Comment by Retric

Comment by Retric 4 hours ago

13 replies

None? Nobody puts airports inside city centers and metro areas don’t just have dense urban housing. The common solution in many land strapped cities is for airports to rout aircraft over water often by building airports on reclaimed land.

What generally gets areas in trouble is locations that used to be a good get worse as aircraft get larger and the surroundings get built up. The solution is to send larger airplanes to a new airport, but it’s not free and there’s no clear line when things get unacceptably dangerous.

nostrademons 3 hours ago

San Jose does. You can, in theory, walk to downtown from the airport; it's about an hour and a half via pedestrian trail:

https://maps.app.goo.gl/zhZdA5tWGAKunM2e8

(This is widely considered a misfeature of San Jose - it limits the height of buildings in downtown San Jose to 10 stories because the downtown is directly under the flight path of arriving flights, it limits runway length and airport expansion, and it means that planes and their noise fly directly over key tourist attractions like the Rose Garden and Convention Center. If we ever had a major plane crash like this one in San Jose it would be a disaster, because the airport is bounded by 101 on the north, 880 on the south, the arriving flight path goes right over downtown, and the departing flight path goes right over Levi's Stadium, Great America, and several office buildings.)

  • bdamm 11 minutes ago

    San Jose Airport's walkability and bikability is actually wonderful and I always take the opportunity to walk or bike there when flying into SJC.

  • Retric 3 hours ago

    There’s roughly a mile of roads, green spaces, and river between the airport and downtown San Jose which an absolutely identical accident would impact. It’s not very wide, but pilots aren’t going to aim for buildings if they can help it.

    So while downtown being in the flight path is a risk there was some method to the madness which caused that alignment.

    • jonas21 2 hours ago

      San Diego's airport, on the other hand, has the a bustling restaurant district, an interstate with frequent bumper-to-bumper traffic, and a dense residential neighborhood all within a mile off one end of the runway -- and a popular shopping area, an elementary school, and a high school within just over a mile from the other end.

      In addition, the terrain rises in both directions (so sharply on one side that planes can't use ILS when landing from that direction).

      • Retric 2 hours ago

        Agreed, and clearly there’s a bunch of much safer options. The north island air station base is close and almost comically better.

Arainach 3 hours ago

>None? Nobody puts airports inside city centers and metro areas don’t just have dense urban housing.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Midway_International_Airport

It's hard to project growth. Things build right up to the limit of the airport for convenient access, then the area grows and the airport needs to grow - and what do you do? Seattle-Tacoma is critically undersized for the traffic it gets and has been struggling with the fact that there's physically nowhere to expand to.

  • Retric 3 hours ago

    Zoning is one option to direct growth, but you can move airports. Chicago is right next to a Great Lake and there’s relatively shallow areas ready to be reclaimed etc.

    Obviously you’re better off making such decisions early rather than building a huge airport only to abandon it. Thus it’s called urban planning not urban triage.

    • potato3732842 2 hours ago

      >Zoning is one option to direct growth

      My magic crystal ball named "the past 50yr of history" says it is unlikely to be the success you envision.

gwbas1c 4 hours ago

> The common solution in many land strapped cities is for airports to rout aircraft over water.

That works in costal areas, but not inland.

There's no large body of water near the Louisville airport.

  • Retric 3 hours ago

    The Ohio River is a large body of water fairly close if someone was going to relocate Louisville airport.

    • WorldMaker an hour ago

      The Ohio River is a mile wide at Louisville, but that still doesn't wide enough to classify it "large body of water", especially because it is a river that moves relatively quick for its width and then hits falls/rapids just downstream of Louisville.

      But also there's a lot of urban and suburban development you'd have to displace to even consider moving the airport near the Ohio River for most miles both up and down stream of Louisville.

  • wongarsu 3 hours ago

    Inland it can work if you have a river. London City Airport would be an example