A spot the fallacy moment in the 2nd Sydney Airport saga
There are references to bi-partisan pressure being brought on the O’Farrell government in NSW to change its opposition to a new Sydney Airport, in Sydney, in this answer to a question in Federal Parliament by the Minister for Infrastructure and Transport, Anthony Albanese.
JOHN MURPHY (Member for Reid) – My question is to the Minister for Infrastructure and Transport. Will the minister update the House on the need for a second Sydney airport to support jobs and build the nation for the future?
ANTHONY ALBANESE – I thank the Member for Reid for his question. This month the Federal and NSW governments received the most comprehensive independent study ever done into Sydney’s and, therefore, Australia’s aviation needs.
The report makes it clear that Sydney needs a second airport sooner rather than later. Passenger numbers in the Sydney region will more than double up to 2035. Sydney airport is increasingly at capacity and its peak period is growing. Its size and land transport problems mean that the airport cannot deal with these increases. The need to act is clear. By the year 2035 the cost to GDP of turning away flights will be $6 billion.
This is an issue about jobs and our economy.
International experience shows that airports create 1,000 jobs for every one million passengers. Without action, growing congestion will hurt productivity as flights are turned away and those that make it face longer delays. We are already seeing the impact on Sydney.
And because Sydney is the hub, a delay in Sydney disrupts the entire national aviation system. We know that four out of 10 flights nationally fly into and out of Sydney.
Despite the speed of modern aircraft, airlines today schedule up to 25 minutes extra for their Sydney to Melbourne flights than they did in 1965. Think about that. In 1965 they scheduled 65 minutes to go from Sydney to Melbourne. Today, in spite of all the technological improvements, it is 90 minutes. That is having an impact on our productivity. It is a handbrake on growth.
And the delays will get worse because Sydney is a hub. A delay in Sydney has knock-on effects across the network. That is why it is a national issue and why it needs to be a bipartisan issue.
The Daily Telegraph captured this point in today’s editorial, which was appropriately titled ‘If it’s built the jobs will follow’. The editorial said that a second Sydney airport:
“…would bring employment to a new generation of engineers and airline staff. It would deliver jobs across almost every area of commerce. It would help maintain Sydney’s prominence as a hub for business.”
This is a critical issue. It is hard. The politics of it are tough. But we need to deal with this sooner rather than later, because it will have a huge impact. I thank those people across the chamber who have entered into a constructive discussion – and who I know are also entering into discussions with their NSW colleagues – about the importance of us making a decision and moving forward on this vital issue for the national economy.
However there is also an obvious fallacy, in that it says the future of Sydney’s air services is important to the rest of Australia.
Australia has no reason to worry about what happens to air services to Sydney, and no need to divert money into fixing the mess, as is implied in the answer.
The jets that fly non-stop between Sydney and Los Angeles or Dubai or from anywhere in Asia can readily fly to Melbourne and Brisbane, where there is room for businesses to grow, and whatever residents in those cities may say in criticism of their transport infrastructure problems, they are insignificant compared to the self-inflicted, entitled and totally selfish shambles that has been tolerated for several lifetimes in NSW.
If the answer the Minister gave is a prelude to diverting yet more Federal funding to a state in denial over its infrastructure needs in general it surely merits resistance from the rest of the country.
The NSW Premier Barry O’Farrell, like all of his living predecessors, runs away scared from the thought of a jobs creating, economy boosting and much needed 2nd airport for Sydney.
There is an existing site for an airport already owned by the Commonwealth at Badgerys Creek, which despite being strongly recommended by an independent steering committee, has been flatly ruled out by the the federal and state governments.
Suggestions have been made that the airport could be located at Wilton, where it would involve the politically insane spectacle of demolishing brand new homes, and offer, amid the smoking ruins of the great Australian suburban dream, a second rate site.
Page 1 of 2 | Next page
Categories: Uncategorized
You must be logged in to post a comment.
Pardon my ignorance as I don’t live in NSW. Can someone tell me the (historical) reasons why Badgery’s Creek would be a taboo site for the 2nd Sydney airport (given Federal Government owned the land already)?
by TT on Mar 14, 2012 at 4:14 pm
The answer is one word TT: politics
by ltfisher on Mar 14, 2012 at 4:20 pm
And NIMBY
by tim on Mar 14, 2012 at 4:22 pm
Ben – I say again, unless forced to by law no airline will want to use a 2nd Sydney Airport. Evidence, London Heathrow – plenty of room at Stanstead and Montreal Mirabel – now an GA airport without even a control tower.
