23 ms·

Why is it so hard to build an airport?

• bell-cot 3y ago
  Long & interesting...but a pretty good tl;dr; is: "NIMBY's are why we can't build any major infrastructure any more".
  • polycaster 3y ago
    For every other non-native speaker like me, lmgtfu: NIMBY (/ˈnɪmbi/, or nimby), an acronym for the phrase "not in my back yard", is a characterization of opposition by residents to proposed infrastructure developments in their local area, as well as support for strict land use regulations.
    • crazypyro 3y ago
      In simple terms, people want airports, but nobody wants an airport near their house.
      • anonzzzies 3y ago
        And the state really shouldn’t care about these few. Probably rich enough to move but don’t want because blah blah.
        • arrowsmith 3y ago
          "Few"? Almost no-one wants to live next door to an airport.
          • codeulike 3y ago
            I think they meant: For any given site, theres proportionally 'few' people that would be disadvantaged
            • anonzzzies 3y ago
              Yep. You cannot just put them just anywhere, so if a location has been found and some people don’t like it, well, that happens. Like others said; everyone wants to fly but they don’t want the bad side. Fine but it happens.
          • egeozcan 3y ago
            But almost everybody wants access to one. This is coming from someone who lived a a kilometer away from the main airport of Istanbul at the time[0], for a long time. I was really disappointed when it was closed as the benefit of access was 100x better than the noise cost. Of course, everybody has different priorities and getting a huge noise source in your backyard after you decide to call a piece of land your home would be frustrating. [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atat%C3%BCrk_Airport https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atat%C3%BCrk_Airport - used to be a very busy airport.
            • ghaff 3y ago
              Eh. As someone who used to travel a lot living 50 miles from the airport was a bit of an inconvenience but certainly one I could live with. Just took a bit longer to get to the airport. I wouldn't have wanted to live next to it.
              • arrowsmith 3y ago
                Yeah me too, I live an hour's drive from my nearest airport and that's more than close enough - mainly because that airport is London Heathrow, meaning I can catch a flight to basically anywhere in the world from it. Living close to a small, poorly-connected airport would be far less convenient than living further away from a major airport.
          • jojobas 3y ago
            If this was true, areas around airports would have been non-residential or at least stupidly penalized in land value. They don't seem to be. In fact when you live close to an airport you stop caring, perhaps not unlike smoke alarm chirps but without danger to your life.
          • theultdev 3y ago
            The people who work at them do.
      • rob74 3y ago
        ...same as with major roads, train lines, power lines, power plants (including but not limited to nuclear and wind), affordable (i.e. high density) housing etc. etc.
        • Symbiote 3y ago
          Not all of that. Railways are relatively quiet and very useful, someone living near one will might well use it very frequently.
          • monknomo 3y ago
            I have lived near a freight railway, and I assure you they are not quiet
            • Symbiote 3y ago
              I lived near several 80%-passenger railways in England, and they are not silent but they are quieter and less annoying than roads. Most of the trains were electric, including the freight trains.
              • monknomo 3y ago
                US experience is different, with big diesels and primarily freight. I'd rate them as similarly annoying to a divided highway, but I suppose it depends on the region and the specifics
                • Symbiote 3y ago
                  There are a million train spotter videos on YouTube, and given the audience I'm unlikely to find one filmed in someone's back garden. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7-wyR316550 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7-wyR316550 (The navy blue trains with yellow 'noses' are high-speed commuter trains, the dark blue, gold and white ones are the high-speed trains to France, the plain white ones are normal-speed commuter trains to London.) I think the continuously welded rails are the biggest improvement, as they remove most of the "clackety-clack". Instead you get the "hiss", but that's only noticeable from really close.
      • jojobas 3y ago
        People buy homes near existing airports with very small discounts for the inconvenience.
    • codeulike 3y ago
      what does lmgtfu mean?
      • magnio 3y ago
        For every other non-native speaker like me, ttbomk: lmgtfu, let me Google that for you.
        • codeulike 3y ago
          Can you do an eli5 of what ttbomk means?
          • AnimalMuppet 3y ago
            "To The Best Of My Knowledge". (I had to Google it, too.) Or was that an ironic reply?
            • polycaster 3y ago
              afaict that was serious
      • richardwhiuk 3y ago
        Let Me Google That For U (usually LMGTFY)
    • bradley13 3y ago
      Your definition is accurate, but I think it is incomplete. The stereotypical NIMBY doesn't want something in their backyard, but they still want the advantages of it existing. They want it to be place in someone else's backyard. People opposing airport construction still want to fly. They just want someone else to have the noise.
      • Gare 3y ago
        > People opposing airport construction still want to fly. Maybe they do in America. But in Europe there's not much need/want of frequent flying for the average citizen.
        • bradley13 3y ago
          In 2022 (according to Statista) there were around 500 million passenger-flights, compared to the 800 million in the US. Accounting for population differences, that means that Europeans fly around half as often as USAians. Yes, that is less, but it is still a lot.
      • floxy 3y ago
        >People opposing airport construction still want to fly. In this age of big data, is there a way to quantify this? My gut feeling is that this is a very heavily Pareto-like distribution, with maybe say 5% of the population accounting for 90% of the passenger miles or flight segments. With the majority of the people flying a handful of times (or less) in their life. And even then, "want" is probably a strong qualifier, since I'd also think the majority of the flight miles are for business travel. You may "want" to keep your job, so you have to fly sometimes. If we had to drastically curtail flying in the future, I'm guessing that not too many people are going to regret missing out on the business meetings to Detroit in January, compared to say, vacations in Florida.
    • deathanatos 3y ago
      > as well as support for strict land use regulations. Perhaps superficially, but no, not necessarily. A large part of the NIMBYism seen in places like SF is opposition to projects that do conform to land use regulation. The entire "by-right" movement is that, if the proposed project is legal (it meets zoning, codes, etc.), then it should be permitted to build. NIMBYs opposed that. YIMBYs mostly aren't opposed to land use regulations, either. (Wanting to change the zoning of an area, or changes the specifics of the regulations is not "against land use regulations", or treating them any less strictly.)
  • deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
  • II2II 3y ago
    The term NIMBY is thrown around too much. Yes, there are far too many cases where NIMBYism is taken too far. On the other hand, there are legitimate cases. I lived in a small, fly-in community for a while. I was very close to the airport, and some people had houses within a few hundred meters of the runway. There was noise, but it was managable because there were only a handful of flights per day (none at night) and there were no jets (the airport could handle them, but it was only intended for emergencies). But that is not the type of airport people are talking about here. They are talking about large airports with constant traffic during most hours of the day and night, with the planes typically being larger and much louder. These are the sort of airports that people can expect a significant loss in the quality of life from. I would expect people to be vocal about it.
    • revlolz 3y ago
      In my experience as soon as the airport grew to the next stage. Local enforcement agencies begin staging out of the airport and then everyone gets to hear when the sheriff deputy's are getting their night flight hours in. I'm in agreement with you, calling someone a nimby for not wanting an airport near them is unreasonable.
    • ghaff 3y ago
      Yeah, NIMBY gets used way too much for I want something and screw anyone who has negative externalities as a result.
  • revlolz 3y ago
    The data the author presents spells out that aircraft are still twice as loud as passenger cars at their quietest. The majority of traffic through smaller municipal airports is very loud propeller aircraft. I don't believe it makes anyone a nimby to not want a freaking airport nearby. I don't think anyone should have to live with such disturbances without voting and ample regulations. It should be incredibly difficult to get airports built. The commerce benefits to the town/city come at the direct expense of health and quality living of residents. The article fixates on noise pollution, but what about exposure to cancerous chemicals? Actual pollution from emissions? Traffic consequences? It's not just some affluent boomer's view or lawn getting impacted. Personally, I never want to live in vicinity of an airport ever again in my life.
  • thaumasiotes 3y ago
    It's a strange piece. Most of the obstacles to airport construction that it describes are nullified by the other obstacles that it also describes. Airports can't handle the liability they incur because imposing airport noise on housing is a regulatory taking. But also, if you build an airport at such a remove from the city that no housing suffers, housing gets built out toward the airport. Except of course, it's not a taking if you were there first. If the housing comes to the airport, there's no liability. Also, airports don't work without being close to their city. When they tried to build Mirabel airport 35 miles from Montreal, it withered and died from being too far away. This is transparent nonsense; 35 miles is not even a long distance. The airport you use if you live in Santa Cruz is SFO, more than 60 miles away. (There is a closer airport in San Jose, which doesn't go to convenient locations.) It takes a long time to travel between any major airport and its city. HKG is separated from Hong Kong by the ocean. A 40 minute drive to the airport is considerably better than is typical now! If Mirabel withered and died from being 35 miles outside Montreal, that can only be because Montreal's air transport needs were already met.
    • michael1999 3y ago
      Agree. 35 miles was a reasonable buffer for anticipated growth. Mirabel died because immigration patterns shifted from Montréal to Toronto as a result of the FLQ and the 1980 secession referendum.
    • throwaway2037 3y ago
      > HKG is separated from Hong Kong by the ocean. Most would say the Victoria Harbour. Do you say that Manhattan is separated from Brooklyn by the ocean? No.
  • bradley13 3y ago
    Sure, this is classic NIMBYism. I understand: we live in a very quiet area, and would certainly oppose something that would dramatically change that. However, what I do not understand are the people who move next to an existing airport, and then complain about the noise. We used to live near a major, international airport. Planes flew overhead. That noise was implicitly factored into the price we paid, and we certainly had zero room to complain. But lots of people did anyway, soaking up lots of time and money that would have been better spent elsewhere.
    • acdha 3y ago
      When I lived in San Diego, I worked near the military airport now known as MCAS Miramar. My coworkers and I were honestly stunned by the people who sued after moving in nearby claiming that they had no idea the place they filmed Top Gun would be that noisy.
      • throwaway2037 3y ago
        A better idea: Tear down the old MCAS Miramar and build housing and parks. Rebuild the airbase in Nevada or the California desert. Yes, it was bad planning to allow so many residences to be built near an airbase, but too late to undo it now.
        • acdha 3y ago
          You’re welcome to lobby your congress members for that but until the military says they’re moving it’s a mistake to buy a house there if you can’t live with the noise.
    • ryandrake 3y ago
      This is called “coming to the nuisance”[1] and in most jurisdictions the complainers have no case. I’m sure it doesn’t stop them from trying though. Reid-Hillview airport[2] in San Jose has been there since the 1930’s, long before anyone who currently lives there, yet is constantly under attack by residents and threatened with closing. 1: https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/coming_to_the_nuisance https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/coming_to_the_nuisance 2: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reid–Hillview_Airport https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reid–Hillview_Airport
• ZanyProgrammer 3y ago
  General aviation is in decline, so really there's no need to build new airports.
  • class3shock 3y ago
    Based on what? It got hammered in covid but is back in a big way now.
    • ZanyProgrammer 3y ago
      general aviation, small airports have been closing down for years. It’s not a growing hobby.
      • class3shock 3y ago
        TIL general aviation = non-commercial civilian aviation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_aviation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_aviation
      • filleduchaos 3y ago
        I mean, in that case the original point doesn't quite make any sense. The article is very clearly discussing the larger airports associated with commercial aviation.
      • alt227 3y ago
        So by general aviation, you mean flying lessons?
  • cse463 3y ago
    I think air travel is becoming more popular actually.
• soared 3y ago
  Very interesting read - would love to see something similar on why Denver’s airport rebuild/expansion has been such a disaster. 2 years after the start, a 34 year $650MM+ contract was ended - https://denverite.com/2023/04/21/dia-great-hall-audit/ https://denverite.com/2023/04/21/dia-great-hall-audit/
  • Beijinger 3y ago
    2 years? Let the guys in Berlin handle it for 10 years and then you dream of Denver guys.
• xrd 3y ago
  Very interesting to see how the noise of jet engines declined significantly. While reading the article I kept thinking, it feels like investing in noise reduction would really pay off, and then a few paragraphs later, there it was. I'm also intrigued by small airports, like the one in Rio, Santos Dumont. The shortest runways in the world. If you could reduce noise and control pollution, it is very nice to have an airport accessible by mass transit, like in Portland, Oregon. Feels like a sweet spot for government intervention.
