The founding CEO of Virgin Blue, Brett Godfrey, last night challenged government, business and the airline sector to scrap the “interminable” quest for a second Sydney airport and pursue an all new, single and super-sized Sydney Airport to replace the existing airport.
It was one of a series of “contrary” or “anti-thoughts” Godfrey offered in his delivery of the 52nd Sir Charles Kingsford Smith Memorial Lecture to the Royal Aeronautical Society in Sydney last night. But it will be the one to make headlines.
Godfrey said this morning: “I’m not advocating this as the solution, but as a thought that will make us think harder about the nature of the second Sydney Airport problem, and consider something radically different that will help Sydney survive as a major city for tourism and business.
“This is about nothing less than its survival as a vital part of the nation.
“Let’s go one step ahead and think of a way to eliminate the existing problems at Sydney Airport of lack of size, caps on aircraft hourly movements and curfews, and the issues in trying to determine who will move what services to a second Sydney airport, and the difficulties which then arise in connecting both facilities, and picking winners and losers.
“Building a second Sydney Airport to overcome enduring problems and restrictions at the main airport should be reconsidered as an ultimately futile strategy.
“One way to avoid that is to contemplate shutting down Sydney airport completely on the opening of a new super Sydney airport that will have the space, and the superb infrastructure needed to provide fast and efficient access for all travellers.
“There is no need to banish anyone to a new Sydney airport if it is the only Sydney airport. Let’s do everything right in a new one where everyone will have to go. Let Sydney Airport’s owners benefit from this process by realising the enormous value of the land at the existing airport and its potential for airport, industry or residential developments. One outstandingly good Sydney Airport is always going to be better than two, one of which will always be widely considered second best.”
Godfrey said he did not have a specific location in mind but it would most likely be found on land rather than out to sea.
In his address, Godfrey also described the current notion of airline consolidations as a panacea for the industry as a fool’s paradise approach and advanced a radical concept for revenue joint ventures as a more appropriate competitive response.
He disclosed that he is a founder of the Virgin Galactic “rocket rides” enterprise and that the technology now being tested in the US was as much a forerunner of new ways of swiftly flying long distances as were the technologies used by the great aviation adventurers and visionaries such as Sir Charles Kingsford Smith.
Just a side issue – how long can one remain a “virgin”, “screwing up” like they have of late?
Ahem, I posed this exact thought last week in a comment, comparing the HK airport relocation from Kai Tak (prime real estate) to Lantau Island (Chek Lap Kok) :
crikey.com.au/2010/09/28/high-speed-rail-thinking-crosses-all-party-lines/#comment-101140
[Of course they were able to factor in the huge real estate value of the old airport. (What is the land value of Kingsford-Smith?)]
Ben, do you know if the Crown still owns the freehold. I hope MAC just have a lease?
If you follow all these threads, you end up with something like my (and no doubt others) concept of a new airport on the route to Canberra (possibly even Canberra airport but maybe closer to Goulbourn?) and yes linked by HST. It combines so many separate Nation Building concepts and while expensive could be significantly ameliorated by the savings from building a second Sydney airport and selling the current real estate. Part of the set up would have to be reasonable fares though it seems a lot of people pay a heck of a lot in parking fees at Sydney and Tullamarine (see smh.com.au/opinion/the-airport-parking-game-20101004-164bp.html?). Reasonable fares could come about not only from some subsidy but the fact that there would be millions of passengers using it (is it 2o million arrivals at Kingsford Smith?) plus a lot of the Melbourne-Sydney displaced airtraffic, plus Canberra traffic (and eventually places like Goulbourn expansion).
Incidentally the HK airport relocation was also used as a part of a decentralization strategy–opening up several new towns along the rail route, including Tung Chung (directly opposite the airport) which already has grown from a tiny fishing village to one of 50,000 people, and of course Disneyland also on Lantau. No doubt Brett Godfrey is well aware of the HK example.
Michael,
SACL purchased a 99 year lease of what remains Crown Land.
I agree that a southern highlands site is a high probability. There are quite a few such possibilities, but they are in general terms six times further from Martin Place than Chek Lap Kok is from Hong Kong Central, or if measured by rail distance, more than three times as far from Tokyo Central as is Narita. In terms of flat land convenient to Goulburn you have to go somewhat further from Sydney to Marulan, or redevelop and expand the existing Goulburn airport, which may not allow quite enough space for a really super sized Sydney Airport. I have disturbed dreams of dozens of high frequency commuter flights departing Sydney each hour to make connections to bigger jets at Goulburn (!) after the rail consortium’s third or fourth ownership collapse.
The bizarre thought occurs that such a destruction of the highlands villages would despite our best intentions also destroy the suitability of Sydney to be a place to do business involving travel, all this mayhem initiated in order to allow dense new suburbs with token transport infrastructure to cover what is left of the Badgery’s Creek site, thus rendering it as hopeless and miserable for commuting and services as the rest of the SW corner of Sydney.
It would indeed be possible, with wisdom and an element of luck, to convert the highlands into a new city of at least one million people which would generate sufficient traffic to support a good sized airport, yet even with the best of rail links much of the Sydney basin, especially to the north of the harbour and Parramatta River would struggle to get a better access to the new site than they have to the existing one.
There are real possibilities for a super Sydney airport, but Godfrey has framed his thoughts on this with a precision that will in fact make many people think again about a really large airport at Holsworthy and south of it, with runways bridged across the canyons, or a further consideration of how Badgery’s Creek might offer sufficient relief to the KSA situation.
I think his ‘contrary’ thought is exceptionally timely.
The SACL leasehold means a swap deal could be done with any new airport, so that it is the Crown that reaps the property profits and recycles it into the new airport and HST etc. It would be a breathtaking scale and timeframe, that only very confident governments and business interests can do (the two were pretty much the same thing in HK). The old Kai Tak site is yet to be redeveloped and is probably one of the world’s most valuable city sites, a bit like Barangaroo on steroids.
[six times further …. than Chek Lap Kok is from Hong Kong Central, or if measured by rail distance, more than three times as far from Tokyo Central as is Narita.]
Yes, that is why it needs to be HST. The Narita trip used to take about 50 mins but since the “high speed” train started this year it takes 36 minutes (not exactly all that fast at about 100 kmph). I don’t think I have ever managed getting into Manhattan from JFK (or Newark for that matter) at less than an hour; ditto Dulles (ridiculous location), London if you use the Underground, Gatwick is about 35 mins not counting the inevitable waiting. So really a true HST to Goulburn or nearby (200 km) would be less than 40 mins (using av. 300 kmph even if trains are capable of 350 kmph). Looks pretty compelling to me.
Just for fun: Wikipedia claims “The Shanghai Transrapid project took 10 billion yuan (1.33 billion US dollars) and 2.5 years to complete the 30.5 km (19 mi) track.” That would make a 200 km MagLev “only” A$9B for a sub 30 minute trip. Problem is I do not accept those financing costs (or the Chinese really would have built their much rumoured MagLev extension to Hongzhou.) No one knows the real costs (and most of the costs would have been in the technology and nothing much to do with low Chinese wages). Still, it is a fantastic dream because it turns out those trains use a lot less energy, have little maintenance and one needs fewer trains because their turnaround is so fast. And of course much more flexibility in where the track can be (allows more twisty route and could make the urban sections easier to maintain the speed than a TGV.) Ah, well.