"Cast_Iron" wrote in message
...

"nightjar .uk.com" nightjar@insert_my_surname_here wrote in message
...

"Oliver Keating" wrote in message
...
So, massive expansion planned for Heathrow, Stanstead and Luton:

One new runway for the least useful airport for the bulk of the
population
of SE England is hardly a massive expansion. Luton gets to use its
current
ruwnay a bit more and Heathrow might get a new runway, if it can meet
pollution levels that it cannot achieve with the current ones.

This seems deeply concerning. If air traffic growth continues at it's
present rate, then in 50 years time air travel will account for 40% of
all
CO2 (greenhouse gas) emmissions.

These minor expansions will not give anywhere near the capacity to
achieve
that sort of level of growth.

The noise from Heathrow airport alone affects some 1 million people.

The majority of whom would have been born after it was built, so it has
been
there longer than they have.

There is no "need" to have massive expansion in air travel, most
expansion
comes from people going on budget holidays, i.e. things that are not
essential for the general operation of our society.

A lot of people would argue that holidays are essential for the
successful
operation of our society. However, according to Newsnight, the main
growth
area is now in the middle-to-high income bracket travellers.

...
As far as I can see, being able to go on holiday twice a year instead
of
once is nice, but the environmental damage is a price that is not
worth
paying.

Nobody is forcing you to take two holidays a year if you think that, but
I
will continue to take my usual three and I have a target of at least one
long weekend in France each month as well.

My personal view is that it is a pity that Gatwick did not get another
runway and that the RAF never finished Heathrow's nine runways before
they
handed it over.


And of course if one is "only" travelling as far as the South of France
one
doesn't have to fly does one?


No, one doesn't.

Eurostar to Lille, then TGV direct to Avignon, and Montpelier or Marseilles.
183mph almost all the way.

Colin

Eurostar to Lille, then TGV direct to Avignon, and Montpelier or
Marseilles. 183mph almost all the way.

How come when a train does 183 mph, everyone's all like "woohoo, this is the
best thing ever, trains rule"... but when a car does 183 mph, everyone's all
like "what an irresponsible, dangerous thing to do, why won't you think of
the children?!?!?!?"

"Chris Jones" wrote the following
in:

Eurostar to Lille, then TGV direct to Avignon, and Montpelier or
Marseilles. 183mph almost all the way.

How come when a train does 183 mph, everyone's all like "woohoo,
this is the best thing ever, trains rule"... but when a car does
183 mph, everyone's all like "what an irresponsible, dangerous
thing to do, why won't you think of the children?!?!?!?"

Because trains are pretty safe at 183mph whereas cars are pretty
dangerous.

--
message by Robin May, but you can call me Mr Smith.
Enjoy the Routemaster while you still can.

Robin May may be my name, but Robin is my first name.

Robin May wrote:
"Chris Jones" wrote the following
in:

Eurostar to Lille, then TGV direct to Avignon, and Montpelier or
Marseilles. 183mph almost all the way.

How come when a train does 183 mph, everyone's all like "woohoo,
this is the best thing ever, trains rule"... but when a car does
183 mph, everyone's all like "what an irresponsible, dangerous
thing to do, why won't you think of the children?!?!?!?"

Because trains are pretty safe at 183mph whereas cars are pretty
dangerous.

Given a clear track and a highly-trained driver and I would suggest a car
easily capable of 183 mph would be fairly safe.

And there aren't many trains operating in the UK that can safely do anything
like 183 mph. A Pacer dmu is far more alarming than a Mondeo at 50.

--
http://www.speedlimit.org.uk
"Necessity is the plea for every infringement of human freedom.
It is the argument of tyrants; it is the creed of slaves." (William
Pitt, 1783)

Because trains are pretty safe at 183mph whereas cars are
pretty dangerous.

But train tracks don't have the visibility for 183 mph. If some kids throw
some garbage onto the line (like they did a few weeks ago when they pushed a
car onto the CTRL), by the time the train driver sees it, too late he's
dead. He can't steer around it or take any other avoiding action.
Sounds pretty dangerous to me.

"Cast_Iron" wrote in message
...
....
And of course if one is "only" travelling as far as the South of France
one
doesn't have to fly does one?

Gatwick to Toulouse or Montpellier with BA scheduled flight is a couple of
hours for around £60 + taxes per person return. Driving is a couple of days
each way, at around £1,000 for the trip, last time I did it. London to
Montpellier by Eurostar and TGV is 7-8 hours and £109 return. So, I don't
have to fly, but, particularly important for a long weekend, it is the
quickest and the cheapest way to travel.

Colin Bignell

"Oliver Keating" wrote in message
...

"nightjar .uk.com" nightjar@insert_my_surname_here wrote in message
...

