Boris: Heathrow could operate new hub airport in Thames Estuary

Comment: It is a very sad state of affairs when the person charged with undertaking the report who is meant to be neutral leaves Boris  bold plan for a 24 x 7 airport off the initial short list. One does wonder how independent the report really is. It seems the Heathrow lobby will do anything to continue what ever the costs. 

Note lets keep reminding ourselves who are these people ....key shareholders in Heathrow are now foreign (Ferrovial  Spanish, CIC holdings from China 10%, Qatar Holdings 20%, Caissw de depot et placement du quebec( Candian) 13.29% , Government of Singapore investment Corp, Universities Superannuation Scheme (UK)   £392m 8.65%. Alinda Capital Partners (USA Company)  11.18% Finally lets remind ourselves how these guys earn money from heathrow 

The company makes money from charging landing fees to airlines and increasingly from ancillary operations within those airports such as retail and property.  95% of its business is from Heathrow itself.

Maybe Colin Mathews can now see the writing is on the wall and has now"retired"  from his post  leaving Heathrow to find a new CEO 

London's Mayor has published proposals for how the site currently occupied by Heathrow could be re-developed and has urged the airport's owners to become a "partner" in the scheme

The Mayor of London has suggested Heathrow could be re-developed into a new education and technology quarter; a new town; a new residential quarter or a combination of all three. Photo: Bloomberg

By Nathalie Thomas, Leisure and Transport Correspondent

5:03PM BST 31 Mar 2014

199 Comments

Boris Johnson is seeking to strike a compromise with Heathrow in the aviation capacity debate by offering the airport’s owners a role in developing and operating a brand new hub in the Thames Estuary.

London’s Mayor on Monday set out four potential scenarios for how the area in West London currently occupied by Heathrow could be re-developed and create homes for as many as 200,000 people.

Mr Johnson, who has consistently campaigned against a third runway at Heathrow, is seeking to appease the shareholders of the West London airport by offering them a role both in the regeneration of the area - as owners of the land - and in creating a new hub to the east of London.

Plans for a four-runway hub airport on the Isle of Grain in north Kent were left off a short-list of options published in December by the Commission investigating where to build the next runway in the South East of England.

However, the commission, headed by Sir Howard Davies, has pledged to undertake further work on the Mayor’s preferred option and will decide in September whether it should be added to the short-list, which currently consists of a second runway at Gatwick and two potential options for an additional air strip at Heathrow.

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Heathrow argues that 114,000 people would be put out of work overnight if it was forced to close in favour of a new hub in the Thames Estuary.

But a report drawn up by property consultants at Jones Lang LaSalle (JLL) and PBA for the Mayor’s office claims the site could be re-developed to support up to 90,000 jobs and provide homes for 190,000 people. Many aviation jobs would be transferred to the east, the Mayor argues, while the re-development of the Heathrow site would create a large number of construction jobs in the interim.

Daniel Moylan, Mr Johnson’s chief aviation adviser, said it would be “ideal” if Heathrow became a part of both the regeneration project and the development of a new hub.

He said: “Why shouldn’t Heathrow, as a private company be our partner in this? Wouldn’t that be the best solution, like other businesses that need to move premises? They get a new airport to manage at the end of it too – that would be an ideal solution.”

Mr Johnson vowed to “fight on” for a new hub airport even if Sir Howard’s Airports Commission opts for a third runway at Heathrow or a second runway at Gatwick.

The Commission believes that one extra runway in the South East will be needed by 2030 but said there is a “demand case” for a second additional air strip in the London area by 2050.

Mr Johnson acknowledged that Gatwick is fast becoming the front-runner in the capacity debate, as Heathrow is still believed to be politically undeliverable. However, he said a second runway at Gatwick would be “far from the optimal solution” and “in the end” the debate will go full circle and return to the idea of new hub airport.

A Heathrow spokesperson said: “The Mayor of London is proposing to spend billions of pounds of public money to forcibly buy and then close Heathrow, immediately putting 114,000 people out of work. He would do this to build an expensive new hub airport at a further cost of £112bn to the taxpayer. The economic impacts of this at both a national and regional level would be devastating.”

