Opposition forces killed several police officers, rioted on several occasions and constructed a giant 200 ft tower to interfere with test flights. Hundreds of acts of vandalism have occurred over the years, even into recent times.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sanrizuka_Struggle

Kansai International: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kansai_International_Airport

Kobe: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kobe_Airport

Kitakyushu: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kitakyushu_Airport

Chubu International: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chubu_Centrair_International_A...

That was the first time I appreciated how hard it is to navigate the modern world if you're illiterate.

There is still a very obvious house in the middle of Narita Airport that you can see when flying in or out. There are roads to it underneath the airport.

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/narita-airport-farm-takao-shito...

"The best outcome would be for the airport to shut down," he said. "But what's important is to keep farming my ancestral land."

I imagine most countries would just use eminent domain?

That's not a runway, but a taxiway. Runways have no curves ever.

https://www.airnav.com/airport/S90

PS: That's really pretty dangerous, imagine having to compensate for crosswind changing directions, avoiding the trees at each side etc.. wow.

Japan also did it in this case in general, but not everywhere. Because having a law and enforcing a law is not the same - because there was determined resistance of all kinds. And by law they could have also expropriated that land, but that would have sparked more violent opposition. Apparently letting this farm as it is, was one of the compromises to have the airport at all, without riot police guarding it 24/7.

They are talking about their lives and families, which they know intimately and on which much of their life depends. I don't know anything about them. Now if they talked about me, about whom they know nothing, then they'd be yadda yaddaing if you take my meaning.

Trying again: they were banned from buying land for reasons that are politely obscured, beyond it relating to their actions in the Japanese military during WWII.

Also https://getyarn.io/yarn-clip/cf343b06-f4a8-46fc-b124-1c61392...

[1] https://www.ptua.org.au/2015/10/29/busiest-airports-rail/

And it's a bit stupid because the stations before and after the airport are the normal cheap price.

Some of the Japans biggest shipping companies (I’ve personally only used Kuroneko Yamato; but I’m pretty sure others do this too) will pick up your luggage from the airport, and deliver it to your room for ~15 USD per bag.

This also works in reverse, and even between cities — don’t take your heavy bags on Shinkansen, have a concierge or front desk ship them to your next hotel.

The Google keyword for this are ta-q-bin/takkyubin.

Trains are great in general. They also tend to be a poor fit for anything much more than carry-on. I've done it and managed but it's better not to if you can.

But Japan is the kind of place that people want to bring a whole lot of stuff back - I know a lot of people who basically fly out with empty suitcases and just fill them to the brim with random tchotchkes over here — and hey, whatever makes them happy.

It’s Japan. Obviously I knew about the train lol. Their trains are awesome!

Took the bus back from the hotel.

Given how far NRT is from Tokyo, $200 doesn't seem too bad...

You'd be an idiot to use a taxi.

Or it's some exceptional situation (flight super delayed?)

Many travelers will just grab a ticket that sounds vaguely correct and then fare adjust at the end. Grabbing an IC card or one of the apps is the easiest course for virtually everyone though.

One of the interesting ideas (that was proposed even back when SEA was adding it's third runway) is to run high-speed rail to Moses Lake Airport in Central Washington and just expand there. I'm doubtful it happens, since that means building a major airport _and_ a new train.

While reading this article, I thought about something like that too. Build an airport quite a while away from the big city, and provide a high-speed, maybe even maglev train there. Make it free for customers.

Also, make it very inconvenient for passengers and staff to approach the airport by other means, only allow cargo delivery there through the road network. This disincentives people from e.g. building hotels close to the airport, which would then attract further settlement, which would ultimately lead to noise complaints again.

Or go one step further and just put on barriers to block the trains too. Don't let anyone near the airport unless they walk/bike the few miles. That will drive up servicing costs but will dramatically lower congestion. If don't correctly, virtually nobody will ever get to the airport. It can then be closed altogether, thereby eliminating any and all future noise complaints.

I don't want to carry 4 big bags in the train when I travel international

I don't want to travel 30 miles if my plane get cancelled.

