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Aiport expansion is a must. I would add runways/capacity to Heathrow, Gatwick, Stanstead, Birmingham and Manchester.
China and Asia are building massive amounts of capacity and buy many aircraft, any environmental arguments against UK expansion are pointless.
Our trains are rubbish, expensive and poorly maintained. It took us 10 years after it opened to get a fast train through the eurotunnel and it's more expensive to take the train than fly to Paris.
FWIW I live under the Heathrow flightpath, have done so for most of the last 25 years.
Planes are getting quieter
Most people under the flightpath moved in knowing there was an airport there.
Yes the A380 on take off is noticeably quieter than a 747. But, since the flightpath involves coming in from the estuary across London or from Berkshire, with stacks in places like Surrey, should people who have lived in these parts have to simply put up with aircraft noise because they currently live within 30miles of an airport?
Our trains are rubbish, expensive and poorly maintained. It took us 10 years after it opened to get a fast train through the eurotunnel and it's more expensive to take the train than fly to Paris.
Privatisation for you.
So what do people propose doing then if some are so dead against airport expansion?
Nothing.
China and Asia are building massive amounts of capacity and buy many aircraft, any environmental arguments against UK expansion are pointless.
All of them? Every single environmental argument?
How about why does Asia building airports mean that they want to fly to London?
In some ways HS2 linking Manchester, Brum & London negates some of the has to be Heathrow crap.
Heathrow is pointless at this point. The only way the new runway and its extra road traffic could meet air pollution limits is to ban all airport parking, dropoffs and driving within the area. Park and ride from Hertfordshire anyone?
BAA's serious proposal to keep within emissions targets last time the 3rd runway was proposed was to bury the M4 in a tunnel and pipe the pollution elsewhere!
Nothing.
Mr Sensible 🙄
Not that I have much of an opinion either way but I thought one of the reason call me Dave is getting his knickers in a twist is because the houses that will be flattened and many of those affected belong to affluent, elderly types who probably vote Tory. If this is the case then they should be able to afford to move. Not that they should have to..........
To those saying LHR is easy to access for the majority of the country... Have you ever looked at a map?
It need to be a hub airport (internation hub airport not uk hub) and being a international hub airport it would make much more sense to be by one of the most important international cities in the world. Not next to Manchester. When people say heathrow has better acess to the rest of the country the are coparing it to LGW and Boris island.
When people say heathrow has better acess to the rest of the country the are coparing it to LGW and Boris island.
Choosing between getting to Gatwick/Heathrow or other for the rest of the country is like asking if you want your balls stamped on, smacked with a baseball bat or lightly sauteed.
It is shameful that our main international airport isn't on a main railway line linked to the rest of the country.
Even that hateful Paris CdG airport has a TGV station, all of the Netherlands can be easily accessed from Schipol etc.
A 3rd runway should come with conditions attached to link it to the rest of the country via HS2.
The NIMBYs will just have to lump it. Maybe just chuck them a load of cash as compensation. In the long term NIMBYs are inconsequential, people will move, populations will shift as jobs and infastructure change where is desirable to live. But if we just block everything and live in the past then the country as a whole will slowly but surely become a more crap place to live. So we just need to politely tell them where to go, and offer a little sweetener to ease them on their way.
When people say Heathrow has better access to the rest of the country....
...they mean the bits actually worth accessing from a business pov, ie the SE of England and London in particular .
But more sensibly, I agree, Schipol really craps all over LHR as both a hub airport and a nice place to travel from - never going to compete with such an interagted system as that 🙁
A 3rd runway should come with conditions attached to link it to the rest of the country via HS2.The NIMBYs will just have to lump it. Maybe just chuck them a load of cash as compensation. In the long term NIMBYs are inconsequential, people will move, populations will shift as jobs and infastructure change where is desirable to live. But if we just block everything and live in the past then the country as a whole will slowly but surely become a more crap place to live. So we just need to politely tell them where to go, and offer a little sweetener to ease them on their way.
Completely agree on your 1st point.
On your second though, it'd be a brave politician who treats a million people so lightly as "chucking them a bit of cash......"
Nimbys they maybe, voters they are....a little bit of reality is needed here...bulldozing a village & insulating homes against noise isn't the full picture of what's required to make this happen..
they mean the bits actually worth accessing from a business pov, ie the SE of England and London in particular .
It's a bit of a self fulfilling profecy though isn't it.
Business want to be where it is easy to access, people want easy access to where businesses are.
That is why political interest and short termist thinking needs to be avoided on big infrastructure decisions like this. It may be a bit flipant to say "chuck the NIMBYs some cash" but we really need to resist making sub-optimal decisions due to a small but powerful lobby group acting purely in their own self interest.
Over the course of generations these considerations will seem minor and perverse, populations will shift, comunities will grow and morph to take advantage of new infrastructure. But if that new infrastruture is compromised, overly expensive or not fit for purpose then we will all suffer in the short and long term.
I hope they build it today then my plane coming back would not be delayed