Transport, energy and flood control plan for South East England, proposed in 2011
The Thames Hub is a proposal for a new approach to integrated infrastructure development that combines rail, intermodal freight logistics, aviation, tidal renewable energy and its transmission, flood protection and regional development in the Thames Estuary and connects this infrastructure to a trade and utilities spine that runs the length of the UK. It was developed by architects Foster + Partners, infrastructure consultants Halcrow and economists Volterra and launched by Lord Foster at the Institution of Civil Engineers in London on 2 November 2011.
A more developed proposal for a platform-based Thames Hub Airport, located on the Isle of Grain in the Thames Estuary in Kent, was submitted to the Airports Commission in July 2013 by Foster+Partners.
Background.
Infrastructure challenges.
The Thames Hub concept was developed to address a number of infrastructure challenges facing the UK. These include:
In the Thames Hub report, Lord Foster says that "We need to recapture the foresight and political courage of our 19th century forebears if we are to establish a modern transport and energy infrastructure in Britain for this century and beyond." In the accompanying video Foster talks about the consequences of inaction in relation to infrastructure planning and says that "the cost of doing business as usual is unaffordable and is certainly greater than this initiative".
Thames Barrier.
The Environment Agency believes that it will have to upgrade the Thames Barrier some time after 2070. The Agency estimates that the rise in sea level in the Estuary over the next century, due to thermal expansion of the oceans, could be between 20 cm and 88 cm and in a worst-case scenario could be more than 2.7 metres.
Rail network.
London's radial passenger rail network makes it difficult for rail passengers to travel around Outer London and the South East without first going into Central London. In addition rail freight trains need to run through Central London to get between the Thames Estuary ports and the rest of the country.
Airport expansion.
There have been proposals for a Thames Estuary airport since 1943. In 1968 Lord Roskill was appointed to chair the Third London Airport Commission, which considered options for a third London airport including a proposal for an airport at Maplin Sands in Essex. When the commission reported in 1970, the government decided to reject its advice for an airport at Cublington and instead decided to promote an airport at Maplin Sands. However this was abandoned in 1974 as a consequence of the 1973 oil crisis. Options for an estuary airport were considered in detail by the Labour Government as part of its work in preparing the 2003 Air Transport White Paper. However the White Paper announced the government's decision not to progress an estuarial option, but to approve plans for a new third runway at Heathrow.
In 2008 Boris Johnson the Mayor of London announced plans to carry out a study for an estuarial airport in the Shivering Sands area, north-east of Whitstable. The feasibility report, produced in October 2009 by former CrossRail Executive Chairman, Douglas Oakervee (who led the construction of Hong Kong's Chek Lap Kok airport on an island platform), concluded that there is "no logical constraint" to the plan. Although Kansai Airport in Japan is located on a man-made island in the middle of Osaka Bay, the Mayor's proposal was criticised as being too radical and is now commonly referred to as Boris Island.
In 2010 the new Coalition Government reversed the decisions in the White Paper and ruled out further airport expansion of London's three main airports (Heathrow, Gatwick and Stansted). In March 2011 the government launched a 6-month public consultation exercise on its policy for a sustainable aviation framework. In August 2011 the DfT published new air traffic forecasts that predicted (in sharp contrast to those published by the previous government in 2009) that the majority of future air traffic growth to 2050 would be accommodated at regional airports. These new projections have been strongly criticised by airlines because they seem to ignore the strong preferences by airlines to operate hub and spoke networks rather than offering point to point services.
Recent studies published by the British Chamber of Commerce and Frontier Economics for Heathrow's owner BAA estimate that the economic cost of not expanding capacity at Heathrow ranges between £900 million and £1.2 billion per year. Willie Walsh, chief executive of International Airlines Group, which owns British Airways (BA) the largest airline at Heathrow, has recently conceded that plans for a third runway at the airport are "dead" and that BA will now look to expand abroad. In his Mayoral response to the government's sustainable aviation public consultation, Boris Johnson highlighted the fact that China's fastest growing airline was unable to operate at Heathrow due to a lack of airport capacity. The Institute of Directors has called for Government to be bold when drawing up its final aviation framework and to consider such ideas as a new hub airport in the Thames estuary. Simon Jenkins, Chairman of the National Trust has said that a Thames Estuary airport offers "the least harm for the greatest gain".
On 31 October 2011 to the Airport Operators Association, the Labour Party's Shadow transport secretary Maria Eagle announced that the Party had abandoned its support for a third runway at Heathrow Airport but said that the government must also drop its moratorium on new airport capacity in the South East.
In a 27 November 2011 interview in the "Sunday Times", former Deputy Prime Minister and current chairman of the government's Regional Growth Fund, Lord Heseltine said that ministers ought to seriously consider an estuarial airport.
On 29 November 2011 the government announced that it would seriously consider "all options for maintaining the UK's hub airport status except a third runway at Heathrow" and on 19 March 2012 Prime Minister David Cameron confirmed that the Thames Hub would be one of those options.
The promoters claim that the Thames Hub proposal complements the UK Government's National Infrastructure Plan and provides a more integrated case than previous proposals for a Thames Estuary airport.
