Comments on: London divided over Heathrow

By: wolf

wolf — Sun, 18 Jan 2009 10:02:26 +0000

If Heathrow is a shambles now how can it take more passengers?

By: Ralph

Ralph — Sat, 17 Jan 2009 15:28:26 +0000

It’s interesting that 58% think it would be good for jobs and the economy, but still only 35% support it. That suggests the ‘good for the economy’ line isn’t working.

Heathrow is a pretty poor airport that needs major revamping which is verging on impossible. Perhaps we should follow our own example in Hong Kong and build a state of the art airport elsewhere and move things over when it’s completed.

By: stuart gregory

stuart gregory — Sat, 17 Jan 2009 03:31:41 +0000

at the next election is pritty clear that some seats will turn conservative and some will turn red, but if voters are as angery now as they seam this could spread to the rest or more parts of london meaning that more labour seats could go than exspected even on a modest swing to conservatives of say 5%.

By: OddJob

OddJob — Fri, 16 Jan 2009 23:36:47 +0000

Just as background for the younger amongst you, the Thames estury airport option was being seriously debated in the early 1970′s and earlier for all I know. Stanstead was built as the alternative.

BAA both as a public body and as a public company has consistently constrained development of Gatwick and Stanstead to promote Heathrow.

Now we have the prospect of more effective competition from the other London airports being run Independantly of BAA

In addition the investment in the west coast mainline, despite the teething difficulties will surely reduce demand on the Manchester shuttle. 90 minutes to central london from Crewe means that the the door to (central london) door time to central london from up here is half the time oof taking the shuttle.

The really strange thing however is how much more expensive (for standard tickets) the train is than flying. There is clearly something very peculiar about the way the negative externalities of rail/air is priced.

Get the price and the time right, and sane passangers will take the train.

Free up the capacity from domestic flights through the provision of viable alternatives, and there is plenty of capacity for those international flights already.

It is all about choices, mainly the political one of Gordan Brown wanting to demonstrate seperation from the “do nothing conservatives”

By: Cllr Peter Cairns (SNP)

Cllr Peter Cairns (SNP) — Fri, 16 Jan 2009 22:25:53 +0000

Oddly enough I think there is a fair bit of support for runway three up here in Inverness as we lost our direct link a year or so back.

The prospect of renewed flights to the UK’s main hub with all the difficult environmental issues being elsewhere appeals to a lot of people, although I am not sure about people being keen to pay for it.

Peter.