How the left ruined air travel

[Gnarly Gnu]

"It will take drastic action to make air travel bearable again. This week, after three years, the Second Circuit Court of Appeals gave Kennedy International Airport permission to shoot some birds that fly around the runways threatening to cause plane crashes. This ruling — and the three years it took to appear — shed some light on a subject I’ve wondered about for a long time: Why is air travel so grotesquely unpleasant?"

 

.....

 

"So why don’t we build more airports? Because airports need to be built near the cities they serve. The cities they serve are controlled by leftists who make construction a Sisyphean nightmare. Take our own New York City. JFK is the worst airport in the country. It would like to refurbish itself, improve and expand, but it’s surrounded on three sides by neighborhoods that wouldn’t tolerate the Concorde; that barely tolerate JFK as it is now and will brook no expansion. On its fourth side, JFK is bounded by federally protected wetlands, so that’s a non-starter too. New construction has to be on JFK’s existing footprint, and that new construction has to abide by New York’s absurdly onerous labor and environmental laws. Nonetheless, Governor Cuomo insists that JFK’s rebuilding will happen. According to Forbes, Cuomo’s plan for JFK will address New York’s passenger needs from 2050 forward.

 

To put that in perspective, if the Wright Brothers’ first flight were this year, Cuomo would be talking about fixing JFK in time for the invention of the jet. Now imagine that JFK were being started from scratch."

 

And an alternate opinion below: Who ruined air travel? The airlines, their union and their politicians.

 

 

[mkennard]

Can you take your politics elsewhere please.

 

 

[KRviator]

Taking the politics out of it, why is public transport in general so unpopular? Not just air travel, but spending money on new railway lines, new busways and interchanges.

 

Is it because "poor people don't drive cars" to quote Joe Hockey and as they're the ones that dude public transport they aren't important enough to spend the $$ on to create votes? Or something else. Something that infuriated me when I worked in Sydney was the freight train curfew each day, from0600-0900 and 1500-1800. A full 6 hours in every 24, freight trains could not run on tracks used by suburban trains to get to the freight terminals. Imagine that with truck? Oh sure, you pay rego, but we're going to ban you from the roads during peak hour...but the government would not spend a cent on freight-train-only tracks.

 

 

[Gnarly Gnu]

Can you take your politics elsewhere please.

Who is this addressed to, the writer? If you disagree with the article the logical thing is to explain where it is incorrect or falls short. Much of the article relates to the US however some aspects are certainly relevant here and the closure of smaller airfields and restrictions / limitations on primary airports is both relevant here and does affect us all. And often these restrictions are based on dubious 'environmental' reasons so yes it does have a political aspect and it seems likely he has a valid point.

 

 

[old man emu]

I think that use of public transport (ground variety) in Australia is hampered by the effects of the "my house on a quarter acre block" culture which arose at the beginning of the Baby Boom era.

 

If you compare any Australian city with any European city, you can see that people live in closely-built urban settings within relatively short distances from where they earn their money. That's a result of their history. Here, our urbanisation history is one of expansive suburban settings located long distances from out workplaces. Also, the development of our suburban living arrangements came hand-in-hand with the availability of cheap, rapid personal transport in the shape of motor cars. Our transport system is also affected by our dislike of being too close to other people - the size of an Australian's 'personal space' in crowds is much greater that that of Europeans and Asians. That's why most of the cars involved in peak hour traffic contain only one person.

 

Where public transport provides a quicker, regular service, it is well used. Compare the use of buses in the Eastern Suburbs of Sydney with their use in the Western suburbs. The Eastern Suburbs show the results of suburban development before the availability of motor vehicles, while the Western Suburbs show the opposite.

 

Currently there is a great deal of residential building going in the old industrial inner city. This development is utilising vertical space, and its occupants will have access to already existing ground transport systems which make the need for private transport less important.

 

As for expansion of aviation facilities - there is a hangover dating from the the first half of the 20th Century when governments actively discouraged any form of transport that would take trade away from the railways.

 

OME

 

 

[Old Koreelah]

Some valid points, OME. There is also a cultural divide in Sydney. Many from the eastern suburbs are much-travelled and like inner city living; quite a few have never driven, in contrast to the traditional Westie who loves his car and backyard.

 

All that is changing fast as new ethnic groups, mostly from old-world countries, move in and develop high density housing.

 

 

[Gnarly Gnu]

...the traditional Westie who loves his car and backyard.

Car, plane and backyard.

 

 

[storchy neil]

plane backyard car for me for those who assume its not happening here go see spec savers neil

 

 

[facthunter]

So the population of Western Sydney is becoming more dense? Nev

 

 

[storchy neil]

:oops:not just dull:peep wall: neil

 

 

[old man emu]

So the population of Western Sydney is becoming more dense? Nev

Any denser and they would sink in liquid mercury.

 

 

[facthunter]

Working on some "cult" car and going to the club and playing pokies is the distraction you need to keep some meaning in your life. "little boxes and ticky tacky etc". Nev

 

 

[old man emu]

"Little boxes, little boxes,

 

Little boxes made of ticky-tacky.

 

Little boxes, little boxes

 

Little boxes and they all look just the same"

 

"Where are the meadows?

 

Tar and cement.

 

Nothing but acres of

 

Tar and cement."

 

OME

 

 

[Bruce Tuncks]

The quarter-acre block was a leftover of the drop-dunny days. Who would NOT want a bit of space between their bedroom window and the neighbour's dunny?

