Building a new runway is doing nothing?

Planners measure the effects of their proposals by comparing the future impacts of a "do nothing" scenario with the future impacts if they "do something" (build their proposed development).

At the oral hearing into UPROAR's appeal against the building of the new terminal (T2) at Dublin Airport, the DAA wanted us to believe that doing nothing includes building the new parallel runway at Dublin Airport. Nearly all of the DAA's analysis of the impacts of T2 on noise, road traffic, pollution, etc., is based on what they claim are the extra aircraft movements with their passengers, due only to the new terminal (T2) if the new runway is already in place! They say therefore that there will less than 3% extra aircraft movements when T2 is full in 2024 compared to what would happen if T2 is not built.(1) Using the DAA's own figures, that would amount to an extra one million passengers only by 2024. At the same time they say T2 is designed for 15 million passengers. Ryanair says it is designed for many more.

The DAA manage this sleight of hand by assuming that their "Do Nothing" or "Do Minimum" scenario means building the new runway, but not building T2. On the DAA's own figures, with the new runway, there would be 37 million passengers in 2024 without T2. So we have to believe that these could all be accommodated in T1! They want us to believe this would be a feasible "Do Nothing" scenario even though their case for T2 is that T1 is already full and uncomfortable for the 21 million passengers that passed through it in 2006.

At the oral hearing an ARUP consultant for the DAA agreed that the assumption meant T1 with 37 million passengers would be a very uncomfortable place, while another DAA representative agreed that it was an infeasible scenario. It is common sense that if T2 were not allowed, the new runway would not be built either. It could not be built if there were no terminal facilities to accommodate its extra passengers. Consequently, as T2 is to be built by 2009, three years before the new
runway, it is the critical piece of infrastructure now determining the future of Dublin Airport. It is quite absurd to propose that a runway which has still to get planning approval and, if allowed, would be built after T2, can be presumed to exist, in order to argue that T2 is not a significant facilitator or generator of extra aircraft movements and passengers.

At the new runway oral hearing in October 2006, the DAA argued then that the runway would generate few extra road traffic problems because the runway would, of itself, not generate extra passengers. Significant numbers of extra passengers would only arise if T2 was built. In the T2 case the argument has been reversed and the blame for the problems due to extra passengers is now put on the runway, now that the issue being examined is the second terminal.

Alice sometimes "believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast" . We are being asked to believe impossible things in order to allow the unsustainable expansion of Dublin Airport.

This is spin and it is unworthy of a public body to attempt to deceive the public and the taxpayer with this cynical sophistry. The DAA is proposing to waste EUR4.5 billion of public and private assets with its unsustainable development at Dublin Airport, if they can get away with it

(1) This 3% figure is contained in the T2 EIS - NTS page 20. At the T2 oral hearing DAA experts gave different figures of 2% extra aircraft movements in 2012 and 7% extra in 2024 due to T2. No explanation was given for this change in figures. Using the 7% figure for 2024 we would still have to believe that 35 million passengers could be accommodated in T1 rather than 37 million; a still impossible proposition.