Sydney needs a new airport with three/four runways and plenty of room for terminals. Pay for it by selling the current KSF/Mascot complex or if you have to sell most of it and keep the rest as a sort of Sydney City Airport with the same approach/take off restrictions as London City.
by Geoff on Mar 14, 2012 at 7:58 pm
@ITfisher.
Can you elaborate? Are there a lot of people in the flight path of Badgery’s Creek?
by Guthrie on Mar 14, 2012 at 8:04 pm
Pardon my ignorance, but wasn’t there wild idea to add extra runways and terminals at the Caltex refinery on tbe other side of Botany Bay?
by Cat on a PC© on Mar 14, 2012 at 8:20 pm
There was a proposal to built a runway at a point west of the desal plant extending north from the southern shore of Botany Bay more or less parallel to Towra Point and aligned 16/34 like the two parallel runways at Sydney Airport but displaced to the west so as to allow it to act as a third parallel runway suitable for regional movements or single aisle jets.
The southern end of this runway would have been NE of Wanda Beach and maybe 1000 metres from it.
The intention was to connect the railway to Cronulla to an extension of the Eastern Suburbs line to La Perouse via a tunnel under Bare Island as well as a road tunnel linking Cronulla-Sutherland to the end of Anzac Parade, but also allowing easy road access to Port Botany and Sydney Airport beyond it.
The interesting thing about this plan was that even if the runway and satellite terminal was never built, a physical link between the Sutherland area and La Perouse is inevitable, and would open up a second access from the Illawarra/Wollongong/South Coast area to Sydney via the eastern suburbs. Cronulla would become 15-20 minutes from Kensington or Bondi Junction, not on a good day, 90 minutes away.
The new runway would not solve large jet congestion at Sydney Airport but it could make regional movements more efficient and inherently safer by giving slower aircraft a dedicated runway and terminal area. The connection would however totally change the demographics of SE Sydney the way the Harbour Bridge between Milsons and Millers Point did in 1932. The plan was drawn up by the late Bill Bradfield and the IAC consultancy. He was the youngest son of JJ Bradfield, the chief engineer of the Sydney Harbour Bridge and the designer of the Sydney City Railway network, of which only the very small City Circle component was ever completed.
by Ben Sandilands on Mar 14, 2012 at 8:38 pm
For heavens sake Ben. Why all the talk of these fanciful plans when there is the big elephant in the room: the capacity of the CURRENT Sydney Airport is artificially restricted by political interference with movement capacity restrictions, LTOP noise sharing restrictions, noise corridors, curfews etc etc. Air traffic controllers have the ability and the tools to vastly increase the current capacity – they are working with one hand tied behind the back because of the politics enforced upon them by these same idiots who are talking about new airports that make no economic sense, and which they will never have to build in their political lifetime. It’s a nonsense.
by dnsmax on Mar 14, 2012 at 10:29 pm
It is not just true as stated that SYD is artifically constrained, but also deliberately constrained by its users. Every time an airline is asked how many times it would fly a domestic or international route between 11 pm and 5 am the answer varies between not at all, to hardly at all.
Not even Changi looks especially busy at 2 am. In the case of Sydney for long haul flights the issue is that to variously arrive or depart during the dead zone, they would have to move into or out of the place or origination or destination when that airport is variously closed or the times themselves are commercially unattractive.
The further problem is that Sydney is little more than 800 hectares in total area including terminals. There is already a difficulty parking aircraft for the half day or more that some would have to remain on the ground before the opportunity to depart for a relevant landing time at a remote airport arises. Emirates finds the combination of down time and high parking fees a suitable excuse to take 8 tonnes of freight each way to Auckland in an A380, any additional paying passengers always welcome, while it is otherwise on hold for a return to Dubai and connections to some important curfew restricted or middle of the night averse European markets.
The real issue at Sydney is peak hours capacity, as is expected from what is an important business destination. Those peak hours in terms of domestic and cities in the eastern half of Asia are from around 6 am to 1030 am, and from 11 am to 7 pm. Even if, as commonsense and technology would both allow, the traffic cap was abolished in those hours, the result would be gridlock as the airlines all schedule more flights than the airport could ever handle at peak efficiency.
The imperative for a Sydney west airport is the extremely obvious movement in economic activity into that part of the greater metropolitan area, which in terms of congested traffic speeds, is basically a basin two hours wide and two hours high.
