Doing Business in the Thames Valley

It has been a good April, culminating with our Annual Dinner on the 24th. The timing was perfect. The event coincided with the publication of the Doing Business in the Thames Valley supplement published in the Financial Times.

It is the first report of its kind in the national press that has appeared about our region, and it was an impressive issue, setting out the vital importance of the Thames valley to the British economy, and containing more than a dozen articles profiling various sectors, and a number of individual firms and business leaders.

I was delighted to see our long-standing friend, Jim Braithwaite, chairman of SEEDA, quoted on the front page as saying ‘the Thames Valley is the engine room of everything we do’.

The FT also several times reinforced our core message – the need for an immediate improvement to the transport infrastructure in the Thames Valley, including a direct fixed link to Heathrow Airport.

The Financial Times is the worlds leading business newspaper, and its messages carry with government. While there has been very little movement from central government, there has been some progress in that the region is now starting to speak more forcefully with one voice, and we also have support from SEEDA.

At the dinner I announced the launch of a poster campaign, designed to draw attention to the absence of a rail link to Heathrow. All our members have copies, and you will soon be seeing them on Great Western railway stations. The poster headed ‘Put the Thames Valley in the Loop’ has been designed by a brilliant young artist James Dawe, who only left college two years ago but who has had work published in newspapers like the Sunday Times and in the Grand Central Station in New York.

If you would like a copy of the poster to display, please contact me at shaun@thamesvalley.co.uk

In the next few months we will be doing more work on the link to Heathrow. As you will know, our support for the expansion of the airport is conditional on this link being built.

I know many people would like to see Heathrow downsized, but that is neither sensible nor practical. What is sensible is to make it a better airport. The extra runway is not needed to increase the number of flights – there is only limited scope for that- but to ensure that existing flights can be operated more efficiently, with fewer of the delays that are caused by its present operation at over 95% capacity.
We want congestion and pollution to be reduced, not increased. That is why we argue for a fixed link to the Thames Valley – by train or monorail – and if that means that some of the ‘legacy’ American carriers with very old planes no longer fly to Heathrow, so be it.

Most of us still think a circular rail link from Reading to Heathrow via Slough and returning via Staines and Bracknell is the best option, but there is increasing interest in the monorail, which would track the motorways, and operate as a Skytrain above the airport, in much the same way as the successful venture at JFK in New York.

We shall be looking at the feasibility of this in coming months

Shaun Whittaker

To the editor of the Sunday Times

Undoubtedly there are many who will agree with the Sunday Times that any expansion of Heathrow Airport is a bad thing.

They wrongly assume that a third runway must mean more noise, more congestion, and more pollution. They ignore the fact that Heathrow has been allowed to develop piecemeal to operate at 98 per cent of capacity, which equates to more planes held in stacks until a slot can become found for them to land, long queues for take-off, delays in obtaining a parking gate, and frustration and anger because of the consequent chaos.

An additional runway will reduce this pressure - provided aircraft capacity is then limited to the saner levels prevailing at Schipol, Amsterdam and Frankfurt, Germany. Noise and pollution can be held by insisting that the airlines allowed to service Heathrow be restricted to those operating the most modern, fuel-efficient and quiet engines.

But the biggest weakness of present government plans for Heathrow is that little attention is being paid to surface access. Although about one quarter of the passengers using Heathrow come from the west of the airport, there is no rail access from the Thames Valley or beyond. That means most passengers, as well as the tens of thousands of airport employees that live in the Thames Valley, have no choice but to drive to Heathrow, adding to the congestion on the M4 and M25, and to greenhouse gas emissions.

Extending the Heathrow Express from Terminal 5 the short distance to the Great western main line at Slough would be a quick and cheap solution to this problem, and would result in a cleaner environment.

Heathrow is not going to vanish. It sits in the middle of the two most dynamic contributors to the British economy - London and the Thames Valley, which is the fastest growing region outside the capital. Its prime purpose should be to serve both these communities as efficiently as possible, and this can only happen if surface transport from the west is improved and overall capacity is limited.

Shaun Whittaker
Chief Executive

Thames Valley Business supports Heathrow Expansion - Support conditional on new rail links

Dear Everyone

The last few days have been busy finalising our response to the government’s consultation on the expansion planned at Heathrow.
This is a controversial subject, so we have approached it with care, consulting not only our members, but also the business and other communities across the Thames Valley.

We are well aware that there are people who think that Heathrow is big enough as it is, and that any expansion will put further pressure on an already overstretched environment.

More people, and more planes, they argue, mean additional greenhouse gases, and more noise for those unfortunate enough to live under the flight path.But, as always, there are complex issues here.

First, Heathrow Airport is of vital importance to the Thames Valley. Many, if not most, of our businesses, depend on it. There are also at least 75,000 people who earn their living, directly or indirectly, from the airport – and that figure is probably an under-estimate.

