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Why is it so hard to build an airport?

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81–90 of 574 posts

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

#81
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 to check first, but it kind of works.

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

#83
Technology has come a very long way in reducing noise exposure and noise levels over communities by dramatic levels.

The core problem now is not one of airport traffic but local communities near airports that allow residential development in places they really shouldn’t. These days it’s less the airport trying to move into someone’s backyard but someone building their backyard next to an airport then complaining about the airport.

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

#84

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…

Paine field is the new seattle area airport.

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

#85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"The US doesn't even have 10 cities which are above 1 million people. reply" I did not believe this and googled it. It is true. 1 Million would be tiny in China. Province.

Part of it is our definition of cities versus metro areas. Boston's population is technically only 650k but Boston proper doesn't even include Cambridge which is like not including one of the boroughs when talking about NYC's population. Granted, we still have a lot less metro areas with over 1 million people but there are still ~50 of them.

Is this something fairly unique to the US or do other countries do this too? that is, having a city boundary that's relatively small compared to the metro area.

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

#86

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…

Paine field is the new seattle area airport.

I don't think they believe Paine Field on its own is going to be able to accommodate the expected air travel growth. Yes, it's serving some commercial air travel now, but the consensus was there needs to be a new airport for all this growth.

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

#87

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…

Wasn’t that the idea behind Denver? It’s outside the city by a decent amount (or was when started). I assume proximity to the mountains was also a consideration.

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

#88
post #2

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

Sure, this is classic NIMBYism. I understand: we live in a very quiet area, and would certainly oppose something that would dramatically change that. However, what I do not understand are the people who move next to an existing airport, and then complain about the noise. We used to live near a major, international airport. Planes flew overhead. That noise was implicitly factored into the price we paid, and we certain…

This is called “coming to the nuisance”[1] and in most jurisdictions the complainers have no case.

I’m sure it doesn’t stop them from trying though. Reid-Hillview airport[2] in San Jose has been there since the 1930’s, long before anyone who currently lives there, yet is constantly under attack by residents and threatened with closing.

1: https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/coming_to_the_nuisance

2: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reid–Hillview_Airport

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

#89

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 distinct lack of green space in US cities is very noticeable to the non-US observer. Huh? I felt the exact opposite in France. Many French cities have a bunch of nice parks, but everything else is wall-to-wall pavement. I always felt the common refrain about there being dog shit all over Paris is because on many streets there is barely a patch of grass for a dog to even go, so if you have a rude person that doe…

I think it's less about the inner cities and more about the suburbs. In the US there are certainly lots of little bits of curb with plants on, but little in the way of large useful green space.

Comparing the LA metro area to almost any European city, it's stark how much more unused or usable green space there is in Europe. The US seems much more binary – you're either in a city, or you're outside one, it's not like the US is lacking green space at a national level!

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

#90

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.

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