I don't see why the transportation couldn't be above water, the Lake Pontchartrain Causeway is almost 24 miles long, a 10 mile long road is certainly possible.

YES for the ocean airport!
that would be so cool :Titanic:

http://www.signonsandiego.com/uniont...nor-float2.jpg

i suppose it could, but then you would have rough waters on an ocean, obstructed views, obstructed ocean currents.

underwater you are lot more protected from ocean conditions and a lot less obtrusive from a NIMBY perspective.

id be down for a desert one too, because those are the only two options. the rest is not gonna happen. i just think an ocean airport is more dramatic at equal cost.

Are there any existing examples of either HSR or 10+ mile long bridges that cross oceans (not bays, lakes, etc.) leading from a mainland to a tiny island approximately the size of a proposed airport?

Some good dialogue going on about a new airport :tup: It would be nice to have a separate thread on the subject, but I'm not sure how long it would stay alive. :shrug:


A great food review site is www.Chowhound.com

The San Diego talk is part of the California thread.

immersed tube section is not as long but it illustrates how technology already works somewhere out there
http://www.cenews.com/userfiles/imag...-06-News-1.JPG
The 450-foot-long, immersed tube tunnel elements are rectangular and consist of two adjacent ducts, each containing one track. Eleven tunnel elements will make up the 0.87-mile-long immersed tunnel section.

http://www.cenews.com/article.asp?id=1838

http://www.marmaray.com/images/wel_map.jpg

I guess it's my turn to weigh in on the San Diego International Floatport.

I'm happy to see that there is growing support on this forum for such an idea. For a minute there I was a little suprised to see many on this forum taking the position that the idea was too "radical", for lack of a better term. Many of you keep saying that this city doesn't want to innovate, create an icon, or take dramatic steps to resolve issues. After saying those things, some turn around and shoot down ideas such as the floating airport saying it's too crazy, not possible or dismiss it all together.

I realize that the airport would be one of the most extreme public works projects ever, but it is extreme in it's genious, not it's viability. Additionally, if our city accepts the idea of spending money for HSR into the middle of nowhere (random desert location airport), this floatport concept may instead see the light of day.

how much does it cost to build the airport in the desert and the high speed rail to connect it with the city?

I'm really not sure. I guess as with anything there are different options that would raise or lower the cost of construction. Anything we get will be in the Billions. The federal government will likely pay the vast majority of the tab.

^They should anyway for screwing us out of Miramar (not counting Susan Golding of course). They should split it 50/50 with the people that protested the Miramar plan...lol

Here's a link to an article that mentions the cost of the Floatport and that the Floatport idea has been considered since the 1960's.

http://www.sdcitybeat.com/article.php?id=4847

An article about the Japanese proposal for a floating airport...

http://www.jsce.org/Publication/CE_J.../realizing.pdf

Last but not least, San Diego's very own Floatport Inc...

http://www.floatinc.com/Floatport.html

same price range:
http://www.nctimes.com/articles/2006..._433_17_06.txt

I'm really pissed at the Airport Authority for doing nothing. I think that was their intention all along.

Anyone else have an opinion on that?

The 15th & Market proposal looks pretty nice. It should complement the colors of nearby ICON.

ICON
http://i4.photobucket.com/albums/y12...pment/icon.bmp


15th & Market
http://i4.photobucket.com/albums/y12...ndering_72.jpg

What a bummer :( Do you think there is a chance that the new buyer will proceed with the original plans since it's already been approved?? I hope so.



In the meantime, I was able to dig up more renderings of the much-loved proposal -

http://img63.imageshack.us/img63/8520/006by6.jpg

http://img101.imageshack.us/img101/627/002jr2.jpg

http://img516.imageshack.us/img516/5861/004xc4.jpg

http://img516.imageshack.us/img516/1854/003mq2.jpg

http://img65.imageshack.us/img65/5932/005zc7.jpg



Anyone able to go to this meeting next week? I'm thinking they'll be showing renderings of all of the big projects we're most interested in - Irvine Tower, Lane Field, Bosa's latest proposal and NBC, along with the Broadway and B St. piers. If I didn't have to work, I'd go.

http://img65.imageshack.us/img65/440...ard726eth1.jpg

interesting arithmetic
 

according to my calculation value of land comprised by SDIA would be roughly $10B assuming it is worth downtown land price ;) that is half of the cost of the floating airport
i don't know how much i can rely on sources of my information though:
http://www.san.org/documents/amp/Pre...ngLandUses.pdf
http://findarticles.com/p/articles/m...10/ai_n7357462

Go NEVP!