  • eitally 3y ago
    Some small airports made sense at the time they were built, but no more (either because planes are bigger now or because construction around the airport was not adequately restricted in ensuing decades. Congonhas in Sao Paulo is an example of this, where it can only handle smaller domestic flights now because of the way the city has grown around it. Here's a satellite photo: https://static.wixstatic.com/media/a27d24_a65c83caab794facb0d31c09a448e9ee~mv2.jpg/v1/fit/w_1000,h_1000,al_c,q_80/file.jpg https://static.wixstatic.com/media/a27d24_a65c83caab794facb0... (it would be like when you're landing at Reagan airport in DC and descending over the water... except that it's skyscrapers)
    • rob74 3y ago
      ...and here's a story about Congonhas airport: https://admiralcloudberg.medium.com/culture-of-chaos-the-crash-of-tam-airlines-flight-3054-991a204f0578 https://admiralcloudberg.medium.com/culture-of-chaos-the-cra... which reminds me: maybe people don't oppose airports just because of the noise, maybe they're also worried about plane crashes (I know the chance is low, but probably much higher for those living near an airport than for the average passenger).
      • eitally 3y ago
        I have several Brazilian friends (mostly in/around Campinas) in SP state who refuse to fly in/out of Congonhas because of that risk. Thankfully now Viracopa is even more convenient and nicer. Honestly, the irritating thing for Americans flying to Brazil is the frequent need to fly into either Rio or SP and then domestically transfer to the other, due to paucity of flight options [at reasonable prices].
• throwaway4good 3y ago
  I don't have the numbers but I bet if you picked examples from China instead the story would be different: It is much easier to build today than it was in the past in terms of the actual building work. What is getting harder and more time consuming in certain places is the regulation and the processes around building a large piece of infrastructure.
• dkdbejwi383 3y ago
  The new Nancy Bird Walton airport in western Sydney is interesting. The existing airport is very close to the CBD and residential areas, and completely hemmed in by those and the bay it sits next to, so has little room to expand. It's also subject to a strict curfew being so close to residential areas. The new airport is huge, being built at an impressive speed, and is going to be on a new metro line (which strangely doesn't link up to the existing metro lines in Sydney, and won't have a direct non-stop rail link). It's being built in a location that's currently "the middle of nowhere" so that it has scope to expand (they're currently building about half of what's already been planned for).
  • showerst 3y ago
    Sounds very similar to Dulles in Washington DC. We eventually ran a rail line to it, and it eventually wasn’t the middle of nowhere any more. Hopefully the rail link takes less than 60 years in your case =)
    • skeeter2020 3y ago
      Similar to our Airport in Calgary, AB. They built a tunnel under a new runway as part of their expansion, including specific right-of-way for rail extension from the downtown, and still there's nothing connecting it. Meanwhile they're going to drive a train right through the downtown core, connecting a light industrial area to the south with a ritzy residential area to the north, rather than the relatively easy and inexpensive line extension to the airport. I think a requirement of being a world-class city is you can take direct mass transit from the airport to the downtown core, but not here.
    • rmccue 3y ago
      Sydney Metro is being expanded out to it; construction's already underway, and is targeted at opening at the same time as the airport: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Western_Sydney_Airport_line https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Western_Sydney_Airport_line
      • dkdbejwi383 3y ago
• badgersnake 3y ago
  It’s nice that they’ve improved the noise issue, but there are a bunch of other environmental problems with airport construction and aviation generally which have not been solved and there doesn’t seem much interest in solving. It’s probably for the best it’s hard to build airports whilst that remains the case.
• Cheer2171 3y ago
  > As air travel greatly expanded in the 1960s and 70s, there were “no more virulent domestic conflicts… in the advanced industrial world than those over airport construction.” I can't keep reading this article seriously. Civil rights movements are the obvious domestic conflict at the time, but even in transportation this is wrong. There were huge conflicts in "highway revolts" [1] or conflicts over suburbanization, urban renewal, and how much of the city to turn over to cars. The kind of thing Robert Moses started but governments around the developed world were doing in these decades. Governments siezed entire neighborhoods deemed to be "slums" to build a highway so suburban commuters could have an easier commute downtown. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Highway_revolt https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Highway_revolt
  • deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
• jorisboris 3y ago
  When building https://randomairport.onrender.com/ https://randomairport.onrender.com/ I noticed that US and Euro airports always look very different Somehow US airports always seem to be surrounded by densely populated residential areas, even in the direction of the runways, while Euro airports don’t seem to have this problem. And secondly Us airports always seem to take huge plots of land compared to Euro airports. My assumption is that Us cities are just bigger, both in population and in the amount of surface they claim (lower population density)
  • mc32 3y ago
    Most US airports were built early before we had the current population. When they began as airports, they were mostly on the periphery, with exceptions.
  • DarkNova6 3y ago
    Actually, apart from the largest US cities your average european city is larger. The US doesn't even have 10 cities which are above 1 million people.
    • mc32 3y ago
      That’s only if you count within strict city limits. Metro areas, not to mention MSAs consists of larger pops.
      • alephxyz 3y ago
        Right. That factoid is only true because cities in the US tend to avoid mergers. The US had 62 statistical areas with a pop. over a million in 2020 (plus San Juan, PR).
    • Beijinger 3y ago
      "The US doesn't even have 10 cities which are above 1 million people. reply" I did not believe this and googled it. It is true. 1 Million would be tiny in China. Province.
• po 3y ago
  If you fly into Tokyo you might come in via Narita Airport (NRT) which is actually quite a distance out from tokyo. Violence is extremely uncommon in modern Japan but NRT was the site of violent resistance over several decades. Opposition forces killed several police officers, rioted on several occasions and constructed a giant 200 ft tower to interfere with test flights. Hundreds of acts of vandalism have occurred over the years, even into recent times. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sanrizuka_Struggle https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sanrizuka_Struggle
  • blamazon 3y ago
    The next couple airports in Japan to be built were built over water on artificial islands: Kansai International: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kansai_International_Airport https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kansai_International_Airport Kobe: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kobe_Airport https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kobe_Airport Kitakyushu: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kitakyushu_Airport https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kitakyushu_Airport Chubu International: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chubu_Centrair_International_Airport https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chubu_Centrair_International_A...
