High skilled jobs further set back in Western Sydney

News just in that the CBA, who the Parramatta Council were banking on to make their plans for the Parramatta Square Development project have decided not to proceed with having offices in Parramatta; instead favoring offices closer to the city. What does this have to do with the new proposed airport though? Well a lot actually.

One of the major arguments for Badgery's Creek airport is that we need "higher skilled" jobs here in Western Sydney. In fact one of the main lobbyists for this airport David Borger wrote an article about why we need this airport - because it would deliver "Western Sydney's knowledge jobs".

As someone that arguably possesses these types of "higher skills" mainly in the tech industry I would love more jobs locally that were both innovative and high paying. However as someone who does work in this industry I can tell you it's not happening anytime soon for quite a number of reasons.

The heart of it is this; "If Parramatta, Sydney's second CBD, does not warrant these jobs what makes a whole new area even further remote do so?". This is especially true because:

• Knowledge jobs like to be based in areas where the "talent" lies and they are in close proximity to other businesses of the same caliber; the pool of talent in those areas outweighs the cost of the extra rent the company is paying for being in the city.
• Quoting the article the words of CBA's CTO himself: ""Moving to the transformed Australian Technology Park will put 10,000 of our people in the heart of a growing technology hub, providing us with a significant opportunity to partner and collaborate with universities, start-ups and other innovative companies,"".
• With a company earing +$6 billion a year (Commonwealth Bank) the cost advantage of moving out west is small; conversely recruiting for startups is extremely important and hard.
• Collaboration and knowledge sharing, meetup's and the like are extremely important to tech professionals. They would prefer to be localised with each other as much as possible.
• Higher skilled jobs earn higher incomes which is obvious; what that means of course is that many of the company owners live in prestigious areas as a result.
• An example being one of the founders of Atlassian; arguably one of the most sucessful Australian tech companies and where his house is located. Do you expect him to travel from Paddington to Badgery's to see how his company is doing?
• Similarly their staff mostly live near these places of work. Increasingly the workforce of the tech industry is globally sourced - if you moved to a new city for a high skilled job would you move to its outskirts or try the inner city first? There's a lot of inertia here to expect them to change to working on the complete other side of the city.
• There's a lot of competition for technology and science areas. Everyone knows that these are the jobs of the future.
• The one mentioned in the article near Redfern
• One just announced by Mark Baird our NSW premier at the former industrial Bays Area precinct
• Macquarie Park (near North Ryde) is already a technology area and will develop even futher due to its better location. Anecdotally Macquarie Park is already considered a remote place to work from some of the technologists I know and work with.
• There's more in Sydney but I think you get the hint thus far.

As said before by myself; I don't think it's airports that encourage these sorts of jobs anyway. Baggage handlers, logistics workers and tourists vans maybe; but not someone who has enough money to value their sleep at night and has to concentrate at work the next morning. They do serve existing cities however.

Western Sydney should stick to what it's best at; especially the Blue Mountains. Embrace what you are good at:

• Open Spaces
• Less Congestion
• Outdoor areas and backyards for family members
• Quiet and peace a simple drive away if your not there already
• A place "away from the hustle and busle"
• A more "laid back" atmosphere

Unfortunately a 24/7 airport with flight paths over the Mountains and over many Western Suburbs probably conflicts with most of these things. You will never be able to compete against the city with what it is good at on its own terms. It has the advantage not just its scale; but with the fact that it is in a place that people desire to live not just for jobs and amenities; but because it still has preserved its heritage and its environment more so than other cities. This of course attracts people with higher incomes. It's no coincidence that the most livable suburbs according the Census are right near a big National Park in the middle of our city; what other cities can claim having nature like that in the middle of them! 

For a good reason why workers in these higher skilled jobs may want more than "just a job" see this link.

If Parramatta won't do it for some time yet; what hope do we have for the area around Badgery's Creek to do it anytime soon? Will leave you to think about that question.

New draft EIS released today

After quite some time the Federal Government has finally released an EIS (Enviromental Impact Statement) for the new proposal of Badgerys Creek Airport on their website. Thought I would write a quick "first impressions" I found when reading the report - I hopefully will have time in future posts to do a more detailed comparison. I will note though that this report was released quite some time after giving the project the "go-ahead" (at least a year and a half since then) which says quite a bit on its own.

