Second airport, Dulles-style

jass said:
Per google:

Downtown Boston to Manchester:
54 miles, 60 minutes
Downtown Boston to Worcester:
46 miles, 65 minutes
Downtown Boston to Providence:
59 miles, 65 minutes
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Just build true high-speed rail to one of these airports, and there you have a second airport without having to build a new one. Plus you get the bonus of high speed rail for regular commuter use as well.

I'd vote for high speed rail to Manchester in the median of I-93, taking out one traffic lane in each direction where necessary.
 
Well. How can we build a supertall or two if the FAA winces about them being in Logan's Flight Path. If we build a true high speed line along the Northeast Corridor, would that almost completely eliminate flights to New York, Philadelphia, Baltimore, and Washington D.C. from Boston? When I mean almost, I speak about Southwest Airlines, who has a hub in Baltimore. And if we build new high speed lines to Toronto, would that almost completely eliminate flights to that city?
 
vanshnookenraggen said:
That is even less feasible for so many reasons, most of all that I doubt the traffic through the new airport would justify the extreme cost.

I still don't think that building a large new airport is even warranted. All I see in the future is rising fuel prices and fewer flyers. We should be more efficient with the infrastructure and technology we have, not continually building bigger, more environmentally damaging projects.
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Allright, we run the high speed line from Boston to I-495, like it is proposed in Penn Design's plan for a High Speed Rail Line along the Northeast Corridor, then run the high speed line up 495 to Fort Devens and build the airport there. Or if the redevelopment of Weymouth NAS has fallen through, we can take that over and build a new airport there, and connect it to the city. The only downside is is that we would have to pay a lot of people big money for them to relocate.
 
I saw somewhere that 33% of all air traffic at Logan is... AIR FREIGHT. Is this necessary? I think Boston can survive with air freight moved out to Hanscom. Devens might be a bit much. Then, boom! 33% increase in commercial/charter flights.
 
Isn't a lot of that UPS and FedEx cargo destined for central Boston and Cambridge, though? Divert it out of Logan and now you need a lot more trucks to deliver it where it's going.
 
BostonUrbEx said:
I saw somewhere that 33% of all air traffic at Logan is... AIR FREIGHT. Is this necessary? I think Boston can survive with air freight moved out to Hanscom. Devens might be a bit much. Then, boom! 33% increase in commercial/charter flights.
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If something is coming by air, then it's expensive or time sensitive and distance may be an issue.

Although Hanscom is pretty damn close, so it may be a good solution.
 
Hanscom could have a direct connector to I-95/128 built, providing good truck access to Boston via I-93.
 
Most of the air freight at Logan moves in the off-hours at night. So moving air freight operations elsewhere does not increase Logan's capacity for other operations during peak periods.

Aside from the mental masturbation aspects of this entire thread, I am surprised nobody has tossed out the idea of using Pease, whose longest runway is more than ten percent longer than Logan's longest.

The downside of Pease is that the longest runway is also the only runway.

Hanscom's longest runway is 7,000 ft, the other runway is 5,100 ft. The longest is a marginal distance for freighter aircraft; the other runway is too short. You are not going to increase runway length at Hanscom. Worcester's runways are a mirror of Hanscom's, and seeing where the airport is, I doubt you can increase the runway length.
 
Second eliminating lots of shuttle traffic by promoting NEC high speed service. I think flights are now eliminated on the Paris-Brussels route because rail is so much more efficient. Key here would be promoting connections to the New York airports, which are hellish to reach from Penn Station via transit (NO trains to LGA, two subways to JFK that take well over an hour and make it a pain to carry baggage) or shifting international connecting traffic to airports more accessible to the rail line (maybe EWR, Philadelphia or BWI?)

A LOT of people fly to JFK to connect to flights that leave from nowhere else (a lot of JetBlue service, and a lot of international flag carriers that don't even touch DC), so building new infrastructure links there alone would be priceless.
 
stellarfun said:
Most of the air freight at Logan moves in the off-hours at night. So moving air freight operations elsewhere does not increase Logan's capacity for other operations during peak periods.

Aside from the mental masturbation aspects of this entire thread, I am surprised nobody has tossed out the idea of using Pease, whose longest runway is more than ten percent longer than Logan's longest.

The downside of Pease is that the longest runway is also the only runway.

Hanscom's longest runway is 7,000 ft, the other runway is 5,100 ft. The longest is a marginal distance for freighter aircraft; the other runway is too short. You are not going to increase runway length at Hanscom. Worcester's runways are a mirror of Hanscom's, and seeing where the airport is, I doubt you can increase the runway length.
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I almost said Pease, but 1 runway? C'mon. Every other potential location has 2 or 3. I have to wonder how much people would bitch if Norwood was beefed up. Plenty of room for it's existing 2 runways to be lengthened, and there's room for a 3rd. NIMBY's aside, it looks like a promising spot. You could even have the Fairmount line hit up 128 and build a spur off to Norwood Airport for it.

You could make a spur to Pease, too, but it's so damn far, further than Manchester. And service to Portsmouth is not looking good for now. First, Seabrook plant needs to shut down, then money for a new bridge over the Merimac needs to be found. I think it's key to have some rail access.
 
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I have to wonder how much people would bitch if Norwood was beefed up. Plenty of room for it's existing 2 runways to be lengthened, and there's room for a 3rd. NIMBY's aside, it looks like a promising spot. You could even have the Fairmount line hit up 128 and build a spur off to Norwood Airport for it.
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People would bitch a lot, because of assumptions about what it would do to traffic on Route 1.
 
Neither of Norwood's runways are even 5,000 feet.

If you don't like Pease, go to Westover. Plenty of runway length. Probably about the same travel time to Boston as Stewart is to NYC.
 
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