    • thechao 3y ago
      I flew into Kansai in 2003(?), with a J-rail foreigner pass and fell asleep on the Shinkansen (which I wasn't supposed to be on). 9 hours & ~1100 miles of train rides later I ended up at my buddy's place in Tokushima. It cost 110 yen, locally. That was the first time I appreciated how hard it is to navigate the modern world if you're illiterate.
  • Solvency 3y ago
    [flagged]
    • potsandpans 3y ago
      What's your point?
      • 3y ago
• tzs 3y ago
  My understanding is that electric airplanes are much quieter but batteries do not have a high enough energy density to make an electric airliner with more than very short range. I wonder if it would be feasible to make some kind of hybrid that uses electric engines for takeoff and landing and regular jet engines for the rest of the flight?
  • slaymaker1907 3y ago
    Largescale use of electric planes still seem like sci-fi for the time being, but you did get me thinking that airships would likely produce a lot less noise pollution than planes.
  • ijustlovemath 3y ago
    That would add massive complexity and excess weight (lugging around the battery and all the fuel), which makes it a nonstarter
  • alephxyz 3y ago
    A 3m wide fan spinning at 3000RPM for takeoff will be loud wether it's being driven by a gas turbine or an electrical motor.
• subzidion 3y ago
  There's been discussions where the "next" airport should go in the Seattle region, and the consensus is that nobody wants it. The State Legislature created a commission to try and identify some potential sites, but the public backlash was so great that they ended up submitting it's final report with no actual recommendation. One of the interesting ideas (that was proposed even back when SEA was adding it's third runway) is to run high-speed rail to Moses Lake Airport in Central Washington and just expand there. I'm doubtful it happens, since that means building a major airport _and_ a new train.
  • perlgeek 3y ago
    > One of the interesting ideas [...] is to run high-speed rail to Moses Lake Airport in Central Washington and just expand there. While reading this article, I thought about something like that too. Build an airport quite a while away from the big city, and provide a high-speed, maybe even maglev train there. Make it free for customers. Also, make it very inconvenient for passengers and staff to approach the airport by other means, only allow cargo delivery there through the road network. This disincentives people from e.g. building hotels close to the airport, which would then attract further settlement, which would ultimately lead to noise complaints again.
    • Dalewyn 3y ago
      The aforementioned setup nearly always means the closer airport ends up getting upgraded later to meet convenience demands, leaving the newer-but-inconvenient airport out to dry. See: Haneda (HND) vs. Narita (NRT) in Tokyo, Itami (ITM) vs. Kansai (KIX) in Osaka, etc.
      • ghaff 3y ago
        Didn't happen with Denver or Hong Kong.
        • masklinn 3y ago
          Or Paris.
• crazymoka 3y ago
  I liked the design of the circular run way airport.
• rokhayakebe 3y ago
  How about more night take offs? Many US airports "close" at 12AM.
  • filleduchaos 3y ago
    Somehow I doubt that the solution to "airports cause too much noise pollution" is "let's stage more of the noisiest aircraft operations right when people are sleeping".
• rob74 3y ago
  > And an airport can’t be too far from a city and remain useful, since travelers need to access the city, workers need to be within commuting distance, and so on. In Canada, Mirabel airport was built 35 miles from Montreal, surrounded by a 79,000 acre buffer zone to prevent any issues of incompatible land use. Mirabel was expected to replace Dorval (today Montreal-Trudeau) as Canada’s main eastern airport, but, in part because of its long distance from the city, this never happened, and Mirabel stopped serving passenger traffic in 2004. Another relatively new airport built far from the city it serves is Munich airport, located around 33 km (20 miles) from the city center, opened in 1992. The two major candidates for "relatively sparsely populated area" when the airport was planned (back in the 1960s) were a swampy area north of Munich (Erdinger Moos) and a forest to the south (Hofoldinger Forst). They picked the swamp, which leads to frequent fog problems. And they solved the problem of the old airport competing against the new one by simply closing the old airport (the company operating the new one is the same as for the old one, so no protests there). Some equipment was even moved from the old airport to the new one in an overnight relocation. But, as the 30 years from planning to opening show, even this remote location was not without conflicts. And, more than 30 years after the opening, there is still no fast train to the airport. The Munich-Nuremberg high speed railway line could have been routed by the airport, but (according to rumors) this wasn't done to protect the Nuremberg airport. Then there were plans for a maglev train (Transrapid) which were cancelled in the early 2000s. Currently the plan is for an Express S-Bahn line, but since the S-Bahn tunnel in the city center can't accommodate any more trains, this will only be possible when the second S-Bahn tunnel is completed (the date for that keeps getting pushed back, currently it's 2035).
  • amadeuspagel 3y ago
    > Then there were plans for a maglev train (Transrapid) which were cancelled in the early 2000s. Edmund Stoiber explained these plans in a legendary speech: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f7TboWvVERU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f7TboWvVERU
• ofrzeta 3y ago
  In Munich/Germany plans for a new airport (as a successor to München/Riem) started in the 60s. Construction started in 1980. The airport went into operation in 1992. Obviously the people in the Erdinger Moos didn't like the decision to build the airport there and many lawsuits ensued that lead to a stop of the construction for three years. In the end and the last lawsuit I think there was no option of another appeal so that was that. In the end I think it just came down to a question of national interest where you can't have some individuals stop a project like this because an airport is needed in the area and it has to be built somewhere.
  • michaelt 3y ago
    > you can't have some individuals stop a project like this because an airport is needed in the area and it has to be built somewhere. Environmentalist opponents of airport construction will often disagree with that premise - for example, pointing to the rise of videoconferencing and remote working.
