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LORD Adonis rather lets the cat out of his bag by accepting that a high-speed rail connection to Heathrow would do little to reduce the number of flights from the airport. This is commendably honest but undermines the case put forward by his boss, Transport Secretary Geoff Hoon, for the railway as a green alternative to flying - which was the rationale for including it in the announcement about the third runway at Heathrow.
In fact, a huge railway station under the airport with fast links to major conurbations might well encourage more people to use Heathrow and attract yet more flights to the hub rather than to regional airports. Given that Lord Adonis seems to accept there is little synergy between the north-south high-speed line and the airport, it is clear the rail announcement was a hastily cobbled-together package designed to appease the environmentalist lobby. This is demonstrated by the sketchy nature of the plans. The projected £20billion cost is merely a guess. There will be enormous wrangles over the route and the environmental impacts. And there are doubts even among supporters about whether routing a high-speed line to Heathrow is sensible.
The commitment to examine its viability is little more than a belated adherence to the Labour Party manifesto, and a response to the Tories, who put Labour on the back foot by supporting the line at their last party conference.
Adonis's launch of the study is nonetheless welcome because the concept needs to be examined, not only from an economic point of view but from an environmental one. It is by no means certain that a high-speed line would be a green project. Quite apart from it requiring enormous resources and energy to build, the line would lead to people travelling longer distances. The Kent high-speed line is encouraging commuters to live farther from London.
Labour should have commissioned such a study years ago, rather than letting the Tories make the running; crucially, it must go into the idea with an open mind. But, as with the third runway, the odds against such a line ever being built remain high.
Reader views (4)
Impose a £100 tax on transit-only passengers. They don't contirbute anythign else to out economy, so they might as well pay until tehy can be persuaded not to travel - freeing up space for those entering/leaving the country.
- Tom West, Birmingham, UK, 20/01/2009 21:13
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Connecting Heathrow with HS1 and the new lines opening to Amsterdam, Frankfurt & Geneva will take 14% of Heathrow's market. HS2 past Brum & Manchester to about Preston is enough to get London-Scotland to 3hrs and win another 7% of Heathrow's market.
HS1 has already taken 80% of the Paris & Brussels air markets. Simply connecting West London & Heathrow in will take the rest. Thats what happened with Paris-Brussels where airlines gave up.
Airports like Heathrow, Birmingham, Manchester and E. Midlands need to be wired together by 200mph rail - just as Schipol, Paris CDG, Frankfurt & Cologne etc have done.
Air France has seen so much of its short haul market switch to 200mph rail that IT NOW WANTS TO RUN TRAINS ITSELF.
Of course 200mph rail reduces airport flights. It could relieve Heathrow of 22% of its flights. Higher fuel costs over the next 10yrs will reduce the rest of the need for Runway 3.
- John Jefkins, Croydon, 18/01/2009 14:20
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They are trying to solidify the Heathrow base, which could easily be removed in stages if we were sensible.
A new High Speed line - maybe not this one - would enable existing lines to give better local and limited-stop services.
A central spine to Leicester, Nottingham and Sheffield, branching off to Brum and Manchester, would take plenty of people out of their cars. Not everyone wants to see Stoke on Trent station every time they go to London.
- Alex McKenna, Manchester, 16/01/2009 22:15
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I think that christian should be supportive of a new high speed railway and not be so negative. All high speed lines such as in france and our own ctrl are successful. Lets talk about what we can do and need to do and not just criticise and assume we cant do anything. Other airports such as Charles de Gaulle and Frankfurt have high speed lines into airports yet rail traffic has grown. and if people use high speed rail instead of going by car or a highly polluting short haul flight to heathrow from a regional airport so much the better. however it would make sense to have more long haul flights from other airports rather then concentrating everything in one place as there are security and other considerations.
- Nick Sloan, welwyn england, 16/01/2009 17:29
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