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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?

#251

Post by 11101010001100 »

benjymo wrote: post #218
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…

It also should be connected to the national rail network so long distance trains go there directly. It greatly reduces time to switch trains when you're not directly from the nearest city. Vienna did this with their airport.

It is (in theory). There is a via rail track and stop < 1 km away.

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

#252

Post by karmoka »

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…

mtl was absolutely not the indisputed business center of Canada in the 1960s.

Headquarters and capital were already moving towards Toronto by the 60s, following the opening of the St-Lawrence Seaway, the growing importance of the american economy for Canada and the progression of the quiet revolution which saw the province become way less interesting for the old money from the Golden Square Mile.

The FLQ was also most active in the 60s, culminating in 1970 with the October Crisis and then nearly seized to exist in the 70s/80s bar the occasional bombing by the RCMP (see the Keable, Mcdonald commissions and Robert Samson)

The 1980 referendum did lead to what a few economists dubbed the "Montreal Effect", and there's certainly some factual basis to it in the form of the flight of many anglophones from the province, but arguing that the sovereignty movement was mostly if not solely responsible for this trend we were seeing before it was on the radar instead of precipitating the ongoing changes is overstating the case.

That said, Mirabel was a disaster regardless of the following growth of mtl. It was rushed for the Olympics, the plans to properly connect it fell before it became clear that mtl's population wouldn't grow as fast as predicted and airlines absolutely loathed it from day one.

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

#253

Post by jameshart »

The claim:

> Despite their importance, airports are enormously difficult to build, not only in the US but around the world.

The evidence: all about the US, with a brief sentence about London Heathrow.

New international airport construction projects started in 2021-2022 include Sydney, Mumbai, Addis Ababa, Manila, Cavite (Phillipines), Dong Nai (Vietnam), Noida (India)…

Sounds more like this is just a ‘you’ problem :)

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

#254

Post by 1-6 »

This is mainly focused on noise levels. They did not focus on large runways and the water runoff calcs and flight paths and elevation restrictions on neighboring buildings etc.

It’s easier to put in an airport first and then build a city around it than the other way around.

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

#255

Post by newhotelowner »

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…

I don't think you ever traveled international or your plane got delayed or cancelled.

I don't want to carry 4 big bags in the train when I travel international

I don't want to travel 30 miles if my plane get cancelled.

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

#256

Post by Mvandenbergh »

thaumasiotes wrote: post #194
TRDRVR wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

London as well, or at least broke even. (Although of course this is complicated to assess and contested).

Same reason, all infrastructure was either already there or usable after (the Olympic stadium was sold to a football team).

Generally the larger a city is, the better able it is to host an event like this for obvious reasons.

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

#257

Post by vel0city »

arnon wrote: post #150
jorisboris wrote: post #24

When building https://randomairport.onrender.com/ I noticed that US and Euro airports always look very different Somehow US airports always seem to be surrounded by densely populated residential areas, even in the direction of the runways, while Euro airports don’t seem to have this problem. And secondly Us airports always seem to take huge plots of land compared to Euro airports. My assumption is that Us cities are…

The US has no alternative forms of transport. Taking an airplane is the most convenient way. In Germany, Italy, Switzerland, France, and the UK taking a train is faster and more convenient (even if more expensive often)

The distances involved often lend themselves to air travel being more convenient even if there are trains. There's a sweet spot for distance where trains make the most sense, but after that a plane will end up being faster even with all the dead time at the airport.

I live in Dallas. Door to door, a train would be faster and more convenient than a plane for me to go to Houston or Austin. A direct flight will always be faster and more convenient for me to go to Denver, San Francisco, Chicago, New York, Orlando, Seattle, etc.

Dallas to New York is ~1,400mi. That's like Madrid to Warsaw. It'll take me ~6 hours everything included to go that distance by plane. What's the travel itinerary for Madrid to Warsaw? Is it direct (same level of convenience)? Is it faster?

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

#258

Post by bombcar »

hn72774 wrote: post #240
traceroute66 wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> US airports always seem to be surrounded by densely populated residential areas The US in general is very densely built up. The distinct lack of green space in US cities is very noticeable to the non-US observer. So I think its more of a case that US airports are surrounded by "less" densely populated areas. > And secondly Us airports always seem to take huge plots of land compared to Euro airports. With the except…

> The US in general is very densely built up Sprawl might be the word you are looking for. US is only #186 in population density by country. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_and_depend...

Comparing the US to countries is very misleading, because there are huge areas with no people which should be ignored. The density of Wyoming pulls down California, and California itself is so large that the central section pulls down the coasts.

For example, density of Southern California is 420.39/sq mi, but the density of the LA Metro area is 541.1/sq mi. Density of California is 253.52/sq mi, and the USA is 87/sq mi.

Southern California is roughly the size of Greece, with a population double of it.

When comparing the USA to Europe, it's better to compare states. The US is less dense, but you can ignore huge swaths of "flyover country".

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

#259

Post by myrmidon »

walthamstow wrote: post #111
_fizz_buzz_ wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

This is disingenuous; "City of London" is a tiny, central district of London.

It is most emphatically NOT "London, the city", in exactly the same way that Civic center is not the city of San Francisco.

It's just confusingly named.

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

#260

Post by ghaff »

TylerE wrote: post #235
ghaff wrote: post #223

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In town is only convenient if you live in town or are visiting there. Where's the parking? Where's the rental car service? The actual terminals are a pretty trivial part of the total airport area.

Not to be trite, but "people who live here, or people who are traveling here" is sort of their target market.

So now you'll have the in-city checkin version and the in-airport checkin version? Because you definitely need parking and rental cars somewhere convenient. "Here" means a greater area serviced by a large airport which is a lot more than a city.

There probably would even be a market for an in-city bag drop service. But it wouldn't replace people driving to the airport.

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