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Announced this morning........the proposed new runway at Heathrow has been scrapped and similar proposals for Gatwick & Stansted likewise cancelled. Chalk one up to common sense!
The transport policy of the Labour Government frankly left me cold; for the life of me I could not understand the idea that Heathrow and Gatwick must expand or the UK become a backwater of international air travel. Yes, Heathrow is full and Gatwick & Stansted heading the same way, but the idea that we just have to keep building those airports bigger and bigger is nonsense and showed exactly how the Government had lost the ability to take advice on alternative ideas towards the same goal.
It's all about slots (and at Heathrow, capacity) and at peak times there simply isn't enough runway slots to cope with demand. Capacity at Heathrow in terms of gate availability has long since overspilled and even the opening of T5 has not significantly diminished the waiting time for gates to become free. These demands have led Boris Johnson to call for a new airport in the Thames Estuary to be built, and whilst I have no doubt that technically it could be done, having seen the same thing for myself at Kansai airport in Japan, I'm personally opposed to the project on grounds of cost and location. I doubt very much that the UK could afford to build such an airport - there are simply too many other demands for Government cash - and the proposed site is in the middle of an important seabird habitat. (I'm a member of the RSPB, so such things matter to me.) Most of all, though, I just don't see the need for it: stuck on the tip of the Kent coastline is an already-built airport with the longest runway in the UK capable of taking every type of aeroplane in the world right up to the uber-jumbo Airbus A380. I'm talking, of course, about Manston.
It seems common sense to me that the way forward is to develop Manston into a freight airport and transfer all freight flights into the UK to an airport that is hardly used rather than go the expense of building a new one forty miles up the road. Take away the freight from the existing London airports frees up slots and capacity; Heathrow has a cargo terminal which could then be bulldozed and replaced with extra passenger capacity and the strains imposed on the single runways at Gatwick & Stansted eased significantly. Manston has the capacity to expand the existing passenger terminal by adding to if required and building freight terminals almost anywhere on the huge airfield grounds. The Thanet Way is nearing completion on being dualled all the way to the M2, it wouldn't be a huge engineering project to build a high-speed rail link onto the Ramsgate rail spur, so the infrastructure problems seem relatively easy to overcome. The added job prospects for an unemployment black spot also seem an added bonus, and I'm sure people from Dover would commute there for work. It seems a win/win situation that I hope the new Government will take a serious look at, and I hope to approach Charlie Elphicke about getting local representation to the new Transport Secretary about a project that would give a huge shot in the arm to East Kent as well as address the serious problems facing British airports.