"Oliver Keating" wrote in message
...
So, massive expansion planned for Heathrow, Stanstead and Luton:

One new runway for the least useful airport for the bulk of the
population
of SE England is hardly a massive expansion. Luton gets to use its
current
ruwnay a bit more and Heathrow might get a new runway, if it can meet
pollution levels that it cannot achieve with the current ones.

Considering there are less than ten runways in the SE, one extra one is
quite significant.

Not if you build it where it is least needed. Stansted could cope with a 50%
increase in traffic using the existing runway alone. Heathrow and Gatwick,
which have much more populated catchement areas, are both working at over
90% capacity.

But also there was talk of Heathrow terminal 6 (!) and a third one.
Basically expansion across the board, except for Gatwick.

All ringed around with so many provisos that it is unlikely that any of them
will come to fruit. Personally, I think that the government is just creating
a smoke screen, while they wait until they can give Gatwick its second
runway, by which time it will be too little, too late.


This seems deeply concerning. If air traffic growth continues at it's
present rate, then in 50 years time air travel will account for 40% of
all
CO2 (greenhouse gas) emmissions.

These minor expansions will not give anywhere near the capacity to
achieve
that sort of level of growth.

Admittedtly the USA is responsible for much of this, but even so, air
travel
is the fastest growing source of CO2 emmissions, and that is something
everyone should be concerned by.

However, long term predictions are notoriously unreliable. If you believe
past forecasts on that sort of timescale, we ran out of coal last century,
have no more oil and are all using clean nuclear fuelled electricity.

The next generation of airliners will use 20% less fuel and I have little
doubt that the designers are working on ones that are even cheaper to run.

.....
There is no "need" to have massive expansion in air travel, most
expansion
comes from people going on budget holidays, i.e. things that are not
essential for the general operation of our society.

A lot of people would argue that holidays are essential for the
successful
operation of our society. However, according to Newsnight, the main
growth
area is now in the middle-to-high income bracket travellers.

This is dubious. 50 years ago hardly anyone went abroad to go on holiday,
and we got on fine then.

50 years ago, virtually nobody had a TV and few houses had central heating
but people's expectations of the minimum standard of living change.

....
I find people who claim not be green quite amusing. By ignoring the
problems
they somehow feel immune to the situation, or worse yet, simply deny any
problem exists because they are unable to face the truth.

Or, those of us who recall the London killer smog, have a different
perspective on what constitutes a problem.

Colin Bignell

On Wed, 17 Dec 2003 22:50:05 -0000, "Chris Jones"
wrote:

Because trains are pretty safe at 183mph whereas cars are
pretty dangerous.

But train tracks don't have the visibility for 183 mph. If some kids throw
some garbage onto the line (like they did a few weeks ago when they pushed a
car onto the CTRL), by the time the train driver sees it, too late he's
dead. He can't steer around it or take any other avoiding action.
Sounds pretty dangerous to me.

Yes, but you might be ludicrously biased.

Rail lines are not perfectly safe. But are you *seriously* trying to
allege that any real or imagined problem you can come up with for a
train to deal with doesn't have a road parallel?

Your car, at 183mph, has to contend with cars operated by distracted
drivers, drivers at 57mph, drivers who are drunk, pedestrians throwing
rocks from bridges, drivers who are making ill-considered judgements
about weather conditions, etc.

Malc.

wrote:

The runways are offset so there is scope for an early turn.

AFAICS this is not the case for the Heathrow plans.

International Procedures have to be adhered and this is taken into account
when designing the airfield.

There are procedures that should prevent any incedent from occurring.
However, if something goes wrong then Air Traffic Control would have
little time to react, and I consider that to be a problem.

Did you see the BBC docufake "The Day Britain Stopped"? Their plane
crash scenario is not very realistic under the present situation, but if
a third runway were to be constructed then the risk would increase by
several orders of magnitude.

On Thu, 18 Dec 2003 11:10:24 +1030, (Aidan Stanger)
wrote:

wrote:

The runways are offset so there is scope for an early turn.

AFAICS this is not the case for the Heathrow plans.

International Procedures have to be adhered and this is taken into account
when designing the airfield.

There are procedures that should prevent any incedent from occurring.
However, if something goes wrong then Air Traffic Control would have
little time to react, and I consider that to be a problem.

ATC already have "little time to react" in many cases, and it's got
nothing to do with the number of runways.

Did you see the BBC docufake "The Day Britain Stopped"? Their plane
crash scenario is not very realistic under the present situation, but if
a third runway were to be constructed then the risk would increase by
several orders of magnitude.

This is pure nonsense, a simple "fear tactic". (Not to mention that
ridiculous and unfounded hyperbole with that "several orders of
magnitude", a statistic that's based on, errr, nothing).

Los Angeles International Airport has FOUR parallel runways. It ain't
a big deal, despite what the doom-sayers claim.

Malc.