42 Suau Sanchez Barcelona Noise

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A er l i ne s

ENVIRONMENTAL AIRPORT MANAGEMENT

Reciprocity Between ExternalTerritorial Factors and InternalAirport Dynamics

The Third Runway at Barcelona Airport: a Story of Noise

In Aerlines issue 41, together with de Jong and Droß, we compared the airport regions of Amster-dam, Barcelona and Munich. That article showed to what extent the level of local and global com-plexity can be reduced with planning, and to what extent the multi-level dynamics of airport regionscan be dealt with. This article highlights the importance of environmental capacity of airports, usinga more detailed analysis of the Barcelona caseand its local complexity. The chronology of events that have arisen since the opening of the new third runway is explained with special emphasisbeing placed on the relation between external ter-ritorial factors and internal airport dynamics. Thearticle concludes with the future perspectives for the airport, and highlights the urgency for thin-king how this infrastructure should be enlarged..

1. Introduction: the Environmental Capacity of Airports

Deregulation of the air transport industry and the shift towards

a free-market regime is adding fuel to the air-trafc dynamicsand to the variability of the network structure. In addition, thegrowing demand for air transportation is creating a serious problem in terms of congestion and capacity at most metropolitanairports. Airport congestion is no longer only concentratedin time: congestion is currently a daily challenge for airportmanagers. Whereas ’old time’-congestion was infrastructure-related, today’s congestion at metropolitan airports stronglydepends not only on intrinsic infrastructural features, but also onenvironmental elements. We argue that airport capacity should be understood as the environmental capacity of airports (seealso Upham et at., 2003; 2004). As Graham and Guyer (1999)stated, the EU lacks sufcient airport capacity to accommodate projected growth trends in air transport and the provision of extensive additional infrastructure is extremely unlikely becauseof environmental constraints.The environmental capacity of airports should be identied withatmospheric emissions and noise impacts inuencing airport performance by adding congestion to the system and limiting air transport movements. Currently, there are more than 600 airportswith noise and environmental restrictions (Table 1).

e-zine edition 42

by: Pere Suau-Sanchez

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Many authors acknowledge the lack of airport capacity. Therelatively recent European Commission’s Action plan for airportcapacity, efciency and safety in Europe (COM, 2006) statesthat, given the expected increase in trafc, Europe will face aneven wider gap between capacity and demand. This is referredto as the ‘capacity crunch’. If current capacity levels are notdrastically increased, the EU estimates that, by 2025, over 60European airports will be heavily congested, and that the top20 airports will be saturated at least 8-10 hours a day. Suchcongestion is likely to have a severe impact on the airlines’ abilityto maintain their schedules, especially at hub airports. Therefore,it will result in a less efcient European air transport industryand in the creation of diseconomies throughout the economicsystem. Besides, congestion will also result in environmental andsecurity costs, since the density and complexity of operationswill reach unprecedented levels.

1.1. ’Territorial Conflicts’: When Noise is the Problem

We can consider the ’territorial conict’to be the contrast of visions of the use and

management of a territory: some argue

that this involves ’defending’ a territory, because someone else is ‘attacking’ it.This difference is usually presentedas an ’intervention from the exterior responded to by the local’. Hence, aterritorial conict arises when there is noconsensus about the present or future of a particular place. The conict enablesother existing options to become visible.Therefore, each of the actors that playa key role in the conict has a differentvision of the territory. So it comes asno surprise that local actors consider changes promoted by some actors as

aggressions against the territory and

the land (Paül, 2007; Marston, 2006; Nel·lo, 2003). Territorial conicts aresometimes related with the Not-In-My-Back-Yard (NIMBY) concept, whichconsiders local opposition as egoisticand lacking solidarity (Dear, 1992;McAvoy, 1999).When aircraft noise becomes a reason for conict, airportscan introduce several measures (see Figure 1). Although

all of these measures help make the areas surrounding

the airport more habitable, they often represent a major drawback for airport performance, and for the number of ight movements. This means that airports cannot runat full capacity, and that selectivity in ight connectionsmay eventually happen earlier than desired.Opposition from people living in the vicinity of airportsis usually strong due to aircraft noise, but considerationof the environmental impacts of airports is made thatmuch more difcult because of the many different bodiesinvolved in, or affected by, airport operations (Graham,2003). One of the main problems when it comes to noisezoning is currently the complex network of interrelatedstakeholders that make decisions in the planning process.This includes the developers, who seek residual land;the municipalities, which yield to the pressure; thelocal, regional or national administrations responsible

for land-use planning that did not foresee the problem due to

their ignorance of the complex aeronautical specications; andthe real-estate agencies, who do not always give the buyer aclear message about possible noise disruptions (Suau-Sanchez,2007).

