#Kansai International Airport Passenger Terminal Building

[dlyarchitecture]

[starrwulfe]

Good news everyone! Georgia has federal passenger train study funding!

In combination with some great news about funding a lot of sorely needed railroad projects and studies at the federal level, Georgia’s U.S. Senators Jon Ossoff and Rev. Raphael Warnock announced new grants to explore three new Georgia passenger rail corridors, made possible by the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law.

The new rail routes would connect major economic centers in Georgia and neighboring states, providing additional public transit options, increased mobility, and a sustainable, clean-energy future.

Starting from Atlanta, the routes being studied are:

A route heading northward with stops likely in Marietta, Cartersville, Dalton and points north into Tennessee that would connect with Chattanooga and efforts in that state to create a line from there to Nashville.

Extending south and eastward, a route that would likely have intermediate stations in McDonough, Macon and end in Savannah with a connection to the Amtrak route linking Florida and DC on the east coast. There’s also the potential to create a branch that would go due south out of Macon, through Valdosta and link with Tampa or Orlando. It would be nice to get some two-state talks going with Florida on doing something together since Brightline is already plying the rails down there and its now a known quantity.

Perhaps the most interesting and likely first to get going is a high-speed line between Atlanta and Charlotte. The in-state routing on this one is not known, but it’d be very strange if Athens was missed. The growing South Carolina towns of Greenville/Spartanburg definitely and perhaps Anderson/Clemson would get stops depending on routing.

Another point of discussion is where exactly in Atlanta would these routes be emanating from; ATL’s current train station for Amtrak service on the thrice weekly Crescent service from DC to New Orleans is basically a glorified waiting room with rails and stairs that lead to Peachtree Rd just north of Midtown. There were some efforts to build a new multimodal station Downtown right across from the Five Points MARTA station, right where a bunch of railroad tracks pass through a trench. While we do need a world-class rail terminal for a world-class city like Atlanta (especially to help get a commuter rail service off the ground — more on that later,) let’s not ignore our 900-pound gorilla lying 8 miles south: Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport.

Literally the World’s Busiest Airport for 20+ years definitely needs to be tied into any long-distance (and commuter!) rail options here. The catchment area of passengers includes not just the entire state but anything that would beat a car ride from an area of about 200 miles in diameter around us. Every time I’ve been in one of Hartsfield’s parking garages, I’ve seen cars with South Carolina, Alabama and Tennessee tags that are definitely not rentals. With frequent enough service, it could be very possible to simply leave the car and take the train to the airport and catch a flight. Most Americans can’t realize this convenience right now but take it from me after living in Japan for almost 20 years, being able to just hop a train even in the most remote parts of the area and get to Haneda, Narita, Kansai and Nagoya Centrair airports without worrying about long-term parking or begging for a ride from friends is a great thing.

According to Axios, how much of the $8.2 billion will wind up in Georgia for its rail project — or the timeline for the project’s start and completion is a big question mark. One thing I’d like to know is does some of this money help look into a regional rail solution here around Atlanta that’s desperately needed. Just like NYC, LA and Chicago, whatever helps the commuter rail network, would ultimately be good for the longer distance trains as well since they could share the tracks. That ATL Trains idea is still the best idea I’ve ever seen and really, REALLY needs to be formally studied with this money. Check out the 146-page prospectus yourself, it’s that good!

Just like the Eisenhower Interstate Highway projects of the 1960s, the US really needs a rail renaissance in order to help face this brave new world of climate change, population and demographic shifts into sunbelt cities that didn’t keep up infrastructure-wise (building another lane isn’t cutting it Chief!) and the simple paradigm shift of decentralization in our metro areas in general– How many people do you know BEFORE the pandemic that worked “downtown?” OK, now how many people actually even go to an office every day? Our transportation network needs to be more dynamic and flexible to account for these shifts and overlaying a decent rail network, both nationally and locally, is paramount. This is in addition to dealing with improving road and air travel; those need to be sorted as well.