 

Nowadays we are seeing blocks of land down to 150 square metres, I reckon they are the new slums. Good thing they don't have drop dunnys.

 

And we regularly see attempts to get rid of Parafield on "noise pollution" grounds.

 

Gosh we went to a BBQ at a villa house and if any of the 3 or 4 neighbours were also using their backyards, you would only be a few metres away from them. What about noise pollution from neighbours too close I wonder.

 

So I agree with Gnarly on this matter, even though for me personally it is the security stuff that I hate most.

 

 

[facthunter]

There was room for a garage and workshop and many grew their own vegetables and some trees/shrubs for the birds to enjoy. Cars were parked off the street.

 

I agree on the future slums concept. This is all about developers making a quick buck. Nev

 

 

[Old Koreelah]

There was room for a garage and workshop and many grew their own vegetables and some trees/shrubs for the birds to enjoy...

My parents moved into a small town block after they sold the farm. With their garden, chooks and a house cow on the town common they lived better than they'd ever had. They were embarrassed to be on the pension and had money left over to go for driving holidays.

 

 

[hihosland]

[ATTACH]26758[/ATTACH]Bruce is worried about 150Sq m blocks

 

around here they advertise "large blocks" at 50 sq m

 

 

 

[red750]

This is tread drift from air travel, although I will say there is repeated calls for the closure of Essendon and Moorabbin as airports, and although Tullamarine was bought and planned with the intention of parallel runways, the spread of housing around the area will no doubt raise lots of protest.

 

In reference to OME's points in post #5, in Melbourne, almost 2 out of every 3 houses sold is knocked down and multiple townhouses put up on the block. Multi storey home units are springing up in suburbs which not too long ago were considered outer suburbs - Box Hill, Burwood, Glen Waverley, etc., particulalry close to train stations. Some are over 20 storeys high, not to mention the many tall units around Docklands and South Melbourne. All this puts great pressure on both roads and public transport. Trains are overcrowded, and multi lane freeways funnel traffic into narrow inner streets, creating peak hour parking stations on the freeways. Sometimes travel is down to walking pace.

 

Daniel Andrews came to power in the State Government on the promise of eliminating level crossings, of which Melbourne had many. Most of those completed have been achieved by dropping the rail lines below the street level. However plans for one line are to create elevated rail lines and stations, and this is causing lots of local complaint. Another of his promises was to block construction of the east-west link. This means heavy trucks have to either travel through narrow suburban streets, upsetting residents, or travel via the cape, skirting the metropolitan area, which is constantly expanding. The ever complaining Joe Public forgets that the food he eats, and other goods he consumes, have to move from farm to factory to warehouse to retailer by road transport. As someone else said, they would scream blue murder if freight trains ran on suburban lines, through the underground, etc., and I can just see them putting shipping containers on trams.

 

 

[facthunter]

The facts on the East West link show it as not stacking up financially without making current untolled roads tolled, and quite a few other negatives. It was a total political move to change the election voting pattern by building in penalties for non starters done in the last days of the Napthine Government. Nev

 

 

[Bruce Tuncks]

Red, this country is importing over 1000 people every day. The winners are those with real-estate interests, the losers are almost everybody else.

 

Everybody else includes me because I like the existence of these under-threat airports even if they are interstate and I don't use them. Gawler was possibly under threat as the local council CEO, who is also a part-time real-estate developer ( although not, for legal reasons, in his own fiefdom...er..council area) wanted to sell the airfield so his great mate, a subdivider-builder, could put in a new development there.

 

Luckily, the Gawler airfield is a perfect place for water-bombers to operate from and the club has been very cooperative in assisting this use. And there have been some spectacular fires lately.

 

So we are safe here for now, but with those 1000 new arrivals for every day of the year, who can tell the future?

 

 

[fly_tornado]

Bruce we never have hit net immigration of 365,000 a year.

 

 

 

[Kiwi303]

[ATTACH=full]41292[/ATTACH]Bruce is worried about 150Sq m blocksaround here they advertise "large blocks" at 50 sq m

I see that has 420m2.

 

If you want small, Try Cebu, Lawaan I in Talisay city has some 48 SqM blocks with 32 SqM houses on them. around 200,000 philippine pesos.

 

 

[Bruce Tuncks]

Thanks FT, I have seen the figure 400,000 for a recent year but I can't find it again and so it may be unreliable. I could find " one million since 2010 " which comes to 200,000 a year on average , so a rate of 1000 a day would sometimes be met, but not for every day of the year.

 

Funny how the figure is not so trumpeted that people me have to research it. You would think it would have been font-page stuff when we had a particularly big month of immigration. Compare this with how a plane accident makes the news, but what has the most impact on our lives?

 

So while I stand corrected, the argument still applies.. it is a great big number and those with real-estate interests are the winners. And there is subsequent pressure to convert airfields to housing.

 

 

[M61A1]

We will probably never know real numbers. Often they are manipulated by changing definitions. Apparently you are employed if you work at least one hour a week. What would real unemployment numbers be?

 

 

[coljones]

Bruce we never have hit net immigration of 365,000 a year.

You forgot the one - PURPOSE "Drive down wages" and SKILLS "451 Visas - no real identifiable skills in demand but an acute need to drive down wages" The figures under "Skill - Employers Sponsored" are dubious as the aim in a large number of cases is not to import skills unavailable here but to displace workers and replace them with lower paid, and in some celebrated and other disguised cases, seriously underpaid workers. If one can't get people to pick fruit it might mean that the pay, while legal, is unconscionably low, and the conditions deplorable.