'Heathwick' rail link won't solve our airport crisis

12 April 2012

The notion that London's airport capacity crisis can be solved by a rail link between Heathrow and Gatwick - mooted at the weekend - shows how much Whitehall has lost the plot on aviation policy.

The Government has ruled out new runways at both these airports. A high-speed rail link might be an impressive piece of engineering but would not create more take-off and landing slots.

With 35 miles of railway, you can travel 35 miles. With two miles of runway, you can travel anywhere in the world.

As Boris Johnson and many business leaders have said, the slot shortage means we are falling behind in developing air routes to China, Latin America and other regions that will lead economic growth in the future.

Already there are 21 emerging market destinations that are not served at all from the UK but have daily flights from other European hubs.

If you want to do business with powerhouse cities like Guangzhou or Shenyang, you'd better start off from Frankfurt. Given the international mobility of so many employers, that is an ominous message for London.

The supporters of the "Heathwick" plan appear to believe that spare capacity could be created at Gatwick by inducing no-frills carriers to switch flights to Stansted and Luton.

But why would they? EasyJet, for example, has 35 per cent of the slots at Gatwick. Why would it want the massive costs and disruption to customers of moving somewhere else?

BA supports high-speed rail for linking residents of the UK regions to the national hub. But that bears no relation to using rail to support connections between inbound and outbound flights at different airports.

This is hardly seamless travel. The rail journey might be 15 minutes. But how long would it take to go from incoming aircraft to rail station and then through the other airport to departure gate? And immigration and security would have to be factored in too. So total transfer time would be likely to be far longer than the 45 minutes advertised at competing hubs such as Amsterdam.

There is the further issue of finding the billions necessary to build the link. Heathrow and Gatwick are now owned by different companies. Why would they give such a scheme priority over development of their own airport?

Which leaves the taxpayer picking up the tab, when all previous airport investment (including Heathrow's third runway, if it had proceeded) has been funded by the industry without a penny from the public purse.

Funding is also one question-mark over the proposed Thames Estuary hub. This idea has been around for more than 40 years, but no one has yet provided convincing answers as to how the operational, financial and surface transport challenges would be overcome. Or how the economy of west London and the Thames Valley would cope with the consequent closure of Heathrow.

The Government killed the third Heathrow runway but has yet to provide a credible alternative. We are an island nation in a global economy. We must have a hub airport that can provide high-quality links to the engine-rooms of world growth in the future. A railway through the Home Counties is no substitute.

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