Expanding Runways
| 12:43 UK time, Monday, 11 June 2007
We're restarting the blog as a forum for debate on major issues, with content that will appear in part on our radio output.
The first issue we're debating, with the help of two commentators on our Have Your Say site, is the expansion in air travel and what it might mean for the environment.
However much you want to make a difference to your carbon impact on the planet and its climate, if you take a ride on an aeroplane you are probably undoing most of the good you do with recycling, turning down your thermostat and switching off your TV at the wall.
In the UK, a small island with limited green space, there is a troublesome tension between the 'democratisation' of air travel with cheap airlines and the damage caused by concreting over the countryside to build runways and the noise over people's houses.
The latest argument has been about a decision by the UK government to back a , London's third airport, to the east of the capital in Essex.
Our first contributions come from Martin Barnes, who has battled expansion at Heathrow, London's main airport, and Sue Harris, who is now fighting the Stansted expansion. Tomorrow, I'll post the response from British Airways press chief. If you'd like to comment, please email. Comments will be posted here later.
Martin first:
"I lived in the village of Stanwell, adjacent to the Heathrow southern perimeter for twenty three years, during which time I saw the airport expand from 200 thousand aircraft movements a year to nearly 480 thousand movements. I saw the building of terminal four and the approval for terminal five go ahead. In addition I saw the building of the World Cargo Centre (for which no public consultation took place) and the creation and expansion of entire business/freight warehouse complexes around the airport, leading to more and more lorries and vans on the roads around the airport. I also saw the start of the M25 widening scheme to the west of Heathrow carried out purely to facilitate access to T5.
"The decision to give T5 the go ahead was the point at which I decided to move away from the area.
"In business terms BAA [British Airports Authority], the airlines and the government have turned Heathrow into a 'hub' airport. This means, in effect, that something like 40% of passengers who arrive at Heathrow are simply passing through. They do not go 'landside', they just go from one aircraft, via a wide selection of shops and resturants, to another aircraft in order to fly to their final destinations. The economic benefit to the country therefore is limited to the money they spend in the shops (T5 will be one of the largest retail sites in the UK) and the hundreds of low pay, low skill jobs created in this enterprise. A rather simplistic view perhaps but the fact that BAA generates more income from retail operations than it does from landing fees demonstrates this point.
"The hub airport concept has to be viewed against the current debate as to whether people really want to fly from A to B via point C (possibly involving a long stopover) or whether they want to fly direct to their destinations. Boing is basing it's future strategy on the latter model and is developing aircraft for that purpose. BAA believes that the formal model will be adopted by airlines who will purchase the 'super jumbos' being built by Airbus to enable the 'hub' concept. The jury is still out on this issue but it is interesting to note that both camps are now claiming that in environmental terms their particular strategy is the best!
"As a 'veteran' of the T5 public enquiry (I gave evidence against) I can tell you that it is perfectly clear that BAA (and the government of the day) has a long term goal of turning Heathrow into a three runway airport, serviced by four terminals (bearing in mind T1, T2 and T3 are to become Heathrow East under one roof), operating in mixed mode (no more runway alternation) and (the last taboo) operating 24 hours a day. At the T5 enquiry BAA said "T5 does not call for a third runway". Clever wording designed to give the impression that a third runway would not be built at Heathrow. They further distanced themselves form the third runway issue by saying it was a decision for government. However, what they did not say was that a no decision to T5 would mean a yes decision on a third runway impossible and that a yes decision to T5 would make calls for a third runway almost inevitable. And so it has come to pass!
"It is also worth noting that Stephen Byers, the government minister who approved the T5 plans, said that in giving the go ahead he recognised the environmental impact on local residents and stipulated that aircraft movements should therefore be restricted at Heathrow to 480 thousand a year. The third runway plans will increase aircraft movements to well over 550 thousand movements, so what has changed? It would appear that the environmental impact on residents around the airport have been ditched!
