5 ms·

I feel like more international airports in SF and LA would be much more useful. More locations to touch-down in, less crowded airports. Getting from LA to SF i

I feel like more international airports in SF and LA would be much more useful. More locations to touch-down in, less crowded airports. Getting from LA to SF is already quite easy travel wise - a 1 hr flight. It's getting to and from the airport and how crowded they are that's most annoying. More airports would help solve both of those.

whyenot 9y ago
There aren't a lot of good places to put them, at least in the Bay Area.
- JumpCrisscross 9y ago
  > There aren't a lot of good places to put [airports] The Bay Area is mostly low-density sprawl. Pretty much anywhere is a fine place to put it. The problem is the veto rights small groups of people have over projects with regional utility, i.e. there's no way for 9 cities to over-rule 1 city for something that benefits them all.
- mchannon 9y ago
  Concord has an airport that used to have daily nonstops. A plane crash into a mall and assorted NIMBY's have closed it to daily scheduled commercial traffic, but it's still perfectly capable. Watsonville has an airport with plenty of room to better serve south bay and Santa Cruz. Moffett, of course. Even San Carlos has an airport with a fair amount of general aviation traffic. Hayward Executive always looms when I fly into Oakland- it looks more than big enough. Livermore, Novato, Palo Alto (busiest general aviation airport in the country), the list goes on. Frankly just getting Concord back into the act would be tremendously difficult. My definition of "good places" differs somewhat from those in power, but that may slowly be changing.
  - acchow 9y ago
    All of your suggestions are further from San Francisco than SFO is...
    - randyrand 9y ago
      It would still make SFO less crowded.
      - acchow 9y ago
        What part of SFO crowds makes SF<->LA slow? I've always sped through security in 15 minutes at any time of day. Surely there must be security clearance time data available somewhere.
        mchannon 9y ago
        When SF fogs in (which is far more often than you'd expect), they close a runway. As a result, you experience crowding in SF even before your SF-bound plane leaves the gate or takes off due to air traffic control ground holds. Epic delays then cascade through the rest of the air traffic system, delaying wherever that plane was supposed to go next. This could all be alleviated if they moved one their runways further apart. I get that NIMBY's won't let them fill in more of the bay to achieve this (c'mon guys, what's another 40 feet or so?). What I don't get is how it doesn't seem to occur to anyone to move the terminal and gate structures back "west" to make this space. After substantial renovations on Terminals 1 and 2 for what is still mostly a ranch-style airport, you'd figure they could do something to free up some space. And don't get me started on SF's slowmobile, taking you to the rental car center in 10 minutes or more.
      - ZanyProgrammer 9y ago
        Do you know how long it'd take to drive from Watsonville to Market Street?
        rollingpebbles 9y ago
        1 hr 45 minutes without traffic 3 hrs peak times on the weekend 3-4 hrs rush-hour commute
- valuearb 9y ago
  Both high speed trains and airports have the same problem, land rights. If it's solvable for trains it's far more easily solvable for airports.
joelrunyon 9y ago
I feel like that wouldn't fix the issue in such close proximity locations. Flying isn't optimal for that type of distance (less than 400 miles). You could lay track and get more volume on some high speed trains with comparable times (if you take into account the time for arrival / security clearance / etc at airports), the train could even be faster. Land rights are obviously the issue (esp in california), but adding more airports as a transit option for end points that are less than 500 miles doesn't seem ideal at all.
- randyrand 9y ago
  how is it not optimal? its 1/3rd the travel time and $75 each way.
  - ingenuous2 9y ago
    Flying is a lot more time spend on overhead.
    - randyrand 9y ago
      it doesnt have to be that way.
      - ingenuous2 9y ago
        Agreed, but now we are talking political problems. And when we talk political problems, it's important to consider the base economic cost, all included.
    - valuearb 9y ago
      Security overhead should be the same for high speed trains.
      - serhei 9y ago
        God, I hope not. It makes zero sense to have TSA theater for high speed intercity trains but not local public transportation, because the latter has far greater passenger volumes. If terrorists wanted to cause mass chaos using a public transit system, they would go for local subway and commuter train lines.
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
dajt 9y ago
Airports take a lot more space than train stations. Living near an airport is horrible due to noise. Trains are a lot quieter than planes. You can fit more people on a train than on a plane. You can load that train with more people a lot more quickly than a plane. Train stations can be underground if necessary. You'll have less pollution from the train. One downside pointed out below, it seems there is a problem with building the rail line. You need to train up high speed rail engineers, create the manufacturing base to make the thing and maintain it, and probably won't have another in the whole country. Or maybe one other in the north east.
- humanrebar 9y ago
  There's effort to build high speed rail in Texas as well: http://www.texascentral.com/project/ http://www.texascentral.com/project/
mistursinistur 9y ago
HSR and "more airports" are not substitutes. Airports don't address the need for capacity on trips shorter than the SF-LA route (e.g. Fresno-SJ or Bakersfield-LA). Rail lines do address this kind of infill transportation. More airports by themselves don't make it easier to get "to and from the airport" -- for this, you need more highway capacity. Most calls to build more airports tend to ignore this fact and its associated costs. (Rail stations, on the other hand, are distributed along a line and don't induce the kind of traffic congestion at a single point that you'd see with an airport node.) The real alternative to HSR is a massive expansion of the highway system, including I-5, and more airports. I would like to see critics of HSR propose a plan that addresses both needs.
- philipov 9y ago
  > (Rail stations, on the other hand, are distributed along a line and don't induce the kind of traffic congestion at a single point that you'd see with an airport node.) Ever been to Grand Central Station in NYC at rush hour?
  - TheCoelacanth 9y ago
    Grand Central Station handles close to three times the number of passengers that the busiest airport in the world handles while taking up less than a third of the land area.
rabboRubble 9y ago
Airports might be more useful if the security theater were eliminated. The shorter the flight the greater proportion of time I spend not traveling anywhere (i.e. standing in the TSA line). If I can avoid the TSA, god help me I will.
rollingpebbles 9y ago
For major airports, LA has Burbank and LAX. In fact, avoid LAX where possible. The other issue is LA is so spread out that that's its fundamental problem; it needs much faster, more pervasive and efficient public transport that ties into national and international travel.