However, this was only partial solution, as it worked for departures only, not arrivals.

https://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/Алматинский_аэровокзал

Most cities don't have airports that close to the city. Maybe you live in San Diego and the airport is right there downtown, but most people are traveling to get to their airport. Ok, maybe you don't want to take a train and can hire an airport van or whatever, but you're likely traveling a distance to get to an airport.

I'm not saying that it isn't nice to have a more convenient airport, but if we're being realistic about climate change air travel is going to have to be something we do sparingly rather than often. People in the US, UK, Germany, and France currently emit an average of 15t, 5t, 8t, and 5t of CO2 respectively. A trip from NYC to London will be 2t of CO2 - which probably needs to be around 40% of your annual CO2 budget. That is to say, an inconvenient airport should be an inconvenience very few times per year.

Making other things in your life more conveniently located should be a much higher priority - the things you'll use daily, weekly, or monthly. An airport is something you'll use infrequently - or will have to use infrequently if we're going to be realistic about climate change. Plus, as I noted, 30 miles isn't really that inconvenient compared to current situations in most cities. Even the "close" airport in London is 20+ miles away from most of London. Is there a huge difference between 20 miles and 30 miles? That's less than a 10 minute difference by car. With a high-speed train it could be a lot less. Paris to Lyon on the TGV averages 167 MPH. At that speed, 30 miles is covered in 11 minutes.

I certainly understand the desire for convenience, but airports are something individual people use infrequently (or will have to use infrequently given the reality of climate change). If getting to the airport is annoying, it's probably not an annoyance in your life frequently.

Demand baggage pick-up and delivery services be offered.

Having someone pick up your checked luggage the day before you fly out, walking off a train right into the airport, and then getting on the plane w/o any fuss, is amazing.

VS the American Standard of waiting in a huge line to weigh your checked luggage, that you just paid an Uber 60-80 to carry for you.

Japan has this really cool service where you can get your bags picked up from your hotel room and taken to the airport or from the airport to your hotel room. It costs max around $20 USD.

> I don't want to travel 30 miles if my plane get cancelled.

My local airport (Sea-tac) is almost 30 miles from Seattle. It can easily take an hour driving to get there. I do agree that taking lots of luggage onto the light rail (WHICH DOESN'T DROP YOU OFF IN THE AIRPORT!!) is a bad idea.

But I am one of those people who despises checked luggage, since it can add another 30+ minutes to checking in. Compared to carry-on and TSA pre-check, where I can walk into the airport, through security, and be at my boarding gate in under 10 minutes.

But hey, Seattle is, as much as I love it, not a world class American city. Let's try NYC.

It can take over an hour to get from midtown Manhattan to JFK driving.

It also takes over an hour on the subway.

Oops, another bad example.

You know what, I am starting to think flying out of Boston Logan[1] is pretty nice.

But seriously, if you want a huge international airport, you need a lot of land, and you don't want to put that smack dab in the middle of a city, unless the land got paid for long ago, and even then, you'll be stuck with an airport that you cannot expand.

Meanwhile a train from Tokyo to Narita Airport is under 20 minutes.

[1] I legit like flying out of Boston Logan, the big dig was expensive but wow was it effective. Also shout out to Bogota Colombia for having super clean streets around its airport. It was an amazing second impression flying in (the first impression being how beautiful the city is from the sky!)

Haneda is vastly more convenient.

[1] https://www.mtr.com.hk/en/customer/services/complom_checkin....

I'm pretty close to that currently--although it's combined sick/personal/vacation. I've done a number of 3-week workcations in my current role and also had a few weeks of vacation banked from a prior paid time off scheme. I've long had a pretty generous amount of vacation time and I've always leveraged work travel (which I used to do a lot of) for sightseeing and related activities.

In developed countries outside the US annual multi-week vacations are routine for the middle classes

    > Haneda is vastly more convenient.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skyliner

Even though NRT is in the middle of nowhere, getting there from my place in Asakusa still is faster then getting across the city to get to HND.

mdk (Shadowcat's resident responsible adult / business person) however has three kids, and two adults trying to wrangle three children as well as luggage makes trains much, much less attractive as an option.

So I think "fantastic to imagine, DOA as an idea in practice" applies, I'm afraid.

I.e. build all the roads you want but don't make long-term parkings available.

