The Current SJC airport is located 1 mile away from Downtown San Jose and only 2 blocks away from the major arterial El Camino and the downtown Santa Clara Caltrain/future Bart station. All of this makes the land incredibly valuable real estate that could be used for dense housing developments. Additionally, the location of the airport requires height restrictions that extend into downtown San Jose.
This New airport could also include several transit connections including an extension of the VTA green line (shown in Brown), access to the existing Capitol & Altamont Corridors (shown in pink), and connections to Bart in Milpitas and Caltrain in Mountain view through a possible new rail line along highway 237 (shown in purple).
Why not simply shut down the airport instead of relocating it?
With the newly electrified Caltrain and the future BART extension to San Jose, the other two Bay Area airports (SFO and OAK) are / will be easier to reach from Santa Clara Valley.
I love this as a thought experiment, and have always bemoaned the fact the airport limits the height of downtown San Jose buildings.
My concerns with this location are:
-The current runway at SJC is just over two miles long - the angle you’d need to place the runway at this location would put it in the wetlands, and there’d be no room to lengthen it down the road. I also wonder about flight paths and whether they’d interfere with Moffett Field - even SFO - one of its approach paths looks like it goes right over this site at about 4000 feet.
-The location in general is super susceptible to rising sea levels - about the same as SFO, and more so than OAK.
I know this is a no-go, but the ideal location (to me) is the Coyote Valley - the site bounded by Monterey Road, Bailey Avenue, Santa Teresa Boulevard, and Kalana Avenue. More than enough length; already located in the SJC approach path; put a Caltrain Station (extend the electrification) there (could even do a HSR station) and you could be downtown in 12-15 minutes.
You’d be asking those two airports to take on all that capacity - I imagine the majority of it would go to OAK since it’s shorter-haul/regional flights, since SFO needs to hold its capacity for long-haul/international flights. You’d be asking OAK to basically double its load while making accessing a major airport much less convenient for over two million people.
I’m mostly just looking at this as a thought experiment. I posted this in a different thread and they brought up strong concerns about the location I chose, so there probably are way better locations than the one I just. But I also think there are way better locations than the current one. Your suggestion of Coyote Valley seems like it might be an even stronger candidate.
I think hypothetically Coyote Valley is a good location, but other than the far northern section it’s zoned as an urban preserve, restricting development until at least 2040 (creating a greenbelt between San Jose and Morgan Hill) - and to be honest, I agree with that since it limits the sprawl-like development that Morgan Hill has embraced.
The topography of the Bay Area limits the amount of developable land. But there is an amazing amount of low-density office parks, much of which is near to transit lines and/or freeways, that should be rezoned and redeveloped at higher density - both commercial and residential.
