HS4Air – “An M25 for high speed trains”

[WatcherZero]

New York has three primary airports, Paris has two.

London has.... Heathrow, Gatwick, Stansted and Luton, at the least.

(Including Le Bourget means you have to include the likes of City Airport)

Southend Airport is about the same distance from London as Beauvais–Tillé (and im sure theres half a dozen more minor airports in a similar radius of London). The other two Paris airports barely break in to five figure annual passenger numbers.

 

[HSTEd]

Well City is more London than either Luton or Stanstead.

Yes, but I was ignoring it because it is a relatively minor airport in terms of passengers.

 

[class26]

The reclaimed land airport model has worked well in tons of places; mostly Japanese.

and Hong Kong

 

[InterCity:125]

And that is before we consider other potential transport links.

A link from HS1?
Something from Southend-on-sea?

 

[si404]

The fact that Hartsfield-Jackson Airport functions as well as it does seem to demonstrate that ultra-large airports are possible in an engineering sense. (IN terms of aircraft movements it puts Heathrow to shame, and Waterloo handles more passengers than Heathrow, so moving that number of people around a building is not infeasible)

It handles about twice the aircraft movements. But it screws up ATC for miles around - it's far worse than Heathrow that already needs the entire SE airspace (a far busier airspace than Georgia) to be arranged around it. For Estuary to do Hartsfield numbers (double Heathrow), the approach zone would interfere with Schiphol unless you bring it right close near people - the problem TEA was meant to avoid! And it needs to do more than merely double figures as the average plane size will reduce - the aim is to double passenger numbers, but also run a ton of small planes to places like Birmingham, Cardiff, East Midlands, etc (turning them into minor spoke airports that have to route most of their traffic via TEA rather than having direct flights) that were realistic land journeys to Heathrow - especially with proposed upgrades of the rail network - but wouldn't be with TEA...

a large six runway airport that would not take out Gatwick and Heathrow

No, but Heathrow closing is the entire point of a single massive hub airport. And ATC reasons would close Stansted, Southend and City. Luton and Gatwick might just survive.

The fact remains that Heathrow and Gatwick spread air pollution and noise pollution over heavily populated areas, doing this is barely acceptable today and willl only become less acceptable over time.

Heathrow = yes. Gatwick = far far less so. 5000 people isn't heavily populated, and R2 will get another 10000. 15k people is less than TEA would affect - because TEA can't be in the middle of the sea as that's too far from London and a nightmare for ATC.

There is a reason that essentially no other cities have this many airports - it is a suboptimal arrangement.

No, it's because not many cities are big enough to pull it off. Especially if they have a hub airport as one of those airports.

Also second-tier cities like Amsterdam, Frankfurt, Dubai, Detroit, Atlanta can't generate traffic on their own for destinations, hence why they sought to become a hub. London, NYC, Tokyo, Paris, etc became hubs with significant transfer flows because their cities could support direct flights. At the moment Heathrow sees about a third of passengers not leave the airport - an already OTT number with the limited airspace and demand from the UK. Super-hubs double down on transfer passengers.

New York, Paris...

Chicago, Moscow, Beijing, Miami, Bay Area...

The reclaimed land airport model has worked well in tons of places; mostly Japanese.

And yet Tokyo still has 2 major airports!

 

[FQTV]

It handles about twice the aircraft movements. But it screws up ATC for miles around - it's far worse than Heathrow that already needs the entire SE airspace (a far busier airspace than Georgia) to be arranged around it. For Estuary to do Hartsfield numbers (double Heathrow), the approach zone would interfere with Schiphol unless you bring it right close near people - the problem TEA was meant to avoid! And it needs to do more than merely double figures as the average plane size will reduce - the aim is to double passenger numbers, but also run a ton of small planes to places like Birmingham, Cardiff, East Midlands, etc (turning them into minor spoke airports that have to route most of their traffic via TEA rather than having direct flights) that were realistic land journeys to Heathrow - especially with proposed upgrades of the rail network - but wouldn't be with TEA...
No, but Heathrow closing is the entire point of a single massive hub airport. And ATC reasons would close Stansted, Southend and City. Luton and Gatwick might just survive.
Heathrow = yes. Gatwick = far far less so. 5000 people isn't heavily populated, and R2 will get another 10000. 15k people is less than TEA would affect - because TEA can't be in the middle of the sea as that's too far from London and a nightmare for ATC.
No, it's because not many cities are big enough to pull it off. Especially if they have a hub airport as one of those airports.

