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Stimulating the second Sydney airport debate
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The lure of a $42 billion stimulus package has shaken the dual transport totems of fast trains and a second Sydney airport (anywhere-but-in-Sydney) out of the closet once more. Stephen Byron, the managing director of Canberra Airport, made a call for the building of such a rail link between Sydney and its airport to Canberra and his airport this morning shortly before attending a regular meeting of the Airports Consultative Forum at the Department of Infrastructure. His formula, fund the 50 minute high speed line ($8 billion) out of the money saved on building a new airport somewhere else, like Goulburn, or Newcastle, or maybe on top of the Bradman Museum in Bowral. Why is the idea of a rural Sydney airport barking mad? At the outset no-one who has a specific reason to fly to or from Sydney is going to use an airport that is not in Sydney. The time and cost burdens don’t work. The decision to restrict Sydney to one airport means that it will decline in relative economic importance compared to cities that have efficient air services because the generators of high levels of business travel will go elsewhere. The policy of an airport for Sydney in whoop-whoop is unenforceable. Nobody has to base companies in a city that is hard to reach by air, or for that matter, hard to move around by any means of transport, or one that having expelled shipping from the harbour, is left with no real answer to port congestion other than run cargo through Port Kembla or Newcastle. Sydney is dying from infrastructure choke. The bill for saving it is simply insupportable, politically and monetarily. Melbourne and SE Queensland, especially between South Bank and Surfers, will easily eclipse the Sydney basin in coming decades, aided by a century of unrepentingly poor infrastructure planning. Byron, who is most definitely not barking mad, is wrong about a 50 minute high speed rail trip from Canberra to Sydney. The maximum velocity of the fastest metal wheel on rail trains in service is 320 kilometres an hour. The straightest possible route from his airport to Sydney’s is 236 kilometres, and that involves amazing tunnels or bridges under or over dam catchments and gorges, plus through a large swathe of hot, methane rich coal seams. Realistically, without near total track realignments, a Sydney-Canberra train could get to the airport or Central in about 90 minutes, half the drive time if the roads are clear, but from which getting to any other part of Sydney is a shambles that makes driving yourself far better than even flying between both cities. Canberra Airport does have a bright future without entertaining the fiction of becoming a second Sydney Airport for regular travellers. Operators like AirAsiaX have business models to cater for a new category of low fare, long haul leisure travellers who want to visit eastern Australia, and don’t care where they land. That model is already working well for AirAsiaX on the Gold Coast, and has been scoped by Emirates for high capacity 650 seat plus services by A380s to Adelaide. Jetstar has been keeping a close eye on how long haul low cost flights using secondary airports could work, and Ryanair and Air Berlin have similar ambitions for the trans Atlantic market. But those studies aren’t predicated on huge infrastructure spends, only on their predicted attraction for low cost high volume leisure passengers. If this mass leisure model clicks it could totally transform Canberra’s airport by 2020. And if they come those passengers will be met by buses, or at best a slow train to Sydney, not some loss making super train ignored by most of the locals and gifted to them by an Australian government. |
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10 Comments
Just to put the figures in this argument in perspective - it takes about 60 minutes to get from Narita to the centre of Tokyo by train. So it’s not infeasible to have an international airport well removed from the city. If people want to come to Sydney they won’t be put off by an extra hour at the end.
Narita is only 60 kilometres from Tokyo Central. Unless your flight is able to access Haneda, which is more convenient to most of greater Tokyo, you must go through Narita. The notion that an airport several hours and several hundred kilometres and several hundred dollars further from Sydney than the main airport will be an acceptable alternative is implausible. As is the notion that the nation will pay for it.
I have just read your (Ben Sandilands) response to Frank Ashe’s comment re Narita. His valid point was comparing travel time — distance is irrelevant for travellers and which is why much of the world is putting huge resources into making faster trains. That is why in my earlier blog I gave many examples of major world cities whose airport access easily exceed the 90 minutes. I thought of another instructive example—Hong Kong. It is a long way from Central but they deemed it worthwhile (and who today would disagree?) to spend a fortune (it was the largest civil engineering project in the world at the time) building the fast rail link so that it is only 20 minutes door-to-door and wins my award for the best airport link in the world (regrettably the Maglev stops before downtown Shanghai).
The point about the Canberra airport idea is that it serves many purposes –the long desired fast link between Sydney and our capital, and future Melbourne link. It could even allow resuscitation of the (yes Whitlamesque!) idea of developing Albury-Wodonga as inland cities. I don’t understand why you and your ilk are so defeatist about it except that it is the (depressingly mediocre unimaginative, short-termist, penny-pinching, self-defeating) Australian way.
The only substantial site remaining is Badgery’s Creek, where there is room (without resorting to major engineering) for a single long runway and at best a short additional strip that could simultaneously cater for small regional services. It could take half as many movements as Sydney Airport per hour, if not slightly more. There is very good potential access off the M7 motorway, which in conjunction with the M4, would put it close in drive time to Parramatta, the Hills, the greater west, and much of the northern suburbs even the upper north shore if the Bridge and Tunnel hassles in accessing the main airport are taken into account. The land is already Commonwealth owned. There is substantial competitive overlap with the natural or less inconvenient catchment of Sydney Airport. I think it makes immense economic sense, especially as it would become the fourth largest airport in terms of Australian jet movements from day one, and would be supported rather than avoided by the carriers. However apparently it doesn’t make as much political ‘sense’ as letting the current airport slowly strangle Sydney’s status as a convenient and competitive city in which to base travel generating services sector enterprises.
Badgery’s Creek is about the same road distance from the CBD, North Sydney and Chatswood as Narita is from Tokyo Central, or less than twice as far away as Tullamarine is from Collins Street.
