An expanded Heathrow can be built years before the alternatives - that’s years in which we can compete in the global race for trade, jobs and growth
What’s the best way to provide the UK with a next-generation global aviation hub and regenerate east London?
We’ve been listening to this a lot during the past year, and no doubt we’ll hear even more about the subject between now and 2015. We’ve learned about extravagant apparitions poised to sprawl out in the middle of nowhere, phantasmagoric floating constructions and other proposals in the Thames Estuary, all magically tethering themselves to London. And like some economic talisman, every new UK airport proposed vaguely to the east is automatically thought to be a panacea for the regeneration of east London
All of these new options require billions of pounds of public subsidy (at least £25bn by the mayor’s own figures - equivalent to almost three London 2012 Olympics), when we barely have the money to do other important things. These proposals for new air hubs also take a very long time to bring about, when every year of delay in providing additional hub capacity costs the UK at least £14bn a year in lost trade.
Crossrail, arriving in 2019, will connect East London directly to an expanded Heathrow hub airport at least 15 years before any Thames Estuary Airport could
Just as disconcertingly, none of these new airport proposals really do anything for east London. Worse, they actually undermine decades of infrastructure investment and e