London’s third airport

Press, Volume CXI, Issue 32604, 12 May 1971, Page 16

London’s third airport

The decision to site London’s third airport at Foulness, on the south-east coast some 60 miles from the centre of the metropolis, will not end the controversy that has raged about airport needs for the better part of a decade. Foulness has had its champions and its detractors; so did the three or four inland sites that were considered from time to time, only to be rejected because too many people would be affected by noise and because too much damage would be done to attractive rural environments. In this age of supersonic flight by huge aircraft requiring elaborate facilities, there could obviously be no such thing as an ideal site for a third London airport; the search, equally obviously, had to be for the site having the least serious disadvantages. The central argument in favour of Foulness was that the development of a long stretch of more or less desolate sea-coast —although much

more expensive than any of the alternatives—would bring social and economic progress to a relatively poor region.

Professor Colin Buchanan, who, as a member of the investigating Roskill Commission, strongly urged the selection of Foulness, is hopeful that it will in time lead to industrial growth in the South Essex corridor comparable with that generated to the west of London by the Heathrow Airport complex. But none of the points of dispute have really been settled. Some critics of the Foulness site say that the noise nuisance will be no less objectionable than it would be at the Buckinghamshire sites. It has been

suggested that more homes will be disturbed by the construction of longer access roads to central London. Wild-Ufe conservationists are deploring the invasion of seabirds’ feeding-grounds; some aviation experts think the birds will endanger aircraft.

It should be possible to dispose of at least one argument against Foulness long before a penny is spent on the project: the suggestion that the airlines might refuse to use the airport even if offered financial assistance. Certainly the heavy cost of maintaining a third base in the London area would weigh more heavily on the airlines than the long distance of the airport from London and other centres of mass traffic. More fundamental objections are being raised. Mr Anthony Crosland, who set up the Roskill Commission as a member of the last Government protests that it is impossible to predict a need for conventional runways by the end of this century; new aircraft designs, permitting the use of short or even vertical take-off and landing, might yet make long runways unnecessary. Much more, obviously, remains to be said before the project gets under way, at a cost the “ Economist ” estimates at £5OO million. The first runway could not be in use before 1980, the remaining three possibly in 20 years. From all this, it would perhaps be safer to regard Foulness, at this stage, as little more than a decision.