Re: 115 Winthrop Square | Financial District
guys, we've been through this a million times at various places on this forum. The runway doesn't point directly at downtown. The CBD is left of centerline, as can be seen anytime you're coming in for a landing on 9, or to the right as you're taking off on 27. Logan's runways maximize use of a very tiny piece of land (relatively speaking - you can look up Logan's acreage vs. similarly busy airports and it is a fraction of the size; they jammed as much as they could on there, and positioned the terminals pretty strategically to avoid a runway going right toward the CBD). And given the pretty crazy wind conditions in/near Boston, it's important that they have choices for operating runways pointing in different directions. These are tradeoffs we make for having an airport extremely close to the CBD. I'm sure there's probably more that can be done to make the height map more flexible for developers (& we should pursue those things), but you can't say the airport planners made egregious mistakes.
I hear you but this doesn't really prove anything. I know that thats basically the conclusion that we've come to but I feel its more confirmation bias than fact.
-The land issue is a moot point because this is mostly fill between a couple islands that existed before.
-Looking at the pictures below show that it barely would have taken any more fill to have another runway anyways, probably even the same amount if you didn't have to fill in the area around 9/27.
-Look at other airports all over the country/world. Hundreds of airports have the runways at 90* from one another. NYC is a good example and I don't see anything inherently different in NY where they can do this but we cant.
-The wind issue doesn't make a ton of sense because if everywhere else can have runways at 90* from one another we can too (we do). The other runways already face the other direction and they work fine. If the east west runways don't work go north south.
-Theres already space for the "new" runway, it would have ran directly next to an already existing runway so noise, wind...etc are already factored in.
-9/27 doesnt point directly over downtown, but its damn close meaning the seaport was buzz cut, along with height restrictions in the South Station area of downtown.
-Finally this is a safety issue sending thousands upon thousands of flights directly over the most populated areas in the state every week.
What is the real reason? Nobody has actually found no shit documentation of why Logan was designed the way it was, we all just collectively talk about it for a bit then settle with what we think sounds best. I whipped up a couple images below to show how simple this would have been and again theres plenty of airports that run their runways 90* to each other so its not by any means required to have one runway that cuts between both.
https://postimage.org/
https://postimage.org/
https://postimage.org/
I realize this is getting off topic but theres not a ton of news on this tower and this topic comes up all the time on this forum so if we can finally put a nail in the coffin maybe it wont.
**Bonus points, this could have allowed a bridge over the harbor (if that last one way runway at the bottom hadn't been built) instead of a tunnel which could have ran a train (future silver line upgrade), allowed people to walk/bike across the harbor...which is extremely difficult for people in East Boston, vehicular traffic, saved money, and finally looked damn good as the gateway to the city.
But for the record, I think both Seattle and Atlanta currently have better skylines than Boston. Although, from ground level, Boston completely wrecks Atlanta in every way possible. (haven't been to Seattle) It is kind of off topic, but we have the better city and I want it to be better in every way possible, including the skyline.