Also second-tier cities like Amsterdam, Frankfurt, Dubai, Detroit, Atlanta can't generate traffic on their own for destinations, hence why they sought to become a hub. London, NYC, Tokyo, Paris, etc became hubs with significant transfer flows because their cities could support direct flights. At the moment Heathrow sees about a third of passengers not leave the airport - an already OTT number with the limited airspace and demand from the UK. Super-hubs double down on transfer passengers.
Chicago, Moscow, Beijing, Miami, Bay Area...
And yet Tokyo still has 2 major airports!

Thank you for posting all this and saving me the typing!

Thames Estuary Airport was only ever a pie in the sea idea from a populist politician, with some pretty renderings from an architectural practice piggy-backing for some free publicity.

 

[InterCity:125]

from an architectural practice piggy-backing for some free publicity.

I disagree, foster+partners already has designed the gherkin and the milau viaduct in France, designing “Boris island” won’t help their publicity much.

 

[FQTV]

I disagree, foster+partners already has designed the gherkin and the milau viaduct in France, designing “Boris island” won’t help their publicity much.

Public Relations works best when the coverage is free and regular. Architectural practices are past-masters at generating enormous and continuous publicity for proposals which are either speculative, or impossible to construct.

Other industries are also highly-adept at this, and the policy is most successful, arguably, when people don’t realise that it’s happening.

 

[HSTEd]

It handles about twice the aircraft movements. But it screws up ATC for miles around - it's far worse than Heathrow that already needs the entire SE airspace (a far busier airspace than Georgia) to be arranged around it. For Estuary to do Hartsfield numbers (double Heathrow), the approach zone would interfere with Schiphol unless you bring it right close near people - the problem TEA was meant to avoid!

The approach (and climb-out) zone from a position in the vicinity of Knock John Fort can be orientated parallel to the coast in a North-North-Easterly direction, and whilst conflicts with Schiphol might arise they can likely be engineered out with proper consultations. The fact remains that the current airport system is simply not fit for purpose.

And it needs to do more than merely double figures as the average plane size will reduce

Why would the average plane size reduce?
The same number of destinations will connect to the airport in the first instance, concentrating the passengers onto a smaller number of larger planes. (We won't be spreading passengers over half a dozen airports in the vicinity of London)

- the aim is to double passenger numbers, but also run a ton of small planes to places like Birmingham, Cardiff, East Midlands, etc (turning them into minor spoke airports that have to route most of their traffic via TEA rather than having direct flights) that were realistic land journeys to Heathrow - especially with proposed upgrades of the rail network - but wouldn't be with TEA...

An airport attached to the Crossrail system would not be substantially harder to reach from most of the country thanHeathrow.
The poor nature of cross-country rail connections means the majority of public transport passengers from most of Britain will be using Crossrail to reach Heathrow in future.

With higher performance stock for the dash from the vicinity of Stratford to the Airport, we are not looking at substantially worse journey times.
Journey times from Tottenham Court Road to Heathrow varies from 28-36 minutes.
With a 140mph end-dash (and modern stock will be able to keep up with Crossrail trains in the core and still manage that performance) will look like 29 minutes.
Even with 90mph stock (so using an add on to the current stock) would look like ~45 minutes.

And that is before we consider that a branch from Crossrail 2 that is proposed at Hackney would permit Crossrail 2 trains to be routed over the alignment to the airport too, with only a couple of kilometres of additional tunnel to Stratford.
That gives us access to every major railway terminal north of the river, and to Clapham Junction.

No, but Heathrow closing is the entire point of a single massive hub airport. And ATC reasons would close Stansted, Southend and City. Luton and Gatwick might just survive.

