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| Is estuary ego sinking 'Boris Island' saga? | |
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| In the world of dreams and drawing boards Boris Johnson’s desire to get a huge new hub airport built in the Thames estuary possesses a pure and powerful logic. His case is that with one bold decision London’s and the nation’s aviation capacity problems can be solved for decades to come, the “planning error” known as Heathrow expunged, the capital’s residents delivered from oppressive aircraft noise and a signal sent around the globe that Britain is open for business like never before. But Sir Howard Davies’s verdict on it suggests that mayoral ambition has got the better of realism. | In the world of dreams and drawing boards Boris Johnson’s desire to get a huge new hub airport built in the Thames estuary possesses a pure and powerful logic. His case is that with one bold decision London’s and the nation’s aviation capacity problems can be solved for decades to come, the “planning error” known as Heathrow expunged, the capital’s residents delivered from oppressive aircraft noise and a signal sent around the globe that Britain is open for business like never before. But Sir Howard Davies’s verdict on it suggests that mayoral ambition has got the better of realism. |
| True, as Johnson himself said, his proposal for a four-runway airport on the Isle of Grain is not dead yet because although Sir Howard hasn’t put it on his shortlist of options he has said he'll give it a closer look. The mayor’s aviation adviser Daniel Moylan continues to maintain that the estuary remains the likeliest home for an enlarged hub because an expanded Heathrow is so politically lethal. | |
| Yet Sir Howard’s description of the Johnson proposals as “imaginative” has been interpreted as almost patronising and his commission’s interim report characterised choosing the estuary as a high risk enterprise and said the Isle of Grain idea could cost up to £112bn – at least five times as much as the three options that made the shortlist and far more than the figure put on it by the mayor himself. Johnson insists that much of the cost would be met by private investors, but students of his record on signature transport schemes – his new London bus, his cable car, his cycle hire scheme – have heard that one before. | |
| The commission also left open to question whether a single, dominant hub anywhere at all in the south-east is what’s most required. The recent surge in demand for air travel has been driven by low cost airlines carrying holidaymakers rather than an increased appetite for globe-circling among the titans of capitalism Johnson so reveres. Might a constellation of “point-to-point” airports meet long-term need more effectively than a gigantic interchange? A lot of smart money is being placed on a second Gatwick runway eventually emerging as the preferred Davies solution. | The commission also left open to question whether a single, dominant hub anywhere at all in the south-east is what’s most required. The recent surge in demand for air travel has been driven by low cost airlines carrying holidaymakers rather than an increased appetite for globe-circling among the titans of capitalism Johnson so reveres. Might a constellation of “point-to-point” airports meet long-term need more effectively than a gigantic interchange? A lot of smart money is being placed on a second Gatwick runway eventually emerging as the preferred Davies solution. |
| And amid all the jostling and politicking, one unglamorous point has barely been heard. The BBC’s Robert Peston was one of those who managed to make it. He characterised the commission’s estimate of the economic cost of capacity constraint at UK airports in general and Heathrow in particular as looking like “a rounding error” compared with the failure to keep the banking sector in good order. In other words, what’s the big fuss about airports anyway? Peston adds: | |
| Even though [the commission] is continuing to evaluate Johnson's grand design in the Thames Estuary, the £112bn expense looks so large compared with the putative costs of doing nothing at all - up to £20bn to airport users and providers over 60 years, and a maximum of £45bn to the wider economy over the same period - that lift-off seems almost inconceivable. | Even though [the commission] is continuing to evaluate Johnson's grand design in the Thames Estuary, the £112bn expense looks so large compared with the putative costs of doing nothing at all - up to £20bn to airport users and providers over 60 years, and a maximum of £45bn to the wider economy over the same period - that lift-off seems almost inconceivable. |
| Seen in this light Johnson's big plans for aviation looks less like the work of an economic visionary than extravagant to the point of vanity – a monument to mayoral ego that may be sinking into the sand. | |
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