'snow excuse

The "can-do" spirit in the United States can be a mixed blessing, especially when it gets the country into wars that turn out to be unwinnable. At other times, though, it can be amazing to behold. Last night I watched New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg calmly reciting how the city was coping with a snowfall of about half-a-metre. There were two crews of 2400 municipal workers, each putting in 14-hour shifts and using 1700 pieces of equipment to shift the snow. Main routes had already been cleared twice and even before the storm had moved on, they were in a position to turn their attention to secondary and tertiary routes. Airports had been forced to close briefly, but were set to reopen as soon as the storm moved away. (At the time of writing, about 24 hours after the worst of the storm, La Guardia is the only NY airport still closed).

It's a complete contrast with what we've seen in the UK over the past couple of weeks, in response to about a quarter as much snow. The main response of politicians has been to point fingers of blame, mostly in the direction of businesses that they saw fit to privatise -- airports, railways -- in the not too distant past. In truth, the country coped reasonably well with the most recent snowfall, though that owes more to the resilience of the public than to any effort on the part of the authorities. (The main road at the end of my street was "cleared" entirely by the action of car tyres moving over it; the same is true in most urban areas, though up north and in the country they do things a bit better).

The one exception is, of course, Heathrow Airport. It's now emerged that Heathrow's snow emergency plan all along was....to close the airport if more than THREE CENTIMETRES of snow fell! So when they got 15 centimetres a week or so before Christmas, they (or rather their customers) were stuffed. The CEO of the airport operator, BAA, has done the modern equivalent of falling on his sword, by giving up his bonus for this year, and there have been the usual promises to "learn from our mistakes". However, I'm not at all sure that even with a Mike Bloomberg in charge, Heathrow will ever be able to cope much better if the same conditions recur.

I've written here before about Heathrow being in the wrong place. It's also much too small in terms of ground area, and it's entirely hemmed in by highways and housing. At most airports, as you taxi to and from the runways you see expanses of grass to the sides. At Heathrow it's all been paved over and put to use. Terminal 5 was built on just about the last space between the two main runways, and the perimeter is fully taken up with parking. BAA estimated that there were 30 tons of snow surrounding each aircraft parked at the terminals -- and as the storm began early in the morning, just about every stand was occupied. The cramped dimensions of the airport meant that there was very little space to put all this snow, and no way to use ploughs on the aprons, even if the airport had possessed such things. Instead they were forced to use earth moving equipment to shift the snow onto trucks. It's no wonder it took the better part of a week to get the place moving normally again. (La Guardia is on a similarly cramped site, which may explain why it is the last NY airport left closed after yesterday's dump -- though I suppose they have the option of pushing the snow into Long Island Sound).

There you have it, then. Heathrow, the world's busiest international airport, gateway to the UK: badly located, too cramped, and incompetently run by a bunch of carpetbaggers. What could possibly go wrong?