Thames Estuary Airport

Thames Estuary Airports

Locations of proposed Thames Estuary airports from W to E: 1. Cliffe; 2. Grain (Thames Hub); 3. Maplin Sands, Foulness; 4. Off the Isle of Sheppey; 5. Shivering Sands ("Boris Island").
Location	Essex, Kent

There have been plans since 1943 to build a new airport for London at various locations around the Thames Estuary.

Proposals

During the 1950s and 60s the predicted growth in air traffic led the government to question the capacity of London's two main passenger airports, Heathrow and Gatwick. The government-appointed Hon. Mr Justice Roskill to head a Commission to review 78 sites and select one for a third airport, pioneering a comprehensive Cost Benefit Analysis to direct their judgement. Cublington in the Vale of Aylesbury was its chosen site.

Maplin

One influential member of the Roskill Commission, Colin Buchanan, dissented on environmental and planning grounds and proposed an alternative site at Maplin Sands, Foulness. This opened the door to strong political opposition against Cublington and in April 1971 the government announced that the site at Maplin Sands had been selected for the third London airport, even though it was the most remote and overall the most expensive of the options considered, and that planning would begin immediately. In due course the Maplin Development Act received Royal Assent in October 1973. In 1973 a Special Development Order was made under the Town and Country Planning Acts granting planning permission for the project, and the Maplin Development Authority was constituted and began its work. The project would have included not just a major airport, but a deep-water harbour suitable for the container ships then coming into use, a high-speed rail link together with the M12 and M13 motorways to London, and a new town for the accommodation of the thousands of workers who would be required.

The Maplin airport project was abandoned in July 1974. The development costs were deemed unacceptable and a reappraisal of passenger projections indicated that there would be capacity until 1990 at Heathrow, Gatwick, Stansted and Luton, aided by regional airports. The scheme was abandoned in favour of a cheaper plan to enlarge Stansted Airport; the requirement for a container ship harbour was to be discharged by the development of Felixstowe.

Cliffe

In 2002 the government identified a site at Cliffe on the Hoo Peninsula in North Kent as the leading contender among potential sites for a new airport for London. The proposal was for up to four runways arranged in two east-west close parallel pairs, with a possible fifth runway on a different alignment, which might be used only at night and in particular weather conditions. In December 2003 the government decided against the Cliffe proposal on the grounds that the costs of a coastal site were too high, and there was a significant risk that the airport would not be well used.

Since 2008, the Mayor of London, Boris Johnson, has been leading scoping studies for a further airport in North Kent. Suggestions have included the development of a major International hub at Cliffe which would link in with the HS1 line to Kings Cross St Pancras.

The Cameron government is currently committed to a full Aviation Review and a scoping study was released in March 2011.

Isle of Sheppey

The 'Marinair' proposal was put forward in the 1990s, in which an airport would be built on an offshore artificial island in the Thames estuary, north east of the Isle of Sheppey. When the proposal was put forward again in the government's 2002 consultation, it was rejected on the grounds of insufficient information and prohibitive expense. The Marinair plans had been developed in the years prior to 1990 by Covell Matthews Partnership, and a Thames Estuary Airport Company Ltd established to manage the project, under the direction of A. E. T Matthews, Managing Director.

Shivering Sands

However the proposal was revived in 2008 by the Mayor of London, Boris Johnson, located a little further to the East towards the Shivering Sands area, north-east of Whitstable. The deputy mayor, Kit Malthouse, has supported a Thames estuary airport since before taking office. In November 2008 the mayor appointed Doug Oakervee (executive chair of Crossrail) to lead the Greater London Authority's preliminary feasibility study which determined in October 2009 that there is "no logical constraint" to the plan.

The proposal has acquired the popular nickname of Boris Island, and is frequently referred to as such in the press.

Thames Hub

Thames Hub airport

The Thames Hub (like Shivering Sands, nicknamed "Boris Island" after Boris Johnson, the Mayor of London) is a proposal for a new approach to integrated infrastructure development in the UK that combines rail, freight logistics, aviation, energy and its transmission, flood protection and regional development in the Thames Estuary and connects this infrastructure to a trade and utilities spine that runs the length of the country.

The aviation component of the Thames Hub is for a four runway airport, built on a platform straddling the land and sea off the Isle of Grain on the Hoo Peninsula, capable of handling 150 million passengers per annum. It would be connected to London by high speed rail and provide fast connections to the rest of the UK via an orbital rail route around the capital linking the Midlands and the North.

The site was selected for its proximity to London – at 34 miles (55 km) from the centre, it can be reached in 30 minutes by rail. The proposal to build the airport on a platform, like those at Chek Lap Kok and New Doha International Airport would allow flights to take off and land over water, significantly reducing noise impacts and enabling the airport to operate 24 hours a day.

The airport would accommodate long-haul airline schedules and growing demand in the Asian market. Thus it would reassert London’s geographical advantage as the stop-off point between North America and Eurasia, which is being eroded by a combination of new long-range aircraft and the emergence of networks centred on a global hub, such as Dubai.

