11 February 2009

Airport Master Plan Out - proposes residential development

| johnboy
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The ABC informs us that the darkness on the edge of town, aka Canberra Airport, has released it’s latest master plan (the last one having been rejected) which now includes turning the whole area into a new city.

    The plan, which covers the next 20 years, provides the first insight into how the airport may develop the former RAAF property.

    While it concedes there are strict guidelines on what can be developed on the land, the master plan includes tourism, small scale retail, hotel and other commercial accommodation.

    Under Federal restrictions, single and some multi-unit developments could be permitted on the land.

They’re asking for your thoughts on the proposed development, best to read the whole thing before sounding off:

    Written comments are welcome and must be received by 5pm Friday 8 May 2009.
    Contact: Kathy Aves
    Canberra Airport
    2 Brindabella Circuit
    Brindabella Business Park ACT 2609
    Tel: 02 6275 2222

UPDATED: The Australian is intrigued by what they see as a bid to be Sydney’s second airport included in this plan.

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So far, it seems the ones pushing this Canberra as Sydney’s 2nd airport idea is… Snow and his airport. It has always been part of the game plan: when he bought the airport, the plan was to get a VFT running past the airport, land freight all night and day and load it onto the train. Then they expanded that to landing jumbos at 2am and loading the international passengers onto the VFT.

The more landings and takeoffs they can get at the airport, the more use he’s getting from his investment. While nothing’s landing or taking off, it’s dead money.

When he bought the airport, he said publicly and often that the lack of a curfew was the big attraction for him. I guess the lack of any meaningful planning curbs on what he built out there didn’t hurt, either.

I get the impression that Sydney is pretty lukewarm on the idea of Canberra as its 2nd airport, but Snow’s pushing it.

I still think Goulburn makes way more sense as a freight airport – close to sydney, closer to the train line and they are actually keen for it to be there.

I also read recently that QANTAS is getting out of air freight, due to the Global Financial Crisis. I suppose someone else would do the freight tho.

The airport is still battling Winnel and his Tralee development, the Fairfax press reports today. Here’s the SMH take:
http://www.smh.com.au/national/airport-warns-on-new-homes-plan-20090628-d1av.html?skin=text-only

Seems Snow can have residential development in his airport plan (he wants to build a suburb at Fairbairn, people used to live there when it was the RAAF base), but the knock-down drag them out fight with Village Building continues.

And the Airport again states that it wants to be the second Sydney airport. Do we in this region want to host the second Sydney airport and do we get a say?

Piratemonkey said :

While canberras population is small i believe their plan may be to charge airlines significatly less then what i assume are pricy fees to use the congested sydney airport. They are still looking for a second airport right? Or did that get sorted?

I assume it may end up cheaper to land passengers in canberra then fly them on domestic to their planned destination.

Actually Canberra is one of the most expensive airports to land and take off from. Hard to believe given their absolute lack of services to the average passenger.

molongloid said :

harveyk1 wrote:
> Also lest we forget that Adelaide is the nearest International airport
> for many thousands of KM’s

Nearest to what?

Sorry, posted in a hurry last night, dinner was on it’s way.

What I meant to say was Adelaide airport is the nearest international airport for many people in SA, as well as some people in WA and northern Vic. If SA didn’t offer direct international flights it would mean that they would need to do some interesting dog leg type flights, which would add on many hours to a trip overseas.

Canberra and the surrounding regions on the otherhand has a near by international airport in Sydney which is easy to get to (hey I know people who drive to Sydney to then take domestic flights), unless they plan to have the same frequency of international flights as Sydney we are simply engaging in tokenism (like the token 3 weekly flights to Fiji in 04).

Piratemonkey said :

While canberras population is small i believe their plan may be to charge airlines significatly less then what i assume are pricy fees to use the congested sydney airport. They are still looking for a second airport right? Or did that get sorted?

I assume it may end up cheaper to land passengers in canberra then fly them on domestic to their planned destination.

This is what the cheap airlines do in Europe. You might pay $50 to get to Spain but you’ll land in a paddock somewhere in the middle of nowhere.

I’d assumed this was their plan as well. They could offer cheap buses to Sydney – It’s only 3 hours to central.

VFT Sydney Central to Sydney Airport to Canberra in 50 minutes would be absurd.

Assume that they build Platform 23A above Chalmers Street as a dedicated Canberra VFT platform, merging with the Airport Line near the tunnel entrance, and diverging from the Airport Line onto the fast tracks at Turella, you have to run the trains at the same timings as a suburban train would take until the trains reach dedicated tracks. Turella is 16 minutes. That leaves 34 minutes to get from Turella to Canberra Airport. That’s simply not possible.

Assuming 250km of entirely dedicated trackage at 300km/h (TGV speed) with absolutely no slowing down for any curves or gradients, it’d be 50 minutes just to get to Turella, thus 1h16m to get to Sydney.

