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Why is it so hard to build an airport?

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Re: Why is it so hard to build an airport?

#111

Post by walthamstow »

_fizz_buzz_ wrote: post #96
hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Counting "city population" is nearly a pointless exercise. What matters is the metro area, otherwise you get some pretty useless results. Austin, TX is tenth by city size in the US, with just under a million people, while San Francisco is 17th, with about 800k. But Austin is a much bigger percentage of the total Austin metro area, while the Bay area is ~8-10 million people total. As such, SF feels like a much bigger…

Yeah, it is basically always is a bit pointless without context. Same with e.g. Paris. Paris itself is "tiny". But Île-de-France (the Paris region) has over 12 million people.

Another one: just 7000 people live in the City of London

Re: Why is it so hard to build an airport?

#112

Post by werdnapk »

sremani wrote: post #67
DarkNova6 wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Actually, apart from the largest US cities your average european city is larger. The US doesn't even have 10 cities which are above 1 million people.

You are missing the forest for the trees. US cities are smaller in a pedantic sense. That is why planners and intelligent people use Metro area statistics for population, traffic, infrastructure planning etc. Dallas population about 1 million. Dallas metro - 7.7 million. This is an important distinction missed out.

That just goes to show you how sparse american cities are built... the sprawl just builds up outside of the city with low density.

Re: Why is it so hard to build an airport?

#113

Post by pbsladek »

po wrote: post #30

If you fly into Tokyo you might come in via Narita Airport (NRT) which is actually quite a distance out from tokyo. Violence is extremely uncommon in modern Japan but NRT was the site of violent resistance over several decades. Opposition forces killed several police officers, rioted on several occasions and constructed a giant 200 ft tower to interfere with test flights. Hundreds of acts of vandalism have occurred o…

If flying into NRT and on the way to Tokyo, ~$200ish for the taxi ride. Ooops.

Re: Why is it so hard to build an airport?

#114

Post by vladvasiliu »

dividefuel wrote: post #85
rockostrich wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Part of it is our definition of cities versus metro areas. Boston's population is technically only 650k but Boston proper doesn't even include Cambridge which is like not including one of the boroughs when talking about NYC's population. Granted, we still have a lot less metro areas with over 1 million people but there are still ~50 of them.

Is this something fairly unique to the US or do other countries do this too? that is, having a city boundary that's relatively small compared to the metro area.

That's fairly common in France. Most "big cities" aren't that populous by themselves, but the metro area has much more people.

Re: Why is it so hard to build an airport?

#115

Post by dwater »

Dalewyn wrote: post #74
perlgeek wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> One of the interesting ideas [...] is to run high-speed rail to Moses Lake Airport in Central Washington and just expand there. While reading this article, I thought about something like that too. Build an airport quite a while away from the big city, and provide a high-speed, maybe even maglev train there. Make it free for customers. Also, make it very inconvenient for passengers and staff to approach the airport…

The aforementioned setup nearly always means the closer airport ends up getting upgraded later to meet convenience demands, leaving the newer-but-inconvenient airport out to dry. See: Haneda (HND) vs. Narita (NRT) in Tokyo, Itami (ITM) vs. Kansai (KIX) in Osaka, etc.

In Washington DC, Washington National Airport (WAS) is just across a river from downtown and connected by subway, and Dulles International Airport (IAD) was way out past the exurbs when it was constructed and only just got a subway connection several decades later. IAD gets way more traffic and has as long as I can remember. I'd guess that's because it's not possible to add many more flights to WAS.

Re: Why is it so hard to build an airport?

#116

Post by Symbiote »

patwolf wrote: post #95
bambax wrote: post #81

There's this classic French movie from the 70s, "Nous irons tous au paradis", where a group of friends buy a house really cheap. They can't believe their luck until they realize the house is next to an international airport (they visited the house when the air traffic controllers were on strike). Here's the scene: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w2aFksnIghQ It's a little bit absurd of course that they didn't bother t…

I live about 5 miles from an airport. It never occurred to me when I bought the house that there'd be airplane noise, but we happen to be right in the flight path. They're infrequent enough that I didn't hear any while touring the house. The house is well-insulated, so the noise isn't bad while inside. But while outside, it's loud enough that you have to pause a conversation when a plane goes by.

I lived under the London Heathrow flight path. There are so many flights that the conversation would be paused for 25% or more of the total time.

Somehow, expanding this airport is politically desirable. 3 million people live under the flight path, and they are dismissed as rich or poor people who should have known better. They are rich and poor, there is plenty of range, and there certainly aren't a million spare houses they could choose to move to.

Re: Why is it so hard to build an airport?

#117

Post by patwolf »

jdnenid wrote: post #99
patwolf wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I live about 5 miles from an airport. It never occurred to me when I bought the house that there'd be airplane noise, but we happen to be right in the flight path. They're infrequent enough that I didn't hear any while touring the house. The house is well-insulated, so the noise isn't bad while inside. But while outside, it's loud enough that you have to pause a conversation when a plane goes by.

How did it not occur to you that there would be noise from airplanes if you live that close? Or is it more of an airstrip where only ultra light aircraft depart?

Half the city is within 5 miles of the airport. I've lived in places much closer and never experienced the noise before. The difference was being in the flight path.

I'll also add that my perception of the distance to the airport was skewed by the fact that it's a 15 mile drive to the terminal entrance, but only 5 miles as the crow flies.

Re: Why is it so hard to build an airport?

#118

Post by jonasdegendt »

vemv wrote: post #107

> In the early 1980s, Dallas Fort-Worth Airport covered as much land as the city of Dallas did, and Denver International Airport is as large as the city of San Francisco. This... doesn't fit into my head.

They're probably referring to the official city limits, which can be tiny, as opposed to the total Dallas metro area. The latter is what people actually tend to think of when mentioning a city.

I might be wrong though as I know nothing about Dallas, in which case it also doesn't fit into my head.

Re: Why is it so hard to build an airport?

#119

Post by bombcar »

ghaff wrote: post #102
bombcar wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wasn’t that the idea behind Denver? It’s outside the city by a decent amount (or was when started). I assume proximity to the mountains was also a consideration.

The newer airport is really less convenient to the mountains than Stapleton was. (At least in terms of distance. Not sure about driving time.)

Ah, I meant that putting the airport farther from the mountains means the planes can take off heading west without circling around.

I don't know if it's that far, however.

Re: Why is it so hard to build an airport?

#120

Post by Gare »

bradley13 wrote: post #62
polycaster wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For every other non-native speaker like me, lmgtfu: NIMBY (/ˈnɪmbi/, or nimby), an acronym for the phrase "not in my back yard", is a characterization of opposition by residents to proposed infrastructure developments in their local area, as well as support for strict land use regulations.

Your definition is accurate, but I think it is incomplete. The stereotypical NIMBY doesn't want something in their backyard, but they still want the advantages of it existing. They want it to be place in someone else's backyard. People opposing airport construction still want to fly. They just want someone else to have the noise.

> People opposing airport construction still want to fly.

Maybe they do in America. But in Europe there's not much need/want of frequent flying for the average citizen.

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