Is this really an airport for Western Sydney?

Many people have quoted that this is an airport meant to serve Western Sydney first and foremost while others have asserted that it really is just a way to palm off the inner cities problems to the west. Seeing both sides of the argument made me wonder - who is right? What does the data say? Of course what really got me suspicious was this quote in the airport announcements fact sheet:

"Based on analysis in the Joint Study on aviation capacity in the Sydney region, residents of Western Sydney have a lower propensity to undertake air travel than the Sydney average."
Sourced from https://www.infrastructure.gov.au/aviation/airport/western_sydney/files/Fact_Sheet_4_The_benefits_of_an_airport_at_Badgerys_Creek.pdf

Knowing the demand for aviation services at the airport is useful to answer a number of questions such as:

• Is the infrastructure investment required for the airport worth it for the taxpayer or is it better spent elsewhere?
• Does the benefits to the community in economic activity and therefore jobs outweigh the usual negative impacts on an airport to the local area? No demand means no jobs.
• Will this be a "white elephant" project?
• Are the negative externalities (i.e. costs) of an airport being borne by a different group than the people who gain the benefits from it? (e.g. locals may hardly ever fly but still cop the noise from the airport)
• Will the amount of users moving to the newer airport be enough to help alleviate the constraints at Kingsford Smith (e.g. movement caps in peak hour times)
• Is this overall the appropriate location of the airport?

In fact without a realistic assessment of demand it probably isn't prudent for the private sector to even think about investing capital into building an airport here in Western Sydney.

Demand forecasting is a tricky business and has a lot of assumptions so I will leave that to others. My one assumption however is that the current location of the airport for Western Sydney (i.e Kingsford Smith) isn't the factor why local residents don't travel often. I base this assumption on the fact that since the airport isn't even an hour away from the main proposed market of Badgerys I can use current demand data on the airport that currently serves this group of the population. I think this is a realistic assumption to make; I out here in the west can get on a plane if I choose to without too much hassle on my part.

I came across two studies that gave me the information I needed. Both confirmed that the local area - that is South West Sydney - are definitely weak users of air travel compared to pretty much the rest of Sydney in general.

The first graph I saw came from the Sydney Airport Ground Travel Plan 2006. As part of coming up with this document Sydney Airport conducted a survey as to where their passengers originated from when travelling to the airport and where arrivals were heading to. All up the Western Sydney markets composed of about 10% of the known demand here as shown in the figure from the document below.

Passenger Origin-Destination from Kingsford Smith Airport (Source: Sydney Airport Ground Travel Plan 2006)

If we use these percentages with the current level of passengers per year at Sydney Airport (see Sydney Airport Performance Highlights) we end up with very approximately 3.7 million passengers per year from Western Sydney. It is a possibility that the 4% in the "Blacktown - Baulkham Hills" category is more from the Hills area than it is from Blacktown area but without the raw survey data I can't really verify this as of yet (i.e more demand from North Western Sydney).

The more interesting bit of information however in this graph is where the real demand for aviation in Sydney comes from:

• Inner Sydney (includes the CBD) leads usage of the airport at 36%
• The Eastern Seaboard from the Eastern Suburbs to the Northern Beaches adds up to 19%.
• 10% of the demand comes from the south east of Sydney; also well located by Kingsford Smith.

What this suggests of course is that the current airport is very well located next to the users that typically use aviation services. Improving this airport if possible therefore has a lot more "bang for buck" in terms of economic activity since its current location is closer to where its demand is situated. In my opinion it also suggests that maybe the original first proposal of Galston from a purely demand driven perspective was a better location for the second airport site given demand seems stronger along the Sydney coastline and the northern half of Sydney (see Second Sydney Airport-A Chronology).

A more recent study conducted by the Government (see Joint Study on Sydney Aviation Capacity 2012) also backs up that demand in general is weak in the Western Sydney area. This is partly due to the development restrictions there of course but even where the population centres are it is visible that the demand in Western Sydney is lacking compared to the anything east of Parramatta. Looking more carefully it is also visible that there is more demand originating from North Western Sydney (i.e the locally known Hills Council falls into this area) than other Western Sydney areas.

UPDATE(25/09/2014): I have found a clearer map than the one displayed in the Joint Aviation Sydney from one of its source technical papers (see http://www.infrastructure.gov.au/aviation/airport/western_sydney/sydney_av_cap/files/Technical_Papers_Volume_1-Joint_Study_on_Aviation_Capacity_in_the_Sydney_Region.pdf) which I have placed first underneath this paragraph. It clearly shows that the strong demand comes from the coastline areas of Sydney with demand generally getting weaker as you go out west towards the Badgerys site.

Map of Sydney Aviation Demand by Region (Source: BITRE analysis of NVS, 2005‐2009 pooled data (Tourism Research Australia), converted to annual trips. )

Distribution of air trips in the Sydney region, by suburb (Joint Study of Aviation Capacity for the Sydney region 2012 p.87)

From just looking at the above graphs from two independent data sources it seems that Western Sydney as a whole is probably not the main market for this airport at the present time. Furthermore I could say it may not be the infrastructure that Western Sydney is "demanding" at all.

Of course in the future there are visions that with the population growth in Western Sydney increasing that this will change somewhat and that's probably true to an extent. However with 43% of the Sydney population (1,923,618 out of 4,391,674 - see http://profile.id.com.au/wsroc/population?WebID=200) currently living Western Sydney only compromising of 10% of current air travel demand it's a stretch to say that an airport is the infrastructure that Western Sydney "demands" or "needs". It will probably take a lot more population growth to achieve a higher share of demand in Western Sydney assuming propensity to travel remains constant over time. That of course will require a lot of other infrastructure first (e.g. roads, rail, hospitals) before something like an airport should be considered.

This of course raises the question as to whether we want more population growth in Western Sydney and/or in Sydney as a whole if it means we need to spend more money on infrastructure to accomodate it but that's another topic altogether.

What this does say however that this airport may be more to serve the passengers of Kingsford Smith; an asset that may be facing capacity constraints at present rather than serving passengers from the local community of Western Sydney.