The results to last week's Fun Online Poll (thank you everybody who took part) are as follows:
At which airport would it be best to build additional runways?
Thames estuary (new airport) - 40%
Luton - 29%
Stansted - 13%
Heathrow - 10%
Gatwick - 8%
So there we go, despite me putting forward the arguments for Luton (good traffic links north and south, by road or rail, far enough away from big towns not to bother people but near enough for people to able to commute there etc), the people have spoken and Thames estuary it is.
I'd be interested to know what the arguments for starting from scratch with the Thames estuary are.
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And lo to this week's Fun Online Poll.
There are plenty of statistics on how many people voted for which party and thus how many don't vote, and reasonable estimates of swings from one party to another.
Because I'm now in the business, I'd be interested to know "How do you make up your mind how to vote at elections?"
Vote [sic] here or use the widget in the sidebar.
Rejoice! Free Propaganda!
1 hour ago
11 comments:
Building an airport near the wreck of the SS Richard Montgomery, with over 1000 tons of high explosive on board, is a really stupid idea. But Boris didn't do recent history at Oxford.
The argument for a Thames estuary airport is "I have no idea what I'm talking about, but I wuv Boris".
Actually, that's slightly unfair.
The original argument, and the one which Boris's idea is based on, is "I like to pretend I live in a world where whizzbang technical solutions mean that we never have to make hard decisions, all the workable airport expansion plans would involve pissing off people who own houses near airports, but not expanding airports would screw the economy, so let's have an unworkable plan instead".
Note this is an excellent example of "they own land, give them money". The relatively low price of houses near airports already reflects the fact that they're near airports and that airports are likely to expand. Compared to expanding existing airports, Boris Island involves spending an extra 30 billion quid solely on increasing the price of these houses (by removing the negative option value).
FC, good point.
JB, yes excellent summary.
FC, the Richard Montgomery is a problem that has to be dealt with anyway. The fact that the authorities are closing their eyes and hoping it will go away doesn't alter the fact that sooner or later the wreck will have to be cleared or it will remove itself in a spectacular fashion. In fact, if an airport is to be built at Foulness, it will give an impetus to actually dealing with this disaster waiting to happen.
JB, I refer you to Mark's point about the negative effect of airport noise on surrounding house prices being almost cancelled out by the positive effect of the employment opportunities of the same airport.
Missed the vote but would have gone for Foulness (Boris Island).
Why? Well, look at Hong Kong's Chek Lap Kok Airport. They faced similar problems and decided it was probably best to start with a clean slate. Its an impressive airport and other countries have adopted this method too where space is a premium.
JP, I was going to cite that example, but they have LVT in Hong Kong (or did have).
JP, that was the majority decision anyway.
Now, why did HK build an island in the sea? Because it is a series of densely built rocky islands surrounded by sea (so "space" is not at a premium, just "dry unpopulated flat land"), so it was cheaper and better to build a new island than anything else. If HK were surrounded by empty, flat land, that is where they would have built the airport.
London is not rocky, but it is densely populated, so not a good place for an airport (expensive land, risk of planes crashing into buildings and killing thousands of people plus noise nuisance). However London and its satellite, Luton, are surrounded by millions of acres of cheap, flat, empty land, so surely that is where airports should be built?
B, LVT tends to make people go for the common sense solution, but you can apply common sense even in the absence of LVT.
I agree. And being an up north sort of chap my ferrets are none too keen on long trips down to those posh parts when they fancy going anywhere requiring good connections. Manchester (and other fine strips of concrete) are okay for many places but they don't fly everywhere... or often.
However, if you're going to plan for the next 100 years and spend oodles of cash you'd better make sure you do it properly. Its for this reason I believe a 3rd runway at LHR is a perfect example of wrong headed cul-de-sac planning.
I gave the HK example above but also Macau and Kansai International Airport in Japan (I think they have two or three others too). Singapore is also talking about doing the same. Sure its expensive but even if its twice the price of onshore construction the other benefits would be worth the extra... like low angle (cheaper) take off, noise, less risk to neighbours and most importantly, room to grow.
I'll take "Planning needs that the city-states of Hong Kong, Macau and Singapore share with the volcanic island chain of Japan and yet don't have in common with southeast England" for 100 points.
A third runway at LHR would be handy because that's where the airport is. This is not difficult.
The risk to neighbours point is silly: plane crashes are incredibly rare events particularly in countries with good ATC, ground radar and zero-visibility approaches, and if something flying ex-LHR does go down, then adding a couple of dozen Londoners on the ground to the 100+ Londoners on the plane doesn't really make much odds to anyone (well, it does to the specific people in question, but not in a statistical risk sense).
The thing about the third runway at LHR is that *it wouldn't cost anything*. The people who own LHR want permission to build it using their own (well, borrowed) money, because they believe it will have a commercial return. All the government has to do is grant permission.
Boris Island, on the other hand, would involve tens of billions of taxpayer squids. The taxpayer would be on the hook for approximately the cost difference between "building LHR R3" - the commercially viable option, estimated at about gbp10bn, which the private sector would be willing to stump up - and Boris Island, estimated at about gbp40 billion.
JP, I refer you to John B's comments.
JB, sure, if the stark choice is between Heathrow 3rd runway or Boris Island, then Heathrow is the far better option.
But Heathrow is already too big for its own good, and hence I think all things considered, expanding Luton is the way forward.
Boris Island is a typical politician's idea: big, bold and impractical. Big and bold so that it catches people's imaginations and make the pol look good, impractical so that it is never implemented and therefore can't go horribly wrong. The original idea, of which BI is the bastard child, was to build an airport on the edge of the sea, on Foulness Island and Maplin sands, with the obvious cost savings over an new island (Foulness isn't really an island). It was also one of the alternative site for building a completely new airport, rather than just an extra runway at an existing airport. Stanstead won that particular contest, I believe, because the USAF had done some useful preparation work a few years previously.
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