[newstfionline]

Many Major Airports Are Near Sea Level. A Disaster in Japan Shows What Can Go Wrong.

By Hiroko Tabuchi, NY Times, Sept. 7, 2018

As a powerful typhoon tore through Japan this week, travelers at Kansai International Airport looked out on a terrifying void: Where they should have seen the runway, they saw only the sea.

They also saw what could be a perilous future for low-lying airports around the world, increasingly vulnerable to the rising sea levels and more extreme storms brought about by climate change. A quarter of the world’s 100 busiest airports are less than 10 meters, or 32 feet, above sea level, according to an analysis of data from Airports Council International and OpenFlights.

Twelve of those airports--including hubs in Shanghai, Rome, San Francisco and New York--are less than 5 meters above sea level.

Low-lying areas along the water have long been seen as ideal sites for building new runways and terminals, because there are fewer obstacles for the planes during takeoff and landing, and less potential for noise complaints. But coasts also provide few natural protections against flooding or high winds.

Hurricane Sandy in 2012 inundated all three airports that serve New York City, crippling travel for days. Typhoon Goni closed runways at Hongqiao International Airport outside Shanghai in 2015, forcing passengers and crew members to teeter on improvised bridges of tables and chairs as they tried to reach dry ground. The worst floods in nearly a century in Kerala, India, killed more than 400 people last month, and the deluge caused Cochin Airport, a regional hub, to close for two weeks.

“We know that there are going to be impacts. And we expect those impacts to become serious,” said Michael Rossell, deputy director-general at Airports Council International, a group representing airports from across the world. “Recognizing the problem is the first step, and recognizing the severity is the second. The third is: What can we do about it?”

Many airports have started to bolster their defenses.

St. Paul Downtown Airport in Minnesota, which has been frequently flooded by the Mississippi, now has a portable flood wall that can be erected if the river starts to overflow. With the help of a $28 million federal grant, La Guardia Airport in New York is adding a flood wall, rainwater pumps and a new drainage system for the airfield, as well as upgrading its emergency electrical substations and generators.

Kansai airport, which serves the bustling cities of Osaka, Kyoto and Kobe and handled almost 28 million travelers last year, faces an additional predicament. A feat of modern engineering, Kansai sits on an island three miles offshore that was built over the course of a decade from two mountains’ worth of gravel and sand. The airport, which opened in 1994, was built in Osaka Bay partly to minimize noise problems but also to avoid the violent protests over land rights that are the legacy of older airports in Japan, like Narita, which serves Tokyo.

Signs of trouble came early. Engineers had expected the island to sink, on average, less than a foot a year over 50 years after the start of construction as the seabed settled under the airport’s weight. But the island sank more than 30 feet in its first seven years and has continued to descend, now losing 43 feet in elevation at the last measurement.

At that rate, at least one of the airport’s two runways will slip under the waves completely by 2058, according to dire predictions made in a 2015 paper by Gholamreza Mesri, a civil engineering professor at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and J.R. Funk, a geotechnical engineer. And with sea levels rising because of climate change, Professor Mesri added, the airport could be underwater even sooner. “You won’t have an airport, you’ll have a lake,” he said.

The doomsday forecast from the American researchers has enraged some in the Japanese engineering community. “It’s irresponsible,” said Prof. Yoichi Watabe of the engineering faculty at Hokkaido University, who has researched Kansai airport’s woes. He conceded, though, that the prediction was not entirely implausible.

Even so, Professor Watabe said, the study assumed that Japan, a nation with a sterling reputation for advanced engineering, “will just watch it sink with our thumbs in our mouths.”

“We will not,” he said.

To stay above the waves, Kansai airport is pumping water from the seabed beneath the island to speed up the settlement process. The main terminal rests on giant stilts that can be jacked up to keep the foundation level. The airport also uses giant pumps to drain its airfield after heavy rain, and has added to a series of sea walls on the island’s perimeter.

