Construction of a new control tower at Melbourne Airport in 2011. The aerodrome is tipped to overtake Sydney Airport as Australia’s largest in the coming years. Photo: Craig Abraham
Melbourne Airport’s proposed third runway, due to be operational by 2022 under a draft master plan published this week, is one of an eventual four runways envisioned from the time the airport was first constructed in the 1960s.
The position of the new 3km east-west runway - needed to meet growing demand that means the two current runways will reach capacity between 2018 and 2022 - was laid out in a 1990 master plan. The draft master plan published on Monday - it is required to put out such a plan every five years - puts more detail on that plan and outlines how it could happen.
The orderly process surrounding airport planning in Melbourne is a stark contrast to the political hot potato of airport planning in Sydney that has left the nation’s largest city without a firm plan to provide a much-needed boost in capacity to the international and domestic terminals at Mascot in the city’s south-east.
While Melbourne’s development from the 1960s has proceeded along four corridors for city growth that were separated by green zones permitting infrastructure, agricultural and other non-urban uses, the main attempt to bring an orderly expansion of post-war Greater Sydney - notably by the County of Cumberland Planning Scheme that would set aside and manage land use - fell apart under pressure from rival government agencies, property owners and developers.
“Sydney was much more haphazard,” says RMIT professor of global, urban and social studies Michael Buxton. “If Sydney had identified a site when Melbourne did, they probably would have been able to build the airport, but as you delay you get more people moving into the sites, you get greater resistance, greater population and so on.”
Sydney was much more haphazard
The expansion of Melbourne airport will help meet growth in passenger numbers from the current 29.1 million to an expected 64 million by 2033, as passenger movements grow at a predicted 3.9 per cent on average over the next 20 years. Sydney had 35.6 million passengers in 2010 and passenger movements are predicted to grow at a slower 3.6 per cent, below its recent growth rate, The Australian Financial Review reports .
Melbourne cannot be too cocky, however. While it has fewer problems with space of its bigger rival, it lacks one key thing - a rail connection to the airport.
“The unresolved issue with Melbourne now is the lack of a rail connection, whereas Sydney does have a rail connection to the existing airport,” Buxton told BRW on Tuesday. “It’s a massive issue.”
In addition, despite Melbourne’s development plan that became law as far back as 1971, successive state governments have opened up land for residential development in areas originally set aside for non-urban use, and the expansion of Tullamarine airport will affect those areas, such as west of Craigieburn, Buxton said.
The unresolved issue with Melbourne now is the lack of a rail connection
“Over the decades there’s been a gradual creeping of rezoning of areas that have moved closer to the airport,” he said. “There has been a lot of housing development that has been moving under the flight paths. The new proposed flight paths would certainly affect housing that has been constructed in the last 30 years since the airport has been built.”
The current draft plan is open for public comments for 60 days. Melbourne Airport, part of privately owned Australian Pacific Airports Corp, is required to submit the plan to the Commonwealth Minister for Infrastructure and Transport for approval before the end of the year.
Sydney Airport will answer Melbourne’s challenge next month when it releases its 2033 master plan, which is expected to boost potential capacity despite the 80-per-hour movement cap and night-time curfew remaining in force.
A spokeswoman for the ASX-listed Sydney Airport said the master plan assumes the ‘new vision’ for Sydney airport proceeds, which includes integration of domestic and international services in its two terminals.
The 2033 plan will allow for 14 new gates - only 5 new gates were forecast in the last master plan completed in 2009 - and assumes a reorganisation of Qantas engineering facilities occurs such that arrived international jets do not have to be towed across the airport. Currently, this necessitates the entire airport having to shut down for three minutes.
The 2033 plan also forecasts far more use of new-generation jets - A380s and Boeing Dreamliners - than the 2009 master plan foresaw, the spokeswoman said.
Additional reporting by Michael Bailey
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