The Thames Hub proposal was developed by architects Foster + Partners, infrastructure consultants Halcrow and economists Volterra and launched at the Institution of Civil Engineers in London on 2nd November 2011.

Advantages

Many advantages have been claimed for an airport in the Thames estuary, particularly as a replacement for Heathrow:

• Flights would no longer arrive or depart over densely populated areas of London.
• Offshore island and new barrier will help to control floodplain.
• As many runways and terminals as necessary could be constructed, without destroying existing settlements, whereas Heathrow is hemmed in by residents.
• Flights could arrive and depart at all hours.
• A high speed rail link to London with a journey time of around 20 minutes would encourage more passengers to reach the airport using public transport. Objectors point to the possibility that a high speed rail link to Heathrow could also be built. However, such a link would require expensive tunnelling under London, and was costed in July 2008 at £4.5bn.
• A high speed rail link to the nearby High Speed 1 would make London's airport a more suitable hub for north-western continental Europe: closer, and easier to reach.
• Crossrail could be extended easily to connect new airport.
• Under the Shivering Sands proposal, it would be possible to reach the airport from terminals in both Kent and Essex, diminishing the amount of new traffic and congestion imposed on either county.
• Regeneration of the deprived Thames Gateway.
• Release of 2,500 acres (10 km²) of prime land at Heathrow, close to the M4 and with excellent rail links, highly suitable for housing redevelopment.
• Traffic in west London would be greatly eased.
• Flexible approach for future expansion i.e. new runaway or Virgin Galactic type development.
• Possible direct connection with Central London using high speed catamarans as a new state of art tourist attraction.

Disadvantages

A number of disadvantages to an airport in the Thames estuary have been pointed out:

• It would require major investment in local infrastructure (roads, railways, schools, hospitals) in order to service the tens of thousands of employees at a major airport.
• There would be considerable upheaval involved in moving London's main airport to a new location, though other major cities have successfully moved their main airport, including Paris (1974), Munich (1992), Denver (1995), Oslo (1998), Hong Kong (1998), Kuala Lumpur (1998), Athens (2001) and Bangkok (2006).
• There would be significant job losses at Heathrow, and knock-on impacts to the economy of west London.
• The construction costs of the airport alone would be large, estimated at £11.5bn for Cliffe, and £3.5bn more for an offshore island scheme.
• There would be large costs for constructing road and rail access to the airport. These were estimated at £1.8bn for Cliffe, including two rail connections to High Speed 1, a road tunnel under the Thames to Benfleet, largely to access the south east Essex labour market, and other road and rail connections.
• Proposals rely on using capacity on High Speed 1, which may be scarce.
• Building an artificial offshore island is time-consuming, adding 3 to 5 years to the construction time.
• There is a risk of bird strike, higher for coastal sites, lower for offshore sites.
• The level of demand for an airport in the Thames estuary is uncertain, and may require government intervention to force airlines to use it.
• Building a major new airport to expand capacity may encourage more flights, and thereby increase emissions of CO2 and other greenhouse gases.
• The presence of the wreck of the SS Richard Montgomery, which has around 1,400 tons of explosives on board. A safe way to remove the wreck, present since 1944, has not yet been found.
• It would require a radical upgrade to the current flight patterns which are based on 1970s patterns, and the proximity to Dutch and Belgian airspace would cause knock-on effects in other countries.
• The South East of England (SE) is already highly developed, with a population density reported (in 2011) as the third (or sixth, by other criteria) most dense in the world. Many areas of the SE already have three or four layers of audible air traffic over them.
• Building the airport would destroy a vital habitat for thousands of wetland birds.

Alternatives

Alternative, non-estuarial, options for providing additional airport capacity in Kent have been proposed.

One option is to expand Manston Airport. Manston, situalted in Thanet, in north east Kent, is relatively close (15 miles) to the Port of Dover and the Eurotunnel Folkestone Terminal and because of this proximity its supporters claim that it could become a hub for arrivals and departures between the UK and Europe and beyond. They also argue expansion would: a) reduce the amount of taxpayer support; b) result in less environmental costs; and c) help regenerate this relatively deprived area of Kent. However Manston is located 65 miles from Central London and the journey time from St Pancras by existing high speed Javelin trains to the nearest rail station at Ramsgate is 1 hour 16 minutes. This journey time could be reduced to under 50 mins by upgrading the old railway line that makes up part of the route, Ramsgate to Ashford, into a proper High Speed line. In addition the flight path from its single runway is directly over Ramsgate, a seaside resort of some 40,000 residents.

External links

• Thames Estuary Airport Feasibility Review October 2009
• Favorable reaction of London Mayor towards the Marinar concept. August 2008
• Advice to the Medway Council Cabinet on the Thames Estuary Airport Feasibility Review, January 2010
• In response to a Freedom of Information request, the Department of Transport has released its files on the Maplin Airport project.