



Is a new airport at Badgerys Creek really needed?


Is a second airport the best way to solve Sydney's air travel congestion problems?

Is a second airport the best way to solve Sydney's air travel congestion problems? Photo: Tamara Dean

Within weeks of taking office Treasurer Joe Hockey commissioned a Productivity Commission inquiry into the funding of infrastructure.

Its draft report released in March identified what it said was a classic example of how not to do it.

“The National Broadband Network, Australia’s largest public infrastructure project, was commenced without a cost-benefit analysis having been done,” it said.

“It also appears that detailed analysis of the project was focused, from a relatively early stage, on how best to implement the government’s policy objectives, rather than considering the merits of different options.”

It sounds like Badgerys Creek.

The Commission said the proper process was for the government to first work out what it wanted to achieve (such as moving planes or passengers quickly) and then work out the cheapest means of achieving it. It might be congestion taxes or time-of-day pricing.

Only then, if nothing else would do the job more cheaply, should it build something new.

To spend billions without first having precisely identified the problem and investigated cheaper ways of solving it would be to waste public money.

I am in possession of some back-of-the-envelope calculations done by a Sydney economist who has tried to do that for the Sydney Airport.

It is well located for travellers (much better than Badgerys Creek) but has a curfew and is limited to around 80 aircraft movements per hour.

It only ever reaches 80 aircraft movements during the morning and afternoon peaks. If regional aircraft were encouraged to move to Bankstown and cargo flights to move to Richmond the peaks would vanish.

Regional aircraft need only 1.8 kilometres of airstrip to takeoff. They don’t need to 2.5 and 3.96 kilometres available at Sydney airport. Squandering it on them is “an inefficient use of a scarce aviation asset”.

Regional aircraft typically carry fewer than 80 passengers. A Boeing B747 takes 396, an Airbus 330-300 takes 290. Allowing regional aircraft to use valuable landing slots at peak times means the airport is carrying many fewer passengers than it can.

Regional aircraft typically account for 20 per cent of movements at Sydney Airport.

Most could be banished to Bankstown if its runway was upgraded from 1.4 to 1.8 kilometres and its capacity lifted from 20 to 30 tonnes. A noise levy at the Bankstown and Sydney airports could pay for insulation in the affected homes. The training schools that presently use Bankstown could be moved to Camden.

With commendable understatement the economist says the costs would be “negligible compared to the cost of building a second airport at Badgerys Creek”.

And that’s just the start. Peak period charging could move non-time sensitive customers to other times of the day.

“Applying the laws of supply and demand to address capacity constraints could prove a unique experience for many stakeholders,” the economist says. “Not allowing pricing to ration the shortage of landing and takeoff slots during the peak periods means not using an existing asset efficiently and can no longer be justified.”

And the airlines themselves could reconfigure cabins to carry more customers by allocating seats more efficiently between business and economy class.

Trying all of these things first, as the Productivity Commission suggests, would postpone the need for a second airport. And they might make us realise we don’t really want it.

It’s worth asking who would use it.

The economist writes that Badgerys Creek will become a “spillover” airport.

“Passengers are unlikely to be impressed by the commute time from Badgerys Creek to the centre of Sydney.”

We will continue to want to use Sydney and the airlines will as well, just as they prefer Tullamarine to Avalon in Victoria.

The economist reckons the government has Buckley's of getting its money back for decades.

“It is likely that Sydney Airport will commence pricing policies for the off-peak period to ensure that Sydney Airport does not suffer revenue leakage to Badgerys Creek,” he warns.

I don’t know whether that is right or not, but I would like to know the government had tried other solutions before settling on spending billions building a new airport in an inconvenient location.

As the Commission says, the first step is to identify the problem.


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  • I'd like to know how many of the landing slots at Sydney are occupied by flights from Melbourne and Brisbane. I understand that Mel-Syd is the 5th busiest lane in the world. Wonder what replacing the majority of those flights with a high speed rail link up the east coast would do to the capacity needs at Sydney.

    Date and time
    April 15, 2014, 1:13PM
    • So..... you would prefer billions of dollars be spent in the rail infrastructure, PLUS on the high speed trains themselves which will no doubt still be slower than planes on the Sydney Melbourne route instead of a second airport in Sydney for comparatively at a much lesser cost plus the prospect of creating thousands of jobs in the west?

