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When it comes to airport infrastructure, the design of terminals may have changed over the years, but the long, straight runway has stayed remarkably consistent. Dutch researcher Henk Hesselink thinks it's time for a change. His radical ideas about runway design would transform the modern airport's operations, layout, and efficiency—and even its architecture.
Since 2012, Hesselink and his team at the National Aerospace Laboratory (NLR) in the Netherlands have been working on a runway design that's circular instead of straight. Their so-called Endless Runway Project—funded by the European Commission's Seventh Framework Program, which supported research in breakthrough technology from 2007 through 2013, and in partnership with several other European scientific agencies—proposes a circular design that would enable planes to take off in the direction most advantageous for them. Namely, the direction without any crosswinds.
https://www.fastcodesign.com/90107235/why-airport-runways-should-actually-be-circular
[Related]: giant circles from the air
Do you think such a design would work in practice?
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Friday March 31 2017, @03:51AM (2 children)
I lived in that neighborhood from 1992 through 2003, it was annually reported on in the Miami Herald for years before that and NOTHING happened. The neighborhood was "gentryfying" in the early 2000s, maybe by now they've got enough capable lawyers in there to actually get something done. Dozens of ordinary residents reporting the problems to the "proper channels" got nowhere.
Subjective has nothing to do with windows rattling and sound levels on the street that you are physically incapable of screaming over - I don't care what your dB meter calls acceptable, that's just too damn loud, and it went on for the entire time I lived there. The people who live just north of MIA in the south end of Miami Springs, well, there, you should expect the noise, and they had plenty of it, noise and fumes too - but when you live over 8 miles away from the airport, at a diagonal off the end of the runway, you don't expect to be targeted by the back end of 727s for their whole climbout - the long noise events would do just that, point the engines straight at the neighborhood and keep them there for well over a minute as they climbed out. Not saying we were intentionally targeted, just saying that's what they did and it has the same effect.
The thing was, wind patterns vary and what I would call NAP violators would happen a few times, then not be heard for days, then they'd be back again. One particular jackass I remember piloted the 5am run for UPS, woke me up 3 days running (I normally slept in until 7, but this was loud enough to wake me from a deep sleep) - reported via e-mail, got the tracks sent to me a month later when they got around to reading the backlog of e-mails, and maybe somebody had words with him, or maybe the winds shifted and they started going to the west for awhile... anyway, the 5am thing stopped for a couple of months, then it came back again for a few days, off and on for YEARS. It's like they were issuing speeding tickets with no fines or points attached, and the noise problem jets just kept coming over and over and over.
MIA supports dozens of takeoffs per hour, and most of them were not a problem, but there were enough to significantly impact quality of life where I lived, and there were people down around 65th street who sold out specifically because of it. As you say, once they got a little more altitude (by 91st st) you could barely hear them, ever.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2) by subs on Friday March 31 2017, @10:11AM (1 child)
Well, as I said, most likely nothing could be done. You were just the unfortunate casualty of noise regulations (i.e. the limited group who couldn't be sorted to their satisfaction) - those regs are very much "the needs of the many over the needs of the few". Also, from 1992 - 2003 and from 2003 - today would be a HUGE difference in noise profile, simply because aircraft got A LOT quieter. Again, there's only so much the FAA can do and I'm reasonably convinced that given the circumstances, they did as much as they could. The only remaining (and extremely expensive) alternative would have been to move the airport far away. Given southern Florida's geography, it wouldn't surprise me if this would result in a 2-3 hour drive to & from the airport, which can significantly decrease tourism and cause a rapid decline in local economy.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Friday March 31 2017, @06:59PM
Well, as I said, there's water nearby, about 1000 feet from my house, and there is absolutely no reason to impact a neighborhood of 1000+ homes when you could just as easily turn 10 seconds later and impact the surface of the water instead. Absolutely they could have done something about it, our neighborhood of 1000+ homes was just the unfortunate casualty of a bureaucracy that doesn't care to prioritize residents' quality of life over the bother of enforcement of the regulations they already have in place.
🌻🌻 [google.com]