Updated 10/11/15
Today marked another milestone in the development of Sydney’s 3rd airport – The Western Sydney (aka Badgerys Creek) Airport Draft Airport Plan was released for public exhibition today.
The PDF document can be found on the Western Sydney Airport website, and I strongly encourage everyone to at least have a look, if not also make a submission. Also released was the draft Environmental Impact Statement.
The exhibition period closes Friday, 18th December 2015.
Whilst I have not read it all yet, my main concern was the flight path(s) and associated noise. Looking at the picture below, The runways of the proposed airport would run southwest to northeast across the airport site. Therefore it is likely that aircraft will mostly take off and land over areas that are not predominantly residential. Those paths look good for residents of Narellan, Narellan Vale, Mount Annan as you can see below:
Photo Credit: Department of Transport and Infrastructure
Some other interesting points also –
The government expects a second parallel runway to be built by 2050, which would allow the airport to handle about 82 million passengers a year.
The terminal would actually be located between the two parallel runways (interesting concept), while car parks would accommodate 11,500 vehicles in the first stage of the airport’s development.
The draft plan does not make provisions for a rail line to the airport when it opens in 2025, but as been reported in the media before (and indeed on this site), the new Leppington line could ‘easily’ be extended to accommodate a route to the new airport.
What do you think of the draft? Leave a comment below.
Update 9/11/05
Distributed into letterboxes last week was the below info card/flyer that lists information sessions about the new airport. There’s a few coming up in November, with the last session in Narellan on Thursday 26th from 4pm to 7pm.
