Foster's plans include a four-runway airport to be built partly on reclaimed land, which will be accessed via high-speed connections to London, the North and mainland Europe, The Times reports.
As the airport is set to be located on the Hoo Peninsula on the Isle of Grain, flights are set to approach the proposed airport from the water and not land. It is said that this will save five million people living under the Heathrow flight path from noise and air pollution.
A new barrage is planned for the River Thames, which will serve to connect the airport with the city. The barrage will provide new flood defences and double the area of land that is protected from floods along the estuary, which will allow more building.
The airport would have the capacity to handle 150 million passengers a year and would open up new air links with China, Brazil and other emerging markets, restoring London's place as pre-eminent aviation hub, the report says.
The scheme would include a railway station underneath the main terminal building, with capacity to handle 300,000 passengers a day. It is proposed that the station would have links with the planned Crossrail network and trains to London terminals within 30 minutes.
If the proposed national high-speed railway goes ahead, the hub would be linked with East London, London, Birmingham, Manchester and Leeds, and with the Channel Tunnel rail link.
Foster's plans also propose to link ports with the railway, allowing freight to be taken off heavily congested passenger routes and clearing capacity in the London bottleneck.
The proposed orbital railway would take 4,000 lorries a day off the M25 and reduce many train journeys across London by an hour, Lord Foster claims.
Foster’s plans are to power the airport and surrounding homes through the use of tide turbines, the cables for which would run along the railway lines the length of the county.
The unveiling of Lord Foster's scheme comes the day after Prime Minister David Cameron told Cabinet colleagues they needed to be “straining every sinew” to unblock any legal, regulatory or planning hurdles around 40 'big-ticket' infrastructure projects.
