Why is it so hard to build an airport? • Hacker News Board

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

#191

Post by rayiner » Fri, Mar 22, 2024, 3:23 PM UTC

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.

I had a cab driver refuse to take me to NRT because it would be too expensive. He told me to take the train from Ueno.

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

#192

Post by TylerE » Fri, Mar 22, 2024, 3:24 PM UTC

Has anyone ever tried to build an airport where the terminals and actual flight ops area was miles away (noise, etc).

Basically I'm picturing something like an urban train station (plus TSA, and customs) that would be located downtown. This is where you'd have check-in, security, baggage claim, etc. After clearing security, you'd get on some sort of rail transit (monorail, maglev, subway, whatever, doesn't matter THAT much as long as it can get out to the flight area in 10-15 minutes.

Basically put the people bits where it's convenient, and the noisy stuff where it isn't.

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

#193

Post by Symbiote » Fri, Mar 22, 2024, 3:24 PM UTC

pbsladek wrote: post #149

ghaff wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

I expensed the taxi. It was 1am. Train another 2-2.5 hours.. It’s Japan. Obviously I knew about the train lol. Their trains are awesome!

That must have been an unusual situation, as Narita closes at 23.00.

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

#194

Post by thaumasiotes » Fri, Mar 22, 2024, 3:25 PM UTC

TRDRVR wrote: post #170

vel0city wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That sounds like exceptionally poor planning. Just to confirm, the new airport served pretty much only international flights? It should have been the nexus for domestic travel to connect to the big hop to Europe, meaning it should have had a ton of domestic routes as well feeding it.

It's the main counterexample to 'The Olympics are good because they force the development of infrastructure that otherwise wouldn't get built' argument. Many of the weird choices about that airport was made so it would be open and useful for the 1976 Olympics. The location was closer to Montreal (but father from Ottawa) in part to make the international arrival experience better for the fans (not for the long-term us…

I thought the main counterexample to that argument was the fact that it has never worked anywhere.

From what I've heard, the Olympics have failed to benefit every city that's hosted them except LA, and the reason they were good for LA was specifically that no new infrastructure was built to accommodate them.

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

#195

Post by michael1999 » Fri, Mar 22, 2024, 3:25 PM UTC

thaumasiotes wrote: post #57

bell-cot wrote: post #2

Long & interesting...but a pretty good tl;dr; is: "NIMBY's are why we can't build any major infrastructure any more".

It's a strange piece. Most of the obstacles to airport construction that it describes are nullified by the other obstacles that it also describes. Airports can't handle the liability they incur because imposing airport noise on housing is a regulatory taking. But also, if you build an airport at such a remove from the city that no housing suffers, housing gets built out toward the airport. Except of course, it's not…

Agree. 35 miles was a reasonable buffer for anticipated growth. Mirabel died because immigration patterns shifted from Montréal to Toronto as a result of the FLQ and the 1980 secession referendum.

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

#196

Post by lainga » Fri, Mar 22, 2024, 3:25 PM UTC

michael1999 wrote: post #184

Mirabel was well planned, but was undone by events. Montréal in the 19060s was the undisputed centre of Canada for business, culture, population, sport, politics, and international relations. Canada expected to grow by millions of people, and we expected a large number of them to settle in Montréal. 35 miles was a modest buffer zone anticipating enormous suburban sprawl. The whole project was derailed in the 70s by t…

And who knows -- maybe they wouldn't have all left if you didn't regard them as "anglos and jews"

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

#197

Post by Duhck » Fri, Mar 22, 2024, 3:25 PM UTC

TylerE wrote: post #192

Has anyone ever tried to build an airport where the terminals and actual flight ops area was miles away (noise, etc). Basically I'm picturing something like an urban train station (plus TSA, and customs) that would be located downtown. This is where you'd have check-in, security, baggage claim, etc. After clearing security, you'd get on some sort of rail transit (monorail, maglev, subway, whatever, doesn't matter THA…

I love this idea. Hong Kong has something kinda like this with bag check in town, and then a train to the airport. It's extremely convenient

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

#198

Post by rayiner » Fri, Mar 22, 2024, 3:27 PM UTC

lobochrome wrote: post #78

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…

I live in Tokyo where we have both Narita, far out but well-ish connected by train with NEX and Haneda, with direct access to the city. Haneda is vastly more convenient.

I fly into Haneda whenever I can, because even though the train is super convenient, for a train, it’s nicer to just throw your bags in a taxi and head straight to your hotel after 13 hours on a plane.

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

#199

Post by jmyeet » Fri, Mar 22, 2024, 3:27 PM UTC

In short, it's short-term interests and skewed incentives.

A classic example particular to US airports is why transport links are almost universally terrible. The answer is: parking. Parking is a huge revenue source for airports [1] so airports don't actually want good public transport links and when you do have them (eg the JFK AirTrain) they're unreasonably expensive. Airports are making up for "lost" revenue. This has been a huge problem as Uber and Lyft have cut into airport revenues.

The real reason this is a problem is because airports make almost nothing from the planes using them. Shouldn't the planes be funded the airport?

Another case study springs to mind: Sydney. Sydney has a very central main airport but it's relatively small compared to demand because it was planned for so long ago. It can't expand: the land around it used now. Sydney has been talking about building a second airport for at least 40 years in Western Sydney (originally named Badgerys Creek). This is much further from the city but has had all the usual planning problems eg developers build homes around the proposed site and then residents complain about the proposed airport that was proposed way before those homes were built. IIRC a similar thing happened around LAX.

This was so much of a hot potato that one Australian government just gave planning permission for Sydney airport to build a third runway in the dead of night and then ran. There are funds to noise-proof affected homes and this was wildly controversial.

I believe the Western Sydney airport is finally happening. I haven't looked at the planes but it doesn't include an efficient and relatively cheap high speed rail link to central Sydney, it's going to struggle.

In the Western world we really need to examine how the supremacy of private property rights and utter car dependence mean we can't build anything, let alone have anything nice. It seems like Asia is the only place where non-horrible airports get built.

[1]: https://www.orbility.com/news/64-parking-is-a-huge-money-mak...

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

#200

Post by jrockway » Fri, Mar 22, 2024, 3:28 PM UTC

sofixa wrote: post #126

> 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 pa…

Montreal isn't the only city that failed with a too-far-away airport. Tokyo built Narita against much local opposition (they still check your ID before you're allowed inside the airport, to make sure you're not an angry local resident), and the opposition resulted in not being able to build the transport link they wanted (the Narita Shinkansen). The result is a good hour wasted on conventional rail to get to Tokyo. (Sky Access kind of fixed this, but I think it's limited to 160km/h and still takes 40 minutes.)

Meanwhile, in the 2010s they expanded Haneda and started accepting international flights, and you can get to Tokyo via a variety of normal trains (and buses if your destination is on the Shinjuku side of things) in 15 minutes.

The whole thing is landfill, so no residents to be mad either.

Last time I flew to Haneda they made all the flights from the US arrive and depart at times when public transportation wasn't running, to discourage those flights, but it seems like they stopped doing that. So now it's more convenient for everyone, and Narita is largely pointless for everyone that isn't an extreme budget traveler (but I think Haneda built Terminal 3 for that use case... so... is there any reason for Narita to exist if you aren't visiting Chiba?)