So the chancellor, Rachel Reeves seems to be softening the nation up for a third runway at Heathrow....
The purpose of this to boost economic growth in the UK, and in the very long term, but 2060 (by which time I will probably be dead) said third runway could be worth well over an additional £150 billion a year to the economy.
(Although a decent chunk of that will be eaten up by mitigating the environmental damage done by the increase in air and supporting traffic.
And in the short term there is going to be massive disruption, I think the last iteration of it that never went ahead proposed lowering a chunk of the M25. That's a route I drive past fairly regularly, I could avoid it, but there is limited capacity for it to take extra traffic, which there will be!
This could well be the HS2 of runways. £14 billion was the last known cost estimate - for a bit of posh tarmac and a few buildings. And if the estimate is £14 the leaches will make that up to £50 bn at least. It's a government contract, after all.
And the completion date is 2035.
Gatwick the better option...
OK it's not as near to London, but adding a second runway to the atm much smaller Gatwick would be MUCH cheaper and quicker, under £3bn estimate and completion by 2030.
The economic gain wouldn't be as great, but I just think it makes much more sense to get this off the ground first, no pun intended!?!?
It's really not that far from London, not that much further at all compared to Heathrow, we'd just have to think carefully about what linking hubs we'd need to boost to improve connections.
Maybe that's the theory behind pushing for Heathrow, set it up as a straw man then the more sensible compromise is Gatwick...?
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