Lets be frank - the EIS was never going to give opponents the ammunition they need to highlight anything bad about the airport development.  No EIS report has ever blocked a project that I'm aware of. Logically anyone writing the report is not going to bite the hand that feeds them and contracted them to write it; this is especially so since the Government as said earlier announced that this was going to be the airport site and made the commitment before the report was even commissioned.

It's still worth looking at however; it may illuminate us as to who will be the winners and losers from the proposal. To be honest it's the first real bit of information we have received about the airport that relates to the most current proposal. It's the main reason I haven't written for so long; there just wasn't the information out there to comment on.

In any case the draft EIS as released seems to give us information on preliminary flight paths and what they see the noise impact to be from their point of view.

What's interesting to me is that the flight paths chosen potentially impact quite a number of people particularly in the lower Blue Mountains where most of the approaching flight paths seem to overlap. They are also somewhat different from what was proposed in the previous EIS last time Badgerys was announced. Departing flight paths this time around go over St Marys, St Clair, Erskine Park, Blacktown and the Penrith CBD. They seem to think however there won't be noise impact that's worth mentioning from this which for me seems quite strange and goes against intuition. In fact comparing actual exposures like I did in previous posts (see my North Ryde comparison on a previous post) I would imagine the noise in decibels to have been quite understated and/or optimistically estimated in order to get the night time N60 maps they did.

These statistical models are just that though; statistics which have the usual problem of garbage-in-garbage-out. They are vulnerable to a number of tweaks in their assumptions including but not limited to estimated traffic, aircraft noise from future aircraft, types of future development, estimated climb rates of aircraft, etc. Lots of variables they can individually tweak to get them closer to the result they want.

Some interesting points that jumped at me:

• The first has to do not just with absolute noise but the frequency of it; I wouldn't be buying a house in the lower Blue Mountains right now for example. Having just enough noise to wake me up at 3am doesn't sound very appealing especially with all the approaching noise paths converging over this area between Penrith and Springwood. It's feels like the Government wanted to punish this area maybe?
• The flight paths seem very "all over the place" mainly due to the airspace that needs to be reserved for three airports that surround Badgerys including Camden, Richmond and Bankstown airports. This leads to some very interesting flight path layouts including paths from St Marys to Penrith CBD and onwards.
• The noise maps don't seem to follow the flight paths all too much; this might have just been a first glance mistake by me. What I do know is that with N60 maps stretching at least 20km from the current Sydney airport these maps particularly with their curved flight paths (planes can't climb as quickly) seem very suss to me.

I hope that I will soon have more time to analyse these documents and do some analysis. From first impressions however I will be honest; it doesn't totally add up especially when compared to data from other airports. My fear is that this document could be more of a political exercise to sell the proposal rather than a true honest assessment of how this development (which will eventually rival the size of JFK airport) will affect local residents. 

Jobs Jobs Jobs

Many of the proponents of the airport proposal in Badgerys Creek cite one major benefit - that being "jobs" hopefully closer to home for local residents. I've seen in articles, forums, presentations, lectures and more all spruiking the job benefits that the airport can bring. In fact for the local community this probably is the only potential benefit an airport they can sell; airports as a whole are normally a negative on the local communities around them (a quick Google search showed at least one but there's plenty of research on the subject).

There's quite a few questions that need to be answered to verify the proponents arguments. For me these are:

1. Are the jobs really going to come from this?
2. Are the jobs the kind of jobs we want? Do they come at the expense of other jobs?
3. Overall are the surplus in jobs created by this proposal vs using the land for other purposes enough to really be worth the cost?

It's the second question that really got me thinking especially knowing that the NSW Government had recently asked the Federal Government whether they could include the Badgerys land as part of their BWSEA (Broader Western Sydney Employment Area). The idea of a technological park similar to say Macquarie Park or an employment centre similar to Norwest with the added benefit of easy transit links made me believe at the time that there may be a possibility I and other technical workers could work closer to home.

Of course with Qantas closing maintenace facilities at Avalon - the other secondary capital city airport in Australia - I doubt the technical job opportunities will continue to be locally based if this airport arrives. While Qantas and Virgin Blue have recently recovered their profits for many years they were experiencing losses of a large scale; avidation generally hasn't achieved a good rate of return as an industry. Even Warren Buffet being the famous investor he is doesn't believe in investing in air travel. Aviation is the most globalised industry on the planet due to its nature; there is no real reason why routine maintenance can't be conducted at other sites or by other contractors offshore.

