A second Sydney airport?

In past seasons it even got so far as a government buy-up of land at the previ-ously preferred site of Badgerys Creek, western Sydney.

But at this point the actors begin to lose the plot. Public outcry over aircraft noise and opposition from a variety of vested interests makes it very difficult for politi-cians to remember why they are supporting something that wins them so few votes and loses them so many. Political consensus col-lapses, governments change, conveniently optimistic revisions of Sydney Airport’s future capacity are discovered – and noth-ing gets done.

So here we are again, somewhere near the beginning. More than three years in the making, the Joint Study on Aviation Capacity for the Sydney Region, commis-sioned by the Australian and NSW govern-ments, has raised the obligatory alarm with a comprehensive and credible assessment of Sydney’s airport needs.

Predicting that Sydney Airport will reach “aircraft deadlock” within a decade, the study goes on to forecast billions in lost revenues from unmet demand if a second airport is not put in train now. It is full of words like “urgent” and “immediate”.

The key actors have dutifully shuffled toward their marks. Though promptly rul-ing out the commission’s recommendations to build a second airport at Badgerys Creek and increase the cap on aircraft movements at Sydney Airport, federal Transport Min-ister Anthony Albanese has said the study makes it clear that Sydney needs a second airport sooner rather than later. And while he has not expressly endorsed Wilton as the site of that airport, this clearly is the government’s preferred option.

After 30 years of study and with Badgerys Creek apparently off the table, no better options are likely to emerge if a second airport is to be built. Meanwhile, the federal opposition also has signalled its support for a second airport in Sydney, as has Qantas CEO Alan Joyce.

The Montagues to these Capulets are led by NSW Premier Barry O’Farrell, who has vowed to oppose any second airport in the Sydney region, following on a pre-election promise. Instead, Mr O’Farrell supports an expanded Canberra Airport linked to Syd-ney by high-speed rail, a suggestion treated less than seriously by O’Farrell’s federal colleagues – shadow treasurer Joe Hockey dismisses it as absurd.

Management at Sydney Airport, including chairman Max Moore-Wilton, an O’Farrell confidant, also are likely to oppose a second airport. So, of course, are most residents and local politicians of Wilton and its surrounds, though residents seem so far to be taking the pro-ceedings with a grain of salt, having heard it all before.

Why Wilton?

An unassuming hamlet 83km southwest of Sydney CBD, Wilton has emerged as the top option for a second airport, in no small part because an airport there would inconvenience the least number of peo-ple. According to this year’s study, it lags significantly in most other ways behind Badgerys Creek, which is closer to the city and to existing centres of demand and bet-ter tied in to existing infrastructure. It’s also where the government already owns land set aside for an airport.

At $4. 3 billion, the estimated economic value of a Badgerys Creek airport is more than 40 per cent higher than that of one at Wilton airport, estimated at $3 billion. While the westward sprawl of Sydney means Badgerys Creek is now much more densely populated than it was when the site was first selected, the government could legitimately argue that everyone who has bought a house there in the past two decades did so knowing the land had been earmarked for an airport.

But no one – at least no one in gov-ernment – seems inclined to make that argument.

Thais doesn’t mean Wilton is a bad site – indeed, the option has been on the table since the mid-80s. It’s close to the Hume Highway as well as the existing passenger rail line connecting Sydney with Can-berra and Melbourne. No Aircraft Noise, a citizen action group that wants Sydney Airport closed down altogether, has in the past advocated for a replacement airport at Wilton, meaning not all resident groups are likely to oppose the plan.

Aside from local resistance and Barry O’Farrell, the main obstacle to the Wilton plan may come from environmental is-sues over the area’s water catchments. Concerns that aircraft pollution could contaminate those catchments, which provide drinking water to Sydney, have been raised in past studies.

While it has been suggested pollution could be easily mitigated, the environ-mental questions mean the outcome of the current study of Wilton, to in-clude “preliminary economic, social and environmental” considerations, could be significantly more dramatic than simple political theatre meant to set the stage for a pre-ordained decision.

What Wilton Airport Might Look Like

Sydney is hardly the only city in the world with more than one airport. Elsewhere, second airports have generally served to relieve demand on primary hubs by catering to some combination of cargo traffic and budget carriers. London’s Stan-sted, for example, handles mainly budget airlines while Frankfurt’s Hahn began as a cargo operation before expanding to budget travel.

Wilton probably would follow a similar pattern. Given heavy investment at Sydney Airport and its plans to overhaul its termi-nal structure along alliance lines, neither Qantas nor Virgin Australia would be likely to move away significant resources. Regional carriers, catering to business travellers and those seeking onward con-nections, also would prefer to stay, given its more central location.

