Comment by smashah | Hacker News Reader

Comment by smashah | Hacker News Reader

I live right next to Heathrow and am starting a micromobility company to tackle air pollution in this end of town, and hold an (albeit expired) PPL.

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.

> With the disaster that is Brexit on the horizon it's definitely not a good idea to scrap the expansion of LHR.

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?

> 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.

> With the disaster that is Brexit on the horizon it's definitely not a good idea to scrap the expansion of LHR. Wait, what? This doesn't follow at all. And expanding LHR will naturally increase the amount of ground traffic, including diesels?

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.

You can clean up buses, trains, cars etc. It doesn't look like we will ever be able to make air travel carbon neutral.

I'm more optimistic, with Rolls Royce's new ultrafans expected to bring +25% efficiency gains and BA retiring the 747 program there is some hope.

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.

You can get carbon neutral hydrocarbon based fuels from either direct synthesis or biofuels. Hydrogen is theoretically more efficient, but has significant hurdles.

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.

Meanwhile any efficiency savings are eaten up by huge increases in air travel. See Jevons paradox.

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.

As flying is frequently better for the environment than driving, increased flights might not be a bad thing for the environment. It really comes down to if their replacing existing travel or adding more travel.

As flying is frequently better for the environment than driving

You can't drive across the Atlantic or Pacific, this a rather silly argument.

Which is why I said: It really comes down to if their replacing existing travel or adding more travel.

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.

The majority of flights are between locations you can drive to.

Not out of Heathrow they aren't.

Most people don’t live near Heathrow but even then the number of direct flights is limited. You can fly direct from Heathrow to a tiny number of airports in China, but from those airports you can then get to most cities in China.

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.

Nuclear powered jet planes, like submarines?

It has been considered: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear-powered_aircraft

Ammonia, produced using renewable energy, is one carbon-neutral fuel that might work for aviation. The Royal Society just produced a full report on green ammonia and its possible role in a carbon-neutral economy: https://royalsociety.org/-/media/policy/projects/green-ammon...

Heathrow should be scrapped and replaced with the estuary airport.

*Boris island

Isn't that the one that would require digging up the SS Richard Montgomery and its thousand tons of waterlogged explosives? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SS_Richard_Montgomery

There is also likely to be a seabird problem in that location.

Next thing you know you'll be expected to wipe your arse after toileting.

.. what?

More flights = more trains, buses, taxis and cars...

The new TfL rail line from Paddington (and peeling off from Elizabeth line) is electric, so, good. LHR can have a ULEZ and busses have more than ample opportunity to be cleaned up. This all comes down political will and proper incentives to get locals to clean up their commutes.

Doesn't the proximity of the M25 make it hard to enforce any emissions policy for traffic around Heathrow ?

Once you take the m4 exit off the m25 you have warning signs for ULEZ already even though ULEZ is actually only the congestion charge zone and they don't hit it until they reach Hyde Park roundabout so it's not a stretch to have a lnother ULEZ out in Great West London since people are already fully aware of it.

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.

I was thinking more that a large proportion of the pollution in the Heathrow area would come from the traffic on the M25.

Yes that's why I mentioned the zone would move Eastward from the A312 parkway, allowing outside traffic to easily come into LHR for pickup/dropoff without the increased restrictions.

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