Bow luxe

There seems to be no limit to the commitment of the London business elite to the irremediable rat's nest that is Heathrow Airport. Today, the Tory-connected Bow Group, fronted by Lord "Tarzan" Heseltine himself, has issued a report rejecting plans for a high-speed rail network connecting the Midlands, North and Scotland to central London. Instead, it wants the hub of the network to be....Heathrow Airport!

Why is it that, after at least 50 years of falling behind in developing a modern railway network, some people in the UK still think we can show the others how it should have been done? A couple of years ago there were objections to a previous high-speed rail plan from a group that wanted instead to build a maglev system. This is currently in use for a relatively short stretch of track between Shanghai and its airport, but China is using conventional rail as the basis for its planned high speed network. Maglev was rejected by Germany for a new Hamburg-Berlin link a few years ago on the basis of excessive cost. Yet Britain should commit to it as the basis for a massive expansion of the railway network??

Returning to the current proposal, I've spent the better part of 30 seconds trying to think of any country that has already developed a high-speed network and chosen to centre it on a decrepit airport rather than its capital city. France? No. Spain? No. Germany? No. This in itself should give Tarzan and friends reason to think that they may be on the wrong track, if you'll pardon the pun.

But it gets worse. The Government (and the Tory leadership) believe that linking Heathrow to the high-speed network would reduce the need for a third runway at the airport. However, the Bow Group says putting Heathrow at the hub of the network would result in a need for greater runway capacity there. This could only happen if people started coming by train to Heathrow to catch flights, instead of flying from local airports. In other words, the Bow Group plan would not only place the London terminus of the high speed lines in a place where few Londoners could use it; it would also adversely affect the viability of existing airports around the country, most of which have plenty of spare capacity already.

This is absolute madness. Then again, how often do you suppose that the Tory grandees on the Bow Group ever demean themselves by taking the train?