In the News: Boris Island

Why is Boris Island in the news?
The Government has announced the set-up of an Aviation consultation, to begin in March. MPs need to find a way of accommodating the anticipated massive expansion in demand for air travel in the coming decades.

Why might the UK need another major airport?
The Department of Transport predicts that, with no new runways, London’s airports will be at capacity by 2030. Heathrow already serves far fewer international destinations (167) than either Paris Charles de Gaulle (238) or Frankfurt International (266). Advocates of new/expanded airports say that the UK needs to be able to support new air links to developing economies in China, India and South America.

What about expanding existing airports?
For many years, the most prominent proposal was the building of a third runway at Heathrow. However, after protests from environmentalists and local community groups, the plan was scrapped, in May 2010. The government also said at that point that building extra runways at Stansted or Gatwick was not an option.

Hence Boris Island?
London Mayor Boris Johnson put forward his idea, with a projected cost of £30bn, in 2008. It involves building an artificial island in the Thames Estuary. The terminals would be on land, the runways on the water and the airport would have high-speed rail links to central London. When Johnson first proposed the idea it was regarded as, at best, eccentric. However, the government has hinted it is now at home to discussing the proposal seriously and, its supporters say, it does have at least two things to commend it: 1) building work would not disrupt existing homes as much as elsewhere and 2) flight paths would be largely over water, rather than over residential areas.

And Boris Island is being designed by Norman Foster?
No - although many media reports are vague/wrong on this. Foster unveiled his own, privately produced plan for an estuary airport in November. Foster's Thames Hub would be built on reclaimed land on the Isle of Grain, on the south bank of the Estuary. The £50bn Thames Hub project would create the world’s largest airport, handling 140m passengers a year (Heathrow currently handles 65m.) and would also include the UK’s busiest station. Foster's scheme also includes plans for an orbital London railway and new Thames flood barrier. Johnson welcomed the Fosters’ proposal: “The mayor is delighted that a distinguished figure like Lord Foster agrees that the answer to Britain's aviation needs lie in the estuary.”

Is an airport east of London, on the river, a maverick new way of addressing the problem?
No – the idea of an Estuary airport is old news: in 1973, an act of Parliament was passed to allow the building of an airport at Maplin Sands on the north of the Estuary – but plans were dropped the following year, on grounds of cost, in the midst of the international oil crisis.

Why might it be a bad idea to try it again now?
One of the key arguments against an Estuary airport relates to the bird life there: the RSPB say that a massive new airport would affect the hundreds of thousands of migrating birds who use the estuary. Even those unconcerned by environmental issues admit that bird-strikes – when flocks of birds fly into aircraft engines and render them unuseable – would be a concern. Another potential problem that opponents foresee is the fact that an airport east of London would need to use airspace already dedicated to Amsterdam’s Schipol Airport. The costs would be between £30-50 billion. And, as the GLA estimates a tripling of air traffic in the UK in the next 40 years, green critics are asking: whatever happened to global warming?

Can an airport in the corner of the country, half an hour away from London on the east side, technically be called a hub?
Maybe not. The much more central (and already existing) Birmingham Airport sees itself as perfectly placed for expansion, to take the heat off Heathrow. Mike Ward, President of the Birmingham Chamber of Commerce, describes proposals for a Thames Estuary Airport, as "a hugely expensive and far-off solution to the UK’s aviation capacity issues [that] would do little to boost the UK’s business in the decades before its completion." Birmingham Airport would be able to double its capacity "overnight" suggested Mr Ward - and with the recently agreed High Speed Rail link, the airport would be just 38 minutes from London Euston – "making it much quicker to travel from vast swathes of London to Birmingham Airport than it would be to travel to the Thames Estuary."

What would happen to Heathrow?
At this rate, not much. British Airways chief executive Wille Walsh says BA would not move to an Estuary Airport unless Heathrow were shut down and that he doesn't believe either Estuary project could be financed. Heathrow employs 76,000 people directly and support a total of 114,000 jobs and any decision to develop the Estuary idea would need to balance carefully the impact on Heathrow of the new project – and persuade airlines to move to the 'overspill' airport. As well as Willie Walsh, the GMB union is against; Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg is against. And so too environmentalists, including John Stewart, chair of Airport Watch: "Even if future generations of aircraft are cleaner, the implications of this for climate change are huge. If a third runway had been built, Heathrow would have become the biggest single emitter of CO2 in the country. The proposed estuary airport would send CO2 emissions soaring at a time when aviation is already the fastest-growing source of emissions in the UK."

Images

1. Aerial view of Foster + Partners' proposed Thames Hub airport.

2. Foster + Partners integrated Thames Barriers proposal, part of the transport network attached to the new Thames Hub proposal.

3. Section of Foster + Partners' proposed Thames Hub airport.

4. Boris Johnson's (left) estuary airport proposal was long regarded as eccentric – until Chancellor George Osborne hinted it would be examined in the forthcoming Aviation consultaion. (Getty Images)

(Images 1-3 courtesy Foster + Partners).