Only with a second airport in that part of the metropolitan area can travellers and freight forwarders reach an airport in an hour or less, not to mention benefit from price competition between each airport.
A reasonable consequence of a large airport opening in Sydney tomorrow, in our dreams, would be for Melbourne to become the largest in the country, followed by the existing Sydney airport, then Brisbane in third place and Sydney West in fourth spot.
But Sydney in aggregate would be not just the largest air travel generator, but the fastest growing.
After a decade it would be reasonable to see Sydney (old) No 1, Sydney West No 2, with Melbourne or BrisVegas fighting over being No 3. After two decades, it would be reasonable to reverse the order of the two Sydney Airports, assuming the Nepean site was chosen, or the Badgerys site was allowed to break through its current western limits into the Nepean site.
by Ben Sandilands on Mar 15, 2012 at 6:47 am
You are dead right about airlines not using the 11pm to 5am period Ben. A quick look at the scheduled arrivals/departures for Melbourne and Brisbane, which don’t have a curfew, shows practically no movements after midnight and before 6am, by either domestic or international operators. Removing the curfew isn’t the answer for Sydney.
by ltfisher on Mar 15, 2012 at 8:49 am
I wonder if the curfew was lifted in Sydney whether the LAX-SYD flights would leave earlier then 10pm LAX time…
by JustinB on Mar 15, 2012 at 11:50 am
Practically no movement in the early hours in Brisbane yes, there is one flight by Emirates arriving at 00:50 and leaving at 02:45 to Dubai, which is a very convenient way to go to Europe. You can be in Frankfurt at 18:00 local time the same day you left Brisbane. This beats everything Sydney can offer.
by Rainer on Mar 15, 2012 at 5:12 pm
A quick look at schedules shows that both Singapore Airlines and Cathay have departures from Melbourne at 0100 for their home cities. The Singapore flight arrives at 0550 and the flight to HKG arrives there at about 0700. Because of the curfew at SYD, there is no similar flight. The flights do give a reasonable connecting time onto daylight flights from SIN or HKG to Europe, and they also give very good connections onto other Asian cities.
Qantas tried a similar flight from SYD which left about 2200, and arrived into SIN in the middle of the night, with a very long wait for the plane to continue onto London.
Also there may not be a big demand for regular flights out of SYD during the midnight to dawn period, but perhaps some flights that are delayed beyond curfew time could be forgiven? Does the airline pay a big fine to avoid the costs of a hotel room for a full load of passengers?
by alangirvan01 on Mar 15, 2012 at 5:43 pm
Ben,
Lets not just talk about the 2300-0500 period, but the peak periods where controllers are holding aircraft on the taxiiway so they dont break the artificial movement cap – even though the runway is no occupied. The same government that is concerned apparently about carbon emissions?
Have a look at what the controllers moved during the Olympics when (for some reason?) the restrictions on LTOP were suspended. Politics.
Back on to the 2300-0500 period, BNE airport operate the following flight:
SQ to SIN
MH to KUL
CX to/from HKG
DJ from DPS
EK to/from SIN
JQ from Avalon
JQ from Melbourne
NZ to/from NZAA
FJ to/from Nadi
QF to HKG
Not to mention Australian Air Express and Toll Freight 737′s.
by dnsmax on Mar 16, 2012 at 8:24 pm
There were two articles about the issues DNSMAX quite rightly raises published here.
The article at this link also links to an earlier or part 1 story.
http://blogs.crikey.com.au/planetalking/2011/09/16/documents-show-how-airservices-australia-is-enforcing-sydney-airport-limits/
The underlying problem here is that Sydney is too small and site restricted to do anything that is politically feasible.
But the Badgery’s Creek site, which is Commonwealth owned, was reserved for a 24 hour airport. It is also relevant to a growing share of the greater Sydney market.
by Ben Sandilands on Mar 17, 2012 at 7:09 am
I too spotted that fallacy in the report. Indeed I posted a comment to that effect before the site went offline, only to see it fail to reappear when the site was restored.
But aside from costs of Sydney doing nothing being wrongly assigned to the rest of the nation, there’s an even bigger fallacy: the costs of to Sydney of doing nothing. These have been grossly overestimated because the study assumed a centrally planned allocation of takeoff and landing slots rather than a free market approach.
