Better airport needed for our second city

But the main reason for my letter only indirectly concerns Birmingham airport development.

As I travelled down to a London airport, I wondered how much extra greenhouse gases could have been saved if all the extra miles of those journeys, over the course of a year, had been reduced by people having shorter distances to travel? When we got onto the M25 it was the slowest part of our journey, for the motorway was snarled up because it had too many vehicles trying to use it.

I felt that if those vehicles forced to use the M25 to reach a London airport could have had not only a shorter journey that took up less time but had not been forced to clog up the M25, the M25 was less likely to have traffic jams.

Then my thoughts turned in another direction. If all the businessmen needing to get to the Midland conurbation and the Midland businessmen needing to fly from London - both of their journeys being for the good of the economy - had been able to save hours of frustrating travel, how much would it build up our industrial export trade, thus increasing our GDP?

Then I realised the politicians’ arguments against it. The centre of the United Kingdon is London. Therefore their thoughts cannot grasp that we could reduce our greenhouse gas emissions quite simply by reducing unnecessary vehicle mileage by reducing the distance people in the second largest conurbation in the UK had to travel to an airport. They also cannot see this would reduce traffic on the M25.

But it seems greenhouse gas reduction nor the manufacturing industry help the economy, which is only about the banking and financial institutions based in London and and the main concern of our government.

Unfortunately, it would also reduce the need for a high-speed rail link because many of those who would use HS2 to get to Birmingham faster will save even more time by flying straight to Birmingham airport. - The Rv Dr Ralp Werrell, Queens Road, Kenilworth.