The Mayor's proposals include turning Heathrow into a technology and education quarter, with two new campus universities, creating 100,000 jobs.

A new town could also be created on the site, according to the JLL report, or a residential quarter with nearly 82,000 homes which would support a population of 200,000.

The report also suggests a fourth option, combining all three to create "Heathrow City". This would involve a residential quarter based around the existing transport infrastructure and some of Heathrow's terminal buildings would be turned into shops and a convention centre.

Heathrow expansion would reduce number of flights, says secret study

Philip Pank

A fourth runway at Heathrow would significantly reduce the number of flights in the South East, according to confidential analysis that has been described as a “game-changer” by opponents of the airport’s expansion.

In a private submission to the Airports Commission, Nats, the air traffic control service, calculated “conflicting arrival and departure flows” and concluded that building a fourth runway in West London would reduce the combined capacity of Heathrow, Gatwick, Stansted, Luton, Birmingham, City and Southend airports by 9 per cent.

It would cut capacity relative to a three-runway Heathrow by 18 per cent because of the disruption to flight paths to the other main airports.

Those against Heathrow expansion said that the analysis, seen by The Times, was a “game-changer” in the debate over airport expansion as it undermined the long-term case for doubling the size of the country’s biggest airport.

Opponents, including Boris Johnson and local residents’ groups, claim that a third runway would be a “Trojan Horse” opening the way for another and subjecting more than a million people to unacceptable noise pollution.

The government-backed commission that will decide where to build the next runway has put two possible configurations for a third runway at Heathrow and a second runway at Gatwick on its shortlist. Sir Howard Davies, head of the commission, said that a third runway could be built by 2030 but it would be full by 2050.

The commission has excluded a fourrunway Heathrow from its shortlist, but the airport’s £31 billion blueprint for expansion includes options to build two new runways. In its submission, Heathrow said that a third runway would meet the demand for air travel to 2040 but that from 2030 a decision would have to be taken on a fourth. Mr Johnson said: “A third runway at Heathrow would be followed by a fourth as surely as night follows day, and if our air traffic experts believe that will result in less overall aviation capacity rather than more, then that is yet another starkly obvious reason why expansion at Heathrow is a total no-go.”

The Nats report, submitted to the commission last November, concluded that construction of a fourth runway would cut the maximum possible number of flights into the main airports to 1,550,000 from 1,680,000.

Flights at Gatwick, Stansted and Luton would be reduced by 50 per cent. London City would see a 25 per cent reduction.

John Stewart, chairman of the campaign group Heathrow Association for the Control of Aircraft Noise, said: “The fear locally must be that if demand does increase, a third runway will effectively become a Trojan Horse for a fourth runway. That is genuinely a new fact which could be a game-changer.”

The Nats analysis highlights the difficulties of turning Heathrow into a “megahub” airport, but also points to potential limitations of a new hub in the Thames Estuary. It could increase total airport capacity by just 6 per cent, because of the closure of Heathrow, City and Southend airports. However, if runways were tilted to run northeastsouthwest, the airport would increase total capacity by 24 per cent.

Supporters of the scheme say that Nats has underestimated the potential benefits because it assumes that a new hub would face the same constraints as Heathrow, operating between 06:00 and 23:00. Because far fewer people would be affected by noise, it could operate 24 hours a day, resulting in a far greater capacity increase, they argue.

Sir Howard will make his final recommendation three months after the 2015 election.

Foster Island

Boris's plan to replace Heathrow with £65bn Thames Estuary airport are as 'grandiose as Hitler's', says leading architect

• Mayor unveils his preferred options to expand UK's aviation capacity
• Sir Terry Farrell labels ideas 'mad' and compared it to Hitler's grand plans
• Mr Johnson has backed away from his plan for 'Boris Island' in Thames
• Now Boris favours 'Foster Island' airport on Isle of Grain in Kent
• He says anyone who believes Heathrow should be expanded is 'crackers'
• Stansted could also be expanded from two to four runways in 'compromise'
• 
  

By MARTIN ROBINSON and RAY MASSEY

PUBLISHED: 09:58, 15 July 2013 | UPDATED: 09:55, 16 July 2013

 
 
 

A leading architect has compared Boris Johnson’s plans for a Thames Estuary  airport to the grandiose projects Adolf Hitler might have dreamed up.