Proposals.
The Thames Hub's vision is that integrated infrastructure development can provide benefits not just for London and the Thames Gateway area but for the whole of the country, hence the project's strapline "An integrated vision for Britain". The main components of the Thames Hub are:
Flood protection barrier and crossing.
The proposal envisages a new flood barrier, about 18 miles downstream of the existing Thames Barrier, at Lower Hope between East Tilbury in Essex and Cliffe in Kent. The new barrier would provide protection to the year 2100 and beyond and result in a 150% increase in the area of land protected from flooding. The increased value of this land could be used to help finance the project through an insurance levy on those areas protected, offering an early 'first win' for the Estuary development. Residential development on newly protected land east of Gravesend and east of Tilbury could provide homes for Thames Hub staff. To maximise efficiency, housing developments could be grouped to form an energy-efficient network of smart homes. Shipping in the Estuary would however be seriously affected because the barrier location is in the middle of a tight S bend where strong tidal cross currents occur. While navigation channels would be incorporated into the barrier to allow ships to pass, negotiating the barrier would be a challenge for a large ship since it would still be recovering from making its turn while lining up for the barrier.
Renewable energy.
Hydropower turbines could be integrated into the flood protection barrier.
The proposed hydropower array in the Estuary would be 5 kilometres long and 500 metres wide and would harness tidal flows to produce energy with zero carbon emissions. The tidal generation units can sit either on the estuary bed or on floating pontoons. Their proposed location is north of the Estuary Airport and to the south of the Yantlet shipping channel, the main container freight route to Tilbury Docks and the new London Gateway port. By occupying the space between the airport reclamation and the shipping channel the units will present a hazard to smaller craft which currently navigate outside the shipping channel. Depending on the type of generation units used, there is the potential to generate up to 525 gigawatt hours (GWh) of energy per year - enough to power some 76,000 homes. Over a yearly cycle, the energy produced would be enough to supply the Estuary Airport, where demand is estimated as 400-600 GWh/year, allowing excess power to be fed back into the National Grid.
Orbital Rail Route.
The four track orbital rail route will closely follow the alignment of the M25 orbital motorway around London. For around a third of its length, the route would pass through tunnels, particularly in sensitive areas such as Epping Forest. It is estimated to remove around 4,000 lorries per day from the M25 and would reduce the costs of continual motorway expansion and the maintenance demands caused by prolonged heavy use.
The proposal envisages that the orbital rail route could be sunk by one metre into the ground. The excavated earth could then be used to build embankments alongside the track, within which energy and data cables could be laid, in order to provide acoustic shielding and reduce the visual impact of the railway, similar in concept to the use of the Ha-ha in garden design.
New stations along the Orbital Rail route will be located close to existing junctions on the M25, making them accessible by two million people within a 10 kilometre radius. Using the Orbital Rail line to reach their final destinations and thus avoiding central London will allow passenger rail journey times across the capital to be reduced by up to an hour.
In crossing the Thames Estuary, rail tunnels and local road links could be integrated into the flood protection barrier, similar in concept to integration of the Saint Petersburg Ring Road in the Saint Petersburg Dam in Russia.
The Orbital Rail route would provide a missing link between the existing HS1 high-speed rail line and the proposed high-speed line to the Midlands and the North, maximising the impact of both. It also integrates with the new Hub Airport, allowing it effectively to serve the whole of the UK. Up to 60% of airport passengers will arrive using fast, frequent services from across the country
Estuary Airport.
The airport site was selected for its proximity to London – at 34 miles (55 kilometres) from the centre, it can be reached in 30 minutes by high-speed rail. The proposal to build the airport on a platform, like those at Chek Lap Kok in Hong Kong and New Doha International Airport in Qatar would allow flights to take off and land over water, significantly reducing noise impacts and enabling the airport to operate 24 hours a day.
Approximately half the area of the airport platform will be on reclaimed land extending into the Estuary, 7 metres above sea level, with the other half on the Isle of Grain. The on shore portion of the site will require the removal of several villages and the relocation of the recently constructed Grain LNG terminal.
The airport will accommodate long-haul airline schedules and growing demand in the Asian market. Thus it will reassert London's geographical advantage as the stop-off point between North America and Eurasia, which is being eroded by a combination of new long-range aircraft and the emergence of networks centred on a global hub, such as Dubai.
Trade spine.
The trade spine would include rail links and utility cables. High-speed services would reduce journey times significantly from the cities of the Midlands and North to the cities of continental Europe. By rail, it will take approximately 1 hour and 50 minutes to reach the new Hub Airport from Leeds or Manchester.
Environmental management strategy.
As the site is located in an internationally protected Ramsar site a key element of the proposal will be an environmental management strategy to compensate for the loss of wetland habitat and provide an equivalent area of new roosting and feeding grounds for birds.
Funding.
The project is estimated to cost £50 billion. The promoters state that it does not need to depend solely on public funding. Established private-sector funding models – such as the Regulated Asset Base
(RAB) approach – could provide a funding mechanism for the project. Such an approach is described in a paper for the European Investment