whyenot 9y ago

There aren't a lot of good places to put them, at least in the Bay Area.

JumpCrisscross 9y ago
> There aren't a lot of good places to put [airports] The Bay Area is mostly low-density sprawl. Pretty much anywhere is a fine place to put it. The problem is the veto rights small groups of people have over projects with regional utility, i.e. there's no way for 9 cities to over-rule 1 city for something that benefits them all.
mchannon 9y ago
Concord has an airport that used to have daily nonstops. A plane crash into a mall and assorted NIMBY's have closed it to daily scheduled commercial traffic, but it's still perfectly capable. Watsonville has an airport with plenty of room to better serve south bay and Santa Cruz. Moffett, of course. Even San Carlos has an airport with a fair amount of general aviation traffic. Hayward Executive always looms when I fly into Oakland- it looks more than big enough. Livermore, Novato, Palo Alto (busiest general aviation airport in the country), the list goes on. Frankly just getting Concord back into the act would be tremendously difficult. My definition of "good places" differs somewhat from those in power, but that may slowly be changing.
- acchow 9y ago
  All of your suggestions are further from San Francisco than SFO is...
  - randyrand 9y ago
    It would still make SFO less crowded.
    - acchow 9y ago
      What part of SFO crowds makes SF<->LA slow? I've always sped through security in 15 minutes at any time of day. Surely there must be security clearance time data available somewhere.
      - mchannon 9y ago
        When SF fogs in (which is far more often than you'd expect), they close a runway. As a result, you experience crowding in SF even before your SF-bound plane leaves the gate or takes off due to air traffic control ground holds. Epic delays then cascade through the rest of the air traffic system, delaying wherever that plane was supposed to go next. This could all be alleviated if they moved one their runways further apart. I get that NIMBY's won't let them fill in more of the bay to achieve this (c'mon guys, what's another 40 feet or so?). What I don't get is how it doesn't seem to occur to anyone to move the terminal and gate structures back "west" to make this space. After substantial renovations on Terminals 1 and 2 for what is still mostly a ranch-style airport, you'd figure they could do something to free up some space. And don't get me started on SF's slowmobile, taking you to the rental car center in 10 minutes or more.
    - ZanyProgrammer 9y ago
      Do you know how long it'd take to drive from Watsonville to Market Street?
      - rollingpebbles 9y ago
        1 hr 45 minutes without traffic 3 hrs peak times on the weekend 3-4 hrs rush-hour commute
valuearb 9y ago
Both high speed trains and airports have the same problem, land rights. If it's solvable for trains it's far more easily solvable for airports.

