Foster says Heathrow should be closed
Foster Thames estuary plan
Source: Foster & PartnersMoney raised would be used to build Thames Hub airport
Norman Foster has said the government should ditch any temptation to perform a U-turn on plans to build a third runway at Heathrow Airport and press ahead with building a new airport in the Thames Estuary instead.
The architect unveiled plans for a four runway airport at the site last year (pictured) and is worried prime minister David Cameron might be reconsidering the decision to axe plans to build a third runway at Heathrow.
Within days of coming to power two years, the coalition dropped the previous government’s plans to build a third runway while last week London mayor Boris Johnson said no third runway would be built at Heathrow so long as he was mayor.
But Foster told the FT any U-turn on Heathrow would be bad for the UK. “A third Heathrow runway is not a long-term solution – more in the Band-Aid tradition. A new airport would take the same time to get planning but would give us the capacity we need for decades to come.”
Foster said the new airport off the Isle of Grain would cost £20 billion to build plus a further £3 billion for a rail link to St Pancras in London.
Around £10 billion of the cost of the Thames Hub project will be recouped through the closure and redevelopment of Heathrow, Foster said who added that a further £19 billion could be raised through landing charges.
In May, the current vice president of the Town and Country Planning Association, Graeme Bell, said Heathrow should be closed and turned into a garden city supporting 30,000 homes.
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Readers' comments (21)
What like the one you designed for the estuary, Norm?
If you really think Heathrow should be closed then what is the point of the Heathrow East Terminal?
Perhaps we should think outside the box, give Gatwick the second runway it deserves (the moratorium must be over soon) and redevelop Kent International at Manston - giving 3 runways in the South East! Both have or are close to excellent transport links to London - in Manston's case a line to hook up with the high speed Eurostar Line could be built for a lot less than 3bn pounds. Perhaps we could reopen the Eurostar Terminal at Waterloo, giving two International rail links in London as well.
Well - Foster would say that - he's the one who designed the proposed Thames Estuary airport (at his own expense) so clearly he's speaking for the people who back him in his vision of ecological tragedy.
My own proposal was shrugged off by Boris Johnson's transport supremo but others are taking it more seriously. It consists of building a dedicated high speed railway, only available to air passengers, connecting all of London's airports and within the customs-controlled area and also carrying baggage. Transfers would not take any longer than they do at present. Result? London would have 8 runways. Instead of building a completely new airports, we would build (at far less cost) an annular high-speed railway.
The British transport infrastucture diagram remains a star diagram, not a web.
Why dislocate a new airport to the edge of Britain - when by locating it in between say London and Birmingham - one could service the rest of England?
Is it because TE is a supposed competitor to Schipol and Frankfurt? Is it because Johnson et al want to be more closely connected to Europe?
Hard to believe, given the usual rethoric uttered by No 10, designed to please the average Telegraph reader with little sense of reality.
JOhnson et al don't care about transport strategy. They care about making money.
What a load of codswhallop! The third runway at Heathrow should be built now, Boris island scrpped as well as the proposed runway at Stansted. The site of Heathrow's third runway is derelict gravel pits and rundown settlements. The proposed runway at Stanted would destroy local woodlands and Boris island would be an unaffordable ecological disaster.
The best reason for not building this new airport is the fact that it will forever be called "Boris Island". Like those bloody "Boris Bikes". And the "Boris Olympics". And the "Boris Areas of Total Social Disintegration".
Some good ideas being thrown around here. I particularly like the first comment from clichy.
Im no expert on aviation statistics, however surely this decision should be made based on aviation fatalities, comparing missed approach landing procedures for both mainland landing strips and landing strips which have large expanses of water surrounding them!
@Alex Henderson - though I think Gatwick should have another runway (it's a pleasure flying from there, easy to get to on Thameslink and the Express) the issue here is a 'hub' airport to compete with Frankfurt, Madrid and Amsterdam. It's no use just upgrading Manston airport into a Standsted of Kent, it's the need to allow airlines to be based on one site, so London can be a connecting place like Singapore, Abu Dhabi etc. I'm not sure about the Estuary airport, but I'd rather we build that than spend £1billion on a failed attempt to build another runway at Heathrow, as it'd take a 10 year public enquiry and it'd never be accepted.