Yes to High Speed Rail? No to Third Runway!

Transport Secretary Andrew Adonis has nailed his colours to the wall, surprisingly speaking out in favour of a future of high speed rail in the UK, at the expense of short haul air travel:

The transport secretary, Lord Adonis, said switching 46 million domestic air passengers a year to a multibillion-pound north-south rail line was “manifestly in the public interest”. Marking a government shift against aviation, Adonis added that rail journeys should be preferred to plane trips.

“For reasons of carbon reduction and wider environmental benefits, it is manifestly in the public interest that we systematically replace short-haul aviation with high-speed rail. But we would have to have, of course, the high-speed network before we can do it,” he said.

Goodness me. It’s a laudable aim, which I thoroughly support. It’s clear to me how long it’ll take, but an infrastructure upgrade such as this has been long overdue for decades. Our roads are rubbish, our rail system remains a joke, and moving to a low carbon domestic transport policy would be an amazing achievement for a government which over 12 years has shown scant regard for climate change. Surely this represents an about-turn for the Department of Transport, and the widely reviled third runway for Heathrow is now dead? No:

Adonis said a high-speed rail scheme would not undermine an aviation policy that calls for new runways at Stansted and Heathrow over the next decade.

“If you look at projections for long-haul air demand the third runway just on long- haul demand alone is justified,” he said. According to government estimates, air passenger numbers will nearly double to 465 million a year by 2030.

So it’s justified purely on his figures of long-haul air demand? Yet local businesses don’t want the third runway, nor do local residents, and BAA has recently been forced to admit twice as many people are affected by the airport’s noise than previously estimated. Thirteen CEOs of major British firms are against it, and passenger numbers are falling, and what about those figures…don’t they just fall down if short haul flights, which account for a third of all Heathrow’s traffic, and which are the driver of airport expansion get taken out of the equation? Adonis’ position on the third runway is untenable if he retains his commitment to using High Speed Two and beyond to move from short haul flights entirely; he can’t have it both ways.

Heathrow’s Third Runway: Dead?

It looks as if a major blow has been dealt against the putative third runway at Heathrow:

According to a presentation by the Department for Transport, seen by the Guardian, BAA is not expected to seek planning permission for a third runway until 2012. The last possible date for a general election is 3 June 2010 and BAA’s best hope for expanding Heathrow is to submit an application by then.

However, executives at the airport group have conceded that it will be impossible to compile the plans and data necessary for an application by that date. Under the DfT timetable, any BAA planning application is likely to be submitted under a Tory administration that has vowed to obstruct Heathrow’s expansion.

The DfT presentation deals a further blow to BAA’s ambitions by conceding that the government document that must underpin a planning request for major infrastructure, a national policy statement, will not be ready until 2011. A national policy statement is a key guide for any planning decision by the Infrastructure Planning Commission, the newly created body that will evaluate a Heathrow proposal.

Anti-expansion campaigners said the DfT document confirmed that the odds of Heathrow getting a third runway were diminishing. “There is no way that BAA can get planning permission before the next general election. The chances that a third runway will never be built are increasing all the time,” said John Stewart, chair of the Hacan ClearSkies campaign group.

Good news that BAA simply don’t have the time to assemble all the information needed for the planning application before the next general election. Bad news would be the trade off  in the Tories winning that election – greater environmental protection; intended abolition however of the Human Rights Act! Which is preferable, given that the current voting system still encourages a binary choice between Labour and the Tories?

The Terminal 5 Song

I was going to put this on my other blog but it really does belong here. BA lost Tim Soong’s, his wife’s and his best man’s luggage, with all of their wedding clothes, and provided no compensation. The Terminal 5 Song is their revenge. Priceless. I wonder what Naomi Campbell thinks? Things seem to be going from bad to worse for institutionally muddled British Airways.

No harm in this blog being lighthearted every once in awhile…;)