Why More New Runways?

[dpeilow]

I was thinking about this idea too...



The map shows a possible system to link the 5 main London airports. All point-to-point journey times are under 12 minutes and indeed it would be possible to get from any one airport to any other in 25 minutes.

The lines have been routed along existing transport corridors and follow motorways or main railways wherever possible. Distances should therefore be realistic. The journey times were calculated by using the Shanghai acceleration/deceleration profile and a cruising speed of 450km/h.

I would suggest that the Gatwick - Heathrow - Luton - Stansted links are built as "Phase 1" and the more difficult Stansted - City - Gatwick link is "Phase 2".

Looking at some rough costings: Phase 1 is 151km, so using the cost of CTRL phase 1 as a guide, I would estimate this to be £3.8bn (£25.8m per km). Phase two is 97km, of which around 20km will be tunnelled. Here I have used the CTRL phase 2 as a guide price for the more urban sections. I would expect this to cost in the region of £4bn.

A report in the Daily Telegraph[1] shows that the cost of the 3rd runway at Heathrow is officially £8bn, but cites industry sources that show it could be as high as £13bn.

If Phase 1 of the plan above is built (for £3.8bn), it would effectively create a single "super airport" with 5 runways and 9 terminals.

In 2006 there were about 2000 flights a day from London airports to EU and UK destinations. That's about the same as 3 runways' worth and is three quarters of total traffic (CAA data[2]). This scheme would allow some consolidation so that instead of an endless stream of 737s or A320s going from each London airport to the same place, demand could be aggregated at a single airport and planes of the 757/787 class could be used instead (most distant airports can handle this class). Instantly you've freed up at least one and possibly two runway's worth of slots between the airports and allowed for growth for the foreseeable future.

As a secondary benefit, passengers can check in at their local London airport and within 25 minutes be at the airport from where their flight departs. Rather than being a chore, taking the maglev from one terminal to another could become something of an attraction in its own right, even for transit passengers. Instead of extra lanes of traffic on the M25 jostling to get into Heathrow, passengers would arrive by clean transport - thus helping the airport meet the air quality restrictions reportedly already being approached.

An additional benefit would be that the Home Counties would get an alternative orbital means of transport to take pressure off the motorways. While the priority would obviously be airport shuttles, anybody who has had to commute into the Heathrow/Slough area from locations north and south on the M25 will know that something else is needed. This scheme opens up the prospect of taking maglev shuttles from park and ride sites near the M1 and M23 directly to the heart of the high tech business parks west of London.

I've shown the route proposed by two of the "HS2" schemes, passing through Heathrow, as this would allow the orbital maglev to feed into such a line at the Heathrow station. However, remember that the benefits of this scheme described above do not depend on HS2/UK Ultraspeed's North-South route. This is purely based on consolidating demand at the existing airports. If HS2/UK Ultraspeed can remove the need for some domestic flights entirely, that is a further benefit to the scheme.

In addition to connecting London City, Phase 2 of the orbital maglev would call at Stratford International station on HS1. This would allow interconnection to short haul high-speed rail and allow through ticketing to destinations where this makes sense (Paris, Brussels, perhaps Amsterdam and Cologne). It would also allow connection to Crossrail, the Jubilee Line and the DLR. By taking the maglev, a traveller could arrive in Docklands quicker than if he had taken Crossrail from Heathrow! Phase 2 is relatively expensive, but it would allow the system to be connected directly to the heart of London and complete the orbital connection between Gatwick and Stansted.

As we have seen, the plan should cost half that of building another runway at Heathrow, potentially free up two runways' worth of slots, allow fast connections to any airport from any point in the Home Counties and create spinoff benefits for commuters. It would allow inter-terminal transfers to take place just as quickly as they do on low-speed systems today. Furthermore, it is completely self-contained, thus negating one of the common complaints from maglev detractors, in that it doesn't need to interface with existing rail systems. If BAA are prepared to privately finance the Heathrow 3rd runway project and recover costs through increases to landing fees, they could finance this scheme themselves and reduce those fees. The upshot would be that the fares for passengers of the maglev would reflect the true operating cost of the system and not have to include the cost of £8bn (or £13bn) capital.

I'd be interested to hear opinions and whether UK Ultraspeed have looked at something like this.

D