Live data from Hacker News

Why is it so hard to build an airport?

construction-physics.com

401–410 of 574 posts

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

#401
post #378

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This shouldn't be down voted, this type of arbitrage is common and the parties engaging in it know the baked in risks. It is no different from the common gambit of buying land outside of cities zoned as industrial or agricultural and then waging politics to have it rezoned as residential to dramatically increase its value.

Yes and no. If someone buy land at scale , and tries waging zoning politics...yeah, okay, arbitrage. Vs. if John Doe buys a house near a substantial airport, then claims he didn't know? No, sorry, nothing's gonna change in his favor. Maybe he imagined it would, and planned...but that's just the difference between ignoramus and fool.

That’s just a matter of ability. A few guys can easily stall things. It didn’t take many to force Sonoma to change. All these attempts have risks. You can always try. Sometimes you’re powerful enough to get change in your favour. Other times you’re not and it was a good bet. Other times you’re not and it was a bad bet.

Besides, this is quite refined now. I just put nana in the house. People can’t resist old people. She’ll have medical issues that need quiet etc etc.

My landlord did something like that with a few buildings for the big London sewer project. London actually paid him for new windows and things like that.

You just apply the force. Most taxpayers don’t notice this stuff so you can get hundreds of thousands out of it.

Many government projects are slow, too, so you can do this for ones where they’re announced but no work has been done. Bam, free upgrades, earthquake retrofit, etc.

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

#402
post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Taxi is not the main way to leave airports in large part of the world.

I went digging out of curiosity, and it seems you are correct. According to this article [1], around 80 of the top 100 airports have rapid transit connections. [1] https://www.ptua.org.au/2015/10/29/busiest-airports-rail/

Even in the US, there are increasingly transit options. Oddly enough, there are sorta options in NYC but they aren't the greatest.

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

#403

I would be pretty upset if all of a sudden my house was under the flight path of a new airport (and the associated economic consequences) but I always find it surprising how annoyed people get that put a house near an airport and then complain about it, where one of my parents lives there is a small but fairly busy private airport that has been there close to a hundred years, so almost no one that lives by it now can…

Why wouldn’t you? It’s a land arb. You get cheaper land then use political power to raise its desirability. Common trick. You can do it a few ways. Get a place near a nightclub then force the club to shut down. Almost certainly they have some regulation they’re not following. Same with schools etc. Or sometimes the city will be planning an affordable housing thing on a lot. No one likes that so you’ll get the homes n…

This is so so how the world works in reality.

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

#404

I would be pretty upset if all of a sudden my house was under the flight path of a new airport (and the associated economic consequences) but I always find it surprising how annoyed people get that put a house near an airport and then complain about it, where one of my parents lives there is a small but fairly busy private airport that has been there close to a hundred years, so almost no one that lives by it now can…

Reminds me of that person protesting a Beer Festival in Golden Colorado. On their sign they stated they wanted to keep alcohol activities out of Golden but the city is home to Coors Brewing Company.

https://kdvr.com/news/trending/golden-residents-anti-beer-fe...

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

#405

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

[deleted]

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

#406
post #291

Earlier quoted context omitted.

-I- would be entirely fine with an airport with those transit restrictions. mdk (Shadowcat's resident responsible adult / business person) however has three kids, and two adults trying to wrangle three children as well as luggage makes trains much, much less attractive as an option. So I think "fantastic to imagine, DOA as an idea in practice" applies, I'm afraid.

Taxi infrastructure is entirely plausible in a project with heavy restriction for private cars. I.e. build all the roads you want but don't make long-term parkings available.

Fair point, I was thinking about "cargo traffic only" as in the original though experiment.

Coaches with a dedicated luggage section would quite possibly help as well, and it occurs to me that you could have a train with baggage cars ... but having never had to travel with more than one small child I can't say how acceptable those options would be to parents in general.

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

#407
post #346

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I certainly understand that sentiment, but a ton of people commute 30 miles daily (or more). Even if you live "near an airport", you probably live 15+ miles from an airport. Tottenham London to Heathrow is 24 miles by car. The British Museum to Heathrow is 19 miles. Columbia University on the Upper West Side to JFK is 17 miles. DC to Dulles is 26 miles. Downtown Denver is 25 miles to the airport. SF to SFO is 14 mile…

And yet all aviation combined is responsible for less than 3% of total carbon emissions. Permanently grounding all aircraft will make no appreciable difference. All the major manufacturers are currently sold out for the next decade; even if there were an additional major surge in demand for air travel enough to impact this number, it would be impossible to fulfill it.

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

#408

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

There is no other definition of London, the city. There's the Greater London region, which is 9m people, but that's it.

Parliament, for example, is in the City of Westminster, one of 32 boroughs which (+ the City) make up Greater London.

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

#409

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If flying into NRT and on the way to Tokyo, ~$200ish for the taxi ride. Ooops.

Agree with others just take the train to Tokyo Station or Shinigawa station. If it’s your first time just remember to exit on the gate that is staffed because gate adjustments can get tricky. The ticket I selected at NRT was apparently not enough money, as expected they were super helpful and nice about it though.

There are also fare adjustment machines, you put your ticket in and it tells you what difference to pay to "upgrade" your ticket.

Many travelers will just grab a ticket that sounds vaguely correct and then fare adjust at the end. Grabbing an IC card or one of the apps is the easiest course for virtually everyone though.

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

#410
post #329

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I was thinking more about how it's not very easy to walk to many parks. Most of the park area I'm aware of is more of a "you have to drive X miles" instead of being able to walk by or through a park on my way somewhere.
Post reply on HN