I was referring to the idea that a single point of failure could take out the airport.
It is hard to imagine one that would not kill Gatwick and Heathrow anyway (mostly weather or ATC related).

Heathrow = yes. Gatwick = far far less so. 5000 people isn't heavily populated, and R2 will get another 10000. 15k people is less than TEA would affect - because TEA can't be in the middle of the sea as that's too far from London and a nightmare for ATC.

There are well over a hundred thousand people living within a few kilometres of the Gatwick boundary fence. They all experience air and noise pollution from airport operations.
It only appears better by comparison to Heathrow which is literally inside the city.

Knock John would permit 260km from Amsterdam and still not have a single person living with 15km of the boundary fence.
Which is further than Manchester Airport is from Heathrow currently.

Also second-tier cities like Amsterdam, Frankfurt, Dubai, Detroit, Atlanta can't generate traffic on their own for destinations, hence why they sought to become a hub. London, NYC, Tokyo, Paris, etc became hubs with significant transfer flows because their cities could support direct flights. At the moment Heathrow sees about a third of passengers not leave the airport - an already OTT number with the limited airspace and demand from the UK. Super-hubs double down on transfer passengers.
Chicago, Moscow, Beijing, Miami, Bay Area...

Yes, the entire point of Super-hubs is that they double down on transfer passengers, that is how you become a super-hub.
Having a super-hub is what we need to have to optimise the entire system.
And it also provides the opportunity to stop condemning thousands of people to incessent noise and to an early death from air pollution.

And yet Tokyo still has 2 major airports!

Japan also has a domestic air market so large that few places outside the US can match it.

 

[Bald Rick]

An airport attached to the Crossrail system would not be substantially harder to reach from most of the country thanHeathrow.

That’s a huge claim. And not one that I think can be backed up by evidence. Pretty much everywhere north, west and south of inner London will take longer to get to a Thames Estuary airport than Heathrow. There would be a lot, lot more losers than winners.

And what about the 70%+ of London airport passengers who prefer to travel by road?

 

[si404]

Why would the average plane size reduce? The same number of destinations will connect to the airport in the first instance, concentrating the passengers onto a smaller number of larger planes.

Average plane size would reduce vs Heathrow:
1) the stupid shuttle flights to Cardiff, Birmingham, East Midlands, etc brought about by the move to the wrong side of London for most of the country would be small planes, lowering average size vs Heathrow
2) closing Southend, City and Stansted means transferring those ~300,000 aircraft movements (about 2/3rds of Heathrow's figure) - also smaller than Heathrow-average planes - to TEA.

The whole point of having a more hub-focused airport was to serve more places - as apparently having more than any other city in the world wasn't enough because Heathrow has fewer than Schiphol. Given we're talking destinations that don't warrant a large plane to London already, we'll be talking mid-sized planes to those new destinations.

Now, OK, there might be some consolidation, where airports of the same airline/alliance run smallish planes from more than one London airport to the same destination and, having lost their ability to serve different London-area markets, can send one big plane instead of two smaller ones. But the thing is that you are actually slowing down the concentrating passengers onto a smaller number of larger planes by increasing runway capacity - the do-nothing scenario does that with runway space scarcity and needing to bring as many people as practical in each plane in order to spread the cost of the expensive landing as thinly as possible. With additional capacity, there's no reason to sell the smaller planes you already and buy a massive one - and you'll corner more of the market by offering 5 mid-sized planes a day than you would with 2 A380s.

An airport attached to the Crossrail system would not be substantially harder to reach from most of the country thanHeathrow.

10 minute journey from OOC vs a 60 minute one makes it much harder (at the very least psychologically) to get to than Heathrow. There's a reason why TEA proposed flights to places 100-150 miles from London - because its in the wrong place for passengers actually wanting to leave the airport.

Most people live North or West of London. TEA has the Gatwick wrong-side-of-London problem, only more so. Essex (though the loss of Stansted would harm the wider region) and Kent (Gatwick's not bad for them anyway) might benefit, but they were rather opposed to a new estuary super-hub airport as the noise and pollution for Southend, Medway, etc would be really bad.

