If, as is claimed, a busy international airport is critical to
the economic well- being of Wales then the purchase of the failing enterprise at
Rhoose by the Welsh Government is probably not the certain solution. Sponsoring
the construction of a better new airport elsewhere might be the better use of
scarce public resources. The proposal for a Severnside airport was last revived
in the UK air transport review some years ago when, coincidentally, much of
Llanwern steelworks was closing down. The proposal then was for the Llanwern
site to be the terminal having direct link to an intercity railway line and the
M4 motorway, the runways to be constructed offshore on the sandbank between
Newport and Bristol. Such an airport would operate 24/7 having a capacity for
off peak freight as landings and departures would be over water. It would
clearly replace both Cardiff and Bristol both of which have locational
disadvantages. ( Had Bristol airport
been located at Filton there would have been no contest). The construction of
such an airport would have underpinned the case for electrification of the
railway from Paddington and possibly competed with Gatwick and Stanstead in
terms of accessibility from West London. The proposal was supported by an
international construction firm and the indicative design proposal prepared by
the architects of Hong Kong International Airport, built on the island of Chek
Lap Kok by land reclamation.
The proposal was not supported by the Welsh Government at
the time, probably for reasons of realpolitik or, perhaps more accurately,
political arithmetic. The governing party in Wales can never have a significant
majority under the present system. Environmental opposition would probably
exceed that surrounding the Cardiff Bay Barrage and that facing the proposals
for a Severn Barrage (an even less probable proposition than such an airport).Whoever
supported the building of an airport at Severnside would lose Gwent, Newport East
and the election. That is why the
alternative to purchasing Cardiff ‘Wales’
airport, which has consistently failed because it is in the wrong place, will
not be fully tested. The 'economic' argument for such an 'investment' will not be fully tested against the environmental counter argument. The probability is that those of us who pay tax in Wales will then be committed to bailing out the Spanish owners and buying the proverbial pig in a poke that is Cardiff 'Wales' Airport..
