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Heathrow third runway plans ruled illegal: not consistent with Paris agreement
- mech1234 7y agoOn the margin, compared to the alternative, this will: 1. Make flights to and from, and connecting flights through, Heathrow more expensive. 2. Move more flights to other neighboring airports. 3. Reduce the volume of people flying to/from/through the Heathrow and the UK in general. I am not sure how much of each effect is needed to absorb the change.
- deugtniet 7y agoIf you make things more expensive, less people will buy that thing. It will reduce emissions in the UK by reducing the airtraffic through the UK. Exactly the intended consequence.
- dackroyd99 7y agoplus we can invest that money improving bus services and rail networks, which will help poorer people participate in the economy. If you can't get the bus to work, you probably don't need a plane to Dubai...
- smashah 7y agoWhat do you mean by improving bus services? Greater West London is the most connected outside of Central, it's TfL policy not to invest in better, cleaner, greener buses not because the money is instead going to LHR expansion.
- dackroyd99 7y agobuses outside of London are (mainly) massively overpriced and horrifically irregular - it's a problem we need to fix right now imo
- smashah 7y agoI agree. Personally I'm pro expansion but not too concerned if it never happens. However, it will be a great shame if, after all of this effort in the name of environment, these smaller issues I mentioned don't get solved.
- smashah 7y agoYeah no. LHR has one of the highest airport tax, yet still is a leading world hub and annual pax numbers keep going up.
- tonyedgecombe 7y agoAll the way through the process I've struggled to understand who will benefit from Heathrow being a hub other than the airport itself. Especially now smaller airports have regular flights across the Atlantic and to other parts of the world.
- mech1234 7y agoDo you accept that increasing the size of a local factory creates local jobs? Why would an airport be any different? >50% of the employees are going to be ground crew, security agents, etc.
- tonyedgecombe 7y agoEven if all the hub traffic went away Heathrow would still be a busy airport. There is a huge demand for air travel to and from London, the airport is at capacity now.
- VBprogrammer 7y ago"Runways don't cause climate change; airplanes do." I applaud the ingenuity of whomever managed to come up with and press home this argument but it feels like a stretch to me. As someone who lives under the flight path of Heathrow I can't say I'll shed any tears if the third runway is permanently blocked by it though.
- goodcanadian 7y agoThe title is a bit misleading. The court ruled that the government failed to take their climate change commitments into account in approving the third runway. They can go ahead with the third runway if they redo their approval taking climate change commitments into account (unlikely to happen as I understand the Prime Minister is against the third runway).
- toyg 7y agoThe PM was against it when doing that brought him votes. He’s long since wiggled out of any commitment. He could have scrapped it already if he wanted to. This is a PM who likes big infrastructure projects, he just needs to find half-decent political cover.
- Robin_Message 7y agoThe Prime Minister was against it 5 years ago, when he was a constituency MP, on the back benches, in a constituency that would suffer more nosie and air pollution from another runway. And who also supported an alternative of another runway built on reclaimed land nicknamed "Boris Island".
- smashah 7y agoI live right next to Heathrow and am starting a micromobility company to tackle air pollution in this end of town, and hold an (albeit expired) PPL. Air quality is bad here for humans on the ground due to the dilapidated 10 year old diesel buses that tfl allow in West London, and the vast amount of Single occupancy vehicles that commute to and from Heathrow every single day. With the disaster that is Brexit on the horizon it's definitely not a good idea to scrap the expansion of LHR. I more than anyone want to clean up the environment in West London, but all things considered, it's not worth it to shoot ourselves in the foot and not expand Heathrow and a scrapping of the expansion is a hollow victory if all other issues impacting the West London environment are not addressed. Cleaner buses, better incentives against SOV use, better alternatives to SOVs, steeper landing slope and other landing policies, properly maintained and seperated bike lanes, expedited and expanding plans for CS9, revised electric micromobility legislation (>500w & upto 20mph), more funding for local offsetting initiatives. These make a difference for people on the ground, not not expanding Heathrow. Edit: also right under the flight path. As most everyone else, got used to the noise.
- tonyedgecombe 7y agoYou can clean up buses, trains, cars etc. It doesn't look like we will ever be able to make air travel carbon neutral.