Airports encourage certain industries to flourish nearby; I side with the opinion that most of them are not technical in nature. Warehousing, transport, retail and tourism are normally the industries to benefit from aviation facilities; not technical or office jobs. There are many reasons at present to believe that technical orientated jobs are not really orientated around airports per se but the technological parks around them; in fact with this airport proposal it could very well be that the land acquired for warehousing, hotels and the like could crowd out the potential of much higher paid skilled work.

Avalon's airport economic benefit summary states that the main job centers created nearby are airport construction (not permanent), hotels, industrial warehousing, service stations and retail outlets. If you drive in the employment lands in the WSEA (the biggest employment land by hectare in Sydney) that's about the only industries in the area and unfortunately at this stage they aren't the massive providers of jobs that locals desperately need. This will only probably be encouraged by the development in my opinion.

The other point is that the land marked locally for the airport had alternate uses; some of which may have given more long term employment of a better caliber than an airport would. Plans for employment lands there have been  before the airport announcement (dated June 2013); in fact the linked FAQ shows these industries were planned to settle there; planning was commencing with or without the airport for the "Western Sydney Employment Area". It pays with this airport proposal to think about the "net" effect on jobs rather than quoting the "gross" job numbers; the smaller the net number the less benefit the airport has on jobs. This point of comparing "net benefits" that may of come anyway is especially important when compared against the costs that an airport brings to the local community such as noise, congestion and pollution. Admittedly jobs may come sooner due to the airport proposal; however since the land would of been used for employment lands anyway at some stage the extra benefits of an airport to me are questionable.

Interestingly another person in a very pro-airport article agrees with me(see http://www.smh.com.au/nsw/deadlines-loom-for-badgerys-creek-airport-at-last-20140912-10ftpo.html) - a professor from UWS (the local university to Badgerys) thinks that unless the development is supercharged into a large major airport it won't deliver the benefit that is being espoused; at best it will cater to freight and budget flights with its lack of curfew status being its main appeal.  This coming from an article that is supporting the development; it therefore has to assert that airports are where the productivity is which I would also question; correlation is not causation. I would assert that airports derive their economic benefit from their location as is the case with the current Sydney Airport; the the fact that it serves a very productive CBD and therefore can tap into and serve this market is its main economic contribution. Cities in economic terms are much more relatively productive than other areas due to their economies of scale and its where this scale is that airports are best positioned. In other words they serve economic CBD areas; many of which were developing organically way before air travel became a big thing. Supercharging the airport development by making Badgerys a CBD in it's own right is an option but has a lot of other concerns in terms of over investment (i.e a potential white elephant development) and the increased community impact of noise and pollution. After all how much money should we invest in yet another Sydney CBD especially when arguably we've haven't made our second CBD work as of yet (i.e Parramatta)?

In conclusion new jobs in the employment lands of South West of Sydney are mainly of the warehouse kind. An article summarises the current problems in the South West of Sydney - although the same local paper mentions Badgerys Creek as a saviour. I would instead assert that given the anticipation of the airport development what's happening currently with the employment lands in Western Sydney is exactly what's to be expected - warehouses upon warehouses of land with a small amount of sparsely populated jobs. I wouldn't be surprised if the likes of Toll and DHL - among just some of the companies building large warehouses out here - are part of the lobby pushing for this proposal; a freight based local airport will make their lives easier even if it doesn't provide more work.

The jobs promised in the area would have eventually arrived anyway with the plans for the area. They would of come without the usual community costs that an airport delivers. I am particularly concerned that the "net" job numbers long term are actually negative as low density industries that prefer locating themselves near an airport crowd out more job dense and high tech industries although at this stage I have no way of quantifying this.

On a side note it seems both the local newspapers are really supporting this development which really shows - unfortunately the statements made to support the airport are usually just thrown into the article without any real support to back them up; I wonder how many jobs say Avalon airport - another secondary Australian airport - has created? (Hint: It's not many). In fact it's going to reverse with most engineering and maintenance jobs moving offshore.

UPDATE: This update was written some time ago but unfortunately/by accident was not posted. Since then Qantas has recovered its profit mainly due to low oil prices. I wonder however whether this is a blip in generally what is a one of the worst industries historically in terms of profitability and return on capital.

