Righto...so whats wrong with Richmond for 2nd airport.
 

Driving home today, listening to some whacker from politics saying they dont need a 2nd airport for Sydney, but at the same time no increase in the movement cap will even be contemplated for YSSY.

Some random points Ive been thinking about. Purely hypothetical.

1. What is the theoretical capacity of YSSY if the pollies butted out and left it to the pros.......but no change in curfew.

2. Would a 4th runway, parrallel to 07/25 be useful.

So why cant Richmond be used. The RAAF apparently wants out. Level everything. Now a grand plan is in order. Use the whole area thats south of the River (not sure of the name) and north of Karrajung Rd. According to google earth, that gives you an area 7km wide by5km or so deep. Plenty of room for just about any airport of any size you want.

But it's a flood plain yells someone from the back of the room. Welkl yes it is, but we have a secret weapon....civil engineers. Hell, if Hong Kong can lop the top off a mountain, Singapore can build an airport on land reclaimed from the sea. Kansai was built on a man made island in the middle of a bloody great bay. Funchal has half the runway built on stilts on the side of a mountain.

Surely we can handle a flood plain. or have we become that inefectual.

The Indonesians are starting to build a 40 km long bridge over a deep ocean to link up their two biggest islands. A massive engineering project in any ones language.

Apologies in advance if this might be better suited to another thread currently running, but personally, I like Ben Sandilands' suggestion: Just cut Sydney loose & leave it to fend for itself.

Sydney Airport? Just cut Sydney loose and get on with life | Plane Talking

After more years than I care to remember, the NSW government (in whatever guise it happens to be at the time) is still no closer to showing the balls to commit to a second airport than it was before. In the meantime, Melbourne's population/economy/infrastructure is growing - with forecasts that it will actually eclipse Sydney as the nation's largest city in the next twenty years - in fact, the rest of Australia is growing, & in the meantime Sydney will end up becoming irrelevant.

YSRI = FG Central. Current runway can not be extended. A long North-South would have to be built. Once you have to do that then it has no advantages over a greenfields site.

Personally I think suggesting Wilton is a classic Sir Humphrey move. With the adjacent Sydney Water catchment area and the housing estates already in place and growing... It will provide another 2 to 3 years of solid controversy before it is quietly scrapped.

my thoughts too - but the whole western basin kind of is too... sure they can build the new stuff to a low vis standard but there's still stacks of delays with that stuff

We lack people with vision. People like Keith Williams who took out the side of a mountain for Hamilton Is airport.

We have instead three year politicians with a three year vision. No use upping it to four years, they just do nothing for another year.

Richmond? Well, think of Meigs Field. Meigs Field - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

It can take the load off Sydney while they think of something else to keep the bureaucrats in business.

Well perhaps Meigs wasn't the best example, but a good case.

Spot on Capt Kremin. Reports, studies, consultants,Federal Government muddying the waters with another location,State Government resistance, Federal Opposition waffling,Local Government NIMBY/IMBY, my God this could go on for decades........oh wait it has. Not going to happen in my lifetime.

It is symtomatic of the inertia that has existed in NSW for two decades, and despite O'Farrell's massive majority he has turned out to be a huge disappointment as Premier. No doubt the back room boys in the Liberal Party are already scheming if things dont improve. The voters are less tolerant and forgiving these days.

The type of politician that would look beyond the next election has been extinct since the 30's.Nothing to see here, move on.

In my personal opinion i dont see the need for a 2nd airport. They should get rid of the 11pm-6am curfew and spend the money on building new roads like the F6, improving public transport and improving roads.
Even if Sydney airport gets that congested surely they could raise landing fee's on narrow body aircraft to try and encourage airline's to use widebody aircraft.

Even if they do build a 2nd airport it probably will be come **** rip off like everything else the NSW government builds like that "2 lane" cross city tunnel :ugh:

Possibly true but I am beginning to suspect that the axiom about "the people getting the government they deserve" is also true. Politicians and their parties run focus groups, polls, you name it, they KNOW what WE the people care about and want. I also don't subscribe to the theory that they are dumb, most of the politicians I have met and spoke with are intelligent and articulate people. They just do not have the will to drive long term visions it seems.

We live in a country that thinks Masterchef and MKR are fantastic television, that produces a Kyle Sandilands and makes him a star, that allows Craig Thomson to continue holding a seat and voting in our federal parliament whilst under a cloud. We pay football players $500K a year for seven months work and provide stadiums around the country on peppercorn rents for the AFL whilst they in turn sell TV rights for a billion dollars. Most of what happens does not make any sense because every small part of the jigsaw is looking after its' own piece and no one sees the whole. We have a national debate and hand wringing about a few thousand boat people arriving on our shores seeking asylum with almost nothing at all said about the number of people who arrive by aircraft and stay illegally, a number greater by a factor of about ten.

The state of national debate in this country gets reduced to the lowest level, eg Germaine Greer on QandA takes aim at the PMs bum size, this from an "intellectual and feminist" no less. Imagine if she were one of the great unwashed.

The first job of government is to be re-elected. Everything else is secondary. So our friend whose electorate is near Sydney airport will put the views of a couple of thousand homeowners who bought their house decades after the airport was built ahead of the national or state good. He would argue that is his job as the local member, to protect and represent their interests and so he is correct.

