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London's airportsThe multicultural make up of London was something that all the main candidates in the recent mayoral elections were keen to sing the praises of and rightly so. London today is a vibrant and cosmopolitan capital city that benefits from the input of people from over the world. Air travel, in particular the growth in cheap air travel over the last 20 years, has aided this transformation. Transport links and mobility are central to the growth of any city and certainly a city that aspires to premier international status. In the UK people have consistently demonstrated their desire to live more mobile lives. Take any measure from car ownership, to rail use, to the rapid growth in air travel and the picture is clear: people embrace opportunities for increased mobility (National Statistics 11.4.2007, 5.4.2007, 4.12.2006). (See footnote) Travelling to the world’s great cities and sights is no longer restricted to the wealthy. Millions of us are able to travel abroad and visit historical and cultural destinations, or just lie on a beach and relax. Likewise, the number of foreign visitors to the UK is at an all time high (National Statistics 8.11.2006) and London, as a key tourist gateway city, benefits greatly from this. Many of us have staked more than the cost of a holiday on our ability to live a more mobile life. Much of London’s heralded vibrancy comes from ambitious immigrants moving here and contributing to the capital’s economic and cultural life. For many UK residents second home ownership, in countries such as Spain and France, is no longer the preserve of the super-rich (DirectGov 11.12.2006). Indeed, more UK residents than ever are deciding to move permanently overseas (National Statistics 22.8.2007). Air travel has thus facilitated more choice in how people opt to live their lives, from young Europeans working and living in London, to British pensioners living out their retirement in the Mediterranean sun. Air travel means people are increasingly able to maintain relationships across long distances and emigrants are able to return home to visit family where previously contact was limited. Yet peoples’ aspirations are increasingly out of sync with the official outlook. Last week, the government’s independent watchdog the Sustainable Development Commission, unsurprisingly, called for a halt to the plans for UK airport expansion, including plans to build a third runway at Heathrow and the development of Stansted airport (SDC 21.5.2008). Yet in truth there is no real ambitious government plan to expand airports (the hapless opening of the new Terminal 5 at Heathrow and a proposal for a couple of additional runways are not exactly a forward-looking programme for airport development). Indeed, the SDC report urges a review of the government’s 2003 aviation white paper, a 5 year old set of proposals, few of which have moved any further than the pages of a largely unread government document. The rare real infrastructure development, such as the new high-speed rail extension to Eurostar services, as welcome as it is, will not be enough to accommodate peoples’ desire to travel more. The reality is that the growth of air travel in recent years has happened within the constraints of existing airport capacity. Travellers’ widely reported frustration with London’s overcrowded airports is testament to that. Surely it’s time to think bigger and plan developments in the transport infrastructure that meet peoples’ aspirations. For example, it’s long been argued that London’s main airport hub, Heathrow, developed in the 1950s and 60s, was built in the wrong place and any subsequent expansion is constrained by its proximity to residential areas. In 1998, facing similar constraints, Hong Kong found a solution to overcrowding in their old tiny airport by building an artificial island out in the harbour and raising a new prize-winning airport on it. So why not build a new London airport away from residential areas with high-speed train links to the city? Elsewhere in the world there’s ambition like this, in Shanghai there’s been no lack of vision in extending their airport in recent years. The Chinese solution for an airport situated out of the city was the Shanghai Maglec Train: travelling at 431 km/h, passengers are whisked the 30 kilometres to downtown in 7 minutes and 20 seconds. More modestly, the architect Richard Rogers contrasted the can-do attitude of the Spanish planning authorities, when extending a metro line to the new international terminal at Madrid’s Barajas airport, to the snail like pace of similar developments here in the UK (Tremlett 2007: 401). If we use rail system in the UK as a comparison, the difficulties rail users are currently facing result from a limited imagination in the past. Chronic under-investment and a failure to factor in increased demand have given us a rail system that we are embarrassed by, rather than one others are envious of. Given what passes for transport planning today, in 20-30 years time we will look upon our airport infrastructure a little like the way we look at the UK’s creaky rail network today. Without a clear and bold vision for the future our existing airport infrastructure will simply become more and more overcrowded, and no doubt various measures will be introduced to moderate our usage of it, including higher taxes. The current state of London’s airports is, if anything, a taste of the future rather than a temporary blip that can be managed away by overhauling the British Airports Authority, as commentators have argued. Once the UK was at the forefront of a vision for mobility and air travel – involvement with the Concorde project - but that was over 30 years ago now. The speed and luxury of Concorde offered a glimpse of how we once wished travel to be like. Sadly only available for the few, it was a worthy ambition nonetheless. In terms of air travel, and transport more broadly, the vision needed for a city of worldwide importance in the 21st Century is no longer found in London, greater ambition currently lies elsewhere in the world. London is worth so much more than this. Still, at least London is consistent in having a laughing stock of a hub airport to go with the clown that is our new mayor. Peter Smith is a lecturer in Tourism at St. Mary’s University College, Twickenham, London 1. The proportion of households in the UK with access to a car rose from 52 per cent in 1971 to 75 per cent in 2004. Rail use has been increasing since the early 1980s to 2.2bn rail journeys in 2005/06. The number of passenger kilometres flown by UK airlines increased from 80bn kilometres in 1985 to 287bn in 2005. Around 97 per cent of the 2005 total was accounted for by international travel. References DirectGov (11.12.2006) One in ten Britons live abroad, DirectGov
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