"So the lesson for Stanstead is clear. Any calls to relax existing limits on the number of flights, infrastructure, etc., no matter how insignificant they may seem, will be, in BAA's eyes, just more step toward a much larger scheme. A Trojan horse, if you like. Do not trust in government to protect resident's interests. Be prepared for BAA to actively lobby local residents and local businesses. Mistrust the motives of those local residents who support the plans. For the most part they will have a vested interest in the plans going ahead and will majically turn up and provide their views (along party lines) at each and every public meeting. And finally try and establish whether the person appointed to conduct the public enquiry really is neutral on the issue. This is not to suggest the judge (or whoever) is corrupt but it is worth looking at the person's record on these sort of issues."
Here's Sue's first contribution:
"I live near Stansted Airport, and we are in the middle of a public enquiry which is dealing with BAA's appeal against the refusal of the local authority to grant them planning permission to use the maximum capacity of the existing runway. BAA are being remarkably coy about exactly how many passengers/year this entails. This is just the first stage: they are applying for planning permission for a second runway later in the year. This will make the airport bigger than Heathrow is currently. We also have, for now, no mention of from the Aviation White Paper's third or fourth runway, with a slightly reduced land grab for the second runway, for which we are supposed to be thankful because BAA has "listened to the community".
"Nobody wants this apart from, BAA and,and, inexplicably, the government, and - oh yes (presumably) - the beneficiaries of cheap flights. The big airlines don鈥檛 want to fly from Stansted and don鈥檛 want to support the cross-subsidy from Heathrow and Gatwick required for viability, and the cram-鈥榚m-in, sell-it-cheap lot don鈥檛 want to pay for the expansion through increased costs. Unlike Heathrow, no-one now envisages Stansted as a hub. Its phenomenal growth in the last few years has been fuelled by low airport charges and the fickle, price-sensitive demand for point-to-point cheap flights and yet it makes a profit only through the aforementioned cross-subsidy and through shopping and car parking. The argument that if we don鈥檛 get it Paris, Frankfurt, Amsterdam or wherever will and that the UK will lose out is based on the notion of a hub and is therefore irrelevant to Stansted, and is in any case predicated on the assumption that expansion is a good thing regardless of environmental and social costs.
"The economic effects for the region (and, arguably, nationally) are negative. It鈥檚 an affluent area with low unemployment and can only attract the low-paid, low-skill labour force required by inward migration or commuting, and housing costs are high. There is a regional and national economic deficit in tourism. Stansted is used by few business travellers. Stop Stansted Expansion coined the memorable statement that the British taxpayer is subsidising a Spanish infrastructure company (Ferrovial who own BAA) to provide facilities for an Irish airline (Ryanair 鈥 the main customer) to operate American planes to fly British tourists to spend their money abroad.
" It seems to me self-evident that there is a strong environmental case against the predict-and-provide, demand-led expansion of aviation generally in the light of climate change and it baffles me how the government reconciles this with its 鈥済reen鈥 rhetoric. In any carbon-constrained future, even with technological improvements, aviation鈥檚 contribution (exacerbated by a factor of between 2 and 3 by radiative forcing) will rise unacceptably and swallow up allowances and reductions made elsewhere.
"That people want to is not an argument that they should be able to without regard to the consequences. The environmental impacts around Stansted 鈥 locally and regionally 鈥 will be huge. Hatfield Forest, an ancient managed landscape unique in Europe, is threatened by air pollution. Water supplies are inadequate. Large numbers of mediaeval buildings will be destroyed, along with farmland and woodland. Noise and air quality will be unacceptable 鈥 unlike at some other airports, at Stansted night flights are allowed. Village communities have already suffered socially through blight and BAA鈥檚 divisive compensation policy. Massive increases in road and rail capacity will be needed, which issue BAA glosses fails adequatelt to address.
"There is a further threat. The government proposes to alter the land-use planning system so that nationally-important infrastructure is not decided on locally. On the face of it this seems sensible and democratic 鈥 no locality ever wants to bear the disproportionate risk while others elsewhere get just the benefit, so such decisions have to be taken objectively and in the national interest. But it fills me with despair because the government has no sensible idea of what the national interest truly is, only what its friends in big business want, or what yields it a quick buck. So we are thrown back on the formidable campaigning power of the articulate, well-resourced home-counties NIMBY types, who, ironically, in Uttlesford have one of the highest per capita carbon emissions in the country. More power to them, and to the Heathrow and other campaigners against the menace of unlimited growth in aviation."
Sue Harris
Bishop's Stortford
