As above. By the time planning is argued about. Court Cases are heard. Arguments over finance. Arguments by politicians. Construction and subsequent delays. I expect if it ever gets completed then it will be at the very least 20 years, probably longer.
The cost will be beyond astronomical. I suspect HS2 (which was binned because of the expense) will be small fry compared to what Heathrow will set us back!
Will need to put it in the will for the grandkids to review.
Never mind that, have you seen it?
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cy8p579g5g5o
Who thought that designing it as a massive pistol was a grand idea?
There'll be a legal challenge from some environmental group or other and it'll get binned off again after 4 years of back and forth and £70m in legal fees, appeals, consultations and revisions.
The cost will be beyond astronomical. I suspect HS2 (which was binned because of the expense) will be small fry compared to what Heathrow will set us back!
The irony being that the benefits from doing HS2 in full far outweigh any expansion of an airport in the SE.
Can somebody explain the complexity of the problem?
Obviously we hear about it all the time but I've never delved into the subject past the headlines and don't fully understand it.
Why is it so difficult? Why does it have to be Heathrow? Why not another airport, or even entirely new one? Why do we need it?
There is nowhere to build a third runway that is not already in use. The picture above shows it nicely. Large areas will need to be flattened and the M25 rebuilt into a tunnel. Why Heathrow? Because it the most important airport in the world obvs. Luton or Stansted would be better with the money spent giving them better connections.
Why is it so difficult? Why does it have to be Heathrow? Why not another airport, or even entirely new one? Why do we need it?
The same reason everything is so expensive. The oligarchs sucking every last penny out of everything.
There’ll be a legal challenge from some environmental group or other and it’ll get binned off again after 4 years of back and forth and £70m in legal fees, appeals, consultations and revisions.
The new bunch of commies running the show are outlawing objections to planning aren't they?
Heathrow and completing projects?
Considering that the tunnels to access terminals two and three are being refurbished and that project is about seven years late in finishing and hundreds of millions over budget, I’d imagine the third runway won’t be finished and in use for at least another 30 years. No doubt when/if it gets finished it’ll also be hundreds of millions over budget.
I doubt I’ll see it finished in my lifetime - and I’m 57!
Never.
Like the Stonehenge tunnel. Not in my lifetime.
have it finished in an afternoon. 2 week warranty.
Slightly off topic, but that reminded me of this... mental!
Busy airports can see about 6000kg of rubber deposits on the runways per day!!!
Why Heathrow? Because it's already a connection airport used by so many airlines.
Why is it needed? Because a lot of planes spend a lot of time in holding patterns waiting to land. And lots of planes waiting to depart.
Heathrow has been is need of additional runways for a long time. There is no easy solution sadly.
Never ever. I don't think it will get started.
There is no easy solution sadly.
Make air travel really expensive.
I very much I'll fly out of LHR before it's completed. There'll be so many objections to it. It'll be delayed for at least a decade. If it ever starts it'll be late & so over budget it'll make HS2 look like a bargain. Didn't this gov oppose any development when in opposition? Funny how that's changed. I wonder what other promises they are going to break before the next election?
It'll be just like the Airbus A380... From concept to commercial flight, it had become almost totally irrelevant.
If they started building a 3rd runway tomorrow, it'll still be 15yrs in the making... By 2040 other airports in the UK will have become much more important for international travel, the draw of Heathrow having once been the world's busiest airport will no longer be relevant, and it will have been a crazy long and expensive exercise in futility!
There's bound to be some air traffic controllers on here but many years ago I was sat in a room at West Drayton with some of the top bods from LATCC who were bouncing around the idea of a third runway (actually 5th and 6th in their terms)
They ended up concluding that, in short, it causes more problems to the operation of UK airspace than it solves on the ground, and additional capacity at Heathrow would come at the expense of the likes of Stansted, Luton and London City. It could also impact our European neighbours as any change to that part of the UKs aieapce will have knock on effects to how flights are passed from one ATC agency to another.
We could have spent a few months building a simulation to confirm this but they basically shelved the project so I didn't get to find out if their opinion panned out. We did spend bit of time looking at operations with the proposed T5 so that dates it a bit. Hopefully that's all been looked at and will be fully addressed before the bulldozers start rolling.
Make air travel really expensive.
Not sure that's a sensible solution.
It’ll be scrapped because teleportation will be invented by then.
no- patents will be bought up by car/oil companies.
tunnels to access terminals two and three are being refurbished and that project is about seven years late
and some of the work done so far will have to be rectified as it has been installed incorrectly.
They’ve only recently taken offsite & disposed of the last cabins that were part of the T5 build village. They’ll need to buy & install new ones soon for the 3rd runway.
