Just before Christmas Stansted Airport unveiled its consultative master plan, not including road and rail considerations or air space. The full documentation (including surface access) is expected to be published towards the end of the year, the actual planning application for the second runway, and all its spin offs, due sometime in the summer of 2007. A public enquiry is forecast for 2008 with a decision by the end of the next year. As things stand, Stansted could have a second runway in operation by the start of summer 2013.
In 2005, 22m people used Stansted Airport. However the sole runway is now running at virtually full capacity and growth is not expected to be more than 3-5% per year. The opening of a second runway will increase the figure to 32m maximum. Interestingly Gatwick, also with a single runway, has just announced its figure for 2005, 32m, the world”s busiest airport with one runway. The big difference is the preponderance of wide-bodied jets, both long haul and charter, at the south London airport. The focus for Stansted, once called the airport in the middle of nowhere, must be the provision of better road/rail access. Gatwick has a major railway station and a three lane motorway adjacent to the main terminal. By comparison the nearby M11 at Stansted is a three-lane road becoming a two-lane motorway north of the airport, whilst the misnamed Stansted Express is but a branch from the main line to Cambridge, stopping at least twice and operating four times per hour.
What is Stansted going to propose for surface link infrastructure for 2013, or in the case of the railway, in time for the 2012 Olympics? There are endless possibilities but with the roads it is relatively easy. Upgrade the M11 to four-lane status to the point where it joins the A14 (which should be improved to motorway standard) and finish off the A120 as a proper dual carriageway to Felixstowe. The train is the dilemma. We are told that there are five possibilities with a copy of the Heathrow Express the least likely. Are we in for another upgrade of the Cambridge commuter line or is something really special proposed? Do we want to impress visitors or put them on a relic of the last century grossly inferior to any number of continental airport metro links? How will the huge numbers expected in from Europe on the budget airlines for the Olympics be looked after train-wise? We certainly do not want them on the roads. In fact will anything be done in time for the Olympics? Increasing the train size from eight to 12 units will help but the main problem is that the (slow) train from Stansted runs only to Tottenham Hale, hardly the centre of civilisation, and then on to Liverpool Street, which is at least is connected by the Central Line to the Olympic site at Stratford. Mind you, getting you and your luggage on to the platform is none too easy.
Let us hope that the planners come up with something sensible and practical and which can be built by 2012