London Mayor's Radical Plan for Heathrow: Demolish It

[rettir]

Thought this may be of interest here.

http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2013-07-22/london-mayors-radical-plan-for-heathrow-demolish-it

London Mayor Boris Johnson wants to turn Heathrow Airport into a pile of rubble. No, he is not kidding.

Throwing fuel onto a heated debate over the future of Europe's busiest airport, the Conservative mayor has called for an extreme solution: Raze Heathrow, redevelop the land as a residential community, and replace it with a new international air hub some 50 miles away on the other side of London.

Business leaders complain that London is losing its attractiveness as an international destination because the city's airports have not been allowed to expand to meet growing demand.

In the business community, it's hard to find anyone who seems enthusiastic about getting rid of Heathrow. Building a new airport at Johnson's preferred site—on the Thames estuary east of London—would take years and would cost, by his estimate, nearly £70 billion (almost $100 billion).

Those numbers "do not stack up well" against estimates by Heathrow's owners, who say they could build a new runway for no more than £18 billion, says the Board of Airline Representatives in the UK, which represents 80 scheduled airlines. Heathrow now has two runways, and adding one more would provide sufficient capacity to meet demand at least until 2040, according to airport officials.