      Sounds about right

      Not Really
      Date and time
      April 15, 2014, 1:40PM
    • Yup, that's $10,000,000,000+ down the drain that could have been used for much better infrastructure projects. Kingsford-Smith is no where near capacity in its current form and with a few changes could provide air services to the metro area for another 80 years. How inefficient.

      luke r
      Date and time
      April 15, 2014, 1:47PM
    • Ahh trains. Only twice as expensive and 7 times as long.

      The reality is, the high speed networks in Europe were first developed when air travel was expensive. Today, it is far cheaper to fly from one city to another in Europe than train with the huge number of discount airlines. The TGV wouldn't be economically viable to build today if it hadn't already had the infrastructure laid down decades ago when flying wasn't affordable for regular travel by most people.

      I fly regularly Syd-Bris for work. With carry-on, I am off the plane and already in my hire car before a high-speed train would have even reached halfway. And I'm willing to bet my seat costs less than what the 4-6 hour train ride (they still have stops and don't do 300 km/h the whole trip) would be. Hell, it's less than what the XPT would be. You have to figure an Australian TGV type train would probably cost around the same as business class!

      Plus, the train would have to convince regular business travellers to abandon their frequent flyer programs. Go have a look at forums like australianfrequentflyer and see how seriously people take their gold and platinum FF status!

      Trains work in places like Japan where you have 6 times to population of Australia living in the same area as Victoria, and multiple cities of over 1 million people separated by what would only be a 20 minute flight, so the train makes sense. But as soon as you are looking at a flight time of over 1 hour, plane wins every time.

      Date and time
      April 15, 2014, 2:28PM
    • "Not Really" - You have obviously never been on the Shinkansen (Japanese bullet train). If you had, you would say what most people who have experienced it say: "WHY ON EARTH DON'T WE HAVE ONE?" Fast, quiet, comfortable. Sugoi! (awesome!)

      Chris J
      Date and time
      April 15, 2014, 2:38PM
    • @James, what about a high speed rail link between Canberra and Sydney.

      For a normal train service, it would probably take an hour to travel from Badgerys Creek to Sydney CBD. A high speed rail from Canberra Airport to Sydney CBD would probably take about the same time (with the bonus of regional mobility and the first-leg to join Melbourne-Canberra-Sydney). That's synergy.

      However, politically the current plan of Badgerys Creek is second to none. It fulfills the election promise of second airport, boost political standing in the Sydney West battleground, generate economy activities and therefore employment just in time for next election. Master stroke indeed.

      Good or bad
      Depends on your point of view.
      Date and time
      April 15, 2014, 3:04PM
    • @Chris J.

      the big problem with high speed rail in Australia is that in summer, it will be slow-speed rail with a strong risk of track buckling in the heat. Do you *really* want a 300km/hr train leaving the tracks at some very inconvenient point in the journey?

      ridden out on a rail
      Date and time
      April 15, 2014, 3:08PM
    • @James
      No one is talking about criss-crossing the entire country with VFT. We are talking about VFT between SYD and MEL, which is the fifth-busiest air corridor in the world. And SYD to SE Qld,which carries almost as many passengers.

      The TGV has been trialled at 575km/h. The train wouldn't be stopping all over the place - that would defeat its purpose. A direct SYD-BNE train trip could easily be done in three hours door-to-door.

      Date and time
      April 15, 2014, 3:19PM
    • High speed rail in Australia will never happen because our largest cities are too far apart for it to be effective. Sydney to Brisbane would be at least 4 hours and Sydney to Melbourne not much less. It can't compete with air travel which can be done in a bit overran hour. Distances in Europe and Japan are significantly less. That's before we even consider the massive cost in building high speed rail line, far more than a second airport.

      Date and time
      April 15, 2014, 3:20PM
    • Chris J of Melbourne, Not Really was referring to the much higher costs and much slower speeds of rail vs. airplanes. I would add the impact to the countryside, the people, farms and communities displaced or affected along the route. You countered with fast, quiet and comfortable. So you haven't addressed any of Not Really's points.

      Yes, I lived in Japan. While the Shinkansen are fast, quiet and comfortable, they're not nearly as fast, quiet and comfortable as airplanes at a fraction of the cost. And Japan's hubs have many times the population density.

      Date and time
      April 15, 2014, 3:30PM

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