- smashah 7y agoI'm more optimistic, with Rolls Royce's new ultrafans expected to bring +25% efficiency gains and BA retiring the 747 program there is some hope. But I agree with you in general. The things that we can clean up we should, with funding from the expansion, policy from gov and properly structured incentives/disincentives. The question I think becomes one of are we trying to protect the locals, or fighting against the idea of air travel. Unfortunately the latter does not achieve the former in this case.
- Retric 7y agoYou can get carbon neutral hydrocarbon based fuels from either direct synthesis or biofuels. Hydrogen is theoretically more efficient, but has significant hurdles. Interestingly commercial aircraft are surprisingly efficient per passenger mile. Norwegian Air Shuttle is sitting at the top with 104 mpg‑US per passenger, thanks to its fuel-efficient Boeing 787-8, a high 85% passenger load factor and a high density of 1.36 seat/m2 due to a low 9% premium seating. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fuel_economy_in_aircraft https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fuel_economy_in_aircraft And that’s on top of generally being able to take more direct routes than land based transportation.
- supernova87a 7y agoI for one have never understood (aside from the network effect and lack of choice) why anyone actively chooses to connect through LHR. The taxes on airfare are extortionate just because they can, you have to pay (!) for on-airport hotel shuttle buses, the facilities are dilapidated and designed with, um, British sensibilities, and transferring / security is an ordeal given how cheaply they choose to (under)staff the services. It is pretty nearly the opposite of a SIN, MUC, or DXB, in my mind.
- toyg 7y agoIt’s not terribly worse than most major hubs in the area. The only one I would rate higher, more or less in the same range from US east coast (which I guess is the major market for hub-like traffic in LHR) is Schiphol, but that’s another sprawl that probably cannot grow much more. Munich is nice but it’s so much smaller and significantly further afar from the US. CDG is an utter dump. I don’t know about the Spanish options, maybe those could compete more actively, but maybe they’ve got their hands full with SouthAmerican traffic.
- asplake 7y agoThere’s also Frankfurt, for those who like a good long walk
- Moto7451 7y agoI’ve only ever flown into Gatwick and it surprises me that they haven’t expanded it with the aim of taking more business from Heathrow. If you’re operating as a transit hub, it doesn’t matter that you’re a train ride away from London. The network effect must be really strong.
- pjc50 7y agoGatwick have their own plan for this: https://www.gatwickairport.com/globalassets/publicationfiles/business_and_community/all_public_publications/second_runway/airports_commission/gatwick_sd3_engineering_plans_final.pdf https://www.gatwickairport.com/globalassets/publicationfiles... But effectively it's centrally planned and only one of them is going to get the permission. Transport links between the two aren't as great as you'd like either.
- spodek 7y agoPeople have gotten so used to flying they can't see how dependent and entitled they've become. When I share that I'm about to start my fifth year without flying, everyone tells me how impossible it is for them but they never try. If they tried, they'd realize how much flying is spreading their lives and communities thin, undermining community. A flight will bring you to a distant loved one. Flying in general disperses communities so you have to fly. Meanwhile we let our communities get covered with litter and garbage dreaming of escape enabled by flying.
- mansoor_ 7y agoPlease tell me you're not driving the same journey?
- ppf 7y agoIndeed. The mpg per person for a modern passenger plane is better than the average US car (assuming a single-person journey by car). The most important factor here is miles travelled, not the mode of transport used.
- keanzu 7y agoThe fatality per mile rate is also wildly lower for commercial flight, so driving instead of flying is 750x [1] more likely to result in you never making it to your destination. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transportation_safety_in_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transportation_safety_in_the_U...
- cafard 7y agoThe second time I took a flight, it was from Denver to San Francisco, to visit family. At that point, the nuclear family's itinerary had been Pennsylvania-DC-Ohio-Colorado. The uncle and aunt's itinerary had been Pennsylvania-New York-Kentucky-Texas-California. All this dispersal was managed by automobile.
- LessDmesg 7y agoSelf-destructing greenie idiocy in action. The UK should get out of the Paris Agreement and watch the EU go back to windmill and horse carriage.