Still grounded

Transport Minister Anthony Albanese seemed to acknowledge as much in a terse statement accompanying the study’s public release. “The challenges are not insurmountable but we do need to better understand their scale and scope,” he said of Wilton. Though he said further study of the site’s technical issues will go ahead, his language suggested the sort of faint praise with which governments back away from things they once supported.

Where things go from here is unlikely to be clarified before the coming federal election, though it’s unclear whether that event will make much difference either, given that neither party has shown much hint of the political will necessary to make a decision in the face of the public opposition certain to mobilise against any new airport development. Such opposition largely explains the government’s preference for Wilton in the first place. The booming growth of Sydney’s west has placed Badgerys Creek in proximity to a residential base sufficiently large and organised to have elicited vows from both parties not to build an airport in their backyard. Residents and their representatives near the Wilton site are also largely and vociferously opposed to an airport, but they are considerably fewer in number.

“The result is so unflattering for Wilton… it will be hard for the government’s preference to survive.”

Meanwhile, the economic consequences of inaction continue to loom closer with each annual airport study. According to the landmark joint study on Sydney’s airport needs released in March 2012, all peak hour aircraft slots at Sydney’s existing airport will be full by 2015, with all slots full by 2027. Other estimates have placed those dates even sooner and airlines already complain that congestion at the airport is impacting their operations. If no second airport is built, according to the joint study, unmet demand will reach 54 million passenger movements by 2060 at a cost of billions in lost revenues.

The only attempt to address this problem that could be described as likely to happen is, in the long term, a woefully inadequate one. Alongside the Wilton study, Albanese announced the government would move ahead with plans to possibly open RAAF Base Richmond to commercial aircraft. This could be accomplished as soon as 2017 for a relatively modest investment, though the return would be commensurately modest. Approximately five million passenger movements could be accommodated annually by Richmond’s east-west runway. But since surrounding development makes expansion of the relatively short 2134m runway impossible, Richmond could only accommodate smaller jets. Building a 4000m north-south runway at Richmond would open the airport to larger aircraft, but would still only accommodate between 20 and 30 million passenger movements, only about half the estimated 2060 demand.

An airport at Wilton, according to the latest study, would serve considerably better. By 2060, it could be expected to facilitate 44.2 million passenger movements, contributing $16.9 billion to the NSW economy and $20 billion in gross domestic product while creating more than 40,000 jobs. Those look like healthy numbers – until they are compared with estimates for Badgerys Creek. According to the study, an airport in Sydney’s west would produce between 14 and 22 per cent greater demand due to easier access. Indeed, Wilton’s distance from the city means that it will “only ever be an overflow airport,” the study said. Greater demand at Badgerys Creek means bigger economic benefits – a 20 per cent greater contribution to the state and national economies and an additional 20,000 jobs. Moreover, an airport at Badgerys Creek could be built for an estimated $2.4 billion within 10 years – $1 billion and seven years less than Wilton. However, more people would live within the airport’s noise footprint at Badgerys Creek than at Wilton – an estimated 8,200 people by 2060 against just 1,500 at Wilton – but neither figure is especially high. Some 150,000 people live within noise footprint of the current Sydney Airport.

Though the comparative advantages of an airport at Badgerys Creek were also pointed out in last year’s joint study, what has been seen as a bit of a surprise is just how dire is the technical assessment of Wilton contained in the new study.

Uneven terrain at Wilton means that simply leveling the site will require a massive 91 million cubic metres of cut-and-fill, partly accounting for the extra seven years of construction time and costing at least $900 million, nearly three times the cost of preparing the site at Badgerys Creek. Worse, Wilton is underlain by coal seams that raise a “major safety risk” from mine subsidence, complicating development and restricting design flexibility. Environmental impacts are also a major concern. Some 60 protected species are thought to live within the Wilton site, which also sits within water catchments. Mitigating those concerns could add as much as $1 billion or more to development costs, the study found.

The engineering firm contracted by the government to perform the technical assessment of Wilton summarised these problems in a glass-half-full manner. “No absolute showstoppers were identified to building an airport within the general vicinity of Wilton,” WorleyParsons wrote in its analysis. Even as faint praise goes, this is weak stuff indeed – and deservedly so. Taken together, the engineering issues raised by the Wilton study suggest a giant red flag. With so many things that could go wrong, it is hard not to imagine a project that ends up years overdue and billions over budget.

If Wilton ended up as the preferred option primarily due to politics – something that can hardly be doubted – the ball is now back in the politicians’ court. As the new study makes clear, Wilton might be better than nothing, but it will produce considerable fewer economic benefits than Badgerys Creek and now looks dangerously risky. Yet both federal parties have clearly ruled out Badgerys Creek and NSW Premier Barry O’Farrell is on the record opposing a new airport anywhere in Sydney.

Public opinion can’t simply be dismissed, of course, but if opposition to Badgerys Creek from the growing western suburbs led to the option being shelved, that’s not the only way to gauge the public’s sentiments. As the latest study points out, public preference for a conveniently located airport means that one built at Badgerys Creek would be much better utilised than an airport 80km south in Wilton.

But we all know how democracy generally works these days, with the narrow interests of loud and devoted minorities winning out over the best interests of the broad but distracted majority. Options remain on the table – and not only at Wilton and Badgerys Creek. Another long-term subject of government study – the east coast high-speed rail network – also received its latest treatment in a government study released in April. That study predicted that a high-speed rail network could reduce demand for domestic air travel by as much as half. But the study was widely seen as pushing the bullet train to the back burner.

In the wake of yet another airport study, the facts – as Albanese put it – are now on the table. Yet, as worthy an addition to the canon of Sydney airport studies as the latest effort may be, after so many years and so many studies it is hard to believe that an absence of facts is the real problem.