January 24, 2007
CALLED IT
Almost 19 months ago, Gothamist published a piece about the Port Authority's consideration of adding a fourth major airport to the New York Metropolitan region. Jen's piece pointed out that traffic is projected to increase to 100mn annual passengers through Laguardia, JFK, and Newark in the next few years and the three existing airports were already nearing total capacity. But what to do?
In other words: We're not going to bid on the West Side railyards. But that is a big question: Where would they stick another airport? The article noted that the last attempt for a fourth airport was over 30 years ago, near Morristown, NJ, an area that is now very populated. A final fun factoid from the Times article: "The newest major American airport, Denver International, is 10 years old and sits on 34,000 acres, about four times the total space of all three big New York-area airports." That is pretty mindblowing.
I had a suggestion, which I posted in the article's Comments section:
Stewart International Airport in Newburg, NY is only 55 miles north of the city. Currently hosts smaller regional airlines, but does have flights to Vegas and Cancun. Also a home for cargo flights by UPS and FedEx. At around 2,200 acres it's less than half the size of JFK (4,930) but more than 3 times as large as LaGuardia (680). Total property is 8,000 acres but a lot of that has been given over to an industrial park. Given that the facility has been used for commercial and passenger air traffic for decades, it seems to have already jumped through all the regulatory hoops and NIMBY bullshit that anyone within a 100 miles of NYC is going to present if you try to park an airport in their community. Transportation infrastructure is convenient; it's at the intersection of I-84 and the NYS Thruway and I believe NJ Transit has regular commuter trains that run down the west side of the Hudson. The town of Newburg could certainly benefit from some major economic development; it's seen better days. Cab fare would certainly be a bitch, but if the Port Authority feels it's going to need another airport eventually, a major expansion of Stewart would be a good start to its search.
I thought it was a pretty reasonable idea, given that it only took me about fifteen minutes online while at work to muster the facts and present them logically. Everyone wasn't on board exactly; from another commentor:
At best Stewart could be used by northern suburbs, where people already have cars. West Shore commuter trains stopped running 50 years ago. The Bergen County and Pascack Valley lines that NJ Transit does run in NY would have to be extended 40-50 miles. Cab fare would be at least $150 one-way from the city.
Good points. Everyone needs a devil's advocate. So I had another go at it:
NJ Transit's Main Line that runs up through Bergen and into Rockland counties stops at Salisbury Mills/Cornwall. That's only about 5 miles from Stewart. The main line's terminus is Hoboken, but passengers can transfer at Seacaucus and continue to Penn Station. A regular train between Penn and Cornwall takes about 1hr 30-40min, but that's with the train making every commuter stop along the line. A dedicated airport-city run would be much shorter, especially if the transfer in Seacaucus were eliminated. Regular shuttle buses into the city could make the trip in about an hour. A five-mile spur extension off the Main Line could deliver passengers directly to the airport. It seems like a relatively small investment in improving infrastructure might be preferable to spending $10 billion (?) on building a whole new airport from scratch. The 55-mile distance is definitely a burden to be overcome, but given that almost all the land surrounding NYC is dedicated to high-end suburbs, good luck getting any of those towns to cede a few hundred or a couple thousand acres to develop a noisy polluting airport. Plus, if the purpose is to ease the burden on Newark, Laguardia and JFK, siphoning off all the travelers who live in Putnam, Rockland, northern NJ and a good deal of lower-Upstate NY seems like a good idea. Especially considering that it's the upstate counties like Dutchess that are experiencing rapid population growth.
Someone else jumped in:
This is old news, of sorts. It was reported on WNBC last week. Newburgh is one of the 2 possibilities mentioned, the other being McGwire AFB in NJ.
Well that was good to know that the Port Authority was looking in the right direction. It's a done deal now according to WNBC:
The Port Authority is planning to buy the operating lease of Stewart Airport, setting the stage for the facility to become the fourth major airport in the Tri-State area.
According to the terms of the deal, the Port Authority would pay $78.5 million to acquire the 93 years remaining on the lease currently held by the National Express Corporation. The lease expires March 31, 2099.
In 2006, 300,000 passengers passed through Stewart airport, which covers 2,400 acres of land in Newburgh, N.Y. In comparison, New York City's LaGuardia Airport is 680 acres.
Authorities believe the airport could accommodate up to 1.5 million passengers annually.
The Port Authority is making the move because it fears the region's three major airports --LaGuardia, John F. Kennedy and Newark Liberty -- will reach operating capacity in coming years, with no room to expand.
So Stewart will be the fourth regional airport for the Tri-State region. Expect a lot of growth in Orange County and surrounding areas as the plan is realized. One thing stood out about the story though. The WNBC report said that in 2006, Stewart Airport served 300,000 travellers and that authorities felt the airport could accomadate up to 1.5 million passengers annually. I don't know where they got that figure, but if Stewart is the Port Authority's choice for a fourth regional airport and they only expect it to serve 1.5 million more passengers than the 105.6 million the big three served in 2005 (Port Authority Airport Traffic Report, p.23) than they're shooting a little low. That's only a 1.4% increase in the system's overall capacity.
Someone at WNBC could have at least done some back-of-an-envelope math and seen that 1.5 million figure as pretty lame and asked a question like: "So that's 1.5 million people next week with no expansion or investment in infrastructure, right?" If Stewart is 2,400 acres as claimed by WNBC, then the next closet area airport to it in size would be Newark, which is 2027 acres. Newark served 34.0 million passengers in 2005. I know this is sort of breaking news, but just throwing out nonsensical numbers is not the same as passing on sensible information.
(All information on acreage and annual passenger traffic for JFK/Newark/Laguardia taken from the 2005 Port Authority Airport Traffic Report, downloadable here.
Posted by Lexiphane at January 24, 2007 10:00 PM
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