Airport Expansion: East vs West

By chance or design, two reports released today advocate, respectively, the building of a new island airport and the expansion of Heathrow. The British Chamber of Commerce made the sure-to-be-unpopular boast that a third runway at Heathrow would pack an additional £30 billion into Britain's coffers over sixty years. In a sign of the bizarro world we now live in, shadow transport secretary Theresa Villiers said the Conservatives were against the report as it failed to factor in environmental costs. Conversely, a report commissioned by the Mayor said that an all-new floating airport in the Thames Estuary could be built within a decade at a cost of £40 billion, and would be "a piece of cake" engineering-wise, according to one ever-so-slightly flippant expert. While it would reduce the number of flights over the city centre, the location would also be some fifty miles east of central London, though a proposed link to Crossrail could mitigate the distance. One thing seems certain — despite the protests over Heathrow, and the general unpopularity of the Estuary plan, London is going to get more runways somewhere, whether we like it or not.