Japan also has a domestic air market so large that few places outside the US can match it.

But that doesn't answer the question as to why they don't have one super-hub airport with Atlanta passenger numbers rather than two smaller hubs. Didn't all those domestic/short haul flights into Haneda deserve hubbing with the international airport at Narita by merging them into one super airport?

All they did was to build an international terminal at Haneda (now Heathrow-sized), and leave Gatwick-sized Narita as it is. Tokyo looked at this and chose to keep two airports, why can't we?

Having a super-hub is what we need to have to optimise the entire system.

The South East's problem is that too many people want to visit the SE by plane. The optimal solution is to remove those not wanting to visit the SE from their airport system. A super-hub does the opposite - TEA was planned to be what? 180 million passengers a year? But 80-100 million of those will not leave the airport under the plan - as a supposed feature of it - but get a plane somewhere else. That's a lot of dealing with stuff you shouldn't have to - far far from optimal!!

Which brings us back to the original topic of a High Speed Railway linking Heathrow and Gatwick. Why on earth would we want to promote people flying via the SE who aren't visiting the SE? The airports, their runways (even with an additional one - whether LHR #3, LGW #2 or 6 at TEA replacing 5 others) and the airspace is busy enough without that traffic. Yes, there will be hubbing, and a little hubbing is a perfectly reasonable thing, but it should be a side effect of a successful city with lots of traffic to it going via a busy airport (30% at LHR are just changing planes), not the driving force behind airline policy for a city like London with more than enough demand.

 

[HSTEd]

Average plane size would reduce vs Heathrow:
1) the stupid shuttle flights to Cardiff, Birmingham, East Midlands, etc brought about by the move to the wrong side of London for most of the country would be small planes, lowering average size vs Heathrow
2) closing Southend, City and Stansted means transferring those ~300,000 aircraft movements (about 2/3rds of Heathrow's figure) - also smaller than Heathrow-average planes - to TEA.

The whole point of having a more hub-focused airport was to serve more places - as apparently having more than any other city in the world wasn't enough because Heathrow has fewer than Schiphol. Given we're talking destinations that don't warrant a large plane to London already, we'll be talking mid-sized planes to those new destinations.

Apologies, I thought you meant reducing the size of plane averaged across all existing airports proposed for Consolidation.
Not against Heathrow alone, which obviously tends to have larger planes than the other airports.

Now, OK, there might be some consolidation, where airports of the same airline/alliance run smallish planes from more than one London airport to the same destination and, having lost their ability to serve different London-area markets, can send one big plane instead of two smaller ones. But the thing is that you are actually slowing down the concentrating passengers onto a smaller number of larger planes by increasing runway capacity - the do-nothing scenario does that with runway space scarcity and needing to bring as many people as practical in each plane in order to spread the cost of the expensive landing as thinly as possible. With additional capacity, there's no reason to sell the smaller planes you already and buy a massive one - and you'll corner more of the market by offering 5 mid-sized planes a day than you would with 2 A380s.

The lifespan of a plane is short compared to the airport though.
Eventually those small planes will leave service, and the costs associated with running many smaller planes will drive a trend to larger airframes.

And even a six runway airport would be expected to saturate eventually, even with 24 hour operations.

10 minute journey from OOC vs a 60 minute one makes it much harder (at the very least psychologically) to get to than Heathrow. There's a reason why TEA proposed flights to places 100-150 miles from London - because its in the wrong place for passengers actually wanting to leave the airport.

Using paddington as OOC is apparently not actually in the Crossrail plan at present, we would be looking at something between 50 minutes and 35 minutes depending on which of the Crossrail extension operations is taken.

It is worth noting that if you were to tie to Crossrail 2 as well, passengers coming from HS2 would likely stay aboard to Euston and board Crossrail 2 instead.
It is likely that through operations of rolling stock would be necessary to improve access from west and north of london, but since we have a dedicated tunnel from Stratford to the Airport anyway, various options could be considered to improve performance.