Setting the landing fees as high as the market will completely solve @Geoff’s problem of nobody wanting to use the new airport. But without the new airport there’s an even greater need for this strategy. Not only will it enable airport access transport improvements to be funded, it will ensure that high speed rail really does free up airport capacity, and will also encourage low cost airlines to move their operations to Richmond.
by Aidan Stanger on Mar 18, 2012 at 3:32 pm
There are some very interesting, and difficult variables at play when we look at what the availability of high speed rail services between Melbourne and Sydney might do to air travel demand on those routes, while I suspect Canberra-Sydney traffic will continue to bleed into the point-to-point advantages of driving from home to meeting when the real time of using an airport is taken into account.
In December using BITRE stats for domestic there were 631,787 passenger movements between both cities, keeping in mind some of this, but less over time, is going to connect to further domestic destinations at either end, because growth is making non-stop avoidance of Sydney and Melbourne connections increasingly viable.
As a proportion of the 2.05 million domestic passengers handled at Sydney that month by BITRE rules, Sydney-Melbourne flights had a 31.5% share.
If we assumed that this entire section of the market was picked up by 766 seat Eurostar train sets tomorrow, and they operated at 100% capacity, that would require 825 services replacing a total of 4181 flights (that were around 80% full). That’s 27 Eurostar sized trains per day.
While this hypothetical would make a huge difference to Sydney Airport overnight, even deflating the current total growth figures at SYD for traffic from all other sources, including Asia in particular, leaves us with an airport in crisis because of growth of almost 5% a year from international traffic and longer range domestic needs, especially when there are indications that economic growth in Asia and in particular China, India and Vietnam will exceed linear extrapolations over the next 20 years.
This is of course, a reason to build high speed rail, and a second Sydney Airport, not one or the other.
The seed capital for HSR could be the $2 billion or so from selling the airport development leases to the owners of Sydney West. Keep in mind, it won’t cost the public anything to build Badgerys Creek. The land is publicly owned, the ground access is being funded by private and public investments in motorways and railways already, indeed, much of it has already been built, and the new airport owners will have to pay for the runways and other facilities themselves. This isn’t going to be the Taj Mahal, but a straightforward airport, with all the benefits of being a green fields site, creating wealth for all sorts of dependant activities in hotels, warehousing and retailing.
But high speed rail will not be built overnight. And almost certainly not within 10 years, but which time real growth in the Sydney economy will be throttled back due to air transport limitations and the competitive offerings of greater Melbourne and BrisVegas.
Even if we try to model severe recessions in Asia and Australia into our considerations, and we should do so, growth will occur, and it will recoil from Sydney’s limitations to nourish the growth of its northern and southern rivals.
The nature of air travel is also changing. I don’t believe we can assume that low cost will be confined to leisure travel. It isn’t now, it won’t be in the future, and businesses will expect frequent, proximate and competitively priced flights or they will locate themselves where they can get them.
We could see some businesses locate closer to Richmond for example, but as the Steering Committee report makes clear, the site will never provide anything more than a modicum of relief. It is a long way from too much of Sydney, yet it does, undoubtedly, provide some opportunities.
I think the exceptional investment in metropolitan rail infrastructure that is going on by stealth in SW Sydney, affecting as it does the ability of the existing airport line to do a freeway style flyover to go direct to Badgerys or an adjacent Nepean site, gives us a very clear pointer to where this is all going to end, unless it ends in an inglorious and debilitating limit on the future growth of the Sydney economy.
by Ben Sandilands on Mar 18, 2012 at 5:45 pm
Ben,
I do think another major Sydney airport should be built eventually, and I think the government should continue to hold the Badgerys Creek site in reserve. But having read the report, I’m now sure that it won’t really be needed in the next decade, and high speed rail could delay that another decade or two. The limiting factor isn’t passenger numbers, it’s air traffic movements. I expect the number of intrenational flights continue to grow, but domestic flights to Sydney airport to be fewer, using bigger aircraft.
As well as taking a signigicant share of interstate flights and eliminating SYD-CBR flights, high speed rail will reduce the need to reserve so much runway capacity for intrastate flights.
And while I agree about increasing business use of low cost flights, I think you underesimate Richmond. With a train station as part of the terminal, it will be as convenient for Parramatta as Sydney airport is.
by Aidan Stanger on Mar 18, 2012 at 9:51 pm
Ben,
I’d still like to see that map showing the boundary of the land at Badgery’s Creek that is actually government owned. And also if there are special terms and conditions on other adjoining land, the relevant boundaries.