Sir Terry Farrell, who designed the MI6 spy building, said the London Mayor’s plan for a £65billion airport was ‘mad’.

Sir Terry said: ‘When people say that you have got to have vision, well Hitler had vision.

'Vision can be a madness where you get so obsessed you throw everything you have got on the roulette table and hope you got it right.’ Hitler famously had his architect Albert Speer draw up plans on an epic scale for a radically re-designed Berlin – to be renamed ‘Germania’.

Vision: Foster Island (pictured) on the Isle of Grain has today been backed by the Mayor of London above his own Boris Island plan because of its proximity to London

Argument: Announcing his three preferred options for aviation expansion Boris said today that building a new runway at Heathrow would be 'crackers'

All change: Boris Johnson's plans for a new airport would demand that Heathrow is bought and replaced with a 250,000 new London borough

Sir Terry, who has designed some of the world’s largest airports and train stations, including Charing Cross, said the four-runway proposal was on an unprecedented scale for the UK and made the HS2 high-speed rail project ‘look like chicken feed’.

Mr Johnson yesterday underlined his commitment to an estuary airport by naming Sir Norman Foster’s Isle of Grain plan as his first choice. 

The Mayor also wants to shut Heathrow at a cost of £15billion to create a new London borough for 250,000 residents.

But Sir Terry, who is working on Gatwick’s bid to build a second runway, said closing Heathrow and moving the capital city’s main airport to the east would mean  ‘flipping London’. 

Sir Terry was approached by the Mayor to work on his project but turned it down.

Announcing his three preferred options to expand aviation capacity in the UK this morning, he ruled out a 'crackers' third runway at Heathrow and demanded a new airport east of London or the expansion of Stansted instead.

Mr Johnson said: 'Ambitious cities all over the world are already stealing a march on us and putting themselves in a position to eat London's breakfast, lunch and dinner by constructing mega airports that plug them directly into the global supply chains that we need to be part of. 

'Those cities have moved heaven and earth to locate their airports away from their major centres of population, in areas where they have been able to build airports with four runways or more.

'For London and the wider UK to remain competitive we have to build an airport capable of emulating that scale of growth. Anyone who believes there would be the space to do that at Heathrow, which already blights the lives of hundreds of thousands of Londoners, is quite simply crackers.'

He also admitted that Boris Island might be a 'bit far away' from London and said that Foster Island was his preferred option. 

New favourite idea: Boris has backed the four-runway 'Foster Island' (pictured) in the Thames Estuary airport, which would be capable of handling up to 180million passengers a year on the Isle of Grain in Kent

Elaborate plan: The Isle of Grain's proposed international railway station, which would include a service to Waterloo in 26 minutes

Once shut down, any Heathrow buyout would be bank-rolled by the Government and the Mayor's aviation adviser Daniel Moylan has said its rail, road and Tube links would make it an ideal place for a new development on the western edge of the capital.

BORIS JOHNSON'S THREE BIG IDEAS

'FOSTER ISLAND': The inner estuary site on Kent's Isle of Grain is close enough to London to provide smooth and fast access by public transport, yet ideally located so as to allow take-off and landing over water and so impact on as small a population as possible.

It sits in an area with a strong industrial history, and is across the water from the new DP World London Gateway Port. A new hub airport there would lay the foundation for a future logistics heartland of the UK.

'BORIS ISLAND': An airport on an artificial island off the Kent coast would remove all problems of noise pollution and give the airport the freedom to operate in whatever way it needed in order to maximise the UK’s connectivity and economic benefits.

STANSTED EXPANSION: Developing a major four-runway airport at Stansted would have the attraction of building on existing infrastructure and being sited in a relatively sparsely populated region, Stansted has none of the environmental or wildlife issues that would need to be overcome in the estuary.

