At least 250,000 vehicles will drive close to the preserved site of Sydney’s second jet airport at Badgery’s Creek today along the M4 and M7 motorways. They will do so with less inconvenience than anyone driving within 20 kilometres of Sydney’s existing airport. And they will have done something the Sydney media, and most politicians, twist and turn to avoid mentioning in any comments about the impending implosion of infrastructure at the main airport, because the obvious Badgery’s Creek solution equals political suicide.
But then again, so do all of the options, from doing bugger all, to throwing open Richmond and Bankstown to jet flights as Infrastructure Minister Anthony Albanese has signalled as possible answers in his courageous plan to formulate a comprehensive aviation policy for Australia by March next year.
Several important signs of change have occurred. In the space of a few months Albanese has ruled out but then ruled in possible flights to the two suburban airfields. In that same interval Tiger has ordered a lightweight version of the Airbus A319, in a roomy 144 seat version that could actually fly useful distances from either Bankstown or Richmond, which suffer from short runways. And for the first time Qantas, through its executive general manager John Borghetti, referred to an urgent need for a second airport in the Sydney basin.
This is a sharp U-turn by Qantas. It has always held to the line that another Sydney Airport is unnecessary. Now it is sending a signal that the existing airport is “stuffed”. Borghetti’s other signal is the phrase “in the Sydney basin” used in his call for action at this week’s aviation infrastructure summit.
Ask any international or domestic airline manager what they think about a second Sydney Airport at Goulburn, or Newcastle, or Alice Springs, and they will point out that even if they were miraculously connected for free with space age maglev railways costing a trillion dollars, no-one flying to Sydney would use them. Air travel is about trip times more than anything else. It isn’t about fighting one’s way to a central rail terminal to then spend a few hours, or half a day in total, getting to an airport in Whoop-whoop.
Without adequate air links Sydney will bleed economic activity to Brisbane and Melbourne, which it is already.
A top level Qantas manager last week told the chief executive of Airbus, Tom Enders, that Sydney Airport is half the land area of any other airport taking a current 30 million passengers a year, and when that reaches a forecast 70 million in less than 20 years it won’t even have room to short term park the dozens of 500 passenger A380s that will be trying to use it each day.
Of course that raises the other political unmentionable in the Sydney Airport saga. All of the space it needs can be found on the southern shore of Botany Bay.
Between now and next March another notion might take root in the rest of Australia; that the solution to all of Sydney’s woeful transport problems is to let it choke on the consequences of 100 years of wilful neglect, rather than bankrupt the country subsidising the solutions.
None of the options are pretty. When you live in Asia and fly into Sydney early in the morning the feeling that you have just arrived at a “disaster zone” is cemented. The queues for Immigration, the huge dreadful backlog to go through customs/quarantine, since they imposed the 100% xray with far too few machines. Then when you pay the avaricious prices that Mac Bank have imposed for car parking – its not the 15 hour trip from LA or the 9 hours from BKK, but the whole “arriving in Sydney” experience leaves you all reamed out. Unfortunately VIP’s miss the experience and therefore NEVER realise the mess they allow to happen.
Shutt the Kurnell refinery – build the airport extension there ( build parallel runways to the two existing Kingsford Smith Runways there). Remove Qantas offices offsite in Alexandria and putt a car park and train terminal there with a rapid transit tunnel under the bay to terminals 3/4?. Dont Say that the airport would be worse environmentally than the Refinery.
To mention a few of the Sydney issues other than the political, the airport embraced the inefficiency of two intersecting runways, meaning it can never run all three full bore full length. As sole airport it takes small slow planes that can hold up four or more large jet movements. It faces the dire US airport issue of not having enough gates to match movements, meaning flights get stuck sometimes for a long time waiting for a gate to become free, which US winters don’t help either. Unless an alternative airport in the Sydney basin opens ASAP this curse at big US airports will add to the inefficiency at the main airport even without snow. The merit of a turboprop strip near Kurnell with a road link via a short tunnel to La Perouse or Port Botany would be reasonable regional connections and more efficiency from a two out of three runway operation.
What is the real problem at Sydney airport, apart from politics? Sydney has three runways and handles about 29 million passengers. Heathrow has two runways and handles 67 million passengers, albeit groaning at the edges. Hong Kong has two runways and manages 48 million passengers. I am a very regular traveller to Sydney and I don’t think i have seen all three runways operating at the same time. The obvious question is why? The answer, of course, is political. Most major US airports operate all available runways in peak times – San Francisco and LA have four, and use them concurrently at peak times, which greatly reduces wait times on the ground. Time for a more open and honest discussion about the airport, rather than more window dressing and political side-stepping of the aircraft noise issue.
There have been reports in the past claiming the refinery is nearing the end of its economic life and needs replacement, not necessarily at the Kurnell site. If true this is an opportunity. However the area that suits development on any scale as a supplementary airport lies further west of the refinery and desalination plant, thus avoiding conflicts with traffic patterns at Kingsford Smith. Care needs to be taken with the mangrove areas, however the sites involved would allow a net expansion of mangrove habitats by creating mangrove friendly wetlands extensions to the NW. With common sense and good will this is achievable. So it’s damn hard. Yet probably no where as hard as expanding or exploiting Bankstown for jets even in the interim.