The new Sydney airport should be about half way between Sydney and Canberra and joined to both by a high speed rail link. Anything else is a massive compromise. Problem is that since the federal government stupidly leased the airports out they have lost control. If they had control selling the land for housing at Mascot would pay for a good proportion of the new site with land buy backs etc.

Question. If the airport leaseholders can turn a profit from the leased airports why couldn't the federal government as the owner? Answer that and you understand the mess we are in.

Bob Brown is not a stupid person, his timing is brilliant, much better in fact than John Howards almost as good as Bligh losing the election at the right time so that she will not have to face the music once Qld Water gets sued by all and sundry.

Off to have a glass of medicine.:eek:

"I-2001" excellent post :ok: I too feel this country has it's priorities all wrong.
There simply is no future for planning of airports or otherwise for that matter.There isn't a visionary amongst the lot of them!:ugh:
We waste billions on failed Govt ventures yet we all dig deep here in Vic for Eg on the RCH appeal at Easter time for the kids of our future nation,we raised $16Mill or so a great effort...what did we Vic's waste on Myki & the pink batts fiasco just as a start ??? :ugh:
Another Airport for Syd,high speed rail links etc...........yeah like to see that!!!:ugh:

Don't forget everyone that a polly is in the game as a job,nothing else but to make his bed as comfy as possible & ride the wave of perks until it's time to bail like we have seen of late. A 3 year tenure is damned short,like their visions!!!
That saying ..."what do you call a 1000 lawyers chained together at the bottom of the ocean?..............a good start"...............substitute Pollies & now where getting somewhere !:ugh:

God help our children in the future,we've left an awful mess for them,something that none of us can be proud of!

Rant over...phew !

Wmk2

Lift the curfew

List the movements per hour limit

A lot of problems would be fixed real quick.

CATIII ILS

Tell all the whingers to take a dose of Choppers Medicine and Harden the Fokker Up

That would give you 10 years to sort out another airport to support a properly functioning YSSY.

Anyone disagree?

...............................................yeah jabadabadoo I disagree, we can't have common sense here it just won't work as far as Pollies go!:-)


Wmk2

Icarus2001.........Are you Ben Sandilands? :ok::D

Australian politicians are now the weakest, most gutless breed of inbreds we produce. I would love to pay a politician what they are worth.

If anybody saw Bob Brown's press conference where he pronounced that the greens were ready to govern the country :cool: And the grinning idiot beside him that now 'leads' their party. Or anyone who heard Larissa Waters comments about donations to political parties (She gives new meaning to the phrase 'dumb blonde').

Yep, this country is in capable hands :cool:

Dream on Sydney, a second airport? Not in my lifetime.

Dood, you do that, you wouldn't need a second airport in Sydney in my lifetime :cool:

............ ummmmm derrrrrrrr.............

The pollies are that effing dumb :ugh:

but if implimented, you could then plan ahead.


Hang on Wally is right........can't be having no common sense around here :rolleyes:

Why not Richmond?
 

As one who operated out of Richmond for more than a decade I can tell you Richmond is not only FOG CENTRAL, but there is absolutely no way of extending 10/28 sufficiently and the provision of a runway of sufficient length oriented E/W would involve sending both road and rail underground if the Rail link and the main road between Windsor and Richmond townships were to be retained.
Add to that the limited infrastructure and the probable need to relocate the RAAF flying operations. The one thing that cannot be engineered to ensure uninterupted operations is the dreaded fog. Anyone who has operated into and out of Richmond will fully understand just what a problem it is.

That is why we need Cat3b. minima of 20ft vis of 150m. This is how Europe keep their Airports running. Try ZRH in the winter, they have far more 'fog days' than we do, snow and ice and yet seem to manage alright. This country is very Third World when it comes to Aviation. Even India has Cat2 where International Airports like OOL don't even have an ILS. I cannot think of one airport in the US that still has an NDB. The International Aviation Community consider Australia a backwater these days. Very sad compared to how we were once held.

In fact India has Cat 3B at Delhi. I did one one day when even the birds were walking, onto a new runway and the A Team on ATC.

Usual Cat 3B minima for my operator's A330/A340 is 'no' DH and 75 m.

Australian airports are a goddamn disgrace.

high speed rail a non-starter
 

High speed rail is expensive. Think around $40 per 100km in Japan, if you're a full-fare Shinkansen ticket holder (from memory). And that's in a country with a much higher population density than NSW & ACT. It would be more expensive in this country, even ignoring the need for a tunnel under the Blue Mountains.

It would also need stupendous cash up front from the public purse, which won't happen in NSW.

At the moment air travel is both cheaper and more convenient than rail for most people. No doubt that will change eventually...

And a environmental nightmare. I find it ridiculous that the Greens propose such a deal. If you consider the thousands of Kilometres of clearing you have to do, the damage to the environment, the carbon footprint due loss of trees, the carbon footprint of the steel in the rails plus the maintenance, trains are not the answer over long distances when compared toto relatively small area of a airport. 2 x 2km of tar vs 1000+km of steel rail:hmm:

Reading between the lines you could almost argue that the powers at be are out to destroy aviation in this country for some reason. These so called 'Green' solutions are not when you scratch the surface.