'For an airport, that is not very good connectivity. But most outer London boroughs would bite your hand off for transport links like that,' he said.

But Heathrow bosses say shutting down their airport would cost almost 80,000 jobs, the biggest cull since Britain's coal mine closures during the 1980s.

'It seems extraordinary that any Mayor of London would propose forcibly buying and then closing Heathrow. The Mayor's proposals would leave 114,000 people facing redundancy, cost taxpayers more and take longer to deliver than building on the strength we already have at Heathrow,' a spokesman said.

This morning Mr Johnson announced that 'Foster Island', 'Boris Island' or the expansion of Stansted airport would be the three best ways to solve Britain's lack of aviation capacity.

Mr Johnson's plans will be submitted later this week to the Government-appointed Airport Commission headed by Sir Howard Davies, who will help the Government make the final decision.

Mr Johnson said that a new hub airport would be able to support more than 375,000 new jobs by 2050 and add £742billion to the value of goods and services produced in the UK.

He said it could be built by 2029, with a hybrid bill being passed by parliament to secure approval for the airport, the surface access and the acquisition of Heathrow.

Two ideas: This graphic shows how planners have designed two new airports on the Thames, one on the edge of Isle of Grain nicknamed 'Foster Island' and the 'Boris Island' proposal in the middle of the estuary

Talking about the future of the Heathrow area should a new airport be sited elsewhere, Mr Johnson said that part of west London, with good transport links, had the space and infrastructure to generate up to 100,000 new homes that London badly needed.

There was the potential to attract tens of thousands of jobs in a number of different sectors and while some workers at Heathrow would relocate to the new airport, many others would find work in a newly-developed Heathrow area.

'Cities have moved heaven and earth to locate airports in areas where they have been able to build airports with four runways or more. Anyone who believes there would be the space to do that at Heathrow is quite simply crackers.'

- Mayor of London Boris Johnson

Mr Johnson's chief adviser on aviation, Daniel Moylan, said: 'Heathrow can never solve our problems and our studies show that we're better off with a new site.

'The immense noise, pollution and congestion that would result from expanding an airport located in the heart of our suburbs would potentially devastate the greatest city in the world.'

The mayor's original preferred plan had been nicknamed Boris Island in his honour as he has championed the idea to build it on an artificial island made of landfill.

It would be two miles north of the Isle of Sheppey and ferries would link the site to Kent and Essex while a railway bridge could connect it to the mainland.

If the Isle of Grain plan happens the scheme is expected to be designed by eminent architect Lord Foster and an airport would have a minimum of four runways, with space to build two more.

Vision: This is what Stansted Airport could look like if it was turned into a four-runway superhub (design above and plan below)

Marches: Celebrities including chef Jamie Oliver have joined protest to prevent Stansted growing in any way

The entire project would cost about £65 billion, including a new train line taking passengers to Waterloo in 26 minutes. 

Planes would descend over the North Sea rather than densely populated parts of London, as many do when coming in to Heathrow.

Mr Johnson now says that the Isle of Grain plan has the 'greatest single potential for regeneration'.

The blueprint involves an opening scheduled for 2029, requiring infrastructure improvements such as extending Crossrail and widening the M25 an extra lane in each direction for 36 miles. 

Ongoing fight: A longstanding campaign has been fought to prevent a third Heathrow runway, but if airports move to the east of the London, tens of thousands will lose their jobs

On top of those three suggestions, Heathrow will be revealing its own plans to expand with a third and maybe even fourth runway.

The Mayor also argues that Stansted could be transformed into a four-runway international super-airport as part of a 'compromise' package.

A super high speed rail link - cutting the journey time to London to 25 minutes - would also be built to support its growth.

But it will still be highly controversial as proposals for a second runway there have already led to years of protests from people living under its flighpath.

Stansted has been targeted by many protests including one where more than 50 people burst onto its runway and shut it down for more than five hours.

Celebrities including Jamie Oliver have also joined other protests. 

