I'd suggest also looking closely at the short haul flighbts which have
aircraft tied up over Epsom and Bookmans Park going nowhere but eating up fuel and
flying time, as well as having the cost of a landing slot.
Dave's figures suggest that it would actually be cheaper for BA to move
passengers on these 'domestic flights' to their Heathrow connection for a
long-haul flight, on a high speed rail line... and funnily enough it ain't that far
to one of the prime candidates for delivery of a UK High Speed line to the
North, built to Berne Gauge with all the lessons of earlier railways
incorporated and serving key centres, but that's incidental to the fact that it as an
engineer, and external course tutor for design students my training is to
think laterally - and sometimes seriously so.
The blind headlong rush to build a third runway with no apparent evaluation
of the points noted above is totally crass and unfortunately typical of DfT
thinking - maybe they are still run by classics scholars from the classic
sources - hands-on railway people like Roger Ford (Informed Sources) and Sim
Harris (Rail Manager On Lien) are hitting out with editorial at glaring flaws in
predictions and this has been reinforced by the recent letter from Ian
Coucher (Network Rail) and endorsed by Adrian Shooter for ATOC on the case for
serious electrification. Any suggestion of a Third Runway has to be tested
against the option of delivering short haul passengers by rail (or even coach for
smaller flows and peak-lopping) and may well be driven by the airlines
themselves because the costs and delays in delivery of a runway ware substantially
worse than delivvery of the passengers by train - which will require a
mainline-high speed line terminal in the airport.
The option - which would also bring HEx from Paddington to St Pancras or
Stratford would tracks the NLR to Camden Road, and thence follows to drop down
under the wayleave of the LNWR lines to Willesden before swinging across to
the GW Main Line and running beneath this in a 'deep' tunnel, almost all
beneath railway land, and with the opportunity to bring up spoil through access
shafts sunk between the widely spaced tracks on both routes, and removal by rail.
In France AIr France has 'planes' which are actually coaches on TGV sets
instead of domestic flights, and in Germany Lufthansa has run trains along the
main spine of the country's rail network in lieu of flights.
Of course the real solution is to travel less....and do more.
Dave Holladay
Transportation Management Solutions.
Writer, Engineer and Travel Plan Specialist - Integrating Cycling with
Public Transport
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G3 6DH
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