Coaches with a dedicated luggage section would quite possibly help as well, and it occurs to me that you could have a train with baggage cars ... but having never had to travel with more than one small child I can't say how acceptable those options would be to parents in general.

I think hubs are often setup to serve airlines running lots of connecting flight rather than the regional population. They would be happier flying out of a small local airport on a narrowbody and flying direct or connecting elsewhere.

See: Haneda (HND) vs. Narita (NRT) in Tokyo, Itami (ITM) vs. Kansai (KIX) in Osaka, etc.

Although now that there's a Whataburger at DFW one big argument for me for DAL is a bit less strong. When the Silver Line finally gets built, I imagine almost all my air travel will go to DFW.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wright_Amendment

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silver_Line_(Dallas_Area_Rapid...

So short answer, I hate the cronyism, but many of the positive end goals marketed here ultimately did come true here. And it didn't fully kill DAL or Southwest in the end.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/transportation/2023/02/18/nat...

> The Perimeter Rule is a federal regulation established in 1966 when jet aircraft began operating at Reagan National. The initial Perimeter Rule limited non-stop service to/from Reagan National to 650 statute miles, with some exceptions for previously existing service. By the mid-1980s, Congress had expanded Reagan National non-stop service to 1,250 statute miles (49 U.S. Code § 49109). Ultimately, Reagan National serves primarily as a "short-haul" airport while Washington Dulles International Airport serves as the region's "long-haul" growth airport.

> Congress must propose and approve federal legislation to allow the U.S. Department of Transportation to issue "beyond-perimeter" exemptions which allows an airline to operate non-stop service to cities outside the perimeter. As a result of recent federal exemptions, non-stop service is now offered between Reagan National and the following cities: Austin, Denver, Las Vegas, Los Angeles, Phoenix, Salt Lake City, San Francisco, San Juan, Seattle and Portland, Ore.

https://www.flyreagan.com/about-airport/aircraft-noise-infor...

Absolutely not! High-speed train have many advantages, but serving stations with large, long-term parking lots is not one of them.

After all, you don't need to disincentivize the approach: you just need to make it clear that the airport is there to stay, and maybe to grow three-fold, and that noise complaints will never be receivable.

But they are always receivable. Complainers will vote, will take control of local government, will lobby state and national government...

"Complaints aren't receivable" policies never last.

Oh depends, you can always build some gulags and get rid of those annoying elections. It's crazy how quick you are into dictatorship realm, with some harmles sounding ideas taken one step further.

They wanted to do that in Munich

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f7TboWvVERU

Woah, that's a good ways out there

The commission was hampered by rules that stated they couldn't look into increasing the existing airports capacity.

"Survey responses also conveyed members’ views on what kind of options the Legislature permitted them to consider — the 2019 legislation prohibited considering sites in King County, or those near military bases. Some members noted that those constraints hindered their search efforts, with some doubting whether it’s possible to have a new airport operational by 2040." https://www.seattletimes.com/business/boeing-aerospace/state...

The "next" airport is basically just expanding SeaTac. There's plans to add a second terminal in SAMP https://www.portseattle.org/sites/default/files/2018-06/1805... And then even WSDOT's project for the new 509 extension is to allow freight traffic to reach the seatac airport.

Outside of that the other regional airport to be used is king county international airport -- even back in 2005 southwest looked into using it.

Paine field, while it has the capacity is not where the demand is for passengers. Secondly, I don't think many people realize the bottleneck for SeaTac airport is not just passenger traffic but freight traffic. It's why the airport commission keeps choosing sites south of Seattle aka Pierce County or Thurston County because it's close to the port of tacoma. They aren't going to choose Paine field.

I love that airport. It should be bigger and is north enough that it has its own population.

Also US needs to build more high speed rail. We are over-reliant on airports.

"Paine Field is home to the Boeing Everett Factory, the world's largest building by volume..."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paine_Field

That would have been an interesting idea before the railroad right-of-way was turned into a multi-use trail. There's another rail corridor that goes through Stampede Pass, but I don't know that it would be usable for "high-speed rail" (nor do I know that it even goes anywhere useful).

I don't know if it's that far, however.