The road and rail connections to the place are all at / above capacity as well. M25 around the M3 / M4 junctions - we all know what that's like. Crossrail is already exceeding all expectations, I think about 1 in every 5 rail journeys in the UK is made on Crossrail, 220m passengers per year.
It's not a viable proposition for any number of reasons but it sounds big and impressive and gives good "we'll kickstart the economy" soundbites. Then it'll be sunk and the Government can blame the greens, the NIMBYs, the woke...
Meantime it'll be used as an excuse why we can't afford cycle lanes, wind farms, electric buses, faster trains...
M25 around the M3 / M4 junctions – we all know what that’s like
Yup and looking at the design above it definitely makes things worse. One of the few amusements sitting in a jam round there is seeing the planes right overhead but now I will be sitting in a jam in a tunnel.
God knows how much the ventilation system is going to have to cost.
Why do we need it?
because Labour have screwed up everything they have touched so far.
Its their way of boosting the economy and screwing the environment.
If they truly want to boost the economy build more hospitals, but then that didn’t go too well with Labour last time …
I will have retired and left the area (I live two miles from the end of the proposed runway). And I’m 57. How about a prediction that Son2 won’t land on it, and he’s 24 and now flying EZY. It will be that long. Gatwick will have dual operations by 2030, however.
And if you want to talk about ”tunnelling competence”, Heathrow have still not reinstated the bike access tunnel to Terminals 2/3 and it’s been under renovation for FIVE years already. Don’t hold your breath.
Not a chance in hell it will ever be built. I worked with the team putting together the first DCO. There's hundreds, not tens of millions needed to even get the plans in front of a planning team.
PFAS in the groundwater from Heathrow is the next big headline problem, check in here in 18 months.
Not sure that’s a sensible solution.
You said easy not sensible. Make air travel expensive and/or have fewer flights. Better for the environment and no extra runway needed!
The bats and newts will scupper it, the little ninja bastards!
You said easy not sensible. Make air travel expensive and/or have fewer flights. Better for the environment and no extra runway needed!
People and freight have to travel. If not by air, then how? Ferry? Rail? Which is worse?
I don’t understand why this is a political hot potato. Yes the government will grant planning permission at some point but then that should be it. The airport is owned by a private company. Surely it should be responsible for funding the money and paying for the whole build and management of all the contractors. Why would the taxpayers pay for it. Unless we are getting a serious chunk of the shares in return it’s shouldn’t see a penny of taxpayers money
Never. It's a stupid backwards ridiculous antisocial damaging uneducated ill-considered corrupt ignorant thoughtless shallow decision that should never have been approved in the first place, and I say this as someone who works there.
Heathrow is a hub. Expanding it increases transfer passengers who don't spend anything in the UK. How the hell does this help business? It doesn't, but it helps Heathrow Airport Ltd, which is a shopping centre which has to deal with pesky flights from time to time.
You'll still be holding as the increased air traffic has to fit into the same London airspace. And of course you'll pay through the nose for the privilege. It's utter bollocks that it'll be handled by electric aircraft, which will never work.
What it has done is cause everyone to forget about objecting to planned expansion at Gatwick and Stansted.
Edit: forgot to add that Heathrow has absolutely zero reliable public transport options from the north. Or the west. Or the south. But you can connect via train in central London and pay for the most expensive rail transfer in the world, conveniently owned by Heathrow.
People and freight have to travel. If not by air, then how? Ferry? Rail? Which is worse?
Air and sea freight are the worst. Rail is the best from an emissions perspective. Freight has to travel, in a lot of cases people don't. It's a choice, not a necessity. Make it more expensive and fewer people will choose it.
Another 'never' here. It will see £millions spent on consultants, architects and legal people, but the world is changing faster than this process will.
The airport is owned by a private company. Surely it should be responsible for funding the money and paying for the whole build and management of all the contractors. Why would the taxpayers pay for it.
If I understand correctly Heathrow will pay for the runway, while the tax payer pays for any changes to the infrastructure which is not privately owned, such as changes to the M25.
Quote from Rachel Reeves on the radio this morning saying she wants "spades in the ground" by the end of this Parliament with a view to it being operational by 2035.
So I'll stick with my previous time estimate of "never".
f I understand correctly Heathrow will pay for the runway
Building it requires a tunnel, literally the footings of the runway, Heathrow Airport should be paying for it not tax-payers. Likewise if Heathrow airport want a better junction at M25 they should pay for it.
Lots of cynicism in here, seems to reflect the state of the nation at the moment.
Large infrastructure projects inevitably take a long time to plan and build. All the more so when it's in a highly urbanised area. If that's unacceptable then what should we do instead, nothing? Just never do anything that's going to take more than a couple of years? That doesn't seem very sensible.
