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Issue 6 2011 FROM THE EDITOR


In the middle of the recession, it is encouraging to see that a number of big infrastructure projects are pushing ahead. First, there is the announcement of a firm opening date for the country’s first major container port for many years at Thames Gateway. The Transport Committee of MPs has come out broadly in favour of the High Speed 2 project to build a new railway from London the the Midlands which will, among other things, free up capacity for freight at the southern end of the existing West Coast Main Line. And politicians do at seem at least to be considering the question of providing more airport capacity in the south-east of England, albeit without much visible progress to date. There are signs that investment in rail freight terminals and


By Chris Lewis


capacity improvements is moving ahead, to the tune of about £400m. As a CILT expert told a recent conference in London, we need


transport infrastructure more, not less in difficult times “because it does good things for the economy”. But this being Britain, hasn’t it been a long and painful process?


At a mere ten years since it was first conceived by P&O, the London Gateway port scheme has made lightening progress, comparatively. Enhanced rail capacity has been talked about for at least a couple of decades; meanwhile, the French are not far off the quarter century anniversary of the opening of the first section of the Paris-Lyon high speed line. As for airports, various schemes have been knocking around since I was in primary school (and now I come to think of it, that WAS a very long time ago - almost part of history now). The latest scheme for an airport on reclaimed land in the Thames Estuary doesn’t sound so very different from some of the ideas that were being floated back in the 1960s and early 1970s.


The planned new airport-on-an-island has been dubbed ‘Boris


Island’ because of the London Mayor’s enthusiasm for the project. Building airports on reclaimed land is normally the sort of thing that they do in very crowded places like Hong Kong, where the only alternative is to knock down the very place that cargo and passengers are flying into. But many people’s mental view of Britain, and in particular its south-east corner, is of a very crowded place. Shoving the airport out into the middle of the Thames is convenient for Boris Johnson as, like all Tories, he has to please two camps with radically divergent views on development – the captains of industry who want to see much needed infrastructure and the Nimbys, ever-fearful of any encroachment on their arguably self- delusional rural idylls (“but it’s only 25 minutes from Waterloo”). For Labour, it’s much easier – you simply go ahead and build the damned thing and if you upset a few locals, they probably weren’t going to vote for you anyway. Not that Labour’s record on transport infrastructure is anything at all to be proud of. All through the early years of this century, when we did have plenty of money, hardly an inch of motorway tarmac was laid and the only major rail project


One or two commentators have said of the agonised London


airport debacle that “the other Europeans are all laughing at us”. That may be partly true, but probably not all Europeans, and certainly not the Germans. There, a regional court has taken the bizarre decision to ban night flights at Frankfurt, the country’s main international cargo hub, at just a few weeks’ notice, and it remains to be seen if the Federal Court will overturn the ruling. It appears that the night ban is a quid pro quo for Frankfurt being allowed to build a fourth runway, which has recently opened, but that will be of little comfort to the airfreight industry, which needs to operate a few freighters at night. The cargo industry has become the collateral damage in the ongoing war between commerce and the environmentalists.


And finally, amid all the news of collapsing currencies, soaring


government debt, capacity cuts and faltering economic recovery it only remains to wish all FBJ readers a merry Christmas and a happy new year. Things can only get better in 2012 – can’t they?


///OPINION


FBJ has already become established as the only UK and one of the few pan-European Multimodal newspapers. The comments we have received prove there is still room for a hard copy publication with the freighting industry. You don’t have to look at a screen all day!


FBJ boasts the most informative and authoritative source of information with unrivalled in-depth knowledge of the rapidly changing freight business environment.


As the definitive publication within the sea, air, road and rail freight sectors, each issue includes regular news and analysis, in-depth coverage discovering the business decisions behind the news stories, shipper and exporter reports, opinion, geographical features, political and environmental issues.


If you have any stories or letters which should be of interest or any feedback on FBJ, please contact our editor Chris Lewis - +44 (0)208 6450666 chris.lewis@fj-online.com


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was the High Speed 1 link to the Channel Tunnel. And we only built that because we didn’t want to be shown up by the French, who had opened their half of the high speed London-Paris line a good decade earlier. Boris appears to be having another go at pushing his ideas for an


airport in the Thames Estuary, though the reaction even among business interests is lukewarm – at least if the TV coverage we have seen is anything to go by. The problem for business is that it needs better airports now – not in 20 or 30 years time or whenever a new airport is likely to open.


Our next issue will include features on Scotland and Russia. There will


also be our regular IT Section and news pages. For further details contact: John Saunders - +44 (0) 151 427 6800 john.saunders@fj-online.com


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