Budget carriers, which have struggled with the high cost and limited availability of slots at Sydney Airport, are the most likely market and could include Tiger Airways and perhaps Jetstar as well as the growing number of low-cost Asia-based carriers seeking a toehold in Sydney. With demand for freight carriage expected to quadruple over the next 50 years, cargo operators also would have a likely interest in a second airport.

According to the latest study, demand for air travel in the Sydney region is expected to grow from 40. 1 million passenger move-ments in 2010 to 57. 6 million in 2020, 87. 4 million in 2035 and 165 million in 2060. Though larger passenger jets mean that aircraft movements will not rise at an equally exponential rate, movements still are expected to rise from 344,000 in 2010 to 421,000 in 2020, 528,600 in 2035 and 800,800 in 2060.

Sydney Airport estimates its potential capacity at 454,546 annual aircraft move-ments, assuming the statutory cap of 80 movements an hour remains intact. Airservices Australia offers a slightly lower estimate of 446,000 movements a year. The airport contends it could handle up to 558,800 annual movements if the govern-ment raised the cap but this appears unlikely, with the government already having rejected a study recommendation to lift the cap to 85 movements an hour during peak times.

The study estimates that by 2027 Sydney Airport will have run out of capacity with unmet demand exceeding 100 flights a day, and that peak-hour slots, already nearing capacity, will be full by 2020.

By 2035, demand for air travel would exceed its capacity by about 75,000 flights a year. By 2060, unmet demand would stand at about 350,000 flights, fast ap-proaching total capacity.

What that means for a second airport is that it wouldn’t need to be very big in the short term but would need room to grow. With the price tag of a single-runway ‘type 3’ airport at $1. 7 billion and a parallel-runway ‘type 1’ airport $5. 3 bil-lion, perhaps the likeliest scenario would see the construction of a smaller ‘type 3’ airport designed around a pre-planned expansion later in the century. The initial, single-runway airport could be finished within as little as six years, meaning politi-cians still have time to make the study’s deadline of 2030.

Why It Might Be Different This Time . . .

Despite the issue’s history, there are signs that pressure in favour of a second airport could be near tipping point. The study’s estimates of the economic conse-quences of inaction are especially pointed. By 2060, the study says, Australia will have lost out on $60 billion in foregone expenditure, $34 billion in GDP and almost 78,000 jobs. The NSW economy would be hit especially hard with Sydney all-but-certainly ceding its place as Aus-tralia’s principal international gateway.

Pressure from airlines also is mounting despite the interest of established carriers in preserving a status quo that effectively limits competition, with Qantas CEO Alan Joyce arguing that peak hour delays getting into Sydney Airport already are becoming a serious problem.

A second airport has long been viewed as something of an inevitability, even if consen-sus on timing and location has been elusive. In the wake of the latest alarms, support for a second airport seems strong on both side of federal parliament and while politicians can always find ways to disagree on the specifics of something they agree about in general, perhaps the sense of urgency is now suffi-cient to ensure the inevitable becomes reality.

. . . Or Not

Standing in the way, most prominently, is Mr O’Farrell, who promised to oppose an airport ahead of last year’s election, saying no part of Sydney “should be contaminated by the sort of noise that comes with an airport”. This promise was hardly a corner-stone of his campaign – more an offhand remark. But in today’s political climate, to go back on a campaign promise is to open oneself to inevitable and often relentless attack (see also Gillard, Julia).

However, aside from his pre-election promise Mr O’Farrell has done relatively little to justify his opposition to a second airport, with his inner-circle choosing instead to attack the motives of those in fa-vour. Minister Albanese, they argue, is sim-ply trying to shift aircraft noise away from his own inner-Sydney constituents. That may be true, but even still such arguments do little to address the fact that the present airport is nearing capacity and Sydney’s economy depends on the accessibility of its gateways to the rest of the world.

Even some housing developers have come out in favour of a second airport, arguing that it would provide the economic drivers without which Sydney will become a giant housing estate without jobs.

Mr O’Farrell’s preferred alternative, a high-speed train linking Sydney to an expanded Canberra Airport, has drawn little support outside of his own advisers and the senior management of Sydney and Canberra airports. Dismissed as everything from pie-in-the-sky to impractical and absurd, it risks becoming a joke. The cost of a high-speed rail link, esti-mated at about $10 billion to $25 billion, would by itself be far more expensive than a new airport. Building line could be complet-ed by 2020 according to some estimates but would be enormously disruptive to the areas it passes through. It also would make limited sense in the absence of a larger east coast fast rail network, a long-discussed project in its own right with a price tag estimated at between $61 billion and $108 billion.