joelrunyon 9y ago

I feel like that wouldn't fix the issue in such close proximity locations. Flying isn't optimal for that type of distance (less than 400 miles). You could lay track and get more volume on some high speed trains with comparable times (if you take into account the time for arrival / security clearance / etc at airports), the train could even be faster. Land rights are obviously the issue (esp in california), but adding more airports as a transit option for end points that are less than 500 miles doesn't seem ideal at all.

randyrand 9y ago
how is it not optimal? its 1/3rd the travel time and $75 each way.
- ingenuous2 9y ago
  Flying is a lot more time spend on overhead.
  - randyrand 9y ago
    it doesnt have to be that way.
    - ingenuous2 9y ago
      Agreed, but now we are talking political problems. And when we talk political problems, it's important to consider the base economic cost, all included.
  - valuearb 9y ago
    Security overhead should be the same for high speed trains.
    - serhei 9y ago
      God, I hope not. It makes zero sense to have TSA theater for high speed intercity trains but not local public transportation, because the latter has far greater passenger volumes. If terrorists wanted to cause mass chaos using a public transit system, they would go for local subway and commuter train lines.

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]

dajt 9y ago

Airports take a lot more space than train stations. Living near an airport is horrible due to noise. Trains are a lot quieter than planes. You can fit more people on a train than on a plane. You can load that train with more people a lot more quickly than a plane. Train stations can be underground if necessary. You'll have less pollution from the train. One downside pointed out below, it seems there is a problem with building the rail line. You need to train up high speed rail engineers, create the manufacturing base to make the thing and maintain it, and probably won't have another in the whole country. Or maybe one other in the north east.

humanrebar 9y ago
There's effort to build high speed rail in Texas as well: http://www.texascentral.com/project/ http://www.texascentral.com/project/

mistursinistur 9y ago

HSR and "more airports" are not substitutes. Airports don't address the need for capacity on trips shorter than the SF-LA route (e.g. Fresno-SJ or Bakersfield-LA). Rail lines do address this kind of infill transportation. More airports by themselves don't make it easier to get "to and from the airport" -- for this, you need more highway capacity. Most calls to build more airports tend to ignore this fact and its associated costs. (Rail stations, on the other hand, are distributed along a line and don't induce the kind of traffic congestion at a single point that you'd see with an airport node.) The real alternative to HSR is a massive expansion of the highway system, including I-5, and more airports. I would like to see critics of HSR propose a plan that addresses both needs.

philipov 9y ago
> (Rail stations, on the other hand, are distributed along a line and don't induce the kind of traffic congestion at a single point that you'd see with an airport node.) Ever been to Grand Central Station in NYC at rush hour?
- TheCoelacanth 9y ago
  Grand Central Station handles close to three times the number of passengers that the busiest airport in the world handles while taking up less than a third of the land area.

rabboRubble 9y ago

Airports might be more useful if the security theater were eliminated. The shorter the flight the greater proportion of time I spend not traveling anywhere (i.e. standing in the TSA line). If I can avoid the TSA, god help me I will.

rollingpebbles 9y ago

For major airports, LA has Burbank and LAX. In fact, avoid LAX where possible. The other issue is LA is so spread out that that's its fundamental problem; it needs much faster, more pervasive and efficient public transport that ties into national and international travel.