News: Tories go for rail expansion instead of Heathrow third runway
Flights > News > # 1907 (29/09/2008)
The Conservatives have said they will scrap plans for a third runway at Heathrow airport and build a high-speed rail line instead if they win the next General Election.
Shadow transport secretary Theresa Villiers said the aim was to cut the number of domestic flights by encouraging people to use the train.
The proposed 180mph rail link would run between St Pancras in London and Birmingham, Manchester and Leeds.
The Conservatives hope the line would also increase use of trains to the continent, and free up the congested West Coast Mainline for more commuter journeys.
A Tory government would spend £15.6 billion over 12 years on the project. The private sector would contribute a further £4.4 billion.
Journey times would be cut from 125 minutes to 80 minutes from London to Manchester, and from 55 minutes to 17 minutes between Manchester and Leeds.
The Conservatives have also proposed a high-speed link between St Pancras and Heathrow.
Ms Villiers said: "This is a seriously green decision. A few years ago it would have been inconceivable for the leader of the Conservative party to say 'no' to a third runway and putting the brakes on Heathrow expansion."
Heathrow, the world’s busiest international airport, handles more than 500,000 flights a year. Its owner BAA says it is "jam packed" and needs a new runway to compete with other major European hubs such as Amsterdam, Frankfurt International and Paris Charles de Gaulle.
A government decision on whether to go ahead with a third runway is expected later this year.
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Comment:
Opposing expansion at Heathrow, and supporting high-speed rail is certainly a bold step forward for the Tories, and this move, on the surface at least, looks like an easy vote winner. However, whatever the environmental arguments, there is a major flaw in the economic arguments of these proposals, especially as David Cameron and George Osborne have been so quick to criticise the current government for their excessive spending. A third runway at Heathrow would be a completely privately funded project, whereas building a new high-speed rail line between London and Leeds is going to require a minimum of £20 billion to get going, and we know how much these projects always overrun. This proposal contains an element of private funding, but around 4/5 of the cost will still come from the public purse.
Although high-speed rail could bring numerous other domestic benefits, its ability to mitigate demand for expansion at Heathrow by replacing short-haul flights would be limited. For example, although Manchester is one of the most popular destinations for short-haul flights from London, recent upgrades on the West Coast mainline have already changed the modal split between air and rail from 60% air and 40% rail to 60% in favour of rail. With additional frequency and speed upgrades on the West Coast mainline due early next year, this trend is set to continue, but any further gains from building a completely new track would be much more marginal. Meanwhile, there are no flights between Birmingham and London, whereas the London to Leeds flights market currently represents a maximum of flights per day in either direction.
To encourage more trips to transfer from domestic flights to rail journeys, there are many more cost-effective measures which could be introduced, especially regarding access to London's mainline rail hubs. The vast majority of domestic flights from London operate to destinations which could be reached by train from either Euston or King's Cross/St Pancras, yet the ludicrously expensive Crossrail project inexplicably bypasses these stations. Whilst the Docklands Light Railway has recently been extended east to serve London City Airport, could there be an opportunity to extend west beyond Bank, at least to provide workers to the east of the City of London with direct access to the King's Cross - St Pancras - Euston complex? As well as providing better connectivity for domestic rail services, this would, of course, provide much better access to Eurostar services to Paris and Brussels, especially now that proposals for the Stratford International Eurostar station in East London have been put on ice.
If Crossrail does sort out its funding problems, then it will sink a vast amount of money into an east to west rail link, when there are plenty of other dots which could be joined up between the north and south of London, where distances are much shorter. For example, King's Cross and Charing Cross are less than three miles apart, but the only direct tube link between them is via the circuitous Circle Line. Whilst a fast link between King's Cross and Heathrow would be very welcome (this could be provided much more cheaply through Cricklewood, using existing tracks, without having to build a high-speed service), why stop here? Surely, if the new line was to be brought into St Pancras, this could easily be extended southwards to Victoria, from where rapid links could be provided to Gatwick Airport and Brighton.
To make any further inroads into the domestic flights market, a high-speed rail service will need to be built between London and Scotland, and this is where costs start to shoot up much more dramatically. However, simply bolting on an extension to Scotland from a route that already weaves its way through Birmingham, Manchester and Leeds would mean a very long-winded way of reaching Edinburgh and Glasgow, especially if line speeds were to be limited to 180 mph, as proposed by the Tories.
We've seen high-speed rail proposals recycled now and then between the different parties, but if they really wanted to get radical, they should look at the 220 mph trains now operating in Spain, or the Maglev serving Shanghai’s Pudong International airport which darts passengers to the city centre at a whopping 268 mph!
Ultimately, by the time any UK high speed rail project gets off the ground, the East Coast route will be far more in need of an upgrade than the West Coast, so we think it might make more sense to look at a London to Edinburgh via York and Newcastle routing (perhaps with a spur to Manchester via Leeds), rather than the one proposed.
Nevertheless, we hope this debate gets brought forward further, but aren't under any illusions that the capacity constraints at Heathrow, either in the air on the ground, will be resolved at any time in the near future.
