Article originally appeared in the Village Voice magazine.
London Luton Airport’s plans to expand to 32 million passengers per annum will have an enormous impact on rural communities like Offley.
These plans would nearly double current passenger numbers. That means more people on trains, more cars on the road and more planes in the sky – and the resultant noise and air pollution would have a direct impact on quality of life in our rural areas.
It would also mean a severely negative impact on local transport congestion.
That includes excessive traffic on the A505, on our rural roads and in our villages – indeed, Great Offley is highlighted in the consultation documents as being an area where highway mitigations might be required as part of the strategy to get people to and from the airport.
Our train services are already over-stretched, and even after mitigations, Luton Rising’s own numbers show that demand for Northbound train services will be 119% of standard seating availability with expansion.
We simply do not have the capacity to cope with this proposed expansion.
I know that thousands of local people agree – more than 3,500 of you have already signed my petition – and that’s why I’m pressing the case against expansion directly with the Transport Secretary.
Together, I know that we can get this expansion stopped. I’ll keep fighting for our community’s interests – in Westminster and in our area.