• Kon-Peki 3y ago
  As the article points out, expanding the two airports in Chicago are out of the question. And because it is more or less impossible to build a new airport, they are planning to build a "new" airport. Which means that this tiny little thing [1][2], which handles a dozen or two Cessna flights per day, is intended to "grow" into a 4000 acre major international airport. When it grows to its full footprint, the western edge will be the railroad right of way that carries one of the Chicago commuter rail lines and the Amtrak route that serves the Chicago-UIUC-Memphis-New Orleans line. Plus an existing Interstate with existing interchanges a mile west of that. Very little infrastructure is needed outside of the airport boundaries. Still a lot of opposition though, and years behind schedule. [1] https://www.google.com/maps/@41.3774859,-87.676198,14.2z?entry=ttu https://www.google.com/maps/@41.3774859,-87.676198,14.2z?ent... [2] https://www.bultfield.com https://www.bultfield.com
  • ryandrake 3y ago
    Airport expansion is almost as difficult as building new. In my neck of the woods, some have suggested that the (primarily general aviation) Livermore airport would make a great “reliever” airport for the Bay Area jets, but this is constantly being fought by residents, mostly people in posh Pleasanton, which is on the flight path. It’s understandable that people don’t want more jets flying above their homes, yet, East Bay travelers would benefit the most from such development.
    • jimberlage 3y ago
      "...yet, East Bay travelers would benefit the most from such development." True, but who do you personally know who would trade a small benefit every time they fly for a moderate nuisance at their house? I'm not sure even pilots would ask for the flight benefit.
    • Kon-Peki 3y ago
      Good point. The Livermore airport is pretty hemmed in already; it looks like it would be pretty difficult to do much expansion and you have all those houses that are already under the runway approaches. I'm guessing that when you say "Bay Area jets", you are talking private jets, not 737s, right? In the case of the South Suburban Chicago Airport, noise is less of an issue. People don't want traffic and they don't want farms turned into warehouses and light industrial. And then the housing built for the thousands of jobs created. It's essentially opposition to sprawl, which I think is a pretty legitimate concern. I think the state could try to do things to help prevent it from being as bad as it could be (forest preserves, open space, minimum zoning, etc). Though I don't think they want to, because the alternative to this airport is that the one just across the border in Indiana would get enlarged, leading to all that economic development going to a different state.
• bambax 3y ago
  There's this classic French movie from the 70s, "Nous irons tous au paradis", where a group of friends buy a house really cheap. They can't believe their luck until they realize the house is next to an international airport (they visited the house when the air traffic controllers were on strike). Here's the scene: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w2aFksnIghQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w2aFksnIghQ It's a little bit absurd of course that they didn't bother to check first, but it kind of works.
  • patwolf 3y ago
    I live about 5 miles from an airport. It never occurred to me when I bought the house that there'd be airplane noise, but we happen to be right in the flight path. They're infrequent enough that I didn't hear any while touring the house. The house is well-insulated, so the noise isn't bad while inside. But while outside, it's loud enough that you have to pause a conversation when a plane goes by.
    • jdnenid 3y ago
      How did it not occur to you that there would be noise from airplanes if you live that close? Or is it more of an airstrip where only ultra light aircraft depart?
      • patwolf 3y ago
        Half the city is within 5 miles of the airport. I've lived in places much closer and never experienced the noise before. The difference was being in the flight path. I'll also add that my perception of the distance to the airport was skewed by the fact that it's a 15 mile drive to the terminal entrance, but only 5 miles as the crow flies.
        • ghaff 3y ago
          At least large parts of Boston are within 5 miles of Logan Airport. But I can say from personal experience that there are specific locations that are stop-conversation levels of aircraft noise which is not true of the city as a whole.
• space_oddity 3y ago
  I seems for me that for most airports its hard to build logistics withing...
• JCM9 3y ago
  Technology has come a very long way in reducing noise exposure and noise levels over communities by dramatic levels. The core problem now is not one of airport traffic but local communities near airports that allow residential development in places they really shouldn’t. These days it’s less the airport trying to move into someone’s backyard but someone building their backyard next to an airport then complaining about the airport.
• sesuximo 3y ago
  why not put the terminal in the urban area and have a fast train/ferry/whatever to the runways
• freeopinion 3y ago
  O'Hare airport sits some 40km outside Chicago. It seems like a long way away from the city. Narita airport is about 80km east of Tokyo. Osaka is about 500km west of Tokyo. Osaka's airport is just 15km outside of Osaka. To travel from downtown Osaka to downtown Tokyo would involve 95km of ground transport in addition to the flight. Or you could take the train, which would involve about 20km of transport besides the high speed rail. You might think that nobody wants to live next to a train station, either. Or even next to a rail line. But I wonder what difference there would be in resistance to a new airport vs a major train station within 5km of a neighborhood.
  • Gare 3y ago
    > You might think that nobody wants to live next to a train station, either. Huh? Properties next to train stations usually have higher prices. Electric trains are clean and quiet.
    • colingoodman 3y ago
      I understand that suburban communities sometimes fight public transit stops in attempt to preserve "neighborhood character" and whatnot. That could be what the other user is referring to.
  • ourmandave 3y ago
    Or even next to a rail line. Not a commuter train, but here's a neighborhood where the rail goes right down the street. Literally freight trains driving past your front yard. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=odWcZagJlAs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=odWcZagJlAs
  • duped 3y ago
    > O'Hare airport sits some 40km outside Chicago. It's more like 25km (15 miles) to the city center and 4km (2.5 miles) to the city limits, although technically O'hare is within the City of Chicago. There's a strip of City land between the eastern edge of the airport that cuts through the suburb of Rosemont to connect to the Oriole Park neighborhood (although that might be Edison Park), on the far Northwestern edge of the city. 40km will get you to the far south side of the city, for which there's Midway.
• vemv 3y ago
  > In the early 1980s, Dallas Fort-Worth Airport covered as much land as the city of Dallas did, and Denver International Airport is as large as the city of San Francisco. This... doesn't fit into my head.
  • humansareok1 3y ago
    Cities are smaller than you think and Airports are larger.
    • bombcar 3y ago
      Remember the famous "freeway interchange the size of Florence" image. It takes the small size of "old Florence" and compares it to a modern cloverleaf. Area goes up real fast because it's the square. Central Park in NY is about seven times the size of Vatican City.
  • jonasdegendt 3y ago
    They're probably referring to the official city limits, which can be tiny, as opposed to the total Dallas metro area. The latter is what people actually tend to think of when mentioning a city. I might be wrong though as I know nothing about Dallas, in which case it also doesn't fit into my head.
  • filleduchaos 3y ago
    The two runways in my city's fairly small, low traffic airport are roughly 1.7 and 2.42 miles long (2.745 and 3.9 kilometres to be precise). It doesn't help that the city of San Francisco is quite tiny, only 7 by 7 miles. When you consider that Denver International has to fit six runways as well as its apron, terminals, hangars, various facilities, and the transit space needed to link all these plus an acceptable amount of buffer space for safety and noise reduction...yeah.