Btw, going back a few threads, I’ve doubled checked. The High Speed Rail study, Phase 1 simply has not considered a spur line option for Wollongong. Again, this is relevant to an airport at Wilton.
by cud chewer on Mar 18, 2012 at 10:04 pm
What I’d like to know is, what the consensus is about closing the existing Sydney Airport if a newer, bigger, better one can be established, and by virtue of a high speed link is no more than about 30 mins from the CBD.
The no aircraft noise Party wants this to happen. They also suggest that the closure and sale of the land at the existing airport would contribute a large pool of money to the new airport. Again, has anyone gone and looked at this and done an estimate? I can’t see this in the current airport study.
by cud chewer on Mar 18, 2012 at 10:07 pm
Aidan, even with the new northwest line I suspect you’re not going to get much change out of an hour getting to Richmond – at least from the CBD. For those in Parramatta what’s missing is a better link to Richmond. Even a decent road for that matter.
by cud chewer on Mar 18, 2012 at 10:11 pm
Well, not the whole shebang.
However there is a case for building the core of HSR network even today. And if it took us 5 years to do the planning it could be built in another 5.
And by core I mean basically those parts of the Sydney basin where a HSR line (or a supporting east west “fast” line) need to be in tunnels.
by cud chewer on Mar 18, 2012 at 10:50 pm
Cud Chewer reply 19:
The report you say doesn’t exist was published on 4 August 2011 and is available online. Search for HSR Phase 1 Report. It isn’t hard. It was even reported at length in this blog here, and you even responded to the topic art the time various comments.
Start here:
http://blogs.crikey.com.au/planetalking/2011/08/04/great-fast-rail-packaging-but-what-is-inside/
Once you have found the full report, go to Section 4.1 and also table 4.1.
This deals with alternative corridors, and is highly accessible.
These corridors include:
No 9. Princes Highway corridor (via Wollongong, Ulladulla, Eden and Bairnsdale with Canberra spur).
Also study corridors 11, 11 b, 11 c, and 11 d and 12, which deal with various Illawarra options that you appear to have read up on at the time but since forgotten.
Elsewhere in the report there are extensive references to Wollongong, including tabulations concerning projected demand, as there is for a plethora of options.
The report I’ve referenced on this blog was followed by a longer post on the same day, which doesn’t refer to Wollongong. I think after you’ve remembered what you appeared to be familiar with less than a year ago you will also remember why I didn’t refer to Wollongong again.
However keep in mind that the really simple and comparatively inexpensive solution to efficient rail to the Illawarra is to cut out the scenic but slow and land slip prone section through the Royal National Park and northern Wollongong towns with a tunnel bypass from Waterfall to a point at which local connections could just as easily serve all but Helensburg.
by Ben Sandilands on Mar 19, 2012 at 5:48 am
Cud Chewer reply 20:
Why on earth would there be a need to raise money from the sale of land at SYD for a new airport?
The site at Badgerys Creek is owned by the Commonwealth. The access to the site is largely built (M7, M5, M4 are all proximate) or underway (SW Railway).
The clear intent of a government that decided to offer the development of the site into an airport is to sell it for billions of dollars, which is the purchase by the new owners of the right to build the runways and supporting facilities on what is a green fields site.
An honorable or far sighted government would take those billions of dollars and invest them as seed capital in the start of a high speed rail network. Sydney needs the second airport and HSR. This is a way of getting the second airport for free and a head start on HSR without recourse to the public purse. What more could we wish for?
by Ben Sandilands on Mar 19, 2012 at 5:55 am
Ben,
The HSR Phase 1 report, by Aecom?
I’ve had a copy since the day it was published.
It has not considered a spur line to Wollongong.
What it did consider is not a spur line. Rather what was considered is running the HSR line past Wollongong and then through to Canberra. This is not a spur line.
by cud chewer on Mar 19, 2012 at 4:04 pm
I’ll spell that out in greater detail for the benefits of passers by.
HSR study, Phase 1.
http://www.infrastructure.gov.au/rail/trains/high_speed/index.aspx
And then skim down to the link
“High Speed Rail Study—Phase One Report Full Report [PDF: 16120 KB]”
Ok, proceed to section 4, and on page 59 (Table 4.1) and onpage 60 (figure 4.1) there is a list of the corridor options considered and the accompanying map.
Option 9: This essentially a follow the coast option that goes through Wollongong on the way to the south coast of NSW and on to Melbourne.
This is NOT a spur option. And I’ll make it very clear. What they are considering is going THROUGH Wollongong on the way to somewhere else.
