Heathrow third runway plans ruled illegal: not consistent with Paris agreement
theguardian.com
theguardian.com
And who also supported an alternative of another runway built on reclaimed land nicknamed "Boris Island".
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.
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.
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 And that’s on top of generally being able to take more direct routes than land based transportation.
I'm also very sceptical that we can synthesise enough fuel to power even a fraction of the current fleet. We need to fix this problem now and that means relying on technology we have now.
You can't drive across the Atlantic or Pacific, this a rather silly argument.
The majority of flights are between locations you can drive to. Even long haul flights often have at least one leg within driving distance ie: DC > NYC > Hawaii rather than a direct flight.
Not out of Heathrow they aren't.
Basically, you can fly from almost any airport to almost any other airport. But, you can only directly fly between a tiny subset of those pairs.
In a perfect world there would be a staged rollout of ULEZ the epicenter being the A312 parkway/GWR roundabout then expanding down Great West Road until you hit the GSK building. As the ULEZ is rolled out, there would be heavy subsidies offered for EVs for residents in that increasing zone. Before all of that though, all local bus operates would have a 5 year age limit on all busses and strict emissions standards enforced. Residents would have the ability to report back and host subsidized air quality sensors+data, there would be a portal to report offending bus routes (just like there are noise abatement reporting procedures set up for airfields). There would be a mass overhaul of the cycle lane network from Southall down to feltham through Hounslow towards Heathrow airport.
I would also heavily subsidize Piccadilly line travel for LHR employees and extend the LHR free travel zone for busses up to Hounslow West station & Hayes and Harlington station (right now it's only up to hatton cross and Holiday Inn - people still have to pay to get there and instead just opt to drive).
Enforcement of an LHR ULEZ would be at the end of a whole list of measures. Unfortunately due to budget cuts and privatization, a lot of these are not even considered feasible.
Wait, what? This doesn't follow at all. And expanding LHR will naturally increase the amount of ground traffic, including diesels?
The UK's increasing immigration tightness is difficult to reconcile with airport expansion, and an economic contraction is likely to hit demand for air travel. As is all question of global warming: from building a new runway you could estimate e.g. one plane landing every 5 minutes 12 hours a day is how much additional CO2 emissions?
That's quite a reductionist view point. Operating Heathrow at something near 100% capacity, as it currently does, means that aircraft spend a huge amount of time queueing on the ground (burning a surprising fraction of the fuel they'd use in the air), going around a holding pattern or being vectored all over the sky.
Not if old diesel busses are banned in greater West London? I too can add a question mark at the end of a non-question? Wow?
>economic contraction is likely to hit demand for air travel.
Economic contraction, government deregulation/tax cuts, decreased pricing, increase demand. Economic systems don't stop after the first step.
>one plane landing every 5 minutes 12 hours a day is how much additional CO2 emissions?
Misconception. Airplanes are pretty much idling during landing, especially with recent regulations calling for steeper approaches for A380. Extra runway = more throughput = less time spent taxiing = decreased emissions on ground per flight.
LHR aims average of every 2 mins.
It is pretty nearly the opposite of a SIN, MUC, or DXB, in my mind.
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.
I am not sure how much of each effect is needed to absorb the change.
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.
Why would an airport be any different? >50% of the employees are going to be ground crew, security agents, etc.
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.
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.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transportation_safety_in_the_U...