Boris wants UK's biggest airport built off Sheppey

[Citrus-Fruit]

Boris wants UK's biggest airport built off Sheppey

A new 24-hour airport could be built off the coast of Sheppey to replace Heathrow, according to plans by London Mayor Boris Johnson, Yourswale reports.

The proposal would see an artificial island created about two miles off the coast of Sheerness with capacity for up to six runways, with connections to both London and the Continent via the high-speed Channel Tunnel Rail Link.

It would be linked to the mainland via a railway bridge with ferry terminals to both Kent and Essex.

The scheme, loosely based on Hong Kong’s international airport, could take just six years to build and replace Heathrow as London’s main air transport hub, described by the mayor as “a planning error of the 1960s”.

Kit Malthouse, deputy mayor who is overseeing the project, told a national newspaper it would be “madness” to expand any of London’s existing airports when there is a solution elsewhere.

He said: “We’re not proposing to switch the lights on at the new airport and switch the lights off at Heathrow, firing everyone overnight. This would be a phasing from one airport to the other. Over the space of three or four years those [workers] that wanted to could migrate.

“You would have no problem with expansion or noise. You could run a 24-hour airport.”

Mayor Johnson said: “If you look at what is going on in other countries around the world –in Hong Kong, in Washington – it’s not impossible to move the capital’s biggest airport.”



The planned location of the island in the Thames Estuary, which is only ten to 13 feet deep, is close to the wreck of the SS Richard Montgomery which sank in 1944 with about 1,500 tonnes of explosives still on board.

The idea of an airport in the Thames has been discussed for about the last 40 years but this is the most specific proposal to date.

Liberal Democrat leader Nick Clegg today said he is opposed airport expansion being including in the Thames Gateway project.

Swale council chiefs and councillors were due to discuss the proposal at a meeting this morning (Monday).

[MolsonExport]

it is time for the UK to think big with respect to the Heathrow problems. How far (kilometers) is the location from the City (heart)?

[borgo100]

I'd say a good 45 mi

[Eigenwelt]

Can we call it Airstrip One?

[ardecila]

^^ Good one.

[zilfondel]

Err, isn't it a bad thing to locate airports in estuaries? Don't a lot of birds congregate there? And they tend to get sucked into jet airline engines and down planes pretty frequently.

[bbeliko]

date of completion: 2100

[10023]

Well that's pretty far from the City.

Is he planning a MagLev train as well? With connections to Canary Wharf, the City and the West End at least?

This would really screw up business travel and weekends in London otherwise. Those precious minutes matter when you're trying to do an overnight flight from New York for a morning meeting, or make it to the airport after an meeting for a late afternoon flight that gets back into Kennedy on the same day.

[muppet]

Basically London's airports are reaching critical mass with 120 million visitors and 140 million air passengers p/a. What the key issue here is that demand is still rising but expansion (even with Terminal 5) is very much contested by locals, whether they be more frequent flights, night flights, extra terminals or new runways.

This is of course vital to London's economy, and its airports without even further expansion will fast lose ground to Paris otherwise, that could replace London easily as the premier European exchange.

An island airport would solve the expansion problems should it need them, but the thing is cost and environment, from the impact on wildlife, risk of flooding and storms, common estuary fog to the huge cost - estimated at $130 billion with London's prices (by comparison Hong Kong's vast island airport cost $20 billion back in 1998).

[bbeliko]

Another solution would be to build heathrow east, along with the 3rd (why not even the fourth), but with nimbys that's going to be impossible, a skit written by a guy at an aviation forum:

Oct 2008 - stop using T2.

June 2009 - Submit public tenders for various designs for its replacement.

July 2009 - All designs rejected by local residents.

August 2009 - A rare and previously thought to be extinct breed of dust mite is discovered in T2.

Late-August 2009 - A charity single entitled "Save the mites = Save our future (and our Children's future)" is released by two ex-Pop Idol nobodies. It goes straight in at number one.

September 2009 - Local residents set up an action group called T.W.A.T.S - (Team Worried and Against Terminal Success) which pickets Parliament to demand that the area is left for animals to graze on, as anything other than this course of action represents what basically amounts to Planetary Homicide. They lodge their formal complaints to the planning commission, which rules that in light of the new complaints against the massive expansion of Heathrow airport and the obvious and irrefutable damage replacing the terminal building will do to London’s green belt, that all previous planning permissions and tenders are null and void. A new planning process is started.

October 2009 – T.W.A.T.S chain themselves to a chainlink fence on the airport perimeter and are forcibly removed by police.

November 2009 – T.W.A.T.S climb in the roof of T5 and splash red paint all over the place to illustrate the murder of the green belt. One tries to break a window and falls to his death. “stinky” as he is known, of no fixed address, is immediately Martyred. The local Government releases a statement expressing their sincere sorrow at his death. His wife/partner “Crusty” also of no fixed address, sues BAA for having lax enough security to let them in in the first place, and is awarded three million quid in damages. She cuts her hair, has a bath, moves to Kensington, sets up an advertising firm and buys a Range Rover.

December 2009 – Local residents not affiliated to T.W.A.T.S pre-emptively sue the Government for millions because of the emotional hardship so brutally inflicted on their lives by the grim edifice of the new terminal, in whatever form it may take. A Government investigation board is appointed to appoint a committee to do a study of the plans.

June 2010 – Committee appointed.

October 2010 – Committee convened for half an hour.

April 2011 - Committee convened for an hour and ten mins.

November 2011 - Committee convened for a seventeen minutes.