The consequence of this is to traverse the escarpment TWICE.
Option 10: Hume Highway more or less as you’d expect with a spur for Canberra. This option does not come near Wollongong. It is I believe the preferred option, but like I said, doesn’t stop to think of a spur to Wollongong. Which is passing strange as the idea of a spur is not foreign to them.
Options 11 and 11a are simple a Hume Highway route to Canberra direct and only differ in terms of how they skirt Lake George. Neither considered Wollongong.
Option 11b appears to be a refinement of option 11. Here the idea is to put a kink into the route to bring it onto the escarpment closer to Wollongong. So the intention here is a “park and ride” station. Of course this particular path just lengthens the route to Canberra and also has some serious terrain issues and that’s why it was knocked on the head.
Option 11b is NOT a spur line option for Wollongong.
Option 12 is like Option 10 in that it goes THROUGH Wollongong and then heads directly to Canberra. This option fails because it again traverses the escarpment TWICE and apart from cost, also lengthens the route.
Aecom have pulled the option of a spur line out of their pockets in order to solve the problem of how to connect Canberra without unduly lengthening the track or having to traverse the Snowies. Aecom also note in passing that a spur line could be (and I suspect probably will be) used for Newcastle. So its not an idea that they don’t know about.
But NONE of their options thus far considered is a SPUR line option for Wollongong.
Go ahead, double check it for yourself. Its such an obvious solution but their thought processes have simply managed to miss it.
So as it stands, Wollongong is getting to miss out on the HSR because the folks at AECOM simply did not think it through!
And for the benefit of the passer by who is wondering what I mean. Consider this. The preferred route for the HSR line is basically somewhere out of southwest Sydney (probably near Liverpool), past Campbelltown (or just to the west) and then via the vicinity of Wilton on its way to Goulbourne etc.
A spur line for Wollongong would connect with the main line somewhere south of Campbelltown. Maybe near Wilton. Maybe just north. In either case such a line would travel over relatively flat escarpment before going through the inevitable tunnel.
What a spur line does is many things. It solves the problem of having to traverse the escarpment twice. It avoids having to lengthen the main line or run it over lakes which is a big issue with the “park and ride” Option 11b. And I’ll repeat this. It means only ONE major tunnel. The same length of tunnel you’d have to build if you were to straighten out the existing train line through the national park. It also allows you to run high speed trains directly onto the existing track and use the existing station at Wollongong. It also allows rail users north of Wollongong to hop on to a high speed train, travel south through Wollongong, then join the high speed spur and still arrive in Sydney faster than if they’d headed through Hurstville. It also has beneficial effects in terms of better use, and stabling of rolling stock that would serve Newcastle and the Central coast. And I’ll leave it there.
Its an eminently sensible option and no-one seems to have cottoned to the fact that the boffins from Aecom have just simply not done their homework. Its missing. And its even managed to fool Ben.
by cud chewer on Mar 19, 2012 at 4:40 pm
Just one thing so I don’t get picked up on. In option 9 of the HSR study Phase 1, the reason why this option ends up traversing the escarpment twice is that any which way you cut it, if you want to connect Canberra (and you’d be stupid not to) then the necessary spur back to Canberra is the one that re-traverses the escarpment. Besides its got major topographical hiccups all the way down the coast.
by cud chewer on Mar 19, 2012 at 4:43 pm
The clear intent is to close the current Sydney airport and presumably make life a lot less noisy for a bunch of people. As I said, this is an idea floated by the no aircraft noise site and on the surface its not an entirely bad idea to close the existing airport – provided the new one is exceptionally good.
by cud chewer on Mar 19, 2012 at 5:07 pm
Much as I like the Illawarra, this isn’t a discussion about Wollongong, but the conceit or fallacy that somehow or other the rest of Australia owes Sydney help in dealing with its infrastructure problems, which are entirely a consequence of avoidable public policy failures, inexplicably extended by a new premier who doesn’t understand that the current airport is choking and that building another not-anywhere-near-Sydney 2nd airport which will supposedly serve Sydney will achieve anything other than causing economic activity to relocate or choose alternatives in Melbourne or Brisbane.
Sydney can have its 2nd airport at Badgerys Creek for no additional charge, and generate revenue for investment in a high speed rail network, through the sale process of a site which the Commonwealth owns.