Engineers had boasted that the walls were tall enough to withstand storms as strong as a major 1961 typhoon that caused the sea to surge nine feet. But Typhoon Jebi, which killed 11 as it tore through west Japan this week, generated a storm surge that reached almost 11 feet, a record for Osaka Bay. Waves crashed over the airport’s sea walls and swamped its pumps, officials said.

To make things worse, an oil tanker unmoored by the powerful typhoon’s 130 mile-per-hour winds struck and damaged the only bridge to the mainland. With nowhere to go, 8,000 people huddled in darkened terminals overnight as waves lapped at the buildings’ walls, before emergency ferries and buses found a way to navigate the mangled bridge and shuttled passengers to safety.

At a televised news conference Thursday, Yoshiyuki Yamaya, the president of the airport’s operator, was contrite. “We geared up for a typhoon, but the typhoon was far stronger than we had expected,” he said. “We were too optimistic.”

[shivaniraje-blog]

Strongest typhoon in 25 years kills 8 in western Japan; airports flooded

More than 1.6 million households remained without power in Osaka, Kyoto and four nearby prefectures late Tuesday, according to Kansai Electric Power Co.

A powerful typhoon slammed into western Japan on Tuesday, inundating the region's main international airport and blowing a tanker into a bridge, disrupting land and air travel and leaving thousands stranded. At least eight people died and scores were injured.

Jebi, reportedly the strongest typhoon to make landfall in Japan since 1993, headed north across the main island of Honshu toward the Sea of Japan. It was off the northern coast of Fukui on Tuesday evening with sustained winds of 126 kilometers per hour (78 miles per hour) and gusts up to 180 kph (110 mph), the Japan Meteorological Agency said.

More than 700 flights were canceled, according to Japanese media tallies. High-speed bullet train service was suspended from Tokyo west to Hiroshima, though service partially resumed later Tuesday when the typhoon left the region.

More than 1.6 million households remained without power in Osaka, Kyoto and four nearby prefectures late Tuesday, according to Kansai Electric Power Co.

High seas poured into Kansai International Airport, built on artificial islands in Osaka Bay, flooding one of its two runways, cargo storage and other facilities, and forcing it to shut down, said the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism. A passenger was slightly injured by shards from a window shattered by the storm.

A 2,591-ton tanker that was mooring slammed into the side of a bridge connecting the airport to the mainland, damaging the bridge and making it unusable, leaving about 3,000 passengers stranded at the airport, transport ministry official Mitsuo Nakao said.

The tanker was also damaged, but its 11 crewmembers were not injured and remained on board, according to the coast guard.

NHK public television showed passengers sitting or lying on the floor in the airport terminal in the dark without air conditioning.

A man in his 70s died apparently after being blown to the ground from his apartment in Osaka prefecture. Police said five others died elsewhere in the prefecture after being hit by flying objects or falling from their apartments. In nearby Shiga prefecture, a 71-year-old man died when a storage building collapsed on him, and a man in his 70s died after falling from a roof in Mie, officials said.

The Fire and Disaster Management Agency said 150 people were injured. Daihatsu Motor Co. stopped production at its Kyoto and Osaka factories, while Panasonic halted work at its air conditioning and refrigerator factory in Shiga. Major beverage maker Kirin Co. suspended production at its brewery in Kobe, according to Kyodo News agency.

Elsewhere in Osaka, the Universal Studios Japan theme park and US Consulate were both closed. Prime Minister Shinzo Abe canceled a scheduled trip to Kyushu, Japan's southernmost main island, to oversee the government's response to the typhoon, said Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga.

In nearby Nishinomiya in Hyogo prefecture, about 100 cars at a seaside dealership were in flames after their electrical systems were shorted out by sea water, fire officials and news reports said.

The typhoon first made landfall on Japan's southwestern island of Shikoku and then again near Kobe on Honshu. Television footage showed sea water overflowing onto low-lying areas.

Tokyo escaped relatively unscathed, with some intermittent squalls.

Article Source BS