The TGV between Paris/Lyon (460km) now takes 1h55min and no one flies anymore—it surprised even the enthusiasts when the first millionth passenger was in the first few months. Who would fly London/Paris or London/Brussels anymore especially with the increasing airport hassles. The distances and populations in the triangle Melbourne-Canberra-Sydney (and Albury/Wodonga as a new growth centre?) is actually no so different—add in an international airport with tens of millions of passengers per year and it all starts coming together. Sure, you need these cities to have workable mass transit but your defeatist arguments will never get it built.
How is the Shanghai MagLev a failure when the year I used it (2006) it carried 7 M passengers? Of course it may well be too expensive to build but it seems the operational costs are low and yes it will not fully come into its own until the rest of the Shanghai metro is built and the line is extended into the city proper. We could do with a touch of communist/derigiste government that gets these things built. Of course it is way too expensive per km but I desperately hope for a tech breakthrough—because TGV is still a bit slow for Oz distances (though it is getting faster all the time).
[ok 4 blog submissions is more than enough!]
I agree with Sandilands on one point. A standard TGV line needs long straight stretches-which in turn is the major factor in cost (land purchase, bridges, tunnels). I advocate Maglev instead! Why take half measures? Modelled on the Shanghai-Pudong Airport link (34 km, 7 mins,430 kph) it would be about 40 mins. (I’m serious but your space limitations prevent explanation).
But it is slightly absurd that BS finds 90 minutes too long. There are very few world cities that allow anything much shorter. Paris RER-lineB takes about 40 mins from CDG but add another 30 mins to get to the airport station. JFK takes about 50 mins on the A-train but likewise you have to get to the station at the airport’s edge. Driving might be as fast as 30 minutes but only at midnight. Tullaramine—in whoop-whoop without a rail link. Ditto for Dulles in Washington which takes forever. Someone noted Narita which is much further out than the old inner-city Haneda airport, demonstrating travellers have little choice about airports—if allowed we would all choose Haneda. The majority of travel to Sydney is not discretionary and they (like most of us going anywhere in the world) will be compelled to go to whichever airport the government dictates. Any new Sydney airport is going to be in whoop-whoop compared to the current one and a 90 minute (road) journey anywhere seems very likely.
TGVs are expensive but make compelling sense in the context of avoiding massive infrastructure duplication (airports, roads), reducing road congestion and linking our major centres (Melbourne-Canberra-Sydney). Fast trains are sweeping Europe, Asia, and in all likelihood the USA will embrace it in the coming decade (eg. LA-SF-Sacramento which will be done to relieve airports and roads). Distances in Australia are more challenging but that is why Canberra-Sydney makes good sense as a first step. With faulty thinking like Sandiland’s Australia will continue to remain in the dark ages of travel.
You are right about the Sydney’s long term planning. Is it now impossible to place an airport in the Sydney basin?
M James, I think you have misread me. There is nothing wrong with a 90 minutes train journey that goes to your destination. But one that drops you into a dysfunctional system to complete the journey is useless. On another topic, I’d like to see part of the stimulus package go into city metros, say 10 kilometres in Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane, on routes where the success of each first stage would encourage further expansion in the longer term. There is bad news about maglev systems. The pioneering demonstration track in Germany is about to close and given the lacklustre performance of the Shanghai experiment, China has lost interest in longer routes. This is discouraging to say the least.
I am an unashamed enthusiast for Eurostar and Thalys and Nozomi. But our low population density really messes with the economics over long distances, something that technology could overcome if construction costs drop by an order of magnitude and our population (or demand) doubles. A real issue for us is fixed infrastructure in permanent ways, where other options, bus in cities and aircraft over long distances, are movable assets capable of reassignment and inherently less costly and more flexible in application.
We face difficult choices with limited funds. But staying in the dark ages as you put it shouldn’t be an option.
The issue that strikes me, in my benighted, defeatist views, is that the least costly solution to Sydney’s airport issues is Badgery’s Creek. If ignoring Badgery’s Creek comes at the cost of billions of dollars on a non-Sydney airport that no-one can be compelled to use, or a railway that in all probability will never be finished, then opportunities to make more practicable investments in major city public transport are compromised.
The government could not for example tell particular airlines they had to use an airport more than 200 kilometres from Sydney without, for example, discovering that Qantas was now required to use Birmingham, to serve London or that V Australia would have to use Victorville to serve Los Angeles. It has no real capacity to disadvantage one set of travellers to Sydney compared to another.
Ben, ok I was being provocative, but still, reading your responses, it still smells of Australian defeatism. That the only alternative is a poor compromise. I am disappointed that you resort to economic arguments to put down high-speed train. Yet if this is not a nation building piece of worthwhile infrastructure I don’t know what is. The TGV costs are eminently affordable (and there are some weird costs floating around—the $12B NW Metro would be the most expensive bit of rail per km in the world; where do they get these absurd costs from?). The false and short-termist economic arguments would have killed the Paris/London/NYC/Tokyo etc Metro systems and what would those cities be like without them? Even the road lobby claim tens of billions lost due to congestion. Your argument about “bus in cities and aircraft over long distances, are movable assets capable of reassignment and inherently less costly” can be turned on its head. This is because there are massive economic benefits for these systems, just that these benefits are not returned to the Metro owners/funders. When buses and cars replaced fixed trolleycar lines in US cities it had a terrible impact on what we now call TOD because who is going to invest in costly infrastructure (shops, business centres etc) when the route could be changed overnight at a whim. Fixed lines provide huge advantages but the economies are usually not considered by the road lobby. Do property values go up near bus routes or train/tram lines? (continues next submission)