A new 24-hour airport could be built off the coast of Sheppey to replace Heathrow, according to plans by London Mayor Boris Johnson, Yourswale reports.
The proposal would see an artificial island created about two miles off the coast of Sheerness with capacity for up to six runways, with connections to both London and the Continent via the high-speed Channel Tunnel Rail Link.
It would be linked to the mainland via a railway bridge with ferry terminals to both Kent and Essex.
The scheme, loosely based on Hong Kong’s international airport, could take just six years to build and replace Heathrow as London’s main air transport hub, described by the mayor as “a planning error of the 1960s”.
Kit Malthouse, deputy mayor who is overseeing the project, told a national newspaper it would be “madness” to expand any of London’s existing airports when there is a solution elsewhere.
He said: “We’re not proposing to switch the lights on at the new airport and switch the lights off at Heathrow, firing everyone overnight. This would be a phasing from one airport to the other. Over the space of three or four years those [workers] that wanted to could migrate.
“You would have no problem with expansion or noise. You could run a 24-hour airport.”
Mayor Johnson said: “If you look at what is going on in other countries around the world –in Hong Kong, in Washington – it’s not impossible to move the capital’s biggest airport.”
The planned location of the island in the Thames Estuary, which is only ten to 13 feet deep, is close to the wreck of the SS Richard Montgomery which sank in 1944 with about 1,500 tonnes of explosives still on board.
The idea of an airport in the Thames has been discussed for about the last 40 years but this is the most specific proposal to date.
Liberal Democrat leader Nick Clegg today said he is opposed airport expansion being including in the Thames Gateway project.
Swale council chiefs and councillors were due to discuss the proposal at a meeting this morning (Monday).
POSTED: 22/09/2008 13:51:15
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