Also it is far from clear that the planned expansion will mean more noise. Today’s aircraft, particularly the Airbus super jumbo and the Boeing 787 Dreamliner, are quiet, and there is a big difference between planes that have been built in the last ten years than those older than this.

Since Heathrow is a major international airport, and slots at it are scarce, we have told the government it should ration slots to airlines that operate modern aircraft. This would exclude some ancient 747s operated by many African and some American airlines.
It’s also a fact that the present runway operation, operating at 98 per cent capacity, is a recipe for environmental pollution, not to mention the aggravation of delays caused.
A colleague who flies in from New York quiet frequently has sat in his aircraft seat frustrated as his plane has landed on time – and then taken almost an hour to taxi the half mile or so to the gate – because there have been none available. And with runways fully in use, planes have to queue for a long time before taking off, and, even worse, are often held in stacks before final approach.These delays not only are frustrating, but they waste precious fuel, and contribute greatly to greenhouse gas emissions.
That is why our support for the Heathrow consultation is conditional on the government insisting that transport links to the Thames Valley from Heathrow must be improved.

When the Thames Valley forms such a key part of the British economy, providing one of only three growth areas in the nation’s economy, it is a major omission that there is no direct rail connection from the west. It is even more of an omission when you realise that, passengers apart, there are some 80,000 people from the Thames Valley who commute to jobs at the airport each day, or owe their livelihoods to it in some way.Our demands are simple. We want the Heathrow Express extended from T5 to provide services from there over a new line to Slough on the Great Western main line and to Staines on the South West Trains network.This would be of immense benefit to the Thames Valley. It would reduce substantially the pressure on the M4. It would greatly reduce greenhouse gas emissions. It would cut the pressure on Heathrow car parks and make life easier for everyone.We will throughout this year be intensifying our campaign to get these sensible schemes approved.

Learning from international approaches to improving rail lines

The Wall Street Journal (WSJ) reported prominently last week that when Terminal 5 at Heathrow opens next month, passengers will be confronted with more advertising than at almost any other airport in the world.

From giant billboards overlooking security lines to television screens in the underground train station, the ads have been positioned in ways BAA hopes will make them impossible to avoid. There are 333 billboards or posters and 206 flat-screen TV sets, which can change ads to target specific flights. By contrast, Los Angeles International has 34 advertising TV sets in the entire airport and New York's John F. Kennedy International has 40.

BAA is also supporting the case for a feasibility study into the western mainline link.

TVEP is still waiting for a response from Rosie Winterton, the transport minister, to the letter I sent her recently, and shared with you on the 31st January entry.
The government must not be allowed to drag its feet on this issue.

In the same issue of the WSJ I read that the Americans have decided to pour huge sums of money into revitalising the country’s rail infrastructure.

Of course – compared with European and Japanese railways – US rail roads have long been a bit of a joke, apart from some isolated examples such as the Washington subway, the new Skytrain at JFK airport, the BART in San Francisco, and the AMTRACK between Boston, New York and Washington.
But in the past seven years over $10 billion has been spent on upgrading track and locomotives, and, according to the Journal, another $10 billion is about to be spent.

The new investments will draw freight business away from over congested roads, particularly goods and a portion of the huge volume of Chinese and Korean imports landing on the west coast and train shipped to the east.

America, of course, is not the only country engaged in new rail building. China has a major expansion programme. We saw at our transport forum in November a video of the superfast train that whisks passengers from Shanghai to the city’s outlying airport in just seven minutes. China is now expanding these trains – using German technology – to other intercity routes. France announced last week a further expansion of its wonderful TGV network.

But here in Britain – apart from prestige lines like Paris to London which drops passengers in the part of the capital they are least likely to want to visit – the government is dragging its feet. It is essential that the Great Western line is electrified, like every other significant main line. It is shortsighted that the Thames Valley, one of the few areas of the country that is producing growth as much of the rest of the economy sinks, still has no direct rail link to London Heathrow. We will ultimately win our argument for this. We can report very slight progress in recent weeks. We need the support of everyone in the Thames Valley and beyond to get this new railway in place.

Three steps forward, two steps back

Dear Friends,

We’re still a long way from achieving our primary goal of achieving a direct link from the Thames Valley to Heathrow.

I have not yet had a reply to my letter to the transport minister that I shared with you last week, and we are still waiting for the government’s regional office to unlock funds that are badly needed to undertake a feasibility study into our proposal to extend the Heathrow Express from the airport to Slough.

At a modest cost, this extension, would give us the link we need.

The steps forward since my last entry are humble, but nonetheless welcome.