I don’t think a suggestion which would involve the enforced extinguishing of an investment in Sydney while concurrently funding the construction of a new airport in the Sydney basin is a useful or coherent suggestion, since the original purchase price is nowhere having been recovered in the 10 years since the $5.6 billion in 2002 dollars was paid into Commonwealth revenues.
The shut down price for Sydney Airport would involve compensation for the balance of 99 year leases, since that earning potential is owned by the current investors, and is a truly astronomical figure no matter how calculated, and as good an indication as any that the No Noise Party was also a No Clue Party.
by Ben Sandilands on Mar 19, 2012 at 6:12 pm
Ben,
I was merely pointing out that that the spur option for Wollongong wasn’t in that report, as you wrote in the comments of an earlier blog entry.
The relevance is I still think an airport needs to be built somewhere that noise just isn’t going to bother anyone, and Wilton is getting there. But, Wilton to my mind just does not make sense without a HSR stretching at least that far.
In any case, whilst it is true that you don’t need a spur line to Wollongong in order to have HSR access (with a shuttle) to a new airport at Wilton, the spur line means having the prospect of a HSR station right there at the terminal. It also brings with it higher patronage from Wollongong itself.
As for the main topic, my approach is one of “what would you do now if you didn’t have an airport?”.. In other words a clean sheet approach.
And what I was hoping for is an answer to this question:
If you were to build just one airport. And there were no other airport in Sydney (or the original one is closed). Could you build it with enough capacity? And if so what would it look like?
I’m not that worried about Badgerys Creek as an option. I just don’t think (and I’ve said this before) that once you take into account the commonwealth owned land out there, that you aren’t up for compensation. The noise envelope has to stretch much, much further.
Now I’d love to see that map of the commonwealth owned land. I’d love to see the projections of the noise map. And I’d love to know just what it would cost to implement proper compensation. If so – and if it can be shown to fair, then I think the proposition should be put.
As far as closing the existing airport is concerned, there is one factor that is getting overlooked and that is this. The best way to gain political and public acceptance of a new airport is to say that our existing airport has served its purpose and needs to go and will be replaced by a modern one, capable of serving well into the future, and done either with an obviously generous compensation scheme such as you’d need for Badgerys Creek, or done in such a location as noise simply doesn’t matter, and of course that has to be done hand in glove with a really, really good transportation scheme – and conventional trains just aren’t it.
Do it right, be seen to be doing it right, and you might get political acceptance.
by cud chewer on Mar 19, 2012 at 7:44 pm
The shut down price for Sydney Airport would involve compensation for the balance of 99 year leases
Yeah, doncha just love government bureacracies that do stupid things like that.
All I want is the actual numbers. I can’t find them in the latest airport report. Indeed Im not sure anyone’s done it. Would the necessary compensation be found in the land value? Would there be a trade off between the current lease and a lease on the new airport? I just don’t know. I’d love some hard numbers
by cud chewer on Mar 19, 2012 at 7:46 pm
The land that was acquired at Badgerys Creek comes with no obligations for compensation that is supported by property law, as demonstrated in the instance of Tullamarine Airport which was similarly designated and reserved as a future 24 hour airport long before it was built, where people built close to the boundaries and under or near the lower portion of flight paths in full knowledge of the situation as is discovered in the course of taking out legal title.
Those actions against the Federal Airports Corporation, which was broken up when the various airports were privatised, were all dismissed.
It is not an issue of insensitivity to the problems of aircraft noise, but one of stupidity on the part of the buyers.
I know you want to chase all air transport activities out of our cities because they cause noise. Readers can decide if this makes sense or not. Anyone who has been near a high speed rail line, other than those which like HS1 in the UK, are in part sunk into deep open cuttings, which makes the experience akin to rocketing through a ditch, will understand that the noise footprint of very fast trains is both loud and invasive and broad.
That doesn’t make me anti-train. But it makes me mindful of the fact that in cities there is economic activity and noise is indeed generated, and that sensible, and practicable policies to minimise noise are highly desirable, but not if taken to the level of massive economic disruption.
I’d like to see the No Aircraft Noise party test its agenda in a society where air travel in the last 12 years has become affordable and widely used and an integral part of the economy. It now has to pitch its propositions to a rather different society than it did in the 90s. It pursues an extreme solution with extreme consequences, and I gather from your comments, is either ignorant of or unprepared to deal with the noise issues that would dog the route of an HSR anywhere it rises to or above ground level.
by Ben Sandilands on Mar 19, 2012 at 8:52 pm
There’s a moral hazard in that.