Most people live North or West of London. TEA has the Gatwick wrong-side-of-London problem, only more so. Essex (though the loss of Stansted would harm the wider region) and Kent (Gatwick's not bad for them anyway) might benefit, but they were rather opposed to a new estuary super-hub airport as the noise and pollution for Southend, Medway, etc would be really bad.

That very much depends on the location of the airport, most studies have concerned an inner estuary option in the vicinity of the Isle of Grain, rather than the option I am proposing further east.

But that doesn't answer the question as to why they don't have one super-hub airport with Atlanta passenger numbers rather than two smaller hubs. Didn't all those domestic/short haul flights into Haneda deserve hubbing with the international airport at Narita by merging them into one super airport?

The original plan at Narita was to build such a super hub, but it was kiled off my politics associated with the forced expropriation of land to construct the airport and other concerns.

All they did was to build an international terminal at Haneda (now Heathrow-sized), and leave Gatwick-sized Narita as it is. Tokyo looked at this and chose to keep two airports, why can't we?

Haneda only survived the 70s because there was rioting to prevent the construction of the original Narita Airport proposal.
The idea of expansions at Narita are essentially verboten amongst the Japanese political class to avoid repeats of those incidents.
Meanwhile large scale expansions at Haneda are problematic because of it's surroundings, hence why Narita was built in the first place.

None of these problems prmiarily effect a TEA, but heavily penalise Heathrow Expansion or Gatwick Expansion.
The political problems that will result from Heathrow will make the current troubles (that led to a decade of government paralysis on the issue) look like a letter to the Times.

The South East's problem is that too many people want to visit the SE by plane. The optimal solution is to remove those not wanting to visit the SE from their airport system. A super-hub does the opposite - TEA was planned to be what? 180 million passengers a year? But 80-100 million of those will not leave the airport under the plan - as a supposed feature of it - but get a plane somewhere else. That's a lot of dealing with stuff you shouldn't have to - far far from optimal!!

Hubs inevitably develop where people want to go though. That is where the planes go and thus longer journeys tend to be pieced together out of them.
Atlanta is something of an oddity in that regard and I am not entirely sure how it become so dominant, but the other major hub of US aviation (O'Hare) is positioned near a major city.

And what about the 70%+ of London airport passengers who prefer to travel by road?

They could either drive to the new airport site, or a gigantic secure parking facility could be constructed on the M25, linked to the aforementioned Stratford-Airport tunnel.

 

[The Ham]

Living circa 1 hour from both Heathrow and Gatwick I can assure you that there's a LOT of people who drive to these airports. Changing to the far side of London would lead to people going to the likes of Southampton, Bristol and Birmingham for as many flights as they could. This would also include going to other hub elsewhere in Europe.

 

[si404]

^^ hence why the plan was loads of shuttle flights to those sorts of places, in order to undermine flights to elsewhere (Schiphol, Frankfurt, Paris, but most of all direct) from those third-tier UK airports. The second-tier UK airports might be able to keep some, but the black hole of Grain will seek to diminish them greatly too.

 

[Bald Rick]

Using paddington as OOC is apparently not actually in the Crossrail plan at present, we would be looking at something between 50 minutes and 35 minutes depending on which of the Crossrail extension operations is taken.

...

It is worth noting that if you were to tie to Crossrail 2 as well, passengers coming from HS2 would likely stay aboard to Euston and board Crossrail 2 instead.

...

They could either drive to the new airport site, or a gigantic secure parking facility could be constructed on the M25, linked to the aforementioned Stratford-Airport tunnel.

OOC is definitely in the Crossrail plan.

Crossrail 2 however is far from certain. And an eastern branch has not been studied, let alone designed.

That’s rather dismissive of the large majority of people who travel by road. A decent proportion travel by bus / coach, particularly from the provinces. How are they going to like an extra hour on the trip? For those driving, perhaps the best place for a gigantic secure parking facility would be where Crossrail meets the M25 and M4. I gather there’s quite a lot of parking in that area today. Although it would be a long trip to a Thames Estuary airport from there, and there’s no way Crossrail could cope with an extra 20k passengers per hour. Perhaps it would be better to have some direct flights form somewhere around there.