• sofixa 3y ago
  > And an airport can’t be too far from a city and remain useful, since travelers need to access the city, workers need to be within commuting distance, and so on. In Canada, Mirabel airport was built 35 miles from Montreal, surrounded by a 79,000 acre buffer zone to prevent any issues of incompatible land use. Mirabel was expected to replace Dorval (today Montreal-Trudeau) as Canada’s main eastern airport, but, in part because of its long distance from the city, this never happened, and Mirabel stopped serving passenger traffic in 2004. It was because of very stupid mismanagement and lack of connections, not the distance. The old airport remained opened and continued serving domestic flights, while international ones were moved to Mirabel... which was extremely dumb because Montreal was the major interchange point between international arrivals and smaller locations not served directly by international flights in Canada. So most of the utility of Montreal airport was killed, and airlines started serving other airports in Canada to do the same thing. Also, there was no good link to the airport - it shouldn't have opened without a direct at least somewhat fast rail link, but it had no good road nor rail connection. Also, it was put in the wrong place - one of the potential locations was midway between Ottawa and Montreal and could have served both cities, but politicians decided they don't want that.
  • vel0city 3y ago
    That sounds like exceptionally poor planning. Just to confirm, the new airport served pretty much only international flights? It should have been the nexus for domestic travel to connect to the big hop to Europe, meaning it should have had a ton of domestic routes as well feeding it.
    • TRDRVR 3y ago
      It's the main counterexample to 'The Olympics are good because they force the development of infrastructure that otherwise wouldn't get built' argument. Many of the weird choices about that airport was made so it would be open and useful for the 1976 Olympics. The location was closer to Montreal (but father from Ottawa) in part to make the international arrival experience better for the fans (not for the long-term users of the airport). The plan was 'International flights in time for the Olympics and Domestic flights a couple of years later' as a way to 'show off to the world.' All this rushing and purpose-building led to suboptimal decision making that ultimately made it a completely wasted investment. A similar story can be told about Olympic stadium in Montreal.
• duped 3y ago
  Airlines should go build their hubs in a better geographical location than major cities, like O'hare. And pay for it with their own money. At ORD for example, something like half of all the air traffic are connecting flights. There's a bit of money to be made by gate fees, but the pressure on the surrounding suburbs (I don't even know if the neighbors even get those fees, since the airport is technically within Chicago's city limits) to allow whatever expansion is necessary for American and United to make more money ferrying people over our homes is untenable.
  • nradov 3y ago
    What's untenable about it? The busy airport has been there longer than most people have been alive. People who live in the suburbs knew what they were getting into.
    • duped 3y ago
      Tell that to the people who lived in the heart of Bensenville that's now a runway.
      • nradov 3y ago
        What's your point? You could say the same thing about almost any major infrastructure project. We can't allow a handful of residents somewhere to veto everything. This is exactly what eminent domain was intended for: as long as they received fair compensation then it's fine.
        • duped 3y ago
          You can't say "they know what they were getting into" when the state shows up and demolishes half a community that had been there for 130 years. I don't think anyone expects the state to force them off their land or their town demolished. > We can't allow a handful of residents somewhere to veto everything. We also shouldn't allow non-residents to profit off the pain of people who actually live where the infrastructure is. My point is that the surrounding suburbs are suffering the pain of being adjacent to an airport while deriving very little benefit, and those do benefit want to expand to increase traffic. Chicago gets quite a lot out of the increasing traffic through O'hare while the people that actually live nearby don't.
• meerita 3y ago
  I had a private flight two years ago. The place was close to a garage. People who are ultra rich visit those places. Airports are just like prisions for common people, because they need to spend hours in it.
• jgeada 3y ago
  > Most NIMBY difficulties stem from the asymmetric nature of the costs and benefits of a new project: a new apartment building, for instance, will benefit a city overall (slightly lowering housing costs and slightly increasing the size of the city’s labor market), but those benefits are diffuse. The costs, on the other hand – traffic, parking, construction disruption – will be borne almost entirely by the surrounding residents, who will thus rationally oppose it. I have always wondered why we don't structure payments of some form to balance out the local costs of infrastructure etc. NIMBY is rational with the economics as they are; but would you really be as opposed to a local power plant if energy costs for the area near the plant were subsidized by some percentage? Balance out the local costs with a local benefit.
  • spacecadet 3y ago
    NIMBY is not rational! Its a biased selfish decision that protects ones own, shrouded in "community" -- Except I'm directly involved with my community and none of the loud talking NIMBY's ever show up... GET LOST.
  • stdbrouw 3y ago
    Or the other way around: as a tax with a Georgist flavor. If your land has a value of $x/m^2 when free of zoning restrictions, but your neighborhood really wants to keep it free of noise / traffic / high buildings or high density, and as a consequence land value drops to $y/m^2, that is perfectly fine but it will cost you $x - $y each year.
  • daveoc64 3y ago
    >I have always wondered why we don't structure payments of some form to balance out the local costs of infrastructure etc. NIMBY is rational with the economics as they are; but would you really be as opposed to a local power plant if energy costs for the area near the plant were subsidized by some percentage? Balance out the local costs with a local benefit. I've seen this proposed for various things like onshore wind farms (e.g. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-60864097 https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-60864097), but there usually has to be a limit to the subsidy/discount/bribe - otherwise it wouldn't be viable for the company that wants the infrastructure. I saw something suggested in the region of 25% discount on electricity bill for people near such a site, for up to 10 years. I don't think that such a temporary benefit would be enough to convince me of having something nearby if I thought it was permanently detrimental to the neighbourhood or my property. (Not that I'm claiming to be a NIMBY).
• JohnMakin 3y ago
  Good article but it's many thousands of words with one simple answer: noise pollution. I lived directly under the path of an airport's takeoff vector. Planes would frequently take off just a few hundred feet above my house. You actually get used to it, but as I've gotten older my hearing loss is more than it should be and I suspect that was a major reason.
  • deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
  • spdustin 3y ago
    Sounds like Midway (MDW). Even with noise abatement procedures, planes take off and land “hot and heavy” which is louder than usual nearest to the airport.
  • michael1999 3y ago
    Noise pollution _and_ air pollution. I love the pretty browns and purples of my sunset over YYZ, but it's filthy. Every time I come home, the smell is disgusting.
• michael1999 3y ago
  Mirabel was well planned, but was undone by events. Montréal in the 19060s was the undisputed centre of Canada for business, culture, population, sport, politics, and international relations. Canada expected to grow by millions of people, and we expected a large number of them to settle in Montréal. 35 miles was a modest buffer zone anticipating enormous suburban sprawl. The whole project was derailed in the 70s by the terrorism of the FLQ, and then the 1980 secession referendum. Suddenly, banks, insurance companies, and foreign offices took flight and moved on down the road to Toronto. Montréal _lost_ hundreds of thousands of high-paying jobs, and hundreds of thousands people as anglos and jews fled. Montréal sunk into a 15 year depression. Toronto became the new centre of Canadian business, culture, and sport. Toronto became a major Jewish city, and immigration shifted for good. The influx triggered a property bubble (and then the condo-crash of 1989). The growth of Toronto of the last 40 years was planned for Montréal, and had it happened there, Mirabel would be a thriving international airpot. Toronto was unprepared, but Montréal had been planning for decades. To this day, Montréal _still_ has more subway track than TO.
  • lainga 3y ago
    And who knows -- maybe they wouldn't have all left if you didn't regard them as "anglos and jews"
  • karmoka 3y ago
    mtl was absolutely not the indisputed business center of Canada in the 1960s. Headquarters and capital were already moving towards Toronto by the 60s, following the opening of the St-Lawrence Seaway, the growing importance of the american economy for Canada and the progression of the quiet revolution which saw the province become way less interesting for the old money from the Golden Square Mile. The FLQ was also most active in the 60s, culminating in 1970 with the October Crisis and then nearly seized to exist in the 70s/80s bar the occasional bombing by the RCMP (see the Keable, Mcdonald commissions and Robert Samson) The 1980 referendum did lead to what a few economists dubbed the "Montreal Effect", and there's certainly some factual basis to it in the form of the flight of many anglophones from the province, but arguing that the sovereignty movement was mostly if not solely responsible for this trend we were seeing before it was on the radar instead of precipitating the ongoing changes is overstating the case. That said, Mirabel was a disaster regardless of the following growth of mtl. It was rushed for the Olympics, the plans to properly connect it fell before it became clear that mtl's population wouldn't grow as fast as predicted and airlines absolutely loathed it from day one.
• TylerE 3y ago
  Has anyone ever tried to build an airport where the terminals and actual flight ops area was miles away (noise, etc). Basically I'm picturing something like an urban train station (plus TSA, and customs) that would be located downtown. This is where you'd have check-in, security, baggage claim, etc. After clearing security, you'd get on some sort of rail transit (monorail, maglev, subway, whatever, doesn't matter THAT much as long as it can get out to the flight area in 10-15 minutes. Basically put the people bits where it's convenient, and the noisy stuff where it isn't.
  • Duhck 3y ago
    I love this idea. Hong Kong has something kinda like this with bag check in town, and then a train to the airport. It's extremely convenient
    • throwaway2037 3y ago
      Are there any other major international airports in the world that have the equivalent setup of Hongkong? For other readers: There is a fast-but-not-high-speed direct train from city centre to the airport. At the city terminal, there are tiny airline checkin booths where you can leave your bags. Magically, they are transported to the airport.
      • mst 3y ago
        I remember flying into Germany once, my ticket including the train, and my luggage having been sent on ahead to the Lufthansa terminal at the other end. (I forget which city now, maybe Frankfurt?) It was very cool except for the part where it was apparently so normal that they'd keep responsibility for your luggage that there wasn't (that I noticed, at least) any warning that was going to happen. I spent a while at baggage claim going wtf and eventually found a desk with somebody who took pity on me and explained. A+ would use service again now I know how it works.
      • galvan 3y ago
        Yes, TPE in Taiwan has the same setup. At Taipei Main Station in the city center, there are airline checkin kiosks and bag drops. You take the train to the airport, and your bags are ingested into the baggage system for you. https://www.tymetro.com.tw/tymetro-new/en/_pages/checkin/index.php https://www.tymetro.com.tw/tymetro-new/en/_pages/checkin/ind...
• jmyeet 3y ago
  In short, it's short-term interests and skewed incentives. A classic example particular to US airports is why transport links are almost universally terrible. The answer is: parking. Parking is a huge revenue source for airports [1] so airports don't actually want good public transport links and when you do have them (eg the JFK AirTrain) they're unreasonably expensive. Airports are making up for "lost" revenue. This has been a huge problem as Uber and Lyft have cut into airport revenues. The real reason this is a problem is because airports make almost nothing from the planes using them. Shouldn't the planes be funded the airport? Another case study springs to mind: Sydney. Sydney has a very central main airport but it's relatively small compared to demand because it was planned for so long ago. It can't expand: the land around it used now. Sydney has been talking about building a second airport for at least 40 years in Western Sydney (originally named Badgerys Creek). This is much further from the city but has had all the usual planning problems eg developers build homes around the proposed site and then residents complain about the proposed airport that was proposed way before those homes were built. IIRC a similar thing happened around LAX. This was so much of a hot potato that one Australian government just gave planning permission for Sydney airport to build a third runway in the dead of night and then ran. There are funds to noise-proof affected homes and this was wildly controversial. I believe the Western Sydney airport is finally happening. I haven't looked at the planes but it doesn't include an efficient and relatively cheap high speed rail link to central Sydney, it's going to struggle. In the Western world we really need to examine how the supremacy of private property rights and utter car dependence mean we can't build anything, let alone have anything nice. It seems like Asia is the only place where non-horrible airports get built. [1]: https://www.orbility.com/news/64-parking-is-a-huge-money-maker-for-airports https://www.orbility.com/news/64-parking-is-a-huge-money-mak...
  • asdff 3y ago
    LAX actually bought out a lot of the built neighborhood land around it and cleared it for expansion, so its not an impossibility.
