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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?

#321

Post by eastbound »

daveoc64 wrote: post #183
jgeada wrote: post #169

> Most NIMBY difficulties stem from the asymmetric nature of the costs and benefits of a new project: a new apartment building, for instance, will benefit a city overall (slightly lowering housing costs and slightly increasing the size of the city’s labor market), but those benefits are diffuse. The costs, on the other hand – traffic, parking, construction disruption – will be borne almost entirely by the surrounding…

>I have always wondered why we don't structure payments of some form to balance out the local costs of infrastructure etc. NIMBY is rational with the economics as they are; but would you really be as opposed to a local power plant if energy costs for the area near the plant were subsidized by some percentage? Balance out the local costs with a local benefit. I've seen this proposed for various things like onshore win…

> otherwise it wouldn't be viable for the company that wants the infrastructure.

Well, isn’t that a proof that the benefit doesn’t balance the downsides? What if the answer were really “We shouldn’t build more infrastructure, we shouldn’t overpopulate this city anymore” ?

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

#322

Post by mst »

duped wrote: post #244
samtho wrote: post #213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why would an airline have any business in acquiring, getting approved/zoned, and constructing an bespoke airport close to a major metro that would presumably only benefit that airline? Airlines already operate at razor thin margins, specialize in only the transporting aspect, and would not be the best party to oversee the development of airfields and airports. Additionally, companies other than the major airlines use…

I think you misunderstand my comment. Airlines should not be building a "bespoke airport close to a major metro" that only benefits that airline. They should be building their hubs in the middle of nowhere and serve only connecting flights out of them, because it's the fact that the hubs are in the metros that cause problems. When half of the traffic through the airport isn't destined for the metro, then half the tra…

I quite like the idea of dedicated hubs a decent distance away from anything else, but you'd still need to staff and supply it so "the middle of nowhere" probably isn't feasible.

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

#323

Post by bombcar »

8organicbits wrote: post #310
TylerE wrote: post #227

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The point of doing it this way is that the secure perimeter would extended all the way to the central station. That's the whole idea. Essentially, this urban hub is "the airport" in terms of traveling to it. Think of the actual hub -> board gates/runway connections as like a really long people mover, not just extending a subway line and drawing a new dot. Trains could travel on a totally grade separated route with st…

How do you exit? Do you take a train back to city center, or do you have an option to exit near the runways? I wonder if you'd end up with multiple entry points with this model.

You likely would. The simplest example would be a high-speed train that connected two airports (either two existing, or an old and new). You could imagine a high-speed subway that connected JFK to EWR that was about 30 minutes or less. Now you don't have to work out how to get to a specific airport, you get to the closest one.

For people without luggage, the difference is minor; but if you are checking bags it would be a huge advantage to dump your bags as soon as possible.

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

#324

Post by dkdbejwi383 »

rmccue wrote: post #37
showerst wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sounds very similar to Dulles in Washington DC. We eventually ran a rail line to it, and it eventually wasn’t the middle of nowhere any more. Hopefully the rail link takes less than 60 years in your case =)

Sydney Metro is being expanded out to it; construction's already underway, and is targeted at opening at the same time as the airport: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Western_Sydney_Airport_line

Yeah, but it doesn’t link up with the M1 line so there’s no interchange. Also the rolling stock isn’t compatible as it uses a different power system to the other lines, and the trains are a slightly different size making them incompatible with the M1/2 lines

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

#325

Post by eitally »

rob74 wrote: post #28
eitally wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some small airports made sense at the time they were built, but no more (either because planes are bigger now or because construction around the airport was not adequately restricted in ensuing decades. Congonhas in Sao Paulo is an example of this, where it can only handle smaller domestic flights now because of the way the city has grown around it. Here's a satellite photo: https://static.wixstatic.com/media/a27d24_…

...and here's a story about Congonhas airport: https://admiralcloudberg.medium.com/culture-of-chaos-the-cra... which reminds me: maybe people don't oppose airports just because of the noise, maybe they're also worried about plane crashes (I know the chance is low, but probably much higher for those living near an airport than for the average passenger).