Now there's tons of developments - which is always a problem for these airports. I remember when SEATAC was far outside the city and everyone hated it, now it's crammed in the middle of the Seattle/Tacoma metro area, which is all one big blob city.

The state has created a new commission to start the new airport site selection process over again, but this time it will just be a recommendation.

The previous project that had been going on for many years was site selection and not just recommendation, but their selection(s) pissed off the people and so the whole thing got just got killed recently.

In theory there was a good place for an airport if those restrictions were removed

Somehow US airports always seem to be surrounded by densely populated residential areas, even in the direction of the runways, while Euro airports don’t seem to have this problem. And secondly Us airports always seem to take huge plots of land compared to Euro airports.

My assumption is that Us cities are just bigger, both in population and in the amount of surface they claim (lower population density)

I did not believe this and googled it. It is true.

1 Million would be tiny in China. Province.

It is most emphatically NOT "London, the city", in exactly the same way that Civic center is not the city of San Francisco.

It's just confusingly named.

Parliament, for example, is in the City of Westminster, one of 32 boroughs which (+ the City) make up Greater London.

"the city of london" is just a confusingly named area inside a city called "London", it's not a city.

Normal people where?

London has only had a mayor since 2000. Each borough has its own council, there is no London council.

You don't know what you're talking about and you're projecting (North) American ideas onto other countries.

> so when people talk about a city called London it's safe to assume they mean the 32 boroughs.

Except it's not. Colloquially, some borough are not considered to be in London. Bromley, for example.

The City of London and the city of London are distinct legal entities.

Granted, we still have a lot less metro areas with over 1 million people but there are still ~50 of them.

In plays out pretty comically in Austin TX in my opinion. You have these teeny affluent enclaves (search for "Sunset Valley", "Rollingwood" and "Westlake Hills" near/inside Austin) that anyone else would consider "part of Austin", but they don't vote in city elections or pay city taxes (but they certainly take advantage of all the benefits of being close to Austin...)

This makes rankings by population rather biased and spawns many endless discussions on whether city X is bigger than its rival city Y (and sometimes it might actually have real-life consequences, say, when the central government comes up with some funds for cities of size greater than some threshold).

* Age of the city

* Natural boundaries (rivers, mountains)

* How government is setup, in some countries (and in some areas of countries) many things are done at the city level, others bump a lot up to county, state, or even country government. The USA manages schools at the city or below, and so city boundaries become well-fought over.

Whenever you see "Unified" you're seeing something built out of smaller, usually city-related, parts.

https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2020/4/27/this-is-the-en...

If you look at the list of most dense “cities proper” [1] China doesn’t even make the list because all of their cities include huge swathes of rural land. Beijing for example is over 6,000 square miles while NYC is only 300 sq mi and the city of LA is only 470 sq mi.

The US has dozens of counties with more than a million people [2] and most are much smaller than Beijing or other Chinese cities. The only city that is comparable to an American one is Hong Kong, the rest are much bigger.

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cities_proper_by_pop...

[2] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_the_most_populous_co...

An airport serves a metropolitan region, composed of many cities, and there are at least 50 with 1M+ people.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metropolitan_statistical_area

Dallas population about 1 million. Dallas metro - 7.7 million. This is an important distinction missed out.

The US had 62 statistical areas with a pop. over a million in 2020 (plus San Juan, PR).

The US in general is very densely built up. The distinct lack of green space in US cities is very noticeable to the non-US observer.

So I think its more of a case that US airports are surrounded by "less" densely populated areas.

> And secondly Us airports always seem to take huge plots of land compared to Euro airports.

With the exception of the limited number of buildings of historical interest, In general the US doesn't do history in its buildings. They'll happily tear stuff down and build a shiny new thing in its place.

As I understand it the whole concept of green belt / urban conservation is also fairly minimal in the US mentality, so large land grabs for building and expansion of airports are easier in the US.

Meanwhile, in Europe, most airports have history and grew organically. And the whole green belt / urban conservation thing is much stronger in Europe. For example, London Heathrow started off life as a single grass runway with a few simple buildings and grew organically over time. Its growth ultimately limited by the city that grew around it, and so you end up with for example the present controversial discussion over the possibility of a third runway. I would hazard a guess that if Heathrow were in the US, the third runway would have been built and operational by now !

