Boris Island and the demise of the Medway

[Twister_Ken]

You are probably talking about Colerne. Try putting an airport there and you would have the Gloucester set on your back.

Not exactly London though, is it? Although Ryanair would probably call it such.

 

[Seajet]

No, not Colerne ( never heard of that one ! ) - or Kemble.

I'll have a look at the map.

 

[LittleSister]

Not what Boris was saying this morning on R4. if you missed it, listen again as it was quite interesting. He reckons UK could follow (for eg) Singapore model and have it ready in 10-12 years.

Not a chance. It could only happen if we had a completely different political system and culture, and paid for the whole thing out of public money. We haven't, and we won't, so it won't happen anything like that quick, if at all.

The history of the plans for a new london airport goes back at least 50 years and is a complete farce. The 60s/70's plans for an estuary airport only got serious when a more suitable site chosen by a (Royal?) Commission - Cublington IIRC - proved to be in powerful nimby territory. Estuary was technically very challenging and expensive (munitions (a friend worked for while going out each low tide to search for and retrieve old ordinance), birds, not to mention the problems and cost of creating a huge island). IIRC it was already stumbling for financial and political reasons, and then killed off by the oil crisis.

 

[Phoenix of Hamble]

Maybe Medway residents just need to find a few feckin' seahorses!

 

[LittleSister]

According to Telegraph, Boris reckons it can be done in 6 years! Clearly knows more about showmanship than major infrastructure projects.

For some history on the 1960s/70s proposals for an estuary airport, how it came to be backed by Government despite never being the front runner, and how the project came to run into the sand() see
http://uk.answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20061024072415AA2hCM6
and
http://www.waltpatterson.org/airptcncrd.pdf

There's also wikipedia entries on, I think, 'Third London Airport' and 'Thames Estuary Airport', but wikipedia's on strike for 24 hrs at the moment.

 

[snowleopard]

I used to live at Cliffe beside the Medway. A few years after we left, the whole Cliffe Airport thing came up. In the end it seems a fair certainty that the whole thing was cooked up as a stalking horse so the greenies would let a 3rd runway at LHR go through as the lesser of 2 evils.

 

[Twister_Ken]

I used to live at Cliffe beside the Medway. A few years after we left, the whole Cliffe Airport thing came up. In the end it seems a fair certainty that the whole thing was cooked up as a stalking horse so the greenies would let a 3rd runway at LHR go through as the lesser of 2 evils.

And there may be an element of that going on now. R3 at LHR was, in the end, categorically rejected by everyone except BAA and BA. I can smell a long period of 'consultation' coming up which will consider the Thames plan in depth (ba-boom) then say it's not feasible and conclude - regretfully - that the only option is R3. Escape route for politicians.

 

[VOD80]

No, not Colerne ( never heard of that one ! ) - or Kemble.

I'll have a look at the map.

Hi Seajet,

Are you thinking of Lyneham, just west of Swindon?

 

[Twister_Ken]

Hi Seajet,

Are you thinking of Lyneham, just west of Swindon?

RAF Fairford?

 

[Seajet]

VOD80,

yes, Lyneham sounds about right; only ever flown straight past it to Valley etc, so not sure if it's the one with big runways I saw mentioned; sounds the right position though.

 

[Cantata]

Yesterday's reporting didn't make it clear that there are two separate and very different proposals.
One is Boris Island, an airport on an artificial island built NE of the Isle of Sheppey.
The other is the scheme proposing an airport on the Isle of Grain, immediately west of the Medway entrance.
Either way, no thank you.

 

[davidej]

i beleive that eventually we will have to put a barrier across the Thames from, say, Margate to Shoebury to stop London and the Thameside flooding because of rising sea levels.

Although this sounds extraordinarily expensive, it can be done by large scale marine work and would be cheaper than replacing the Thames Barrier and then raising sea walls along both sides of the Thames downstream. Afterall the Dutch managed something like this in Zealand 40 years ago.

This ought to be factored into a scheme to provide a new airport and seaport on an island forming part of this barrier - much further from population areas than the existing proposals

 

[Coaster]

VOD80,

yes, Lyneham sounds about right; only ever flown straight past it to Valley etc, so not sure if it's the one with big runways I saw mentioned; sounds the right position though.

Lyneham is about as far from London as Coventry, Peterborough, Calais or the Isle of Wight. Its site is much smaller than Heathrow Airport's and the main runway about half the length. My eldest daughter was based there for a while and we flew from it in a Herc. From above it looks quite small.

Looking out the back:

Lyneham from the air:

Heathrow it isn't.

 

[Twister_Ken]

Fairford, though, is big in runway terms. Big enough to land a space shuttle apparently. However, it ain't London, even with a HS trainlink.

 

[Capt Popeye]

considering existing airfields ?

there is an ex military airfield in NE Kent called Manston, pretty long by my recall, poss use as an alternative to a dodgy Thames Airfield / Barrier ?

re a flood barier accross the Thames Estuary ?

yep, great, where is all the water going to go that would normally flood the Salt Marshes in the Estuary and lower reaches ?

probably break the flood defenced from Suffolk to Sussex ??

 

[photodog]

re a flood barier accross the Thames Estuary ?

yep, great, where is all the water going to go that would normally flood the Salt Marshes in the Estuary and lower reaches ?

probably break the flood defenced from Suffolk to Sussex ??

Ooooh... we could have a thames tidal barrage scheme to generate electricity! Plus a new airport!

Whoo... all the problems solved in one go!