***

Speaking personally for a moment; where I am now is 10 minutes from Luton (taxi), 30 from Heathrow (driving / taxi), 45 from Stansted (driving / taxi), 1h20 from Gatwick (drive to station then train).

The very best to Thames Estuary would be 1h 20 driving, 1h 30 by train. Similar, or higher, differentials will apply to most people north, west, or south of inner London, ie approx 90% of the U.K. population. How can this possibly be better?

 

[si404]

Actually OOC isn't in the Crossrail plan, it's in the HS2 phase 1 plan. Different end of the construction lifecycle (one nearly done, the other just beginning), but still fully approved and on the way to fruition. </pedant>

 

[Tobbes]

The Estuary Airport (TEA) is in the wrong place, as has been noted. Echoing the analysis of Roskill showed in the 1960s, the optimal spot is north of London on major transport links - when the liberal thinktank CentreForum did the work, the winner was Kimpton in Herts (https://www.google.com/maps/place/K...xf5a3c697b120d94d!8m2!3d51.850962!4d-0.283599) where you'd basically build a refined version of ATL with terminal links to the ECML and the MML; a link to WCML and HS2 would not be complicated but would be new build. You'd close LHR (and redevelop the 3500 acres) close Luton and possibly Stansted (redeveloping both) allow a second runway at LGW and allow LCY to continue its specialist role.

None of this will happen, of course, and we'll end up with four runways at LHR and huge externalities over SW London and the Thames Valley.

 

[Bald Rick]

The Estuary Airport (TEA) is in the wrong place, as has been noted. Echoing the analysis of Roskill showed in the 1960s, the optimal spot is north of London on major transport links - when the liberal thinktank CentreForum did the work, the winner was Kimpton in Herts (https://www.google.com/maps/place/K...xf5a3c697b120d94d!8m2!3d51.850962!4d-0.283599) where you'd basically build a refined version of ATL with terminal links to the ECML and the MML; a link to WCML and HS2 would not be complicated but would be new build.

Not doubting this, but I happen to cycle through Kimpton most weeks, and the one thing that is particularly noticeable is the hills in the vicinity. And they are not really compatible with runways; at least not without flattening a substantial area.

 

[Tobbes]

Not doubting this, but I happen to cycle through Kimpton most weeks, and the one thing that is particularly noticeable is the hills in the vicinity. And they are not really compatible with runways; at least not without flattening a substantial area.

Yep, you'd be playing with lots of diggers. It's the infrastucture and proximity to London, as well as an East West flight path that avoided the existing major towns that was the attraction - otherwise you go full Roskill and end up half-way to Birmingham.

Anyway, it's all irrelevant as it won't happen, sadly.

 

[camflyer]

The Thames "Fantasy" Island was always a ludicrous idea and If we were starting to build a hub airport from scratch then NE London/Herts probably would be ideal but the fact is that Heathrow already exists and has a huge amount of infrastructure and economic hinterland associated with it. A third runway at heathrow was always going to be the most sensible option.

Once we have Crossrail, the Western and Southern access projects and hopefully this high speed link to Gatwick/HS1/HS2, Heathrow would be one of the best connected airports by rail in the world.

 

[swt_passenger]

Another project kicked into touch by DfT, according to New Civil Engineer:

The £10bn HS4Air rail scheme connecting High Speed 1 (HS1) with High Speed 2 (HS2) via Gatwick and Heathrow airports has been rejected by the government, New Civil Engineer can reveal.

The project to build the 140km high speed route had been proposed as part of the Department for Transport’s (DfT) market led proposals (MLP) call for ideas.

https://www.newcivilengineer.com/la...eathrow-and-gatwick-rejected/10038092.article

 

[Tobbes]

Another project kicked into touch by DfT, according to New Civil Engineer:

And frankly, quite right too

 

[najaB]

And frankly, quite right too

Depends on the funding arrangement. If it had been largely private with an element of DfT funding then no good reason why it shouldn't happen.

