Bermudan wrote:
I am for it as well. Looking at the alternatives, not doing anything at any of London's airports is missing a trick. The pie in the sky Boris airport is a non-starter, it's one thing building an airport and another building all the transport infrastructure to link it to a substantial population centre which would actually travel to use it - it would take decades to complete and is in totally the wrong place for the majority of southern citizens who would want to use it.
If it was actually built then Heathrow would be phased out over time and eventually close leaving the region with significantly less jobs than now. Maybe they are not the best service jobs, but they are jobs nonetheless. There are light-industrial areas of Hayes and its environs which have been lying derelict for decades, if Heathrow were to close it would face the same fate - it would not suddenly become some new Garden City overnight despite whatever Boris and his glossy presentations hint at. Soon after building a new airport in the middle of nowhere, population and development will occur around it and then after several decades we will again have the Heathrow problem - just in another location.
There are other arguments for why Gatwick or Stansted can't be expanded instead but I think the Heathrow Hub proposal is compelling. The current situation where planes are queuing up for 20-30 minutes to land is such a waste of fuel and time, totally dirty - is there an argument that if extra capacity was available and stacking could be eradicated it could lead to less overall pollution even considering the increase in traffic - given it would fly straight in and land rather than burning up fuel over the largest city in Europe?
Given the current infrastructure projects such as CrossRail, the Western Rail Access Programme on the Great Western and maybe HS2, these are bringing even more population into a one-hour travel radius of the airport so if it is expanded it would not only be convenient for a substantial population but the extra capacity would be used (as if that was in any doubt).
Yes, understand the disadvantages of having to bulldoze the Heathrow villages, but can't believe that people who have bought there in the last 20 years were not aware that expansion over their back gardens was not a real possibility.
Heathrow Villages this week. South Hayes (encroaching onto Hayes town centre) in 2035.
Trouble is where do you draw the line. Would you still support it if you lived in the villages or an area they have their beady eye on in the future.
The real solution is to separate freight from passenger traffic.