UK Transport,-Airports and HS2,- 2 Statements and some Realities.

Media focus over the last few days on the Eurozone crisis and other miseries has meant that two very important statements on transport policy,- one by new Conservative Secretary of State, Justine Greening and the other by her Labour opposition equivalent, Maria Eagle, have gone largely without comment. Both are of major significance for the UK's economic and social future and deserve much wider publicity.

Firstly there was Ms Greening, MP for Putney and Roehampton's declaration to a meeting of aviation people that "The political reality is that the (Heathrow 3rd runway) decision has been made and it is done". Contrary to hopes that with the last election now well behind them and over three to go before the next, the Conservatives might review their fatal electioneering promise to axe what was then Labour's plan for the additional runway, this has to be the end of the last chance of its resurection. The British airline industry has reacted with predictable dismay and it does mean that either it goes into relative decline or one of the Thames estuary options is swiftly taken up and undertaken with un-British haste regardless of what birds, insects, rare plants etc it may come across. A byproduct of this stance is that it makes talk of bending the proposed HS2 railway from London to Birmingham and the north to take in Heathrow an even less sensible proposition than it is now. Thanks to the efforts of European, Middle Eastern and Asian airlines offering excellent high quality links to the world via their home airports, Heathrow is fast diminishing in importance to northern England and Scotland. It is though still significant for southern and western England and south Wales.

Ms Eagle speaking for Labour discarded their previous position of championing Heathrow's third runway by also declaring it dead and buried. For once cross party agreement but unfortunately on an issue where both are now wrong. She did though reaffirm Lord Adonis' support for HS 2 though in a changed form. With an over optimistic glance at gaining support from disgruntled Tory voters in the Amersham/mid Chiltern Misbourne Valley/Wendover corridor, she declared, Miliband style, that they they were not Nimbys and she in effect shared their pain, environmental concerns etc. She and the party are now for HS 2 following a deviation which most of its customers do not want so as to loop via growth- stymied Heathrow thereby adding to the journey time and cost per person per journey for evermore.

Although both parties have linked the abandonment of the Heathrow runway to the case for building HS 2 there is less and less relationship between the two. Thanks to European, Asian and Gulf airlines providing ever increasing links to the world via their efficient and attractive hubs, northern England and Scotland do not need Heathrow so providing an expensive rail link to it from those places is not worthwhile. The rail links the airport does need are to the south, west and Wales. These do not have significant airports offering extensive and high frequency connections to other people's hubs. The most obvious, short and therefore relatively cheap link would be from Terminal 5 direct to the Great Western mainline heading west. Now that the GW line is to be electrified and the T5 platforms are already built and unused ,it becomes particularly easy and both for Crossrail and long distance trains from Paddington to Reading and beyond, north to Birmingham, west to Bristol and Wales and south west to Exeter, Plymouth and Penzance.


HS 2 and the 3rd Heathrow runway remain the greatest strategic transport needs for the UK. Politicians need to understand that they are separate not conjoined issues and take action on both. Talk of a new airport in the Thames estuary for £50 bn in ten years is airport pie in the sky. This is UK, not Hong Kong or Korea. Apart from the upheaval it would create for the whole Thames Valley corridor economy from west London to at least Swindon, out to the east birds live in the Thames estuary. People around there want to sleep. There will be unique mosses, badgers and who knows what else? It would take decades to circumnavigate these via countless enquiries, reviews, appeals and the rest. £50 bn would quickly morph into £100bn and keep going while Britain's transport systems went the other way.