Perhaps the best news is that new rolling stock is coming to the Great Western main line. This will still take another six years at least for the programme to be completed, however. The line is also not to be electrified one of the only remaining main routes in the mainstream of Europe that still runs diesel trains.
There is also news that extra units may be tacked on to some of the existing main trains running between Reading and Paddington, but nothing has yet been confirmed.

News that the government has partly bowed to pressure and left open the possibility that CrossRail may be extended to Reading is pleasing.
Rail minister Tom Harris has announced the government is safeguarding additional land beside the track between Maidenhead and Reading for CrossRail should “there be a business case” for it. He has been careful not to say what the parameters are for this case.
There is real significance in the announcement though, because it shows that the government has recognised for the first time that to run this frequently stopping service along the Great Western main line will require extra tracks.
This is important because if CrossRail were to run on existing tracks, the present semi-fast services from Oxford and Newbury through Reading and Maidenhead would be badly hit, as there is limited capacity.

CrossRail still remains essentially a project for the benefit of East and Central London, it seems, with little benefit to the Thames Valley. For it to have real benefit, I believe it should be extended from Heathrow to Slough.
The services will not start for another decade, and we cannot afford to wait that long for direct services to Heathrow – even if CrossRail were to be re-routed to achieve this link.

As I have said many times before, we need the existing Heathrow Express and Heathrow Connect to be extended from their terminus at Terminal Five the short distance to Slough.

The one piece of really good news is that that both Reading and West Berkshire councils have now given planning permission for the new railway station to be built at GreenPark, near our headquarters and close to Junction 11 on the M4 and the Madjeski stadium.
This is the first privately-funded railway station to be built in the south of England for 50 years.

Best wishes

Shaun Whittaker

They know how to do things down under!

One of the things I admire about Australians is that they know how to get things done.

This week the new Labour government - facing severe infrastructure problems at the country’s ports and on railways and roads - appointed a minister for infrastructure.

Kevin Rudd’s government realised that blockages in the ports and bottlenecks on the roads and railways were damaging the country’s burgeoning exports, and holding the economy back, much as the inadequate motorways and railways in the Thames Valley are impeding our growth.

Down under, they have set up Infrastructure Australia, a public-private partnership, which looks at priority projects identified by the government, and seeks to find engineering, technological and financial solutions to bring them forward.

Wouldn’t it be good if there was a similar body, Infrastructure Britain, to design, fund and execute projects such as increasing the capacity of the M4 and providing an extension of the Heathrow Express to Slough, so we could have a direct rail link to the world’s busiest international airport?

I have been thinking about this as TVEP has been receiving strong support from many quarters for our lunch at the House of Commons, canvassing support for our transport goals.

We have the Eddington report, recommending priority should be given to these matters, but there is no system in Whitehall and Westminster to get things moving.

Following that lunch, I summed up our views in a letter to the Minister of Transport, which you can click here to read.

Please continue to give TVEP your support

Valuable lunch at the House of Commons

Thanks to the help of Theresa May, MP for Maidenhead, TVEP was able to host a lunch at the House of Commons last week to update Thames Valley MPs and various branches of government on our case for urgently-needed improvements to the M4 and an extension of the Heathrow Express from its present termination point at the airport so it runs through to Slough.

This will provide the badly needed direct rail link from Reading, Maidenhead and Slough to Heathrow, making it easier for both travellers and workers to get to the airport, and, of course, reducing traffic congestion and greenhouse gas emissions.

Our members are spending well over £15 million pounds a year in taxi fares to get to Heathrow. Someone who flew over from America for a meeting with me in Windsor the other day was charged £65 for the short journey - the standard fare; because the airport is only serviced by London cabs.

All the local authorities were represented at the lunch, as well as SEEDA, the regional development agency, and business members of our board. It was good that the Thames Valley was able to speak with one voice, and impress upon the minister of transport the urgency of dealing with the Thames Valley’s transport infrastructure.

After all the Eddington report recommended that priority needs to be given to revitalising transport in the prosperous areas of Britain, and the government has accepted these recommendations, but so far has not moved forward. Prior to the lunch I presented the case for action, pointing out that the downturn in the national economy in recent month’s means that only two regions of Britain are now contributing to growth: everywhere else is slipping backwards.

Our members report that their employees are frustrated beyond belief by the increasing amount of time it takes them to get to and from work, and two of the companies represented at the lunch said that if things are not fixed up, they may move elsewhere.

This would be a terrible loss after all the progress the Thames Valley has made in recent years.

For more information please visit www.thamesvalley.co.uk/infrastructure. There you will also find a PDF which sets out our case for Western rail access to Heathrow and improvements to the M4. Please tell people about this.

The next few weeks will be taken up with the consultation on the proposed third runway and sixth terminal at Heathrow. I will keep you posted on this. We are determined that the transport infrastructure improvements we are currently demanding must be put in place before any further expansion takes place.