Third runway nonsense...

As the debate over Heathrow's proposed third runway heats up, with the airlines and the British Airports Authority (BAA) plaintively claiming that the UK economy will implode without it and we'll all be forced to return to a crude hunter-gatherer existence, grubbing out a living amongst the ashes of despair...(well, I paraphrase but its not far from their claims of doom and disaster)...an interesting and viable alternative was mooted this week. The good old train.

In a written Parliamentary answer posed by the liberal question machine-gun that is Norman Baker MP, Transport Minister Jim Fitzpatrick was forced to reveal that 2.5 million transfer passengers at Heathrow arrived on flights from within the UK! So what's the beef?

Well, the pro runway crew argue that the third stretch of tarmac is essential to create new slots in Heathrow's crammed schedules. The counter-point is that most of these intra-UK journeys could be made by high-speed rail, freeing up existing valuable space at Heathrow for long haul flights, and the argument therefore goes that this is where we should be investing public money.

The real agenda at play here is revealed in a quote from British Airways Chief Exec (and the man largely responsible for the hilarity of the Terminal 5 debacle) Willie Walsh who warned that backing high-speed rail at the expense of a third runway would be a mistake as 'there are very few destinations where a rail alternative is feasible from London for passengers wanting to travel and return the same day'. So much for slower travel eh Willie? We must continue the trend for ever more cross-country twanging and the climate be damned.