2. The Airport of Barcelona

The following case study about Barcelona airport aims to turnthe attention to territorial factors and to their inuence on theairport dynamics. Barcelona airport is located 10 kilometersfrom the city of Barcelona in the Llobregat River delta within themunicipality of el Prat de Llobregat. Barcelona airport is Spain’ssecond largest airport in terms of passenger trafc, and was thesecond fastest growing European airport in terms of passenger trafc in the period from 1996 to 2001. Passenger trafc hasgrown by more than 100 percent since the Olympic Games in1992. The airport handled ten million passengers in 1992, and24.5 million in 2004. With 33 million passengers in 2007, it is thesecond most important airport in the Euro-Mediterranean region

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CountryNº of Airports CountryNº of Airports

US302

Switzerland7

UK

37

Austria6Germany28

Belgium5Italy25

Brazil5France24

Romania5Sweden17

Ireland4Canada16

Portugal4Spain12

South Africa4Australia9

Taiwan

4

Denmark

7

The Netherlands

4Finland7

With three noise regulated airports18

Japan

7

With two noise regulated airports32

Norway

7

With one noise regulated airports45Total world airports with noise and emission restrictions641

Table 1:

Number of airports with noise and environmental restrictions per country. Source: Authors’ elaboration from Boeing, 2008.

Figure 1:

Type of airport noise restrictions at world airports. Source: Authors’ elaboration from Boeing, 2008.

after Rome. Moreover, the Barcelona-Madrid air shuttle serviceis the busiest city-pair connection in the world (OAG, 2006).Since a couple of years, it has three runways, two of which are parallel to one another and can operate independently.

2.1 The Story

Barcelona airport is located in an area that suffers from major infrastructural pressure. There are numerous infrastructures inthe Llobregat River delta that have created several conicts, but the protagonist of all these conicts about the airportenlargement since the creation of the Master Plan (1999) has been the airport itself.The new third runway (07R-25L) has been one of the mostcontroversial projects. The third runway commenced operationson 30 September 2004. The decision regarding its locationwas a matter of debate for several years, as some preferred alonger runway nearer to the sea, while others believed that ashorter runway should be located further inland. Eventually, thedecision was made to locate it at a distance of 1,350 m andto construct it parallelto the rst runway(allowing simultaneous

operation of both

runways). Constructing

the third runway at

this location had someimpact on the LlobregatDelta Natural Park, as

some of the littoral pine

forest was cut down.Of particular note were22 hectares (around 54acres) of the Ricarda,

an area listed in the

PEIN plan of 1992(Protection of Spaces of Natural Interest) and inthe ZEPA plan (SpecialArea for Conservationof Birds).The ecologistorganization DEPANAled an ofcial complaint against AENA (the Spanish AirportAuthority) on 2 December 2003. DEPANA claimed that soilmovements had been made in areas protected by the CatalanGovernment’s Wet Zones Catalog, La Volteria and el Pas deles Vaques. In response, AENA stated that these two areas werenot included as protected areas in the environmental impactassessment report, approved in January 2002 by the SpanishMinistry of Public Works.The municipality in which the airport is located, el Prat deLlobregat, beneted from the new third runway, while other municipalities suffered from noise disruptions from the outset.The areas that particularly expressed complaints were thecoastal neighborhood of Gavà Mar in the municipality of Gavàand, to a lesser extent, the municipality of Castelldefels. It isimportant to note that Gavà City Hall approved the expansionof the Gavà Mar neighborhood in November 2004, even thoughit was aware that the new district was destined to suffer fromnoise disruption.The Environment Monitoring Commission of the EnlargementDevelopments of Barcelona Airport (CSAAB) includes theTechnical Working Group for Noise. This group meets withAENA professionals and the Barcelona, Gavà, Castelldefels andel Prat de Llobregat city councils to monitor the noise impact andto make the right decisions. On 11 December 2003, the CSAAB(AENA, 2005) approved the noise print associated with the westconguration with Castelldefels voting against it (see Figure 2).So, until the inauguration of the new South Terminal (located between the two parallel runways) 85 per cent of landing andtake-off operations would use the west conguration and 15 per cent the east conguration. Both congurations ew over Gavà and Castelldefels but out of the Leq 65dB area during theday and Leq 55dB during the night (legal limits in Catalonia for noise disruption. Gencat, 2002).However, since 30 September 2004, the day on which the thirdrunway started operations, the runways have suffered severalchanges to their congurations as a result of the disturbancescreated. Therefore, the CSAAB approved a new operationalconguration on 14 November 2005 thatwould have 85 per cent

of daytime take-offsleave from runway head

25L in the Castelldefelsand Gavà direction(see Figure 2). Bigger aircraft would haveto continue taking off from runway head 25R.

The populated areas of

Gavà and Castelldefels

would therefore not

be affected, since theaircraft were forcedto make a 60º left turn

just after take-off to

y over the sea. Thisconguration however,which involves major

minimization of thenoise disruption over

the populated areas,requires much work and many changes to be made to the airport platform, which was to be completed by the end of 2006. Thiswork included: adjustment of runway head 02, airplane by- pass from runway head 07L to enable 95 per cent of take-offsto be made from the new third runway, and a new TerminalTrafc Management Advisor (TMA). All of this work costapproximately €18.9 million (AENA, 2005).On 26 September 2006, the conguration approved on 14 November 2005 came into operation and was planned to be keptin place until at least the opening of the new South Terminal. Thisnew operational conguration meant a reduction of 90 per centin aircraft ying over Gavà and Castelldefels and a reduction of up to 20dB for the Gavà Mar neighborhood (AVV Gavà Mar,2006). The people living in the vicinity are clearly benetingfrom the new conguration and abatement procedures, but itdoes not seem likely that this situation will last forever. Due tothe considerable trafc growth at the airport (between 7 to 9 per cent annual growth during the last decade) AENA, the Spanish

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Figure 2:

Changes in the airport operational confguration. Source: authors’ own

elaboration.

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