Relocating Songshan

Well the TransAsia ATR crash highlights the danger of a crash of a much larger plane into Taipei city buildings. Such as the A330 , which currently is the largest plane flying into and out of Taipei.

Taoyuan seems the obvious choice, but some are saying the 3rd runway in Taoyuan is needed before it can accomodate the SungShan flyer numbers.

Someone said relocate to TAmshui? Where in Tamshui would be suitable for an airport?

Only thing I can think of is an OFFSHORE ARTIFICIAL ISLAND built off Tamshui such as Chep Lap Kok of Hong Kong and Osaka’s new Kansai airport. An MRT connection from that would be an easy way into and out of Taipei city. But the idea of Checking IN at SungShan is dumb. Just make SungShan into a large park like Central Park of NYC. But please not more and more buildings on that piece of land. The area around it can already be then redeveloped into high rises.

chinapost.com.tw/taiwan/nati … irport.htm

Leave it where it is. It’s a regional/commuter airport and most of these airports around the world are located within or very close to the cities they serve.
Moving SongShan to Taoyuan and placing all commuter traffic there would be annoying - Songshan is convenient for people traveling to and from Taipei and Taoyuan is a pain to get to.
Placing the airport in Danshuei? Danshuei is also annoying to get to. Not only this, Danshuei is right on the ANNA/BAKER/GRACE approaches and DME/ILS to 23 and 24 for Taoyuan, so there’d be lots of competing traffic.
It’s fine.
Since 1970, there have been 4 serious accidents at Songshan, and 2 of those were in the 1970’s. In the 1990’s, there was one accident involving a C130, and we just had the Transasia Airlines crash. Non of these aircraft crashed into buildings. I bet more people have died in bus crashes in Taipei since 1970 on the road outside the airport.

there’s a lot more air traffic now and the planes are bigger, plus they bring air and noise pollution into the crowded city. The airport would be more beneficial as a much needed city park, however I think personally it could wait until 2030 as mentioned earlier.

I agree with Bernadette. It’s an extremely convenient airport where you can touch down right in the heart of Taipei. How many other cities have such convenience?

I bet the the money grubbers are drooling at the mouth and rubbing their hands together at the idea of getting their hands on the land so they can develop more shopping malls and residential boxes.

Tell them: No!

I use Songshan sometimes, but it’s not that convenient from southern part of Taipei…only a little closer than Taoyuan due to the way the highways are located. It’s handy for Neihu and Taipei central, sure.

I thought Prez Ma’s idea for Sungshan (don’t forget keeping it open has military uses too) was to mainly use it as a private jet airport , with some “legacy” routes thrown in. You know the Sungshan to Kimpo, Sungshan to Haneda links.

Should’nt be used for SungShan / China routes. If anything Sungshan to HongKong / Macau makes more sense, except if flight numbers were being restricted, then TAiwan / HK would be no, as there are too many of those.

Develop it for private jet/ VIP and legacy routes and some domestic flights. Keeps the total flight numbers low enough to be tolerable.

[quote]I bet the the money grubbers are drooling at the mouth and rubbing their hands together at the idea of getting their hands on the land so they can develop more shopping malls and residential boxes.

Tell them: No![/quote]

Charlie’s right. And doesn’t this get to the heart of the problem: that we can’t trust the powers-that-be (elected or otherwise) to provide new green space or parks in Taipei even though doing so would help improve the liveability of our city and the health of our neighbours. I hope this situation changes down the road, but as the Songshan Culture and Creative Park debacle has shown, it remains the case now.

And until this changes, Songshan Airport should stay exactly where it is.

Guy

You mean like the two major parks (Dajia and Xinsheng) less than 1 km away from the airport? If we add the EXPO park and fine arts museum in, we’ve already got four parks a very small radius, plus the riverside parks that extend north to Tamsui and east to Xizhi. There is no need for another one, much less one as huge as the current Songshan Airport.

Moving international traffic to Taoyuan makes sense, but it doesn’t make sense to ask Taidongers to flight all the way to Taoyuan and then transfer to MRT or bus to get to Taipei. The airport still has a role to play.

[quote=“Hokwongwei”]
You mean like the two major parks (Dajia and Xinsheng) less than 1 km away from the airport?.[/quote]

You mean the expanses of concrete that don’t have buildings? Those aren’t major parks.

Taipei needs more green space to help absorb noise and air pollution, increase biodiversity, and provide needed recreational space. If we look at where taipei falls behind the top livable cities in the world it’s not in convenience. It’s in green space and especially in spaces that offer a sense of pride in one’s natural heritage.