The only tough thing with going with an underwater tube system of high speed trains to reach the floating airport is that you could probably only get away with one land-based terminal. You couldn't have 3 tubes running out to sea from various points. I'd say you put the terminal somewhere at the current Lindbergh site, with a few big parking garages, a direct trolley line coming from Santa Fe Depot and Old Town, and all your ticketing/baggage/security areas. From there you hop on to one of four mag-lev trains that are running at all times, so the wait is no more than 10 minutes for any train. Each train I would suspect would hold about the same as a standard Coaster train, with 3-4 cars each holding maybe 200 people. The trip would take about 6 minutes out to the airport, where you'd be put into the center of the structure, underneath. From there, you go up one of two banks of escalators/elevators to your airline terminal on either side. In the center of the airport in addition to the terminals would be restaurants, shops, outdoor viewing area, etc.

The airport would be off limits to small aircraft and maybe private jets, as you probably wouldn't want to take up valuable space with plane storage areas. Fuel could be brought in by tanker and unloaded directly into the storage tanks. The airport would have to have the ability to handle boat ferry traffic, in the event something DID happen to the underwater trains. Maybe an enclosed marina area that is shielded from swells and waves.

The tube could be sunk directly out the channel leading out of SD bay, and the land-based terminals could theoretically be mostly underground, with only one or two stories above ground. Trolleys and roads come in, you enter at ground level, go through ticketing, go downstairs where you go through security, and then over to your train. The computerized system could tell you which train you'll be on based on your time of arrival/checkin, or maybe based on your time going through security. Since you can now "check in" from home, the security system would scan your ticket when you go through, and pop out what track to walk to to catch your train based on how many other people are there, and what time your flight is. This would alleviate the problem of tons of people crowding onto the first available train at busy times like Christmas. Same with arrivals, when you get off your flight you'll be told which track to go to, just like baggage.

Baggage handling would be the tough one. the trains should run on a regular basis, not based on flight schedules. So do people have to take their luggage through security and onto the trains themselves? And then do they check luggage once they get out to the airport? Do you have a separate tube that takes the luggage out to the airport alongside the trains, at the same speed, so that luggage can be checked in from the land-based terminal?

I think the difficulty will be in getting people and their luggage to and from the airport. I dont think engineering the airport itself would be the most difficult task. And building the airport itself would be fairly easy as it could be built elsewhere and then just assembled on site, and as someone else put it, with the steelyards and shipyards in SD, they'd have a close location to fabricate most of it.

I sure hope someone continues to pursue this actively and seriously, as I dont really see too many BAD things about it.

Someone mentioned weather and fog, and from what I understand, is its only a big concern when you have big obstacles to deal with... Buildings, mountains, etc. With a floating airport, the plane's instruments would be able to function all the way down to the deck, so they could land and take off in 0 visibility. And I'm sure in the design process, a new system could be developed on the airport itself to help guide planes in... lasers, radar systems, whatnot.

A floating airport isn't going to happen here.

That is all.

:pet:

I disagree. Maybe not anytime soon, but if we are 10-15 years in the future and the airport has reached a critical capacity shortage to where the public is demanding something be done and there are no other alternatives something will have to give and alternative ideas will be the only lifelines the crappy do-nothing politicans will have to cling to. This will be because these jackasses will have likely done abosolutely nothing in the meantime and will be scrambling in the end. Those who balk at the people proposing this now will be begging these "radical thinkers" to save their sorry, NIMBY, political-asses when a true crisis is looming within their term

granted, I do think in such a scenario the military, not because they give two cents about our city but for PR purposes, would probably give up miramar before we would be forced into an offshore airport, but you never know

Right now people talk about a new airport like it's some fun plan to envision big jets taking off for distant lands right from our own city, like it's a ficticious wish-list item that we can take or leave if we so choose. People aren't really grasping that the politics, environmental evaluations, planning, construction, etc take many many years for a new airport to reach the point of being operational and the longer we do nothing, the more we reach a critical timepoint to which the whole process of building a new airport can not be completed before noticable problems start occruing at the current facility. It really is a critical issue and looking at things like a sea-based airport are not being done out of whimsy, they are being done because we are running out of time and alternatives

I agree...and I would take it a step further by saying that an airport of ANY kind isn't going to happen here for at least 50 years. This town doesn't have the head-and-asswire to pull something off like that -- and don't forget all the people who want to keep SD small and quaint.