Building it requires a tunnel, literally the footings of the runway, Heathrow Airport should be paying for it not tax-payers. Likewise if Heathrow airport want a better junction at M25 they should pay for it.
Yes I'm inclined to agree that they should at least contribute significantly to it, and looking further that may well be the case. The below article says that Heathrow will also pay for the "associated works" which I assume includes the tunnel.
https://www.aerosociety.com/news/heathrows-third-runway-set-for-take-off/
Putting aside the rights and wrongs of any particular project, why are we completely unable to get on and complete infrastructure work in this country? It feels like they've spent most of the past decade putting up some gantries so people can drive on various motorway hard shoulders.
Just in my area they've spent well over a year now adding a cycle lane to a short section of the Leeds ring road, about five sorting out a bypass to about two miles of the A59, and even more talking about an obviously necessary pedestrian footbridge crossing a dual carriageway so that people can get to the local railway station (second period of consultation incoming on that one).
Never.
It's a stupid idea to grab headlines. If we really need more capacity Manchester is a better bet
I work in the public sector and we are trying to build something that ticks all of the government boxes to support entrepreneurs, innovation, job creation, wellbeing etc. It is a UK Gov funded project. The site includes one listed building. We are four years in and at least another 12 months before we can start construction (after demolishing the listed building). So will be six years in total for one small site. Its crazy, impossibly difficult and frustrating. So no chance at all of runway being built in 10 years if the rules remain as they currently are.
and don't get me started on bats.....
The M25 is already TWELVE lanes around there, and it's still a massive traffic jam every single day.
Surely they'll need 50 - 100% increase in the all the road / rail capacity?
If we really need more capacity Manchester is a better bet
That was at least part of the intention behind HS2.
Use the train to unlock capacity at both Birmingham and Manchester Airports. The new T2 at Manchester is genuinely impressive although frankly anything would look good next to the total shitheap that is T3 (which will soon be closed and redeveloped).
Putting aside the rights and wrongs of any particular project, why are we completely unable to get on and complete infrastructure work in this country?
There is a complete lack of any long-term plan or strategy for anything. Everything - transport, the NHS, education - is a political football and petty politicians will scupper the plans a previous politician approved simply to "have their say" or "put their mark on something". So something can be started, stopped, restarted under a different scope (which requires expensive re-design, re-procurement), then be subject to legal challenge, paused again, stopped because general election. It's an endless circle of consultations, re-design, stop / go (which doesn't inspire confidence in the project so few companies want to work on it and those that do want gold-plated insurance up to the hilt) and also short-term funding streams which can be redirected or cut at the whim of politicians.
Plus you have lobby groups (often very well-funded oil / auto ones) campaigning against things like sustainable travel, trains etc and you have a ragtag bunch of very poorly funded environmental groups campaigning against airports, roads etc.
Add in NIMBYs, minor things like there is simply not enough room in this country to be efficiently ploughing roads, railway and airports though places, the last remaining vestiges of our natural environment like newts, bats, orchids, listed buildings, archeological sites...
Also the Treasury has way too much say in a lot of this, they get cold feet at the thought of writing large cheques over long-terms.
Large infrastructure projects inevitably take a long time to plan and build. All the more so when it’s in a highly urbanised area. If that’s unacceptable then what should we do instead, nothing?
In the case of expanding airport infrastructure, then yeah. It seems fundamentally incompatible with climate change.
High speed rail on the other hand, go for it. They should build out HS2 as originally planned so far as I'm concerned.
I also can't believe for a second that it will be delivered for anywhere near the previous estimate of £14bn. They need to move an entire town, BA Headquarters will go, currently industrial units will go, massive engineering on roads and utilities, tunnels always go over budget. Huge legal challenges, lawyers making money, potential changes of Governments during the construction time. I'll be amazed if they can bring it in for less than double that cost.
God I could go on and on about this.
What always cracks me up, is that the politicians want a visual representation that they are doing something to make aviation more environmentally friendly, hence big infrastructure projects on the ground that people can see.
Where the real inefficiencies are, is in the sky, with the route structures etc. People can't see this so can't quantify it.
Invest in the route structure to allow aircraft continuous climb and descents for fuel efficiency and use the rest of the money to finish HS2. This would take away a lot of the domestic traffic, which RWY 3 is getting built for anyway!
They should build out HS2 as originally planned so far as I’m concerned.
This.
Internal transfers are the problem. Reduce them by better linking up airports (and the UK more generally) by rail.
As for freight… air should be the last resort. Refocus on markets and suppliers closer to home. Real honest long term thinking for this means closer cooperation with, and eventually joining, the EU.