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Why is it so hard to build an airport?

construction-physics.com

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

#121

Post by Kon-Peki »

ryandrake wrote: post #97
Kon-Peki wrote: post #79

As the article points out, expanding the two airports in Chicago are out of the question. And because it is more or less impossible to build a new airport, they are planning to build a "new" airport. Which means that this tiny little thing [1][2], which handles a dozen or two Cessna flights per day, is intended to "grow" into a 4000 acre major international airport. When it grows to its full footprint, the western ed…

Airport expansion is almost as difficult as building new. In my neck of the woods, some have suggested that the (primarily general aviation) Livermore airport would make a great “reliever” airport for the Bay Area jets, but this is constantly being fought by residents, mostly people in posh Pleasanton, which is on the flight path. It’s understandable that people don’t want more jets flying above their homes, yet, Eas…

Good point. The Livermore airport is pretty hemmed in already; it looks like it would be pretty difficult to do much expansion and you have all those houses that are already under the runway approaches. I'm guessing that when you say "Bay Area jets", you are talking private jets, not 737s, right?

In the case of the South Suburban Chicago Airport, noise is less of an issue. People don't want traffic and they don't want farms turned into warehouses and light industrial. And then the housing built for the thousands of jobs created.

It's essentially opposition to sprawl, which I think is a pretty legitimate concern. I think the state could try to do things to help prevent it from being as bad as it could be (forest preserves, open space, minimum zoning, etc). Though I don't think they want to, because the alternative to this airport is that the one just across the border in Indiana would get enlarged, leading to all that economic development going to a different state.

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

#122

Post by pif »

perlgeek wrote: post #63
subzidion wrote: post #52

There's been discussions where the "next" airport should go in the Seattle region, and the consensus is that nobody wants it. The State Legislature created a commission to try and identify some potential sites, but the public backlash was so great that they ended up submitting it's final report with no actual recommendation. One of the interesting ideas (that was proposed even back when SEA was adding it's third runw…

> 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…

> make it very inconvenient for passengers and staff to approach the airport by other means

Absolutely not! High-speed train have many advantages, but serving stations with large, long-term parking lots is not one of them.

After all, you don't need to disincentivize the approach: you just need to make it clear that the airport is there to stay, and maybe to grow three-fold, and that noise complaints will never be receivable.

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

#123

Post by rootusrootus »

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.

My father-in-law used to live in Federal Way, Washington, directly south of SeaTac. He swore you got used to it. The noise was amazing -- two parallel runways, his house just about smack in the middle between the two approach paths. Airliners would go over the house every minute (or less!) alternating between the runways. Flaps down all the way, gear down, making incredible amounts of noise. Inside the house you could tolerate it, but it was still noisy. Outside, you had to pause your conversation constantly as a plane went overhead.

SeaTac is well known, and the air traffic never really stops, so there is no way he did not know about it when he bought. I assume it made the house a lot cheaper than it would otherwise be. I guess it is the ultimate demonstration of a free market. For the right price, people will put up with anything.

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

#124

Post by ghaff »

bombcar wrote: post #119
ghaff wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Stapleton was still east of Denver. I think the siting of DIA was probably more that there was a bunch of flat relatively empty land even further east. It's been a while since I flew into Denver but my recollection is the airport is pretty hell and gone from the city.

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

#125

Post by busterarm »

pbsladek wrote: post #113
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.

Keisei Skyliner and Narita Express are 1/10th of the cost and twice as fast.

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

#126

Post by sofixa »

> And an airport can’t be too far from a city and remain useful, since travelers need to access the city, workers need to be within commuting distance, and so on. In Canada, Mirabel airport was built 35 miles from Montreal, surrounded by a 79,000 acre buffer zone to prevent any issues of incompatible land use. Mirabel was expected to replace Dorval (today Montreal-Trudeau) as Canada’s main eastern airport, but, in part because of its long distance from the city, this never happened, and Mirabel stopped serving passenger traffic in 2004.

It was because of very stupid mismanagement and lack of connections, not the distance.

The old airport remained opened and continued serving domestic flights, while international ones were moved to Mirabel... which was extremely dumb because Montreal was the major interchange point between international arrivals and smaller locations not served directly by international flights in Canada. So most of the utility of Montreal airport was killed, and airlines started serving other airports in Canada to do the same thing.

Also, there was no good link to the airport - it shouldn't have opened without a direct at least somewhat fast rail link, but it had no good road nor rail connection.

Also, it was put in the wrong place - one of the potential locations was midway between Ottawa and Montreal and could have served both cities, but politicians decided they don't want that.

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

#127

Post by ghaff »

pbsladek wrote: post #113
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.

There is a train though which even people on expense accounts usually take.

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

#128

Post by sofixa »

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.

Not if the old airport gets closed - like Tegel and Tempelhof were in Berlin, even though the new one next to Schonefeld wasn't ready yet due to it being a fiasco of colossal proportions.

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

#129

Post by DrBazza »

Kon-Peki wrote: post #79

As the article points out, expanding the two airports in Chicago are out of the question. And because it is more or less impossible to build a new airport, they are planning to build a "new" airport. Which means that this tiny little thing [1][2], which handles a dozen or two Cessna flights per day, is intended to "grow" into a 4000 acre major international airport. When it grows to its full footprint, the western ed…

Unfamiliar with this, but are you suggesting that the airport would cover the railroad, or simply just finish before it?

If it covers it, then from the satellite pictures it would be trivial to bury the line in a cut-n-cover tunnel for little expense.

The fact that a rail line runs there already seems ideal for a modern airport.

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

#130

Post by ourmandave »

freeopinion wrote: post #94

O'Hare airport sits some 40km outside Chicago. It seems like a long way away from the city. Narita airport is about 80km east of Tokyo. Osaka is about 500km west of Tokyo. Osaka's airport is just 15km outside of Osaka. To travel from downtown Osaka to downtown Tokyo would involve 95km of ground transport in addition to the flight. Or you could take the train, which would involve about 20km of transport besides the hi…

Or even next to a rail line.

Not a commuter train, but here's a neighborhood where the rail goes right down the street. Literally freight trains driving past your front yard.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=odWcZagJlAs

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