December 2011 – Preliminary findings are released. They say – “It is the opinion of this Committee that a public enquiry should be convened to assess the lawsuit brought by local residents. Once this is complete planning process may begin on the new terminal”

June 2012 – New committee convened which meets for three mins in a bar in Whitehall before taking a treasury credit card to Spearmint Rhino. Signs are put up all round the now derelict and crumbling T2 site that say that BAA is ‘Caring for your future’

November 2012 – T2 blows down in a moderately strong wind. A national day of mourning is held for the dust mites which it is presumed all perished. A charity single rework of Elton John’s ‘Candle in the Wind’ is released, sung by Jason Donovan and a class of primary school kids from Bromsgrove, entitled “You weren’t just a dust mite to me (Give peace a chance)” – its rockets straight to number one.

December 2012 – Work begins on clearing the site. Local residents complain about the noise of the drills and diggers (over the noise of the planes) which are causing emotional problems and successfully get an injunction to prevent the contractors from using any mechanical tools at all. The rubble is moved by hand. Local residents win more millions in compensation, because BAA should never have allowed the building to collapse in the first place.

December 2013 – the site is cleared. The fourth appeal of the planning permission is in the process of being dealt with in the High Courts.


April 2014 – The local residents take their case to the European Court of Human Rights in The Hague.

June 2014 – Final design, an award winning masterpiece of modern design and technical genius from Sir Norman Foster is dismissed on costs grounds. A rival bid from Botchitt & Scarper Ltd is accepted. The commission expresses ‘concerns’ that the design does not have any gates, and that the water feature and timber decking in and around the hard stands are unnecessary.

November 2015 – Work begins.

December 2016 – Work finishes. BAA make a massive glitzy launch and much is made of the fact that it came in with no work overruns and actually early. Rather less is made of the fact that the work is 395% over budget.

March 2017 – Structural engineers state that the building is unsafe. It transpires that the contractors had just poured tar over the ground and stuck beams into the tar. The site foreman, a Paddy O’Murphy, went on record as stating that “It was fine mate, its fine for people’s drives, and its fine for de terminal tingy dat we’re doing for ya’s. Do ya like Dags?”

April 2017 – Botchitt & Scarper Ltd is found to be a fake company. Nobody at the planning commission bothered to do any due diligence because they all had their drives done as a bonus. The new T2 falls down in a light breeze. An Al-Qaida carbomb is blamed.

May 2017 – Local residents sue again for emotional distress caused by the length of the planning process.

July 2021 – A new terminal design is approved.

May 2027 – The new T2 is opened. It was fifteen years late and cost more than nine-billion pounds all told, or 30% more than an entire brand new airport in the Thames Estuary.

[830point35]

^ Didn't I just read that about Berkeley trying to chop down a tree or two?

[nito]

Originally Posted by 10023

Well that's pretty far from the City.

Is he planning a MagLev train as well? With connections to Canary Wharf, the City and the West End at least?

This would really screw up business travel and weekends in London otherwise. Those precious minutes matter when you're trying to do an overnight flight from New York for a morning meeting, or make it to the airport after an meeting for a late afternoon flight that gets back into Kennedy on the same day.

An airport in this vicinity (the previous proposal has been proposed several times. The prior proposal was in the Aviation White Paper conducted by the government earlier this decade on a site known as Cliffe (named after the village that would have been concreted over)




Like most other London airports, rail connections would be mandatory. Three of London's airports: London Heathrow, London Gatwick and London Stansted have dedicated express railways, and others such as London Luton, London City, have a rail service to London.

And as the above map from the 2003 plan illustrates, a rail line would have been built that would have connected into the CTRL (HSR1 to London St Pancras and Paris Gare du Nord) and the North Kent Line. The CTRL connection would provide journey times from the terminal building to Central London of 20minutes; interchange at Stratford would allow for journeys into the City and Canary Wharf.

The North Kent Line connection would have connected into the future Crossrail Extension on from Abbey Wood, but at present trains would carry on to various termini in the City and West End. Crossrail would take passengers via Canary Whaf, the City and West End but probably take 30+ minutes eventually popping out at London Heathrow at the other end essentially connecting both airports on a one seat ride.

The studies also looked at a connection across the Thames to the London Fenchurch Street lines providing a possible orbital rail service to towns and regions around and beyond London.

I honestly doubt that there would be much inconvenience to business workers when you consider that you can't get a direct train from JFK to Manhattan and the journey either requires an indirect rail trip and change or an expensive taxi ride.

I think the only mode you could take that would beat a London Cliffe-Central London (20min CTRL) train journey compared to a journey from JFK to Manhattan would be by helicopter.

[pricemazda]

It's being called 'Boris' Fantasy Island'.

The plan is pointless, it doesn't account for bird strikes, the fact that heathrow gets a lot of its passengers from the rest of the UK, having this airport the other side of london, loses a large catchment.

Not only the undeground line, heathrow express, surrounded by motorways. Heathrow is going to remain, and will be expanded.

[bains1971]

With the Olympics coming up, it is the wrong time to be planning for a New Airport. We have got enough on our hands for now, the better option would be to start building a new terminal in place of 1&2 at Heathrow.

[nito]

Originally Posted by bains1971

With the Olympics coming up, it is the wrong time to be planning for a New Airport. We have got enough on our hands for now, the better option would be to start building a new terminal in place of 1&2 at Heathrow.

That is happening with the Heathrow East project, the below is an indictive outlook of what Heathrow East would generally look like, but the design has yet to be finalised.

[twoNeurons]

It seems silly that the UK is thinking about increasing its airport quota while it still is chugging along on obsolete rail. Why not build a nationwide TRUE high speed network first and see what kind of demand it takes off of domestic flights.

[arbeiter]

It'll never happen. Why would they do that when they could expand any number of underutilized airports? Southend is basically in the water as it is.