And 250km is optimistic. By road it’s 283km from Sydney Airport to Canberra Airport. If you assume that Goulburn is not that important or that it could be served by occasional trains detouring via the existing route in peak hours, then you could perhaps get it down around 250km if you took the following sort of route:

Construct new dedicated trackage along the East Hills and South line from Kingsgrove to Glenlee Junction (just past Macarthur)

Build a new line alongside the NH31 from there to Marulan

Build a new line along a new alignment direct from Marulan to Tarago (bypassing Goulburn to save a few km)

Put in a link where the new line crosses the old at Tarago, so that fast trains to Goulburn can operate in peak hours, and so that the overnight garbage trains from Sydney can use the new line and save on all that diesel wasted using the tedious existing route, and still unload at the new terminal they just built there.

Build a bridge across Lake George (build it fast while the lake is dry to cut down on construction cost)

Tunnel under the range at Bywong through to Majura Road

Follow the Majura Road valley down to the Airport

There would be some other considerations as well

Consider having the fast trains continue in a loop around Canberra (around being the operative word). Build a 2 track line with three platforms at the stations (centre platform for the VFTs, which would not carry local passengers) running Airport – Erindale – Tuggers – Weston – Molonglo – Belco – Gunghalin, and then back down Majura Road to the Airport. The express trains to Sydney would diverge at Majura Road and the local trains would continue south forming a loop route.

Consider putting the Airport rail station near the river at Pialligo and build a ferry wharf there for transfers to Civic (put bus stops on the Commonwealth Avenue bridge, stairs and ramps up each side of the bridge, splash guards for when the memorial jet is operating, and put a jetty underneath the bridge between the two staircases with a separate pedestrian link to land). Continue the ferries out to Queanbeyan, and put another wharf on the other side of Pialligo down near Brindabella Business Park for the benefit of the thousands of suckers who have to work there. People could transfer between the ferries to or from the intertown buses to Civic and Woden on that bridge.

A Wallaroo-Dunlop-Macgregor-Belco-Canberra Stadium-Civic-Parliament-Woden-Erindale-Theodore-Banks-Tharwa route could be added later, for local trains only, once people feel a bit overwhelmed about the trains not being able to get them to Civic, and to support new developments north of Macgregor and south of Banks. People could get to the Airport or Tuggers by changing trains at Erindale or Belco.

Consider whether the local trains even need to have a driver on board. New subways and metros are being built with driverless operation, and existing subways are being converted to driverless operation in other parts of the world. Building an urban line around Canberra but forcing every train/light rail vehicle/whatever to have a driver makes it little better economically than running buses. No driver plus cheap electricity means a train every few minutes would cost next to nothing to run once it had been purchased and the infrastructure had been built.

Piratemonkey6:55 pm 11 Feb 09

While canberras population is small i believe their plan may be to charge airlines significatly less then what i assume are pricy fees to use the congested sydney airport. They are still looking for a second airport right? Or did that get sorted?

I assume it may end up cheaper to land passengers in canberra then fly them on domestic to their planned destination.

harveyk1 wrote:
> Also lest we forget that Adelaide is the nearest International airport
> for many thousands of KM’s

Nearest to what?

JC said :

Yeah right, download all 24 meg of the report before sounding off! That is very un riot-ACT like!

Downloading it’s not the problem, it’s reading it all. I just went through and read some of the more interesting idea’s. As a very frequent user of the Canberra airport I have an interest in what it’s doing.

Old news. This won’t happen. They will be unable to shift the ILS to the left away from the current flight for approach to rwy35. Go Goulburn, I hope they build the second airport there.

This is what Snow had planned right from the start, before he started up on his uncontrolled building kick.

Get a VFT link to Sydney, and have Canberra airport as the alternative Sydney international and freight hub. And there it is, in the 2009 plan.

Yeah right, download all 24 meg of the report before sounding off! That is very un riot-ACT like!

Good luck to them turning into a proper international airport. But I hate to point out to them that us Canberrans already have a single hop choice from Canberra to LA, it’s called Sydney \ Melbourne. Personally I’d rather fly to LA from either Sydney \ Melbourne than having my first international leg only to Auckland. Given there is only one Qantas flight from Auckland to LA (and yet 2 from Melbourne, and from memory at least 3 from Sydney per day) it would make far more sense to tranfer in either of these Cities.

I’m personally curious as to the viability of direct international flights from Canberra. We have a population of a little over 300,000, and I doubt that a large number of people travel overseas on a daily basis, so without a viable method to link the outer suburbs of Sydney to Canberra (in such a way that it’s faster to get to Canberra airport than Sydney airport) I don’t see direct international services as been overly successful.

Also lest we forget that Adelaide is the nearest International airport for many thousands of KM’s, so even ignoring the fact they have 3 times the population of Canberra, for most people in SA getting to an alternative international airport is not as much of an option as it is here in the Canberra region.

That said, a direct flight (on a half decent plane, I’m personally a fan of the 747-400’s, none of this 737-300 crap that Qantas likes to fly to Auckland) to NZ would be nice, as I don’t mind the transfer in Melbourne to get to Auckland, but coming back home I’m eager just to get here in as shorter amount of time as possible.

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