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2363945/Boris-Johnsons-plan-replace-Heathrow-65bn-Thames-Estuary-airport-grandiose-Hitlers.html#ixzz2dqUwqvyq
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New Thames Estuary airport 'easily affordable'

A new four-runway airport on the Isle of Grain in north Kent would need up to £45bn of net government spending over nine years but is “easily affordable”, it was today claimed, as Boris Johnson set out his plan to solve Britain’s aviation crisis.

The Mayor of London backed a new airport in the inner Thames Estuary which could open in 2029, as he attacked ministers for “sitting around like puddings” and doing “nothing” as rival cities abroad build vast airports in an attempt to win a greater slice of global trade.

Mr Johnson is submitting three proposals to a Government-appointed Airports Commission, although he suggested a development on the Isle of Grain would strike the best balance between economic benefits and reducing the negative effects of aviation on local communities and the environment.

The plans, to be submitted this week, also include transforming Stansted “out of all recognition” and a new airport built on an artificial island in the outer Thames Estuary off the Kent coast – a project dubbed “Boris Island” after it received early backing from the Mayor.

Britain has “squandered decades” by failing to make a decision over where to build new runways in the South East, Mr Johnson claimed. That indecision means “other countries are eating our lunch” when it comes to growing business and connections with the rest of the world, he warned.

In addition to building a new airport to the east of London by 2029, the Mayor proposes that the Government spends £15bn of taxpayers’ money to buy Heathrow, close the airport and regenerate the area by building up to 100,000 new homes. However, Daniel Moylan, the Mayor’s chief adviser on aviation, admitted it could take up to 25 years to completely regenerate the area around Heathrow.

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Mr Johnson on Monday fired the first shot in what is likely to become an increasingly bitter battle over the future of aviation in this country, as Heathrow prepares to publish its proposals for expansion tomorrow.

Heathrow will also present the Airports Commission, led by former Financial Services Authority boss Sir Howard Davies, with several options where it could build a third runway, and eventually even a fourth.

The Mayor’s camp argued that the eventual cost to the taxpayer of expanding Heathrow is unlikely to be vastly better than the price tag for a brand-new hub airport, which would have a “trivial” impact on the local population by comparison.

Extra surface transport links would need to be built to accommodate a four-runway Heathrow, Mr Moylan said – a burden that would fall on the taxpayer.

A new hub would require £4bn-£5bn of net government spend per year between 2019 and 2028 — a period when it is proposed the taxpayer will also have to pay out for the proposed High Speed 2 rail project. But backers say the Thames Estuary airport would be sold as a “going concern” to private investors, while the taxpayer could also recoup money through the sale of land around Heathrow to housing developers. “It [a new hub airport] is certainly affordable in the context of Government expenditure of £700bn per annum,” Mr Moylan said.

The Isle of Grain airport would be located on agricultural land next to the Thames Estuary. A new high-speed rail line would have to be built to transport passengers from central London to the airport in less than half an hour and the plans include extending the Crossrail project from Abbey Wood to reach the hub. The M25 would also need to be “enhanced” while the airport could be connected to train services from the Midlands and northern England by the proposed HS2 route.

According to an investigation carried out by Transport for London, the Isle of Grain airport would support 388,000 jobs on the whole, including 134,000 directly at the airport, and permanently add 0.5pc per annum to GDP by improving connectivity for UK businesses.

The airport would initially handle 90m passengers year but eventually double that number would pass through its doors. About 31,500 people would be affected by noise from the Isle of Grain hub compared to 766,000 at Heathrow at present.

Mr Johnson said the debate on runway expansion had been a difficult issue for “all sorts of leaders” and “nobody has grasped it”.

“Why don’t we get on with it?” he said. “I simply want to exhort people in this Government to do something … You can’t endlessly push this into the long grass.”

The Mayor has repeatedly clashed with the Prime Minister David Cameron and George Osborne, the Chancellor, over the issue of air capacity. The Government was last year accused of kicking the debate into the long grass by announcing a commission to discuss potential solutions, which will not deliver its final findings until 2015.

Mr Johnson said expanding Heathrow would be “nuts” and also discounted a “dual hub” solution, involving an extra runway at Gatwick, which would do “absolutely little or nothing to increase connectivity,” the Mayor added.