This is the opposite of reality. The US is sprawly and low density.

Of course, that's exactly the problem: sprawling over more space means that it's harder to get to open space for an airport.

Sprawl might be the word you are looking for. US is only #186 in population density by country. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_and_depend...

For example, density of Southern California is 420.39/sq mi, but the density of the LA Metro area is 541.1/sq mi. Density of California is 253.52/sq mi, and the USA is 87/sq mi.

Southern California is roughly the size of Greece, with a population double of it.

When comparing the USA to Europe, it's better to compare states. The US is less dense, but you can ignore huge swaths of "flyover country".

The cities I am used to have parks at most 100 meters away from any home and a pretty large park 200 meters away, then anyone can go out and enjoy the park. San Francisco on the other hand seems to require driving to the park, but there isn't enough parking for everyone to enjoy the park anyway so most people don't have reasonable access, not comparable at all, the parks are giant though but they don't do anything for local neighborhoods. New York is kinda bad at local parks as well, but much better than San Francisco.

Huh? I felt the exact opposite in France. Many French cities have a bunch of nice parks, but everything else is wall-to-wall pavement. I always felt the common refrain about there being dog shit all over Paris is because on many streets there is barely a patch of grass for a dog to even go, so if you have a rude person that doesn't clean up, the shit is going to be where you're much more likely to step on it.

Comparing the LA metro area to almost any European city, it's stark how much more unused or usable green space there is in Europe. The US seems much more binary – you're either in a city, or you're outside one, it's not like the US is lacking green space at a national level!

YMMV significantly depending on the specific metro area. The suburbs of Seattle like Bellevue and Richmond were like that too - full of large parks and natural reserves everywhere.

https://www.alltrails.com/lists/san-diego-canyons

If San Diego was as wet as some European cities, those would all be amazingly green.

Redmond?

Then there are also much bigger parks with some hiking trails through more natural/unmanaged areas like griffith park or the sepulveda dam area or the hansen dam area, that also have all of these amenities (save for the holocaust museum) and even more. Sepulveda dam has archery, a rocket launch pad, and a model aircraft field. Hansen dam also has the archery but also a lot of equestrian activity and people keep horses in the area.

To act like the greenspace is not available or unusuable doesn't speak to what is actually there for use today.

> […] but not an actually useful park beyond sitting with a book or a smoke perhaps

Yes, and grass to play improvised football or things like it.

> chock full of amenities europeans would be lucky to have

Not really, because European social life is not organized-activity-oriented. At least nowhere near my perception of American life (8y in CA).

In Europe, you meet first (let’s hang out, meet at a cafe, in the park) and then roam around and maybe do something spontaneous. In many cases, this involves mixed ages (kids playing, grandparents etc).

> Bathrooms

Yes. To be fair, I think it depends on how urban it is. In bigger parks like Golden Gate Park SF, the homeless don’t bother to go that far. If you have bathrooms near urban centers they tend to get misused and scare away regular folks anyways.

> To act like the greenspace is not available or unusuable doesn't speak to what is actually there for use today.

The green space in the US wins overall (again based on mostly CA), if you commit to the car ride to get there. In fact, if you count the national/state parks it might be best in the world.

In terms of green space integrated into urban life, I would say Europe is way better. In the US you can’t easily “integrate” green space that way into car-centric urban sprawl, because everything is already compartmentalized and divided and driving distance afar from other parts.

If you discount Heathrow, Europe doesn't even have one in the top 10, whereas the US has 5 in the top 10.

The airports are different because the traffic volume is different.

What a silly statement. "Europe doesn't have one in the top 10 if you remove its one entry in the top 10."

Had I not said what I said, I would have just as likely have had angry Brits in my comments.

You're also really missing the forest for the trees here.

Turkey has many of the political markers of being in Europe but is really a unique situation and its leaders like to take the best of being European and not-European where it suits them.

Do most people consider it a European country? Doubtful. I've never known any Turks who considered themselves European...even the super cosmopolitain globe-trotting kids of Turkish diplomats that I grew up around.