Can Boris be right? In recent weeks, not only has he taken the Government to task on its airport policy because he is in favour of building a new airport out in the Thames Estuary (see The London Daily News), but he has also has struck a chord with many living in the Thames valley by writing a letter to the Prime Minister on 20th June explaining that from a London perspective, HS2 does not meet the bill because it is not properly “plugged in” to the capital’s infrastructure (see The Telegraph of 2 July).

Boris’ idea of a new airport in the Thames Estuary has been backed by The Times, which on 28 June made 8 proposals for improving British airport policy also including creating new runways at Heathrow, Gatwick, Birmingham, and Stansted, and building another new airport in Cliffe in Kent. The Times reported that such action was urgently needed because insufficient runway space means that 60% of arriving aeroplanes stack over London before landing, delaying arrivals in peak time by 20 minutes.

Because of this, British Airways and British Midland are now looking to move to other European airports in Madrid, Frankfurt, Zurich, Brussels and Vienna to establish links with the emerging market economies of Asia and Latin America. In the words of British Airways Chief Executive Willie Walsh in response to the cancellation of a third runway at Heathrow, “for the UK not to have a coherent policy on aviation really should be of great concern to everyone”. We will not know how the Government plans to tackle these problems until Transport Secretary Philip Hammond proposes his new aviation policy in Spring 2013.

Boris’ scepticism about Government’s flagship transport proposal of a £34 billion High Speed Rail line running from London to Birmingham (see my blogs of 4 March and 3 May) has also been mirrored in the press. Camilla Cavendish commented in The Times on 30 June that the HS2 proposal is based on the false premise that every minute spent travelling is a minute lost for productive business, “…but the calculation cheerfully ignores the many 21st-century passengers, such as me, who work over wireless internet connections”.  She says that “I’d like to see Britain investing in the best broadband network in the world”.

And while the new Chinese high-speed railway from Shanghai to Beijing, built in only three years, will cut the journey down from roughly ten to five hours, HS2 only cuts the journey from London to Birmingham down by up to 30 minutes, and that won’t be until 2026. Is such a short time saver so far in the future really going to help us compete with China? With 1,400 workers in Derby losing their jobs because the Government has decided to award a £3 billion contract to make carriages for Thameslink to Siemens in Germany (see the Mail on Sunday on 6th July), there is clearly no guarantee that HS2 rail contracts will even benefit British companies, with many Chinese companies expected to put forward a bid.

So, it looks as though Boris is right on both fronts. We need both a better aviation policy (including on airports) to connect to the developing world, and a more effective rail policy as the HS2 proposal does not hit the mark when it comes to improving British infrastructure on a basis of value for money. Any outside observer would hope that air and rail transport infrastructure would be clearly linked together both in planning and implementation, but - surprise, surprise - there are no plans to put a link from the HS2 line to Heathrow before 2030. Transport policy looks increasingly like an uncoordinated shambles.

All of this makes me think back to the conclusions from a conference I attended on Global Trends 2030 at the Airlie Conference Center near Washington D.C at the end of May, which said that “…in some developing states… planners are designing modern cities from scratch, without having to deal with legacy infrastructure.  Many African countries adopted mobile communications without ever installing land-lines.  Leap-frogging can lead to more sustainable societies”. Looking at the headlines over the past couple of weeks, it seems that British transport policy is doing painful back flips rather than graceful leapfrogs. If we do not sort out our transport policy, we may soon find that developing countries are overtaking us in terms of competitiveness.

General, HS2