Hi Mike, I’m not arguing that the government is wasting public money. My point is that the government is justifying the expenditure. I don’t really care about where the money comes from only that money is being spent on something unnecessary because the government has said it is necessary.

However, the argument that the UK Government is wasting and is likely to waste billions of pounds of public funds on unnecessary airport expansion is just not correct because the proposed expansion at Edinburgh, Heathrow, Stansted, Luton, Gatwick, etc., would all be funded by the private sector simply because these airports are all privately owned. Thus, if the business case stacks up, funding will be negotiated on a commercial basis ~ and if for any reason it doesn’t, then the airport companies concerned won’t spend the money (it’s doubtful that they’d even be able to raise the necessary capital or achieve the required return on investment anyway).

The various rail improvements (e.g. London’s “Crossrail”) are not directly linked to airport expansion and in any case, irrespective of whether these are funded via a Public/Private Partnership (PPP) any improvement/development of the UK’s rail infrastructure has got to be good both for UK plc and on environmental grounds.

I agree that for internal i.e. domestic air travel over sectors of up to about 250 miles, a reliable and high-speed rail alternative would be entirely viable but this is unlikely to be achieved without significantly increasing public investment (otherwise, the cost of long-distance rail travel simply increases to a point where the law of diminiishing returns kicks in) and if oil stays well above $50 the impact on HMG’s tax revenues will rule this option out notwithstanding G Brown’s ongoing impersonation of Mr Micawber…

Long-distance rail travel cannot however, compete with air travel to the Continent beyond 200 to 250 miles i.e. Paris/Brussels and maybe Amsterdam/Rotterdam simply because of capacity constraints through the Channel Tunnel and so there will remain a demand for flying to/from Continental Europe (and of course, to/from Eire, CIs, IoM, etc) together with long-haul, and with a population across Europe and N Amercia that will become increasingly older and indeed, retired, leisure activities (to which flying is very much associated) will remain a boom industry even if the growth figures used by HMG prove somehwat optimistic.

Secondly, I believe that the figures themselves assume that the recommendations of the report are followed. We have a causal feedback loop here… building extra runways at existing airports lowers the operational cost of running the airport per customer, and consequently reduces the cost of air travel. It is assumed that this will in itself increase the demand for air travel!

-Adam

There is sign that the Dft is going cold on airport expansion:

1. The environmental damage: Short haul passengers are using the equivalent of 40mpg gallons each, moreover burning Co2 at altitude is thought to be 2.7 times worse at high. Flying in a short haul plane is like driving a Hummer on your own. When you consider air journeys are up to several thousand miles, aviation is a significant and rising contributor to CHG.
2. The overall effect of the explosion in cheap air fares has been to suck money out of the economy. British tourists travelling abroad outnumbered foreign tourists coming to Britain by 2.5 to 1 last year, according to National Statistics. The tourism deficit, which is the difference between what British travellers spend abroad and foreign visitors spend here, has widened from £4.7bn in 1997 to £17.6bn last year. The aviation industry counters this and argues aviation is a driver of the world economy AKA Globalisation. Well, 20% of flights are business travellers, a lot of work could be done over the internet. Nevertheless, globalisation has brought jobs and also reduced jobs in the economy, just ask the manufacturing and agricultural sectors or Britain’s own tourist industry.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/newspaper/0,,170-1938992,00.html

3. And finally there is considerable opposition to airport schemes, especially Stansted - which even the county council is against!

If the oil peak doesn’t reduce demand for aviation or climate change, government will.

Business travel can be a big waste of time and a real takeoff for video links should stabilize the amount to travel at around the current level.

If no new runways were built the market would ensure those who need to fly used them. The white elephant that was Stansted provided discounted fees to use up spare capacity. This will change and a natural rise in charges will lead to less low cost flights so reducing demand. Things only go wrong if you make new white elephants. Then growth has to be created to fill them.