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Heathrow Protestors Taking Lessons from Second Life

Interesting to see that the protestors of the building of a third runway at Heathrow are aping the strategies used in Second Life.

By buying up property that would be required to build the new runway, taxiways, terminals and transport links (which makes it sound remarkably like a new airport altogether, just as BAA is being forced to sell other airports), and then splitting that property up into tiny lots that are sold to individuals, the goal must be to make the process of acquiring the land as hard as possible.

This sounds like the strategy used by many unscrupulous land merchants in Second Life – by buying up small plots of land (even a few square metres) and building huge (yet thin) garish structures, chock full of advertising and loud noises.The residents in the sleepy hollows have little choice to get a nice time in their game home, and sell up. Land barons gets a whole sim, at a low price, and start developing it with no interference.

Yes, the case here is people holding small plots to stop an expansion, the other way around, but the attempt to be an irritant and hope the other party goes away… well the success or failure of this is going to be visible over many many years.

So what do I think? Honestly I don’t know, because it’s impossible to measure the arguments – you’re going on other people’s best guesses and whatever baggage they bring to the runway. My personal experience of Heathrow is of the traveller, who invariably has to travel either T1 to T3 as a transfer, or more recently between T3 and T5. Is it any worse that Dallas Fort Worth or Chicago O’Hare?

What I think would make a bigger difference is a dedicated high speed rail line between Heathrow and Gatwick (and possibly Stanstead), solely for transfer passengers. Given you take up to 20 minutes to drive around Heathrow on a bus, a train transfer isn’t going to add that much, and opens up more runways and transfer passengers to the other airports

If BAA was getting to keep Gatwick, I’m sure this would happen…

January 16, 2009; Politics, Second Life;

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Comments

4 Responses to “Heathrow Protestors Taking Lessons from Second Life”

Commonly Sensible on January 16th, 2009 14:28

The problem with this tactic is that it won’t work. The government can and will use compulsory purchase orders to get the land title and get the expansion built. This ploy will achieve nothing more than delaying and increasing the cost of the inevitable.

The protesters are just a nuisance and a burden to the tax payer.
Ewan Spence on January 16th, 2009 15:24

Yes, on the face of it ti will slow everything downbut not halt it. As I hint, I’m not up on the whole process of CPO’s, even though my Gran once had one applied on her house so they could drive a new flyover through the living room.
Craig McGill on January 18th, 2009 23:05

I’m with commonly sensible on this one – and it’s actually a terrible lesson to take from online as PR stunts online should be to bring about change in the real – but all they are doing is dragging stuff out and giving some Govt departments more to do.
ed on January 20th, 2009 12:23

This tactic has worked in the past.
When building the Channel tunnel, there were two routes proposed to build the French high speed train line link to Paris.
One route was picked and i think people from Lille were a little peeved that it was going to bypass their town, so they went and bought land along the route and sold it in small plots, which meant that it became even more un-econimic to build the route, as paperwork costs, so they picked the other route which exists today.
It good to see enviro’s putting their money where there mounth is.
They could possibly build a high speed underground rail link to manchester International for the money they are going to spend, never mind Gatwick or Stanstead.