Update on Bristol Airport expansion plans

Bristol International Airport are holding a pre-planning consultation with an exhibition at the airport this week (details below).

We do not believe that this consultation will change any significant detail of the actual plans that will be submitted in a few weeks time.

We expect the plans will be submitted in March, and we will need your help then to show North Somerset council the strength of feeling against the expansion and its impacts.

However, we also do not want the airport to be able to use the consultation on their exhibitions to show there is little opposition to their plans.

If you can get to the exhibition, please do so that you can see the scale of the proposed project.

We would ask you to bear in mind the following:

  1. there is no mention of the amount of carbon dioxide the extra flights will emit, and no credible plan to reduce them to below their current levels. For all the low energy lighting, turf roofs and little windmills, the project will have a huge overall environmental impact.  
  2. it is highly dubious that any net economic benefit will come to the area, due to the still significant outflow of tourism revenue. To achieve the claimed £343m of inbound benefits would require inbound to increase by a factor of 6 without outbound increasing at all, which is not credible.
  3. the  passenger figures have been dropping since the credit crunch began to bite in the UK, with figures at BIA for October through to December all being significantly lower  than in 2007 (12.7% lower in December). We believe that this trend will continue for some time. Is this the right time to be expanding the airport? The number of extra jobs is not credible either, and the method of calculation is opaque.
  4. no significant improvement will be made to public transport access, so if the airport does grow to 10 million passengers, most of the extra ones will arrive by car and this will further add to congestion, noise, air pollution and danger in the roads around the airport
  5. all airport expansion leads us away from reaching a sustainable, low carbon economy and is in direct conflict with the targets set out in the Climate Change Act for an 80% cut in emissions by 2050

There is a feedback form at the exhibition, but we would encourage you instead to send your responses by email to:
consultation@bristolairport.com
and copy it to us at:
email@stopbia.com

The details of the consultation and the plans are at:
http://www.bristolairport.co.uk/about_us/our_future/planning_application/public_consultation.aspx

January 29, 2009 · Filed Under airport

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