I have several Brazilian friends (mostly in/around Campinas) in SP state who refuse to fly in/out of Congonhas because of that risk. Thankfully now Viracopa is even more convenient and nicer.

Honestly, the irritating thing for Americans flying to Brazil is the frequent need to fly into either Rio or SP and then domestically transfer to the other, due to paucity of flight options [at reasonable prices].

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

#326

Post by acchow »

treflop wrote: post #268
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…

Japan is well known for violent political clashes. There is still a very obvious house in the middle of Narita Airport that you can see when flying in or out. There are roads to it underneath the airport.

This is shocking to me

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/narita-airport-farm-takao-shito...

"The best outcome would be for the airport to shut down," he said. "But what's important is to keep farming my ancestral land."

I imagine most countries would just use eminent domain?

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

#328

Post by michael1999 »

karmoka wrote: post #252
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 mos…

I’m not sure we disagree. I consider the quiet revolution, the FQL, the nationalist movement, and the PQ to be all of a piece -- the same thing in different generational clothing. I'll agree that far-sighted foreign money saw the writing on the wall as early as the 60s and started making new investments outside of Quebec But actually moving running businesses is much more disruptive, and only happened later. The whole process took decades, and culturally, Montreal was the capital well into the early 80s. Toronto didn't even have a baseball team until 77.

I probably underweight the impact of the seaway. Me experience is in office work. And there, Hogtown was decidedly a solid second city -- like Chicago, or Lyon. Commercial banking was booming. But RBC, BMO, and many insurance companies still had their head-quarters in Montréal in the 1960s. RBC moved their headquarters in 1976, and BMO moved in 1977. Sun Life moved in 1978.

It think it is obvious that the condo boom/crash of the 1980s was a direct consequence of 400k wealthy people moving en mass over a decade. Just an enormous bolus of money.

The discussions of the day make are explicit that the PQ, the nationalist movement, and bill 101 in particular were driving the exodus.

https://montrealgazette.com/news/local-news/history-through-...

As for Mirabel - agree. The plans made sense in the 1960s when the planning started, but the shift to Toronto was underway before they broke ground in the mid 70s. But politics is run by older people, and their imaginations are rooted in the past, not the future. Toronto has the mirror problem -- run by Orange-order children who long for the days of zipping down the Kingsway to downtown in 15 minutes. We're only now moving into a generation of leaders who grew up with Toronto as the centre of Canada, and realizing we need infrastructure to match. We spent 40 years without building a thing while millions moved here.

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

#329

Post by asdff »

NegativeLatency wrote: post #224
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…

Haven’t spent a lot of time on the US east coast but on the US west coast we have low density sprawl with also not that many parks.

Western US generally has a huge edge on the east in terms of parkland. Both in terms of urban parks that can be quite substantial in size and amenities offered (e.g. golden gate park in SF or griffith park in LA, about 2x and 5x larger than central park in nyc, respectively), but also the vast amount of acreage that is either nature preserves or publicly owned state or federal land. 80% of nevada is federal land. In Las Vegas, you can go from gambling at caesars palace to hiking in red rock canyon in about a half hour maybe even less. Also in California at least, the coast is public land, you can sunbath on the sand in front of multimilliondollar malibu estates just fine. In the east many beaches are actually private property, and depending on the state this could even be most of them.

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

#330

Post by colatkinson »

eitally wrote: post #301
dynm wrote: post #277

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One option would be to have people check in, drop off their luggage, and even go through security in some convenient location in the city center and then take a high-speed train "inside security" to the gate. (Maybe you could even have trains to two different fields.)

That would be fantastic. I'm almost salivating thinking about how appealing that would be in Manhattan (or DC, or even SF).

God yeah it's like a hypothetical version of the AirTrain that isn't a huge pain. Last time I flew out of JFK from Manhattan IIRC the easiest way was to do the E or LIRR from Penn to the AirTrain anyway, so might as well streamline the whole shebang.
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