Why I propose BHX with a high speed rail into London & manchester. It must equate at least a quarter of the people come from the midlands, and a quarter from other areas including scotland and manchester. Why do we need to drag all these people down to london each time they need to travel. There is plenty of staff in Birmingahm to help with the airport.

BHX already has pretty good rail connectivity from London. There's fast trains every 20 minutes, so from many parts it doesn't take much longer to get to than it does to Stansted, for example. The problem is that walk-up tickets are so expensive (£45 each way, off-peak) that it's usually not an economic option.

Integrated Air/Rail ticketing (like in Germany) would be a huge step to solving this problem, but sadly the ticketing technology isn't there yet in the UK.

Whilst I am all for an intergrated system.

I looked at this a few months ago. A family could get tickets three months time for a few pounds each return. Many families plan their travel in advance, so they would be okay. It would be the business travellers, who possibly would still use LHR.

The site has plenty of room for growth, especially compared to LHR and very good road networks.

The downside of expanding Stansted and Birmingham is that, if one of the principal arguments is the number of aircraft creating noise pollution over London, all you're doing is moving the problem elsewhere - you could quiet easily argue that the impact would be far greater (due to lower background noise) over the East of England and West Midlands.

(Of course, people there don't vote for the Mayor of London, do they?)

Now, you could argue that it's far from unusual for London to want to benefit at the detriment of the rest of the country, but I'll leave that one alone for now :)

Sure, Advance tickets are cheap. But what happens if your flight is delayed? What if you're delayed at immigration? Suddenly you're paying another £45 for a walk-up. You can add an hour or two of contingency time for this sort of thing, but who wants to wait around at an airport for that long when you're returning from holidays?

Valid points. Although, as far as South-East England goes, the area around Stansted is about as sparsely populated as it gets. So you're talking, perhaps, thousands of NIMBYs here rather than millions ;)

This is also why the Thames Estuary is an ideal location. With the exception of the village of Grain itself, nearby land is largely industrial for a couple of miles all around. It's the one place you can put a big hub airport within striking distance of the capital while disturbing the least number of people.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-19517692

Into the long grass of the next election.

There is, however, an interim report next year, which should lay the groundwork.

there's no way such a major infrastructure project as this could be approved by the Coalition, when there is a clear commitment not to build additional capacity in the current Parliament.

I don't think the current Parliament will go to 2015, so we should have a proposal and a proper Conservative government elected prior to that which will give the go-ahead to a proper Hub, kick R3 into the long grass and treat the BHX proposals suggested above with the contempt they deserve.

The commitment was to not build a third runway at Heathrow. Other options were always on the table.

Whilst I do agree with reasons, I am not as optimistic. I think any opportunity, even the 2015 election will go to Labour. I personally dont want that I will vote for conservatives, however from evidence on here and in the general public I feel Labour are very much in the running.

I havent read the Labours response on the Boris airport, so I cant comment on their feelings. I dont think they have a policy, they dont normally. However there doesnt seem to be any real commitment from them that I have witness, or that Boris has used.

For who?? I live in the West part of Central London, I get to LHR in about 35min. Stratford station is already 50min away, let alone the connection to some airport in the middle of nowhere. No matter how fast the connection from Stratford, it would be a massive increase in travel time.

Sometimes I think everyone in this place lives in East London. :rolleyes:

I doubt this very much - but presumably you have some solid figures that show this to be the case?

Agreed, the best place for a new airport(8 runways or more) would be along high speed 2, tie it in with rail networks. and make it between the M1 and the M40. After looking at Satellite photos, it seems that this would be ideally situated in Quainton.

If they can get rid of Red Ed and replace him with his much brighter and more down to earth brother this would not be the case. David Miliband said during the Labour leadership contest 'We need a Third Heathrow Runway' and if he had won the leadership Labour would still support Runway 3.

I am hoping he will be chucked out before the elction. Alisdair Darling and David Miliband are both poised to take over with Labour already warning Ed he had 1 year to up his poll ratings. However due to the ConDem screw up he is upping his poll ratings.

I rather hope Ed stays in.

http://thomasjpitts.co.uk/wp/wp-cont...beakerMAIN.jpg

The Opposition has a terrible, and I mean terrible, record in the area of airport expansion. I can't think of anything they did during the Blair Brown years which helped air travel.

On the other hand, the Conservative record during the 80s and 90s in this area is strong, and demonstrably so.