NOVEMBER 19, 2019 \ STARWEEKLY.COM.AU COM.AU
(Luke Hemer) 200668_21
NEWS + SPORT + THE WEST’S BEST PROPERTY GUIDE
Surf’s up in the west Surf’s up in Melbourne’s west. Urbnsurf will open its $28 million surf park near Melbourne Airport in January. The park is the first of its kind in the southern hemisphere. Last week, some of Australia’s best young surfers, including Sage, above, took to the waves to test it out. ■ More pictures: Page 7
Runway delivers angst By Tate Papworth Keilor residents claim Melbourne Airport’s decision to build a second north-south facing runway will “kill” the area. The Airport’s decision, announced last Thursday, means that the number of flights over suburbs including Keilor, St Albans and Bulla could increase substantially. Keilor Residents and Ratepayers spokesperson Susan Jennison said: “It’s a death knell … it’s devastating”. She said residents were concerned about the health and social impacts of another north-south runway and increased air traffic.
“The big thing with this is that a lot of people are still not sure how it is going to affect them,” she said. Residents will consider their next move over the coming weeks. Airport chief executive Lyell Strambi said the additional runway is expected to open in 2025. “After a period of extensive analysis and consultation with industry partners, we’ve decided that building our third runway in the north-south direction is the preferred option over an east-west direction,” he said. “The main deciding factor is the availability of the runways in a north-south direction. They are just far more available for operations
on more days of the year, particularly in those peak hours where capacity is really important to the airport.” More than 300,000 residents living in impacted areas will receive information packs in the mail, starting from next week. “There’s no denying that a growing airport has an impact on the community,” Mr Strambi said. “Some of those impacts are positive, some of those are negative and we have to work with the community to understand those and then find ways to deal with them. “There’s a number of different ways you can operate a particular runway system to reduce
the impact on your communities and that’s what we need to work through now – how best to run this airport and this new runway system which will create the best affect overall.” The airport hopes to begin construction on the new runway from 2022. It is estimated it will $1.5 billion, significantly more than the originally planned $1.3 billion price tag for the east-west runway. Mr Strambi said the main determining factor in the airport’s decision to scrap more than five years of planning on an east-west runway was availability, largely determined by the wind. The plans still need to be approved by the federal government.
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