:: Island Hopping ::

Thursday, March 27, 2003

I thought today I'd briefly review two (relatively) new Asian airports which were built on razed or artificial islands.

The first is Chek Lap Kok airport in Hong Kong, designed by the renowned Sir Norman Foster and Associates. Construction involved not only the building of a massive central terminal (the largest single enclosed contiguous structure in the world), but the leveling, reshaping, and expansion of the eponymous island, which lies about 25km from Central in Hong Kong. To support the heavy volume of traffic between the island and the city proper, high-speed rail links and suspension bridges for automobile traffic (as well as other infrastructural improvements) were built over hilly and unaccommodating terrain. From Metroplolis magazine, Feb 1999:

Much of what's impressive about the project is its sheer magnitude. I'd be remiss if I didn't rehearse a few facts. During its (incredibly rapid) six years of construction, this was the largest building site on the planet. Chek Lap Kok, a sweet little island with a 345-foot peak, was leveled and then expanded 400 percent to an area two miles wide and three-and-a-half long. The $20 billion spent on the project financed not only the construction of the island, the terminal, the cargo-handling facilities, and myriad outbuildings, but also a high-speed rail line and a highway into downtown Hong Kong, a small city for airport employees, and one of the world's longest suspension bridges.

According to a suggestive piece of publicity, the five-and-a-half-million-square-foot terminal--purportedly the biggest enclosed public space ever built--is "larger than London's Soho district." It contains 457,450 cubic yards of concrete, nearly 30 acres of granite, almost 25 miles of piping, 100,000 light fixtures, and 5,500 doors (not bad for a one-room building). It took 11,000 man days to draw and 13 million to build, has a baggage hall bigger than Wembley (or Yankee) Stadium, can now accommodate 35 million passengers a year, and could eventually handle as many as 87 million.

You might want to avoid it at the moment though, because of that outbreak of SARS.

The second, Kansai airport in Osaka, Japan, is smaller in scale (financially as well, report put the cost between $14 and $17 billion), but perhaps even more audacious given that it rests entirely on an artificial island amassed from reclaimed land for the express purpose of hosting the airport. Completed in 1994 after only 6 years of construction efforts, and connected by a causeway supporting (much like Chek Lap Kok) road and rail traffic, the island rests 5km off the Japanese coast in Osaka bay. The project was further complicated by the necessity of factoring in settlement and sinking rates in accordance with the known behavior of artificial sediment. Despite data which suggests that the current settling rate exceeds the predicted rate (and is uneven, causing the island to tilt), expansion plans were approved and preliminary construction is underway, resulting in far more... turbulent public opinion than its Hong Kong cousin. From a 7/29/01 NYT article:

Last year, despite a modest increase in the number of flights and passenger traffic to Osaka, Kansai International, which charges some of the world's highest landing fees and office rents, lost $1.28 billion.

Transport analysts in Japan attribute the losses to a combination of factors, including the needed repairs and weak economic conditions that have reduced air traffic. Also to blame, they say, is growing competition from new airports in Seoul and Hong Kong, which are more economical and robust, even though they too were built on reclaimed land.

The sinking has raised doubts in Japan and abroad about the safety of Kansai International and whether the world's most expensive airport was worth the price.

Kansai International officials insist that the airport will eventually live up to its potential. Last year, airport traffic increased 5 percent to 120,000 flights, and the number of passenger arrivals rose 3 percent to 20.5 million people, the officials said. But those numbers are far short of the capacity of 160,000 flights a year that planners predicted would be achieved by now.

Posted by morland @ 01:10 PM

:: Comments ::

what happens if there's a a tsunami there? would the osaka airport be trashed?

and, additionally, why can't we just call it either a tidal wave or just call it tsunami? Pick one, for gods sake.

Posted by: the guy who lives in vail on March 27, 2003 02:08 PM

not really sure about the first question, but as for the second:

http://www.gsfc.nasa.gov/gsfc/educ/science/1997/05-05-97.htm

Posted by: morland on March 27, 2003 02:26 PM

Why'd you leave out this one?

http://lotronline.net/cloudcity/history.shtml

Posted by: Alexavier Bonner on March 28, 2003 06:40 AM

1) built a long, long time ago; not within the past decade

2) not in Asia.

Posted by: morland on March 28, 2003 10:23 AM

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