Little Sydney and Mega-Melbourne, an instructive comparison in new airport ambitions
It speaks much for the centre of growth and vision in this country to compare the political difficulties that arise over plans for a 2nd Sydney Airport, and the general enthusiasm for a 3rd Melbourne Airport.
The push for the selection and preservation of a new airport site for greater Melbourne announced today reflects the drive and opportunity that exists in Victoria when it comes to looking at the future.
Even Melbourne’s 2nd airport, at Avalon, is in favor of the notion!
While Sydney chokes, Melbourne looks at its wide open spaces and says “Why not?”
It doesn’t cost all that much to plan and acquire a new future Melbourne site given the amenable topography of Victoria’s capital, and its plans to take what Sydney thinks belong to it. The Sydney 2nd airport quest has in fact soft launched a Nepean option right beside Badgery’s Creek, the site chosen, in 1986, and subsequently downsized and with all work ‘suspended in order to fast track it‘ by federal Labor in 1995.
Sydney began its search for a second airport sit before World War II, when for a while the Rosehill Racecourse area was the favorite. After the war ended Towra Point Botany Bay with an integrated flying boat terminal was looking good, then air transport changed somewhat, and Galston Gorge was chosen by Charlie Jones, the Whitlam government transport minister.
The Melbourne quest is a reminder that the cities with convenient air access, and efficient maritime and surface freight facilities, are going to win the competition to keep or acquire enterprises that generate lots of air travel, jobs, and state revenues.
In that sense Brisbane is the natural enemy of Melbourne’s determination to eclipse Sydney as the major gateway and economic power house of the eastern half of the continent.
The obvious site for a 2nd Brisbane Airport is the semi-mythic Jacob’s Well site north of the main Gold Coast strip. It makes sense, plans exist, and nothing much seems to get said about it, but it should also be added that the existing Gold Coast Airport is a victim of its own success within a tightly confined site, and perhaps, looking ahead, its owners might cash in on a fantastic real estate opportunity as part of new Gold Coast/Brisbane airport development. (Just thinking aloud.)
Such a development in a far larger Brisbane/Gold Coast economy doesn’t really threaten the main Brisbane Airport, bearing in mind the situation that would arise if a Mega-Brisbane feeds on the same growth that Melbourne sees as lifting its population to more than 7 million by 2050 or soon after, including those activities that quit Sydney as a response to its seemingly insoluble infrastructure problems.
Of course there are other constraints and challenges too. Starting with water supplies, serious efforts to tap the main renewable of solar energy in future planning, and the avoidance of excessive reliance on private vehicles to serve commuting, all factors that will have to deal with workplace and lifestyle changes we fail to consider at peril to our future regenerations.
But growth does require more airport capacity than the current airports at Brisbane, Melbourne and Sydney are plausibly going to accommodate even if as predicted, air traffic growth slows markedly after 2030. It is the same issue that arises in high speed rail. The essential corridors and growth scenarios need definition and preservation now. And in some cases, need a start to construction, such as between Sydney and Newcastle, and arguably, some strategic tunnels to straighten out the rail access through the Illawarra escarpment, or the doing of something innovative between Campbelltown and Wollongong, roughly along the line of the partly built coal train route.
Transport infrastructure will be the key to the relative fortunes of the eastern cities in the first half of this century. Melbourne has shown its hand.
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After long consideration, I’ve concluded there can be only be one reason why Sydney has, over the past 60 years, single-mindedly sabotaged its public transport infrastructure: the presence of Indian Hemp or a more powerful hashish-style derivative in the Sydney water supply. I dare not imagine that this is anything but natural and/or accidental. It’s not possible that the Sydney drugs underworld controls the NSW public service water cooler contract, is it? A rational explanation eludes me.
by wordfactory on Jan 15, 2012 at 8:16 pm
Ben, if you want to see the reason for Sydney’s paralysis on airports, rail and most other infrastructure look at the hysterical bleating today from the media about the Harbour Bridge maintenance closure.
I had to cross the Harbour twice on the weekend and while the traffic was heavy, it wasn’t the disaster portrayed by the media. Yet if you relied on the SMH, Tele and radio you’d have thought waifs were being orphaned as breadwinners passed away in the hopeless chaos.
You can repeat this hysteria for any infrastructure project in Sydney; the combination of sensationalist media, vocal NIMBYs determined that nothing should be built that could vaguely affect their property prices and cowardly politicians equals paralysis.
What’s worse, when an infrastructure project does get built, the opponents manage to force expensive compromises that blow out the cost of the project – the Lane Cove River crossing of the Chatswood to Epping railway being a good example – which actually suits the PPP financiers who benefit from cost overruns through increased fees.
It’s difficult to see how Sydney is going to break out of this without a change in the political, social and business attitudes in the city.
by Paul Wallbank on Jan 16, 2012 at 9:44 am
The issue with transport infrastructure is that it involves hard decisions, in terms of financing (preferably off the Government budget), impact on communities (resumption of land, disruptions to existing transport) and balancing long-term interests (growth in transport vs inconveniences for residents). Governments are less and less inclined to make these hard decisions, pretending that the current situation can be maintained for just that bit longer ie. until they are out of office and it’s not their problem.
You are right to focus on infrastructure. Building the airport is one thing, but connecting it to all of the other services that people want and need is the key thing. I have always been impressed with London City Airport – I can’t believe that you can fly into the heart of the city, hop on to the DLR and in a couple of stops connect with the Underground. And recently, Heathrow impressed me – check in at the train station and then 15 mins dedicated train ride to the airport.
The Australian approach seems to just disconnect the airport from everything else that’s going on around it.
by NeoTheFatCat on Jan 16, 2012 at 11:20 am
Noise, noise and noise … and successive ministers who have given in to it.
Thanks to the senate enquiry we now have an aircraft noise ombudsman. Yet little government action has been taken to establish title covenants that if you move into airfield environs you accept that aircraft noise will occur.
The Victorian Baillieu government has wisely established an aviation minister – and at that one with aviation knowledge. I am certain that if they select a nice open site and establish appropriate developmental controls and caveats for later housing development – Victoria will get the jump on NSW.
by Quizzical on Jan 16, 2012 at 11:27 am
I think Melbourne has learned its lesson when you simply compare Tullamarine “Jetport” to KSA… One has to deal with Curfews and a bad terminal layout causing issues in transfers. The other was placed not too close, but not too far, and doesn’t have such a major issue with noise.
That said, Syd does have the better transport link to the city…
by Chad Henshaw on Jan 16, 2012 at 12:34 pm