Such an ambitious public works project is hardly likely to come from a weak federal Labor government barely clinging to power – and not much more likely from a Coali-tion government.

While participation by the NSW gov-ernment ultimately will be necessary to see a second airport through, the Australian government could for now move forward in the hope that a more amenable premier will eventually replace Mr O’Farrell. But it is that very changeable nature of democratic government that has made a second airport so difficult to achieve.

No politician is ever likely to run a campaign built around a project that of-fers few immediate benefits and offends a significant part of the electorate. Instead, the closer a second airport gets to reality the more likely it becomes that one party or another will seize on opposition to it as an easy way to drum up votes. Build-ing a second airport will not only depend upon bipartisan consensus now – a hard enough ask – but on a durable consensus between successive governments over a number of years.

Soap operas don’t often have such neat and tidy endings. But anything’s possible.

What happens next?

The Australian government has requested talks with Sydney Airport Corporation, putting into motion the legal wheels that may one day lead to a second airport.

Under the terms of the airport’s privatisation in 2002, the corpora-tion gained a right of first refusal for a second airport in the Sydney Basin, meaning the government must negotiate with the company for between five and 12 months.

After that, the transport minis-ter can issue a notice declaring a second airport “a need in the public interest”. Nine months later, if the corporation has not agreed to build and operate the second airport, the contract can be awarded to another operator.

Critics have long suggested the corporation will view a second airport as a threat to its monopoly status and do everything it can to block development.

A terminal redesign proposed last year was seen as the airport’s effort to forestall a move toward a second airport and management has sug-gested that, despite the findings of a government aviation study released this year, the airport still has plenty to offer before it reaches capacity.

Building a new airport would cost an estimated $1.7bn
for a single runway or $5.3bn for parallel runways and
would take between six and 12 years.
CANBERRA
• 300km from Sydney, 60-75 mins away by proposed high-speed rail
link.
• Costs: $420m to upgrade airport, $10-25bn for high-speed rail.
• Pros: Could foster development of larger east coast rail network;
adding to existing airport sidesteps opposition to new airport.
• Cons: Distance; little political support; could siphon economic
activity away from Sydney; construction of rail line would cause
major disruptions.
BADGERY’S CREEK
• 50km from Sydney CBD, close to M7 and M4.
• Costs: $360m for earthworks, $190m for road links, $1.1bn for rail.
• Economic value: $4.8bn.
• 1.7m people affected by aircraft noise.
• Pros: Land already purchased by government and set aside for
airport; closer to CBD; higher cost-benefit rating.
• Cons: More people affected by noise; has been ruled out by both
major parties.
RAAF BASE RICHMOND
• Government studying possible use for “limited civil operations.”
• 65km from CBD.
• Costs: $150m in infrastructure upgrades to handle 1 million passengers
per year; $500m for 5 million pax.
• Runway could accommodate aircraft up to single-aisle jetliners
such as Boing 737 and Airbus A320.
• Pros: Civil use supported by RAAF; could emerge as short-term
compromise given deadlock over 2nd airport.
• Cons: Heavily fog-affected during part of the year; airspace conflicts
with Kingsford Smith and Bankstown; limited capacity; could
not handle large aircraft; additional aircraft noise.
SOMERSBY
Rated highly, but ruled out because of major airspace conflicts with-
Sydney Airport.
WILBERFORCE
Rated highly, but would likely force the closure of RAAF Base
Richmond.
KINGSFORD SMITH
According to a government-commissioned study released in March:
• Kingsford Smith will reach peak hour capacity by 2020 and full
capacity by 2027.
• The Sydney region will need a second airport by 2030 to avoid
serious economic consequences.
• Failing to act will cost the economy $6bn in unmet demand by
2035 and $60bn by 2060.
• The study called for improved public transport links to the airport.
• The airport’s management has said the study underestimates future
capacity at Kingsford Smith.
WILTON
• 83km from Sydney CBD, close to M5, 60+ mins away by train.
• Costs: $810m for earthworks, $460m to upgrade road links, $1.1bn
for rail link.
• Economic value: $3bn.
• 81,500 people affected by aircraft noise.
• Pros: Fewest people affected by noise of any Sydney Basin option;
few property acquisitions required; close to M5.
• Cons: Further from population centres than Badgerys Creek;
environmental concerns over water catchments; would force closure
of Wilton and Wedderburn airfields; would affect operations at
Wedderburn, Holsworthy and Camden airports.