Comparing like for like: noise myths around Badgerys

Looking at the noise maps in my previous post and comparing them to both Sydney Airport noise maps and Badgerys flight paths made me sceptical of the Badgerys noise maps provided. It made me realise there are two commonly used myths about Badgerys used by the proponents of the proposal with relation to noise when promoting the airport which I believe have been very misleading to the community of Western Sydney.  I have particular concerns for the suburbs of Glenmore Park, St Clair and Erskine Park along with new suburbs being built towards the south-east of the airport.

The two myths that I think need to be put to rest when comparing Badgerys to Sydney Airport are:

•  That the buffer zone around the Badgerys airport dispels noise as an issue for suburbs in Western Sydney.
•  That noise follows the direction of the runways chosen (e.g for Option A that noise will be concentrated south west and north east of the Badgerys site. If your within 15km of the site your pretty sure to be hit with noise impacts.

At the time of writing my previous post I took the noise maps provided at face value. However looking at it more closely in correlation with the flight paths I became concerned. As one example I've provided two pictures to compare below - the noise map and the flight paths used to derive it.

• N70 Noise Map for Option A Operation 1
• Proposed flight paths for Option A Operation 1 

If you couldn't guess my concern by looking at the above maps it's pretty straightforward - despite the flight paths going in all directions the N70 maps don't seem to reflect this and show most of the noise going north-west and south-east. While this wouldn't make sense to the average observer - don't those other flights create noise as well? - I think this is probably due to their high threshold of more than 10 movements a day in each direction. This has the effect of trimming all but the most used flight path (this flight path is used approximately only 30% of the time on EIS numbers).


The Western Sydney Airport Alliance, as part of encouraging the airport mentions that the nearest suburb on the flight path for Badgerys is equivalent in distance to North Ryde from Sydney Airport (pg 6) which is approximately 15km. Of course while they mention it like it is a good thing I note that all suburbs between North Ryde and the airport (Drummoyne, Hunters Hill, Lane Cost West, etc) all complain about aircraft noise and are probably the main beneficiaries of Badgerys Creek airport. So to put this statement to test I went to see if I could get any data about the noise impacts at North Ryde.

Sure enough AirServices Australia have done the work for me (see http://www.airservicesaustralia.com/wp-content/uploads/Short_Term_Monitoring_Program_North_Ryde_NSW_-_May_2013_V4.pdf). The report makes for some very good reading for Western Sydney residents particularly in the suburbs of Glenmore Park and St Clair/Erskine Park who reside within 15km or less from Badgerys on the proposed Badgerys Creek Option A flight paths. I would encourage local residents to read it - at the very least it will prove that planes are still very loud in general.


The most memorable part of the report is obviously in the summary: that the Max DB is around 88.7db that you will experience with the average of 70.2db. At that average you will be interrupted in conversation whilst inside your house and without curfews you won't be able to sleep either. All this and your not even on the main flight path!

The buffer zone around Badgerys reduces the very extreme of noise but still is not big enough to reduce the impact on your day-to-day life from aircraft noise. Personally I find these noise maps almost useless - as a community member I want to know whether I could be woken up by a particular sound more so than how often - i.e if one of those flights on your flight path is at night your not going to sleep well.


Conclusion: Don't at this stage trust the noise maps - well at least not the ones provided by the EIS - if your in a flight path you will be affected and it will be noisy. That's all you need to know. Without a curfew this impact will be more severely felt by residents within 15-20km from the airport.

Aviation noise from Badgerys Creek in Western Sydney

Previously I wrote a post showing the potential flight paths of Badgerys Creek airport; today's post is to try to get an understanding of what that means in terms of noise for local residents. What noise will you experience if you live under one of these flight paths?

Unfortunately if you read the newspaper and look at their maps you will probably walk away with a false impression of whether you will be affected by noise. This is because most articles show the ANEF map; this has already be proven to be misleading as found by a senate committee (see http://www.infrastructure.gov.au/aviation/environmental/transparent_noise/expanding/index.aspx). People want to know how noise will be like on a bad day or night rather than just an average. The real issue is that the purpose of the ANEF map was never meant to show the community the possible noise impact to them but rather how noise will impact city planning and zoning. The community however has a much stricter criteria; they aren't interested if they can get away with developing a house - they rather know that if they lived there what the noise would be like for them.

