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Aviation History
1950
1950 - 1809.PDF
FLIGHT, 28 September 1950 KENSINGTON ROAD KENSINGTON \\__HIGH ST The routes from the two London passenger terminals to the airports, B.E.A. coaches take about 30 min. and those of B.O.A.C. 50. LONDON'S AIRPOttTTRANSPORT Air-service Concentration Means Road-service Bottlenecks : A Plea for Urgent Action By GEOFFREY DORMAN, A.R.Ae.S. IN 1947 I wrote an article advocating the use of moreairports for London, and in particular for the use ofGatwick as the Continental terminal for the Metropolis. But for the past three years the Ministry of Civil Aviation seem to have been hardening their hearts and insisting on concentrating all air traffic, internal, Continental and inter- continental, into one airport at Heathrow; and we are ordered not to call it "Heathrow " but "London Airport," admitting the existence of only one. The additional and temporary London Airport at Northolt is to be closed as a civil terminal in 1953 and all traffic is to use Heathrow. The controllers say there will be no difficulty in fitting the Northolt traffic into Heath- row. Maybe they are right; but when, in February this year, I was flying in to Northolt in a south-west gale which necessitated a diversion to Heathrow, we were held off for 40 minutes waiting to be fitted in. No doubt all the traffic can be taken at Heathrow in theory, but I doubt if it will work out that way in practice, in spite of the very efficient system of radar traffic control now in operation. But now a new problem has arisen and the question of bringing in Gatwick as the Continental terminal is very much alive again, and B.E.A. are pressing hard for the airport to be brought up to standard as soon as possible. The new problem is not one of air traffic but of road traffic. It has been calculated that there will be an almost con- tinuous convoy of coaches between Heathrow and the coach terminal, with only three minutes between vehicles, in each direction. That is bound to lead to traffic chaos unless certain ex- pensive remedies, detailed below, are adopted. Under day- time conditions the time taken from Airways Terminal at Victoria to Heathrow is about 50 min. At night it may be only 35 min. One of the great advantages of Northolt is that there is a fast run from Kensington Air Station to the airport, with, as a rule, only a slight traffic hold-up at Shepherd's Bush. The run between K.A.S. and Northolt seldom takes more than 30 min, even in the day-time. But there is always, during the day, a hold-up at Ham- mersmith Broadway; and when coming from Heathrow to London there is a very slow, narrow, congested one-way traffic system when approaching Hammersmith. That con- fusion will not only be worse confounded, but complete chaos will be caused to traffic in both directions when coaches are on the road at three-minute intervals. There could be four solutions. The first would be the provision of an extra track each way on the existing electric railway between Hounslow West and Hammersmith, with an extension from Hounslow to Heathrow. That would necessitate a new overhead or underground extension from Hammersmith to Hyde Park Corner or Victoria. The second would be the building of a completely new road, with expensive fly-overs, from Chiswick to Central London, and possible widening of the Great West Road. The third would be some sort of overhead rope-railway, and the fourth would be the use of helicopters as airport coaches. I doubt if such a service could be a practical proposition inside ten years, and in any case the thought of a stream of helicopters, one every three minutes in each direction, is not a very pleasant prospect to contemplate, especially in bad weather. It would give nightmares to potential controllers—and, one fears, to .those living below the route! In Johannesburg, where the new Jan Smuts airport is under construction, a new nine-mile road to the centre of Johannesburg is to be built to carry airport traffic. B.E.A. are asking the Minister of Civil Aviation to lay down runways at Gatwick, and they say they are prepared to use the airport with only one runway, east and west. They would be prepared to divert on the few days when gales make the site unusable. Gatwick is an hour or more by coach to Central London; but the Southern Region of British Railways have told B.E.A. that they would be pleased to run trains between the airport and Victoria to a 30-min schedule, and would build a siding at Gatwick for them. Then, if passport and customs formalities were performed on the train instead of at the airport, much saving of time would result. From many European cities Gatwick would entail ten or fifteen minutes' less flying, which would very materially reduce the cost to the operators. The noise and slight danger of flying over London would also be greatly reduced.
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