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How Berlin’s Futuristic Airport Became a $6B Embarrassment

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Re: How Berlin’s Futuristic Airport Became a $6B Embarrassment

#121

Post by betaby »

troymc wrote: post #42
nsns wrote: post #8

But is it only BER? As mentioned int the article - what about Stuttgart 21 ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stuttgart_21 ) etc.? It is possible that these sites exist as new financial "loopholes", transferring tax-money from the government to private contractors without much oversight.

Montreal had a different sort of airport fiasco in the 1960s and 70s: Mirabel Airport was supposed to replace the Dorval Airport as the "Eastern Gateway to Canada" for human travellers. Today, Mirabel is mostly a cargo airport. And the terminal is being demolished... Meanwhile, Dorval was expanded several times. Also, it was renamed the Trudeau airport. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Montr%C3%A9al%E2%80%93Mirabel_…

Looks like it's perfect time to stop expanding Dorval airport and concentrate on Mirabel future. Montreal area is growing, number of flights is growing. Important reason why Mirabel can't be used efficiently - is a lack of railway connection to it. If Mirabel were reachable by train there would be flights from it. And terminal wan't be demolished by the way, there is big push back for that.

Re: How Berlin’s Futuristic Airport Became a $6B Embarrassment

#122

Post by Retra »

Kenji wrote: post #102
MrBuddyCasino wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The theory that is taken out of the drawer in such occasions is that the airport will have "a positive economical impact on the whole region, so the calculation isn't that simple". Sometimes it works, but in most cases it doesn't.

If "the calculation isn't that simple" how come the politicians think they can figure out the solution, but the collective hivemind of demand and offer by literally all participants of the economy cannot?

Why would you believe thousands of people participating in an economy would come to a better solution than a few people making plans?

About the only thing large masses of people ever seem to accomplish is throwing fuel into various metaphorical fires.

Re: How Berlin’s Futuristic Airport Became a $6B Embarrassment

#123

Post by JimboOmega »

jandrese wrote: post #30

This is exactly what you expect to happen when you're redesigning the building in the middle of construction. If the project manager can't say no then it's pretty much guaranteed to be a disaster. On the plus side, it seems like they've finally found someone competent to fix the mess and move the project forward.

What I don't quite get is that the problem keeping things from being fixed seems to be entirely related to the fire system.

Meanwhile all the other issues like heavy equipment breaking tiles... none of that seems to be slowing it from opening.

So how did all the other systems wind up being more or less ready?

Re: How Berlin’s Futuristic Airport Became a $6B Embarrassment

#124

Post by mschuster91 »

All I do is remembering EDDM, Munich's airport, which was finished on the day it was supposed to - and even better, they moved the entire technology of the old airport in a single night (https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flughafen_M%C3%BCnchen#Inbetri...).

Re: How Berlin’s Futuristic Airport Became a $6B Embarrassment

#126

Post by cmarschner »

Kliment wrote: post #72
netcan wrote: post #68

Why do airports always need to be so ambitious? Usually the simple airports are best anyway.

The worst thing about BER is that it's designed to replace Tegel, which is easily the most sensibly built major airport in Germany. Space-efficient, cheap to operate, high-throughput, built very quickly with limited resources to solve a specific problem.

Tegel has the charm of an old bus station, but efficient it is. My record was Berlin Schönhauser Allee to Munich East in 3 hours and 20 minutes. It can only get worse from there. The commute to BER alone will be at least 30-40 minutes longer.

Re: How Berlin’s Futuristic Airport Became a $6B Embarrassment

#127

Post by mschuster91 »

wlesieutre wrote: post #46
ghshephard wrote: post #26

I realize that higher standards of fire and other safety measures make these systems more complicated, but you would think that with all the technology we have today for planning, engineering, communication, documentation, modeling and simulation - that these types of fiascos would become rarer and rarer. I wonder if anyone has looked at large scale projects like these over the last 100 years and determined what impl…

We have a lot of powerful software for building design these days, Autodesk's Revit suite being the big one. But as in software development, better tools just ends up meaning that clients demand things faster and cheaper, rather than better. There are some classes of problems that it definitely helps solve, like keeping the structural engineer and HVAC engineer from design conflicts where a beam and a duct go through…

AFAIK as long as you're only carrying a couple of 230V lines (3x1.5qmm NYM-J and friends) you're fine to use plastic tubes or tack them onto the walls, but as soon as you're mixing in non-power wiring you're required to lay them in separate tubes.

Re: How Berlin’s Futuristic Airport Became a $6B Embarrassment

#128

Post by cmarschner »

Kenji wrote: post #99

I don't understand why the state funds airports. If people want airports, there is a demand, and that demand is either big enough to fund an airport and is satisfied, or it isn't because people don't want to spend that kind of money. Seems to me like something the state shouldn't be involved in.

Airports are shared infrastructure, just like roads. As such they are serving a common purpose, and don't have to make money by themselves (rather indirectly through enabling business). That's exactly where the government should be involved in. E.g. It makes more sense to have a single airport rather than several competing ones, airports shouldn't go bancrupt and be closed, and building them might require changing laws or evicting/relocating 1000s of people. These are all in the sphere of public responsibility.

Re: How Berlin’s Futuristic Airport Became a $6B Embarrassment

#129

Post by anigbrowl »

wlesieutre wrote: post #46
ghshephard wrote: post #26

I realize that higher standards of fire and other safety measures make these systems more complicated, but you would think that with all the technology we have today for planning, engineering, communication, documentation, modeling and simulation - that these types of fiascos would become rarer and rarer. I wonder if anyone has looked at large scale projects like these over the last 100 years and determined what impl…

We have a lot of powerful software for building design these days, Autodesk's Revit suite being the big one. But as in software development, better tools just ends up meaning that clients demand things faster and cheaper, rather than better. There are some classes of problems that it definitely helps solve, like keeping the structural engineer and HVAC engineer from design conflicts where a beam and a duct go through…

But as in software development, better tools just ends up meaning that clients demand things faster and cheaper, rather than better.

Exact same thing in the arts field - not all clients of course, and I can't think of a recent equivalent to a fiasco of this scale, but the general trend is that clients feel when the cost of technology goes down so should other costs.

Re: How Berlin’s Futuristic Airport Became a $6B Embarrassment

#130

Post by nomailing »

Good to hear that the pirate party member Martin Delius is the head of the parliamentary committee leading the investigation. I'm wondering if we would be that informed if a member of another political party would be in charge, because one of the main programmatic points of the pirate party is transparency.
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