Firstly just so you may have an understanding of the information I've attached further down in this post I've grabbed the below examples of sound and their "loudness" in decibels (db) from Sydney Airport's noise management plan. Note that the decibel scale is not linear - an increase in 10db represents a doubling of the sound volume.

Threshold of pain 140db+
Pneumatic drill (unsilenced at 7m distance) 95db
Heavy diesel lorry (40km/h at 7m distance) 83db
Modern twin-engine jet (taking off at 152m distance) 81db
B737-800 jet: arriving at Sydney Airport (flying over Leichhardt) 75.4db
B737-800 jet: departing from Sydney Airport (flying over Croydon) 2 70.9db
Passenger car (60km/h at 7m distance) 70db
Office environment 60db
Ordinary conversation 50db
Library reading room 40db
Quiet bedroom 35db
Threshold of hearing 0db

Nowdays airports in their noise management plans show three maps in their plans. These include:

• The ANEF map
• The N70 map which shows areas that are likely to be affected by aircraft noise above 70db and how often in a 24 hour period.
• The N60 map which shows areas that are likely to be affected by aircraft noise above 60db. This is normally provided for nighttime exposure only since this is the sound level that when inside will cause you to wake up from sleep.

The rationale for choosing 70db as the sound level for these maps comes from the fact that any sound above 60db will disrupt indoor conversation and general household activities. Assuming your inside your house a 70db sound outdoors will be reduced to 60db by the time it makes it inside. In other words it's really 60db of sound that will be disruptive; its just lucky your always inside right?

I've put the N70 maps below of Badgerys Creek and Sydney Airport for you to compare.

N70 Map for Badgerys Creek Option A Operation 1 - Takeoffs to North East (Source: Supplement to Draft EIS Second Sydney Airport Proposal Volume 3 Supplement Part E Chpt 8)

N70 Map for Badgerys Creek Option A Operation 2 - Takeoffs to South West (Source: Supplement to Draft EIS Second Sydney Airport Proposal Volume 3 Supplement Part E Chpt 8)

N70 Map for Badgerys Creek Option C Operation 1 - Takeoffs to North (Source: Supplement to Draft EIS Second Sydney Airport Proposal Volume 3 Supplement Part E Chpt 8)

N70 Map for Badgerys Creek Option C Operation 2  - Takeoffs to South (Source: Supplement to Draft EIS Second Sydney Airport Proposal Volume 3 Supplement Part E Chpt 8)

N70 map for Sydney Airport (Source: Sydney Airport Master Plan 2033)

N60 maps are also shown as well by established airports (see Bankstown Airport Noise Plan and Sydney airport night time curfew maps) which has more of a bearing on outdoor activities. Unfortunately for us Western Sydney locals we only have a predicted night time N60 map that in my opinion isn't much use. This is because it has been compiled with the assumption that there is a lot less aircraft traffic during the night and therefore less noise to measure. I don't believe this assumption to be correct since one of the main appeals of this airport is that it probably won't have a curfew and Mascot will continue to do so. It could just very well be night time passengers and freight are the main markets for this airport who would otherwise have to wait for a slot outside curfew hours at Sydney Airport - at this stage we don't know.

To illustrate my point even with a curfew the N60 maps over the sea provided by Sydney Airport look like below - there are still 20+ events per night 12.5km's away near Bundeena even with curfew restrictions. Contrasting this the Badgerys EIS only tells you that you will get more than 5 events each night at this distance. Sydney Airport also has the advantage of being able to send planes out to sea of course:

N60 Map for Badgerys Creek Option A (Source: Supplement to Draft EIS Second Sydney Airport Proposal Volume 3 Supplement Part E Chpt 8)

N60 Map for Badgerys Creek Option C (Source: Supplement to Draft EIS Second Sydney Airport Proposal Volume 3 Supplement Part E Chpt 8)

N60 Night Time Curfew Map for Sydney Airport (Source: Sydney Airport Master Plan 2033)

Despite my previous doubts on the N60 map shown above for both Option A and Option C runway configurations it still shows that unfortunately there will be many sleepless nights for the people in the areas nearby (e.g Leppington, Mulgoa Rise and more). It has to be noted that these N60 maps were made in 1997; a lot of housing development has happened since then. There is the reason why in 2009 the Aviation White Paper released by the Labor Government ruled out the use of Badgerys Creek - "Badgerys Creek is no longer an option. It has been overtaken by years of urban growth in the area and is inconsistent with future NSW spatial planning and land use development for the south-west region of Sydney."