Lets suppose you buy land right next to land designated as an airport. Well yes you’d have a reasonable expectation that if there is noise, its your problem.
That part I buy.
But what if you buy land 2Km from an airport, or 5, or 10, or 15? What’s a reasonable expectation then? Is it your stupidity that later the airport grows to an extent that the noise is curtailing your quality of life, or merely bad luck? Its a question fundamentally of cost-transferal. And (see below) I don’t think its really that hard a problem to solve.
The real problem here is the expectation that airports can continue to grow and that they can continue to throw a larger and larger noise envelope over the land and that’s your bad luck. Yes, there have been some agreements as to basic “sound proofing” compensation. But the reality is that right here, right now in Sydney there are 10s of thousands of homes that don’t qualify for even that modest, after the fact, compensation, which frankly I wouldn’t like to live in because its just too noisy.
Now, what would be fair, is not just an airport boundary in itself, but a noise envelope that is fixed from the date of the airport being designated as an airport. Only then can you buy land knowing what you’re expecting.
I say this because I’ve personally had to deal with the debacle of Newcastle Airport, where when we bought the land it seemed to be reasonably free from noise and well outside the noise envelope. Problem is that as successive noise maps came out they grew and grew. To the point where the family home is noise affected. Is that my family’s stupidity? If it is, then what you’re saying is no-one should buy land within god knows how far from an airport. Maybe 60Km will make it safe?
Either you have written into law a fixed noise envelope for an airport, an envelope within which the airport can grow and which it cannot grow past, or you’re forever running into issues of unfairness that quite frankly I think are reasonable. And we’re not talking about right up against the boundary either.
Without meaning to be rude here, I think frankly that proponents of airports tend to be too dismissive of this or tend to feel air travel is such an important thing that it over rules the quality of life that busier and busier airports tend to trample on.
Now, I do think airports are a good thing. I just think either you have to be scrupulously fair from the word go, and/or put it where its just not going to bother anyone, or some combination of the above.
The situation we have here is that Sydney Airport throws a noise envelope that’s fully 30Km long, and up to 4Km wide at its center, excluding the cross path. If we built the same thing at Badgerys Creek its not just going to affect the government owned parcel of land, its going to affect many people who didn’t even remotely think they were even near that particular locality.
Its a little unfair to suggest I want to chase all aircraft activity out of a city. What I’m saying is had it been done in the knowledge of how air traffic was to expand, and how much noise that would have created, they would have never created Kingsford Smith.
And I’ve also said, and will repeat, I’m not averse to Badgerys Creek. I just think that you’re just being unreasonable if you think that it is fair or even politically feasible to just go ahead on that site and not give out what amounts to generous compensation.
And the other thing I don’t have is precisely how many people would be under such a noise envelope – lets suppose Badgerys Creek had a noise envelope as large as the present airport – and how many outright purchases that would involve and how many would accept noise insulation.
The thing is I think the compensation bill may not be a show stopper. It may be much bigger than some airport advocates are factoring in, or think that “stupid” people should be entitled to, but in reality I bet you the compensation bill done in a “obviously over-generous” manner would still be fundable.
Go on, have a guess at the numbers? And are we talking 1 billion.. or 2? That’s what’s gotta be properly documented. I think if it were that much itd still be a fair price to pay to forever banish the fairness issue.
In any case you’re not going to get an airport there politically unless you’re prepared to do something quite radical like that.
Yes, and I’ve been following this issue in the UK and they’ve been steadily headed down the path of more “green” tunnels too. It is an issue, and the consultants that work with Arup have been working on better noise barriers at the level of the bogeys. In some cases proposing what amounts to partial or complete enclosure. Again, these sorts of structures are modest in cost compared to the overall per Km cost of a line.
Bear this in mind too. Most of Sydney will never see a HSR line. It’ll be *under* the city. Secondly the vast majority of the rail line (Bris to Melb) will be somewhere that the immediate noise is only going to annoy the sheep. I’m actually following the process carefully and I will be one of the first to object if their choice of routing hasn’t been done as thoughtfully as possible. And if their engineering, especially the noise controls isn’t being done with a fair minded and generous hand.
Yes, but if you’re going to spend $20B on an airport, is $2B a fair price to pay for not just being fair, but being seen to be fair? (Numbers are just for illustration).
What I’m saying here is, I can be supportive of a new airport but lets do it properly. Lets answer the hard questions such as I posed.
by cud chewer on Mar 19, 2012 at 10:07 pm