From: gl4317@yahoo.com
In article ,
John Levine wrote:
> Bribing politicians to expand airports is at best a very long term
> investment, and in some areas useless. No amount of bribery will
> cause new runways to be built at LGA or DCA. Fortunately, they are
> probably the two US airports with the largest amount of traffic that
> could plausibly move to rail.
While not impacting the NEC in any way, I imagine that a number of other
airports across the country would be expanded with, at best,
considerable difficulty. I certainly can see Sea-Tac being that way.
In the case of Sea-Tac it sits at the top of a ridge that is the only
non-water flat spot of significant size anywhere nearby. Another runway
would mean a massive fill project to turn a valley or two into flat
areas.
I suppose expanding nearby airports could be an option, but the King
County airport (Boeing Field) is at the bottom of a canyon so I don't
think modern air traffic really like the place. It has other limitations
which is why they built Sea-Tac. The Lake Union airport only serves
airplanes that float so unless the flying boat makes a big comeback it's
pretty much limited to scheduled flights to places like downtown
Victoria BC that also have water airports, plus just like Boeing Field
the Lake Union flight path probably doesn't meet modern clearance
requirements. Paine Field (the other Boeing Field) might work as an
additional regional airport, but it is pretty far away from most
anything other than Boeing.
Take away the half-hourly Horizon Air shuttle flights between Portland
and Seattle and efforts to expand airport capacity in Seattle become a
much different picture.
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