I agree green space is a good thing, but I think Songshan is a bad choice for location. Look at how much green space is already there:

We should look at this from a practical standpoint. Is the airport making money? Does it contribute to the city’s development? Is it safe? Does it make life measurably worse for Taipei residents? I don’t know any of these answers, but they need to be taken out and discussed thoroughly instead of it being politicized.

The other big issue as I’ve pointed out is that people from Hualien, Taitung, Penghu, Kinmen, and Matsu often need to head to Taipei for business or government affairs; they rarely need to go to Taoyuan for that. Rerouting through Taoyuan would only be a major inconvenience.

Exactly! Because what we need more of is high rise buildings, shopping malls and stadiums because within a very small radius of Songshan airport, there are no such buildings - it’s all greenery and mountain shrubbery. Especially Songshan and Nangang - they’re beautiful places teaming with wildlife, quaint little brooks and meadows filled with the sweet aroma of flowers and the scent of wild grass. Butterflies dance on the breeze and insects chirp with content in the warm summer haze. :slight_smile:

I have cause to visit Songshan’s facilities at least once every couple of weeks. It is a safe airport from an operational standpoint. It also employs a lot of people from Taipei and believe me, it makes a lot of money especially now with the international flights coming in (landing and handling charges, plus passenger tax).

Does Songshan cause a lot of air and noise pollution? Again, with modern aircraft and the strict usage of climb profiles which both cut down on noise pollution and air pollution, I’d say Songshan is less noisy than 10 years ago. Add to this the fact that buildings cannot be built either end of the runway within a certain distance, Songshan is doing a very good job of keeping developers away from not just the airport land itself, but also the approaches to the runway.

Looking at that map and being very familiar with the area the answer is not much. Most of the Expo park is cement for example.

As for people coming from other areas they do not by any stetch have a seamless transition and all of Hualien, Taitung and the outer islands are about what, 3% of the population? And I know of no good argument why the residents of one city are supposed to suffer for the convenience of a few people living on the other side of the country.

Eh? Songshan mainly serves the people of Taipei so they can go and clog up other parts of the island, like Hualien and Taidong and the outlying islands. People from Taidong and Hualien usually take the train - and for international flights, the people of Taidong often travel to Kaohsiung airport.
Songshan airport mostly caters for the travel requirements of people in Taipei, not the rest of the island.

Moving the service Songshan offers will likely cut tourism to Taipei and also the rest of the country, and will also have a negative effect on the airlines currently offering domestic flights. Plus there is a whole industry in Taipei catering to the airport. If service are moved to Taoyuan, departure and arrival slots at Taoyuan will become tighter and therefore the risk of an airprox incidents and delays will also increase.

Leaving Songshan as the commuter airport it is makes perfect sense.

I don’t understand the problem with just leaving Songshan alone. It makes flying to certain international destinations way more convenient.

I love airports close to town. Having to trek out into the middle of nowhere is a pain.

Songshan’s a nice little airport too. Not too huge and impersonal. Got a friendly vibe to it.

If they get rid of it they’ll only fill up the space with more crappy buildings.

The space will never be a park. Remove the airport, and the best you could hope for would be a well-planned community that’s priced (and protected) for low and average earners. But that’s unlikely, it’d be more luxury apartments, shopping malls and the like.

Yeah Tokyo did not get rid of Haneda once Narita opened. Jakarta still has Halim even though Soekarno-Hatta opened and I believe K.Lumpur still has Subang. Seoul still has Kimpo, etc.

Nobody is getting rid of their inner city airports it seems.

[quote=“tommy525”]Yeah Tokyo did not get rid of Haneda once Narita opened. Jakarta still has Halim even though Soekarno-Hatta opened and I believe K.Lumpur still has Subang. Seoul still has Kimpo, etc.

Nobody is getting rid of their inner city airports it seems.[/quote]

Subang is barely used and is hardly inner city.

get rid of it! no need for it when the MRT to taoyuan airport is finished this year.

i don’t planes flying down in the middle of a city from a safety standpoint, i don’t like it from a noise standpoint and i dont like it from the standpoint of taking up central city space for something better, who said it has to be malls and 30 floor plus buildings only? build something decent. just because it is a novelty is no reason to keep something that takes up space directly in the middle of the city. get rid of it!

No one here says it should be this way. But honestly since I moved to Taipei I have not seen a shred of evidence that the area would be developed otherwise.

Songshan Airport not a “novelty.” Tokyo has one of these things (Haneda), Seoul has one (Gimpo), and so does Shanghai. You could argue that these are vastly larger and more important cities than Taipei. But certainly by utilizing Songshan Airport in this way, Taipei is not embarking on some radical novel scheme.

Guy