 

[swt_passenger]

And frankly, quite right too

Which reminds me, I was going to say that as well. Another slice of pie in the sky...

 

[Jorge Da Silva]

From CityAM
http://www.cityam.com/270414/m25-high-speed-trains-project-connecting-heathrow-and

The scheme, called HS4Air, would have linked the High Speed 1 (HS1) and High Speed 2 (HS2) rail lines with Heathrow and Gatwick airports.

But the New Civil Engineer today reported the Department for Transport (DfT) has turned the plan down.

Engineering firm Expedition submitted the proposal earlier this year in response to a call for ideas from the DfT.

The route would have allowed passengers to travel between the airports in just 15 minutes, a significant reduction from the current one hour and 45 minute-long journey.





It would have provided a direct high speed link from Manchester, Birmingham, Leeds and Cardiff to the two major international airports, as well as a direct link to the continent via the Eurostar route.

Developers said when it was proposed that 40 per cent of the route would use track that already exists, but modified to accommodate the new high-speed trains.

Expedition director Alistair Lenczner told City A.M. the DfT did not want to work on the project because it was too costly, too complex and it would have been met with opposition because it went through green belt land.

"But green belt opposition didn't stop them progressing the Lower Thames Crossing project," he said. "You have to break a few eggs to make an omelette with infrastructure projects like this."

When the call for ideas was launched, the DfT said the public sector did not have a “monopoly on good ideas”, asking the private sector to contribute its proposals.

A DfT spokesperson said: “The call for ideas sought market led proposals to enhance our railways which were financially credible without government support.

“The HS4Air proposal did not meet the requirements as set out in the call for ideas.”

City A.M. understands the department has responded to all the plans it received from the call for proposals.

 

[camflyer]

Well, it was an interesting idea to link the two airports and provide a bypass to London. I'm just not sure the economics were there to support the cost.

 

[swt_passenger]

None of these schemes ever seem to prove there is a demand for a flow between the airports. Perhaps they ought to concentrate on links TO both airports from “other places”...

 

[AndrewE]

It's absolutely barking - unless you are a plane nut or inside the industry and unable to see the downsides.
Give the transatlantic licenses back to Manchester and Prestwick (that were confiscated a decade or two ago to boost Heathrow) and lots of the UK population that want to go west won't need to go to the south-east anyway. Saves on shuttle flights and makes slots available for London-land travellers without enlarging either Gatwick or Heathrow.
Hasn't anyone read the warnings about how important and urgent it is to use less fossil fuel? Air travel is about the most energy-wasteful mode there is over short and medium distances - apart from helicopters and rocket transfers of course!

 

[philthetube]

It's absolutely barking - unless you are a plane nut or inside the industry and unable to see the downsides.
Give the transatlantic licenses back to Manchester and Prestwick (that were confiscated a decade or two ago to boost Heathrow) and lots of the UK population that want to go west won't need to go to the south-east anyway. Saves on shuttle flights and makes slots available for London-land travellers without enlarging either Gatwick or Heathrow.
Hasn't anyone read the warnings about how important and urgent it is to use less fossil fuel? Air travel is about the most energy-wasteful mode there is over short and medium distances - apart from helicopters and rocket transfers of course!

You forgot to include Voyagers

 

[class26]

It's absolutely barking - unless you are a plane nut or inside the industry and unable to see the downsides.
Give the transatlantic licenses back to Manchester and Prestwick (that were confiscated a decade or two ago to boost Heathrow) and lots of the UK population that want to go west won't need to go to the south-east anyway. Saves on shuttle flights and makes slots available for London-land travellers without enlarging either Gatwick or Heathrow.
Hasn't anyone read the warnings about how important and urgent it is to use less fossil fuel? Air travel is about the most energy-wasteful mode there is over short and medium distances - apart from helicopters and rocket transfers of course!

Transatlantic licenses went ages ago. Any airlines is free to fly to any airport n the UK from across the pond. they just choose not to.