Moving the airport

[Ho Really]

This area would have been good for an alternative airport if we could start from scratch. Most of it though is low lying land that gets flooded. The embankments keep the seawater out. Not sure whether it would be a good place to live with sea levels rising thanks to global warming (due to climate change).

Cheers

[Shuz]

Keep on preachin' Ho. You said the word, brother. Amen, halleujah.

Airport FTW.

[Howie]

But Parafield Airport is only a few km's from Dry Creek.

[Shuz]

Dry Creek is a far better location, to be serviced by 2 freeways in future (PRExy, Nthn Ctr) plus rail line. Sufficient room for expansion, and almagation of both Adelaide and Parafield airports. Parafield is in the middle of suburbia, and is too small for expansion.

[Howie]

The idea has merit, but i'm not totally convinced it's the best use of water frontage.

[Shuz]

The economical benefit of an airport on waterfront land far outweighs any (if there is even any) economical benefit a mere handful of homes will do.

[stumpjumper]

Ho Really has a point.

If you presented the site to a seminar on urban planning, you'd get a lot of support for part of the site as an airport. The main runway can take off into the prevailing wind over the sea (which Parafield can't offer), and there is room for expansion and there are good freight connections.

In my perfect world where city planners used common sense to plan the city, there would be recreational use, dwellings with canals etc on Le Fevre Peninsula, with the Dry Creek site sporting a harbour and airport with national freight links .

[Splashmo]

Ho Really has a point.

If you presented the site to a seminar on urban planning, you'd get a lot of support for part of the site as an airport. The main runway can take off into the prevailing wind over the sea (which Parafield can't offer), and there is room for expansion and there are good freight connections.

In my perfect world where city planners used common sense to plan the city, there would be recreational use, dwellings with canals etc on Le Fevre Peninsula, with the Dry Creek site sporting a harbour and airport with national freight links .

But at Adelaide Airport you already take off into the prevailing wind and over the ocean - if you took off into the prevailing wind at Dry Creek, you'd have to travel over the western suburbs for quite a while before you reached the sea. We can't lift the curfew at Adelaide Airport and that's only really half-surrounded by residents, whereas Dry Creek landings and take-off would affect a sizeable number of people.

Of course, in an ideal world, the mangroves and natural swampy environment through Port Adelaide and West Lakes would have been preserved, for the benefit of the plains and the gulf's environmental health. A deep water harbour all the way into Dry Creek would be devastating.

[stumpjumper]

OK, can the airport on safety and noise pollution grounds, but as for a harbour being devastating, I'd say salt pans were fairly devastating to mangroves.

My point was that given the opportunity, the Dry Creek site would be a more logical choice for a freight harbour than Outer Harbor with its difficult land access. Likewise the DefenceSA facilities would be better placed on the land side. With a freight harbour and a heavy transport node sharing the Dry Creek site we could perhaps take the heavy road transport out of the city - instead of bringing it over the Adelaide Hills we could run it behind the hills northwards then bring it west to Dry Creek. Running 80 tonne B-doubles through built-up areas down Glen Osmond Road and out along Portrush Road etc is not an ideal solution now and may be a worse choice in the future.

Once the salt pans are developed that choice is gone.

[Splashmo]

If you look at the area on a map, then you can see there would be an incredible amount of dredging and land clearing required to put a harbour all the way over at Dry Creek, not to mention all the environmental impacts and the financial cost of such a project. It would just make no sense at all.

Trucks and freight trains can be diverted away from the southeastern suburbs quite easily... we've already had the proposals for them to come around from the other side of the hills, and with the Port River Expressway and existing railroads, it's quite easy to reach Outer Harbor. Not to mention that there's still plenty of room there, should we ever need space for more than two or three ships at a time.

[stumpjumper]

The salt pans are a little far south, agreed. A dredged harbour immediately opposite the present Outer Harbor would be more realistic.

The main reason for this would be to free up for highest and best use the potential residential land on both sides of Le Fevre peninsula.

I'm sure someone must have looked at this option, but I'm not aware of any available report or data.

[Shuz]

Time for me to blow my horn again.

AIRPORT.

[Aidan]

Ho Really has a point.

If you presented the site to a seminar on urban planning, you'd get a lot of support for part of the site as an airport. The main runway can take off into the prevailing wind over the sea (which Parafield can't offer), and there is room for expansion and there are good freight connections.

If you presented the site to a competent audience at a seminar on urban planning, you'd get no support for part of the site as an airport at all. It's right next to southern Australia's premier bird sanctuary: the Greenfields Wetlands. So you'd either have an unacceptable risk of bird strike, or you'd have to destroy some of the best waterbird habitat around, to the detriment of many rare species. And the latter option would also greatly increase pollution in the Port River - cleaning up the stormwater is the main reason they were constructed in the first place.

It is a good site for a rail freight terminal and warehousing, but I didn't think it would be a good location for a residential development. However, people do seem to go for waterfront housing, so I could be wrong.

I have to admit to being really confused about this - apart from being on salt-pans adjacent to mangroves, wouldn't these 20,000 people be bounded by Bolivar to the north and the Wingfield landfill to the south?

I'd expect there to be a big gap between there and Bolivar, though I haven't seen the details of the plan.

As for Wingfield landfill, firstly it's S of Gillman, not Dry Creek. Secondly the days when it was a pile of rubbish are long gone - it's effectively just a normal hill now.

[AtD]

Adelaide Airport will not move. Especially not after the huge investment in the terminal and facilities. Keep it to the Visions section please.

[Shuz]

Well even if they don't relocate the airport here, surely the Government knows that at some point in time the airport simply _has_ to move. It's got no place where it is now.