• gumby 3y ago
  Lots of complex issues, but the distance one is manageable: put the check in / security part of the terminal in the city or at its edge and then send the passengers straight to the appropriate terminal (and their luggage straight to the baggage management) via HSR. You could have multiple check in terminals to expand the catchment area.
  • ghaff 3y ago
    That assumes you're coming from the city and now you need acres of parking in a more built-up urban area.
    • gumby 3y ago
      I mention you can have other terminals as well, and those in other urban areas can be connected to transit. You spread the parking around; in cities it’s often easier to take transit.
• bediger4000 3y ago
  How much does Bent Flyvbjerg's work on megaprojects impact this? Around 2000, he used to claim that either people didn't understand the scope of very large projects, or that there were shenanigans involved. One of Flyvbjerg's more recent papers: https://arxiv.org/pdf/1409.0003 https://arxiv.org/pdf/1409.0003
• jameshart 3y ago
  The claim: > Despite their importance, airports are enormously difficult to build, not only in the US but around the world. The evidence: all about the US, with a brief sentence about London Heathrow. New international airport construction projects started in 2021-2022 include Sydney, Mumbai, Addis Ababa, Manila, Cavite (Phillipines), Dong Nai (Vietnam), Noida (India)… Sounds more like this is just a ‘you’ problem :)
• 1-6 3y ago
  This is mainly focused on noise levels. They did not focus on large runways and the water runoff calcs and flight paths and elevation restrictions on neighboring buildings etc. It’s easier to put in an airport first and then build a city around it than the other way around.
• Scubabear68 3y ago
  They are trying to expand the Trenton-Mercer Airport. One of the justifications is airport expansion would “increase tourism into the City of Trenton”. Anyone who has been to Trenton, NJ will understand what is wrong with that idea.
• ThinkBeat 3y ago
  One economic problem is that the express train to or from the airport (if there is one) is that a roundtrip ticket can quickly cost more than the roundtrip airfare these days. That is yet another barrier for disadvantaged people. When the airport is closer to the city they are often included in the normal public transit system and thus a lot more affordable.
• zzz999 3y ago
  An airport is very simple to build if you ignore regulations (laws keep getting worst too because they mostly only add them and rarely subtract them... Soon it will be like building a nuclear reactor).
  • holmesworcester 3y ago
    Only if either: a) the airport is far from any other humans b) the horde of humans your airport angers do not also ignore regulations OR your airport has its own sufficiently large private army
  • CooCooCaCha 3y ago
    People say this but rarely give specific examples. My experience is that things seem simple on the surface but are actually more complex than you’d expect. As an example, I’ve seen people complain about building codes and why they can’t they do what they want with their property. But they don’t consider that fire services, for example, need to be able to rely on those codes.
• balderdash 3y ago
  I would be pretty upset if all of a sudden my house was under the flight path of a new airport (and the associated economic consequences) but I always find it surprising how annoyed people get that put a house near an airport and then complain about it, where one of my parents lives there is a small but fairly busy private airport that has been there close to a hundred years, so almost no one that lives by it now can claim to have been surprised by its existence when they moved into (or built) their houses, yet their is perpetual noise complaints and a surprisingly vociferous group that wants it shut down. Similar thing happened where I went to college (house prices were lower near campus - because you had to put up with being near several thousand college kids) and then people move in and complain about the college kids!
  • renewiltord 3y ago
    Why wouldn’t you? It’s a land arb. You get cheaper land then use political power to raise its desirability. Common trick. You can do it a few ways. Get a place near a nightclub then force the club to shut down. Almost certainly they have some regulation they’re not following. Same with schools etc. Or sometimes the city will be planning an affordable housing thing on a lot. No one likes that so you’ll get the homes next door for cheaper. Then you can lobby for the place to become a park. Boom! Your home is now more valuable than it would be. It’s just political arbitrage.
    • loteck 3y ago
      This shouldn't be down voted, this type of arbitrage is common and the parties engaging in it know the baked in risks. It is no different from the common gambit of buying land outside of cities zoned as industrial or agricultural and then waging politics to have it rezoned as residential to dramatically increase its value.
      • holmesworcester 3y ago
        The cool solution I've seen to this problem is to have some process for identifying the class of people who are affected by [locally burdensome thing] and then allowing the proponents (a business, the government, etc.) to negotiate some settlement with that affected class directly, with a majority vote used to accept the settlement. For example, everyone near the airport could get some property tax relief or share of an annual payment that would go away if the airport went away. This way a small minority of vocal opponents cannot effectively oppose something that would be good for everyone, but if something is irredeemably terrible and unfair locally affected people can block it.
• RajT88 3y ago
  This seems to be referring only to large international airports. Wikipedia lists 383 airports in the US, only 30 of which are "large". None of the muni airports are on the list. There's so many of those! I can think of 5 within a short drive of my home; there's got to be thousands in the US. So, no shit building big noisy busy things on huge plots of land is hard! NIMBYism scales.
• ed_balls 3y ago
  There is a huge political battle in Poland right now regarding a new airport. It's more controversial than nuclear plants and new rail combined. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Central_Communication_Port https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Central_Communication_Port
• amai 3y ago
  Don’t build another airport. Better invest in a high speed train network.
• satellite2 3y ago
  > The FAA was so concerned about reactions to jet noise in Washington DC that it didn’t authorize jets to land there until 1966. Interesting how that could be considered as interfering with the democratic process nowadays.
• satellite2 3y ago
  > Similarly, not only are many of the users of an airport tourists who don’t live in the area, but at hub airports they might merely pass through without interacting with the local region at all. Why not create hub only airports (in the middle of nowhere) and enforce them via no hub policies around cities?
  • Fatnino 3y ago
    Staffed by people flown in daily from some city half an hour flight away?
• benced 3y ago
  The correct answer here is to ignore local landowners and build the airport. Airports have tremendous benefits to the country and the greater area. I feel badly for the folks who have to take the costs - and I wouldn’t be opposed to some compensations - but fundamentally we’re talking about helping a few people (who could move) at the cost of most people. I feel especially strongly about this in the case of people who moved in after the airport existed. You knew exactly what you were signing up for.
• mangocheetah123 3y ago
  [flagged]
• nektro 3y ago
  lovely and well researched article. and all the more reason to support high-speed rail :)
• deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]