Even as the Tories ready their secret fleet of Sipson bound bulldozers, our transatlantic cousins at Gothamist are having their own airport related tomfoolery with an organisation calling itself the Manhattan Airport Foundation. The group's proposition, conveyed by a very professional website complete with quality 3D renders, is to redevelop the unused area of central Manhattan, currently know as Central Park, as an air transportation hub fit for the 21st century.
This stunt may well be based on a 1960s paper by British anti-airport campaigner John Adams, detailed by our own Plane Stupid. Adams showed that the cost-benefit analysis system used in assessing London's proposed third airport would, if permitted, conclude that the very best location for the facility would be London's Hyde Park: a large, open, flat area with excellent transport connections and conveniently located for central London. This essay was happened upon by a rather less satirically minded News Editor at the Sunday Times, taken at face value, and run by that paper as a serious suggestion.
As for the foundation, their office address on the 58th floor of the 57 story Woolworth Building might be a clue to their true intent... Of course this plan would be a travesty, but the thought of never again having to wait in the snow at the Jamaica Center Airtrain interchange does give us pause for thought...
