311–320 of 574 posts
> 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…
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Just to confirm, the new airport served pretty much only international flights? It was a pretty common urban planning concept for a large city to have one airport devoted mostly or entirely to domestic flights, and one mostly or entirely for international flights. New York domestic: EWR New York international: JFK New York freight: LGA Chicago domestic: MDW Chicago international: ORD Houston domestic: HOU Houston int…
I too thought 'international' in the name meant something. Until I worked with a guy who was into gliders. They named the large empty grass field that you had to drive for an hour to get to an 'international' airport. It was basically just enough to get a very small airplane aloft with a glider attached. They thought it was funny they pulled it off.
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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.
The property line would end at the railroad right of way. A passenger station would be built to provide service to the airport. The current talk is to build it as a cargo airport, but the original concept was a passenger airport to serve the growing population in Illinois and Indiana that find access to the existing airports inconvenient. There is every reason to believe that if it is built it will start serving pass…
Of course, there's also the factor that cargo flights are insane to begin with, if you take a bit to think about it.
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.
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When DFW was built Congress passed the Wright Amendment which kneecapped Dallas Love Field (DAL) to only serve domestic and immediately adjacent state travel. Personally I prefer DAL but I can see how DFW would have potentially withered on the vine if it hadn't been passed. I'm happy its finally expired though and now DAL can offer international flights. Although now that there's a Whataburger at DFW one big argument…
Jesus. I just read the Wright Amendment article and it’s absolutely disgusting the level of regulatory capture and corporate cronyism enmeshed in our government in this country. There is no reason the federal government should be involving itself in these petty airline disputes, and certainly shouldn’t be helping maintain monopolies for reasons as bad as “American Airlines is the largest employer in North Texas”.
So short answer, I hate the cronyism, but many of the positive end goals marketed here ultimately did come true here. And it didn't fully kill DAL or Southwest in the end.
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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
Are there any other major international airports in the world that have the equivalent setup of Hongkong? For other readers: There is a fast-but-not-high-speed direct train from city centre to the airport. At the city terminal, there are tiny airline checkin booths where you can leave your bags. Magically, they are transported to the airport.
https://www.tymetro.com.tw/tymetro-new/en/_pages/checkin/ind...
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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
Are there any other major international airports in the world that have the equivalent setup of Hongkong? For other readers: There is a fast-but-not-high-speed direct train from city centre to the airport. At the city terminal, there are tiny airline checkin booths where you can leave your bags. Magically, they are transported to the airport.
I seem to remember Japan would let you check your luggage at the hotel and they'd handle a freight forwarder to your next hotel, which is not quite the same thing but related.
Lots of complex issues, but the distance one is manageable: put the check in / security part of the terminal in the city or at its edge and then send the passengers straight to the appropriate terminal (and their luggage straight to the baggage management) via HSR. You could have multiple check in terminals to expand the catchment area.
That assumes you're coming from the city and now you need acres of parking in a more built-up urban area.
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Yeah but compare the San Diego metro area just a little south and it’s overwhelmingly full of green space. I live in SD proper and there’s several open space parks within walking distance that are measured in the square miles with tens of miles of trails each, not to mention the recreational parks in every neighborhood and kids parks that are every few blocks. The suburb cities in the county have even more open space…
Part of it is people not recognizing "San Diego greenspace" because it's mostly brownspace. San Diego is built on a huge sprawling system of canyons, many of which are parks and have trails, but they're brown and ignored. https://www.alltrails.com/lists/san-diego-canyons If San Diego was as wet as some European cities, those would all be amazingly green.
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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.