An undertaking from the owners of Heathrow Airport that a scheme to move the M25 motorway to make way for a third runway will not cause significant disruption, has been questioned by campaigners, MPs and engineers.
The Government last week gave its backing to a plan put forward by Heathrow, which is owned by a consortium of private investors including the sovereign wealth funds of China, Saudi Arabia and Qatar, to build a longer version of the proposed additional runway at Britain’s sole hub airport.
The £21bn project – part of a wider £49bn investment plan – involves a £1.5bn scheme to relocate a section of the M25 into a tunnel to allow the new 3,500-metre runway to be built over the London orbital motorway, which is one of the busiest – and most congested – roads in Europe. The route is often dubbed ‘the road to hell’ – a reference to the Chris Rea hit penned by the singer as a result of his own frustrations with the M25’s traffic jams.
The longer runway scheme was chosen despite opposition from British Airways, which is Heathrow’s biggest customer and said last month that it would rather the airport’s expansion happened without moving the motorway.
Hotelier Surinder Arora had placed a bid for cheaper rival plan for a shorter runway that stopped short of the existing M25. But it was rejected by the Government in favour of Heathrow’s “credible and deliverable” option, with the transport secretary, Heidi Alexander, describing its approach to road infrastructure as “comparatively more mature”.
The airport has insisted it would deliver the privately-financed “realignment” without disruption to “existing traffic flows” by building a new stretch of motorway directly parallel to the existing one and then joining the two in a series of overnight closures when the new relocated road is ready for use.
Heathrow’s boss, Thomas Woldbye, has said the task of diverting the road would be “expensive but well controlled” and the airport has pointed out that similar projects have been successfully completed by competitors including Paris Charles De Gaulle (CDG) and Frankfurt.
‘I think Heathrow are living in cloud cuckoo land’
But the scheme has been criticised by opponents of the expansion plans, which is due to be completed by 2035, and sparked questions elsewhere about whether an engineering project of that scale can be delivered without a knock-on impact on the M25 and communities surrounding the airport.
Justine Bayley, chairman of the Stop Heathrow Expansion campaign, told The i Paper: “I think Heathrow are living in cloud cuckoo land. You can build another bit of motorway beside the existing one but to suggest it will have no impact on the existing motorway and its operation for the duration is simply not real.”
Bayley pointed to what she said had been the chaotic experience of communities when the M25 was widened around Heathrow and the M4 interchange a decade ago. She said: “You had traffic trying to get off the motorway and onto local roads, resulting in gridlock. And I just foresee all that happening again.”
Heathrow says the third runway plans will create a wider and safer stretch of motorway at one of the busiest junctions on the M25. (Heathrow Airport limited)Robert Barnstone, of the No Third Runway Coalition, said Heathrow had so far failed to provide clarity on a number of issues, in particular how the equipment and material required to build the new motorway would enter and exit the construction site without causing regular tailbacks.
He said: “There are huge impacts that would result from the disruption to the M25 with a third runway… I’m sure it’s feasible to build bits of road and tunnel off-site but how do they get brought in? What would be the impact of construction traffic?”
Green Party MP Sian Berry added: “Constructing an unnecessary third runway will bring massive disruption and congestion during construction and afterwards.”
‘Offline’ construction before new motorway stretch is ‘switched on’
Heathrow has invested heavily in PR efforts, including online videos, to persuade the Government and the public that it can deliver its road relocation scheme without bringing parts of west London to a grinding halt. Once completed, the overall expansion scheme would increase the airport’s capacity of 80 million passengers a year to about 120 million.
Its scheme involves building a new stretch of road between junctions 14 and 15 of the M25, to the west of the existing motorway on disused or industrial land. The relocation involves dropping the level of the existing road by about five metres, forming a cut-through tunnel which would be covered by the new Northwest runway extending beyond Heathrow’s current footprint.
Heathrow says the new future-proofed section will be built ‘offline’ on land 130 metres to the west of today’s motorway, keeping construction separate from daily commuters. (Heathrow Airport limited)When the airport outlined an almost identical scheme in 2019, it said it was “really keen for as much manufacturing to be done off-site as possible” and suggested it would be looking to assemble pre-made components to form the new road rather than large-scale construction from scratch on-site.
Heathrow said that its proposal would result in a new wider section of the M25 with quicker journeys and less congestion, while also avoiding upheaval to a stretch road which currently sees 250,000 journeys a day.
The proposal states: “The new section… would be built entirely ‘offline’ immediately to the west of the current motorway – it would not disrupt existing traffic flows during construction. It would then be ‘switched on’ at a time where any immediate disruption would be minimised… Once the new section is operational, the current M25 would be closed to enable construction of the runway to continue towards the east.”
The airport said its methodology was “tried and tested”, pointing in particular to the implementation of a similar scheme at Paris Charles De Gaulle in recent years. Other airports including Fort Lauderdale in Florida and Frankfurt and Leipzig in Germany also feature runways which cross motorways.
A Heathrow spokesperson said: “Heathrow expansion is a once in a generation opportunity to upgrade our connectivity in the air and on the ground. One of the legacies of our plan will be a 100 per cent privately financed upgrade to one of the busiest stretches of the M25.
“We have a tested plan for building next to the current motorway that will keep motorists on the move during construction. We have already looked at the alternatives and they simply create more impacts for less benefits, so we’re confident we have the best plan available.”
It is understood by The i Paper that one of the means of mitigating construction traffic at Heathrow will be the use of a railway spur which passes close to the proposed motorway construction site. It is unclear how much spare capacity there is on the line, which is currently used for freight traffic.
‘It would require a sizable slice of good fortune’
However, a construction expert with a major engineering firm emphasised the complexity of the task facing Heathrow’s owners. The senior engineer said: “I have no doubt that it can be done, but placing a full-length runway for one of Europe’s busiest airports on top of one of Europe’s busiest motorways is not for the faint hearted. It would require meticulous planning and a sizable slice of good fortune to be achieved without some form of disruption in the locality.”
Other experts said Heathrow nonetheless has a good record in bringing to fruition complex infrastructure projects, in particular the completion of the £4.3bn Terminal Five in 2008.
Henrik Rothe, a specialist in airport planning and construction at Cranfield University, underlined the need for the airport to increase public transport access saying the M25 project “is not an easy thing to do”. He added: “Yes, there will be disruptions but we should look at how Heathrow managed the construction of Terminal Five, which I would say was a masterpiece in terms of logistics and contract management.”
Passengers ‘could end up footing the bill for Heathrow expansion’
This summer Heathrow said it expected to make revenues of £3.6bn in 2025 and last year recorded pre-tax profits of £917m. The question remains of whether its expansion plans now proceed to the next stage of gaining approval. The Government has said it would like to see construction work begin 2029.
The airport charges airlines significantly more than competitors such as Amsterdam Schiphol and Paris CDG, although Heathrow points to the UK’s higher energy and construction costs as contributing to any disparity.
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Airlines are concerned that they will find themselves footing the bill for Heathrow’s expansion in the form of yet higher access charges, which in turn could be passed to passengers in the form of higher fares.
Sean Doyle, the chief executive of British Airways, last month said the airline would prefer to see a shorter – and potentially cheaper – third runway at Heathrow.
Speaking before the Government’s announcement last week, he said: “If you can avoid moving the M25, you should avoid moving the M25. I can’t argue against the logic of that.”
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