With the longest runway in Yorkshire at nearly 3,000 metres long and a huge 1,600-acre site in which to expand, bosses at Doncaster Sheffield Airport consider it uniquely positioned to grow in the coming years.
Though more than 1.2 million people came through its doors last year, the airport on what used to be RAF Finningley has the capacity to handle as many as 25 million people annually and 250,000 tonnes of cargo.
A new rail-link is key to unlocking the potential of Robin Hood Airport. And according to a vision document published today and seen by The Yorkshire Post, the key to unlocking this potential could be delivered both quickly and at relatively low cost.
An airport station connected to the East Coast Mainline could be built by 2025, turning the site into a major international gateway for passengers and freight for the areas east of the Pennines and north and east of London, as well as putting itself in reach of nine million people within 90 minutes by public transport. Its price-tag of £280m, which includes a contingency for unexpected circumstances, pales in comparison with the billions of pounds being spent on major infrastructure projects such as HS2 and Crossrail in London.
Crucially, it’s a prospect that would transform the economy of the local area, the North and arguably even the country as a whole, providing much-needed aviation capacity at a time when the proposed expansion of Heathrow is proving slow and hugely controversial. ADVERTISING The vision document, launched this afternoon, sets out how a link to the East Coast Mainline between London and Scotland can be the “transformational change” which realises the airport’s unmet potential. Robert Hough, chairman of Peel Airports, which owns Doncaster Sheffield Airport (DSA), describes it as being in the “foothills of opportunity” as it bids to become the UK’s “most outstanding regional airport”. It sits a few miles from the M18 and A1(M), with the Great Yorkshire Way link road connecting it to the motorway due to be finished in May.
The vision document shows six trains per hour arriving at the station directly from the East Coast Mainline and regional services, with other services coming via Doncaster Central Station.
Part of the grand plan is the station link acting as the catalyst for the creation of an ‘aerotropolis’, a new form of city where an airport is integrated into a cluster of manufacturing, aviation and logistics bases, as well as housing, retail, hotels and leisure. Amsterdam Schiphol and Dallas-Forth Worth in the US are among the best known examples of this type of settlement, though the more immediate comparisons for Doncaster Sheffield are Dublin and Edmonton in Canada.
And in South Yorkshire, it will bring in more high-skilled, high-paid jobs with competitive, internationally-focused companies in the vicinity of the airport, with 1,000 homes already having been built there in recent months. Local, regional and business support is key if the scheme is to get off the ground......