What I would like to see in any updated EIS (Environmental Impact Statement) is an N60 worst day (in the daytime) map for each runway configuration that is proposed similar to the one Sydney Airport prepared for its night time hours. That's what likely to be disruptive to your day to day activities when your for example enjoying a family picnic or playing an outdoor sport. This should then be shown to the community so they fully understand what noise they will experience and where it will be located.

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.

Flight paths of each runway option

This post is simply an information dump from the EIS documents; which doesn't seem to be anywhere obvious on the web other than in PDF form on the Blacktown Council website. In quite a number of articles, forums and other websites information about the airport has been presented in a way that in my opinion is potentially misleading to the community. As an example a Daily Telegraph article titled “Badgerys Creek Flight Path will slience the critics” shows the ANEF maps of the airport rather than any proposed flight paths. People really want to know whether the planes will "fly over them"; this post attempts to show more information to address exactly that.

At present as shown in the 1997 EIS for the airport there are three options that are proposed for the runway alignment of the airport; with the first two options quite similar.

• Option A has the runways going NE/SW
• Option B is the same but with a longer northern runway
• Option C is a direct N/S runway configuration
  

Whatever option is decided of course will influence the final flight paths of the airport. Most newspaper articles assume that Option A will be selected from what I have seen. Indeed if we assume that the fact sheets published along with the airport announcement are true from the Government we can probably say that Option A is the only option available. This is because out of the options proposed this is the only one that does not require more acquisition of land.

"The site owned by the Australia Government is sufficient to support an initial airport development and further land acquisition is unlikely to be required. Any future decision to expand would require consultation between the Government, the airport owner and affected stakeholders."
Fact Sheet - Building an airport at Badgerys Creek

Of course we can note that before the election Warren Truss confirmed the airport was not on their radar either (http://www.smh.com.au/nsw/just-dont-mention-a-second-airport-20130803-2r669.html). So I'm not sure whether we can trust the press release above. Furthermore the above words in the fact sheet seem like minister speak; the option is still open and no decisions have yet been made here. More interesting to note that when I attended the UWS airport forum a UWS staffer commented that Option C was more likely on the table since it would be funded by private enterprise and that they would prefer this configuration to line up with their other airport (i.e Kingsford Smith). While I don't have any information yet to suggest this is the case it does show there is no consensus of any part of the airport proposal yet including which runway alignment will be used.

The funny thing about all of this is that no matter which option is selected it really doesn't change much in terms of which areas will cop the most frequency of flights. Besides the obvious immediate areas near the airport Penrith and to a lesser extent Camden and Blacktown are situated within proposed flight paths. Below I've attached images of the flight paths as proposed by the 1997 EIS for both Option A and C to illustrate this. This of course debunks the myth that planes will simply continue flying north east and south west of the airport. It is interesting that at least for Option A that the flight paths turn back to fly over Sydney - in particular the Penrith area - when there doesn't seem to be any obvious reason why they need to do so.

Option A: South-West Takeoff flight paths (Source: Draft EIS (1997) Second Sydney Airport VOLUME 1 Chpt 9)

Option A: North-East Takeoff flight paths (Source: Draft EIS (1997) Second Sydney Airport VOLUME 1 Chpt 9)

Option C: Northern Takeoff flight paths (Source: Draft EIS (1997) Second Sydney Airport VOLUME 1 Chpt 9)

So why are we interested in what the flight paths will be? For two reasons:

1. It allows us to determine where the community impacts will be felt including but not limited to aircraft noise and;
2. It also gives some possible explanation as to why local stakeholders either support or oppose the airport development. It is interesting to note that out of the surrounding councils Liverpool (and therefore unfortunately WSROC) are the main vocal supporters of the airport while Blacktown, Camden, Fairfield and potentially Penrith are opposed to it. This of course correlates to the flight paths above with the Liverpool area pretty much clear from most of it.

Both reasons above of course whole topics in themselves and if I have time will deal with in further blog posts. I thank Blacktown Council for hosting the EIS documents of the Badgerys Creek airport proposal on their website (see http://www.blacktown.nsw.gov.au/Planning_and_Development/Strategic_Planning/Sydneys_Second_Airport_Draft_EIS_from_1997). It is interesting to note that a standard Google search does not show any proposals for flight paths at all at time of writing this post; hopefully posting them here makes it more accessible to people.