The wood is pretty, but as someone who uses this terminal, the key improvement is that they raised the ceiling and significantly increased the amount of natural light. Here's a good photo of what it looked like before: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Portland_Internation...
The major functional drawback is that wayfinding for both arrivals and departures is much worse. The overall flow of foot traffic is way more confusing than say, the newer terminals at SFO.
tadfisher 17 days ago [-]
This is Phase 1. Phase 2 will replace the rest of the terminal structure (the part that was open during Phase 1 construction) and directly connect foot traffic to the gates. The long outer walkways are temporary and their walls will be removed.
It's a lot like Frieza or a battle with Gandondorf. We got more phases before it shows it's real form.
MostlyStable 17 days ago [-]
That's good to hear. I had assumed there must be more planned (partly because some parts are still boarded off) because the current walk distance from security to the gates is just awful; but it's good to hear confirmation.
obelos 17 days ago [-]
In addition to the great lighting, the new design also has much improved acoustics. The sound dampening is impressive. I can have conversations without straining to pick up words through the din of echoes, and the ambience has a nice warm sense of quiet.
Anechoic 17 days ago [-]
FAA through the National Academies did a research study a few years ago [1] to provide guidance on improving the intelligibility of PA systems and also improving the overall acoustics of airport terminals. The idea is that this guidance would be used for terminal renovations and new construction. It looks like they may have put this to use! (I was on the team but not an author of the final report).
I'm really glad that recognition of acoustics in airport design is gradually gaining steam. As a Seattle resident I'm pretty jealous of people who fly through SFO regularly, because that airport is a joy to wait in because of how quiet it is. Now apparently I get to be jealous of PDX as well.
Wow. That is an impressive rabbit hole to explore.
> She also said that the Port of Portland "understand[s] that people have an emotional connection to the carpet".
Not a phrase I expected to read today.
araes 17 days ago [-]
> Features "mood-enhancing colors"
We hate your "mood-enhancing" attempt and obsessively collect the old carpet so our living rooms can have actual mood enhancement from the carpet we actually liked. Such demand businesses "could request 1,000 square yards (840 m2)" (out of approx 100,000 m2). Only four (4) were actually made available. [1] Still goes for decent ($200 / sq. ft.) prices online [2] and people still freak out when they spot it somewhere. [3]
I'm one of those people. My mom was an executive who traveled to DC practically weekly, so I have fond memories of going go PDX often go see her off and pick her up with my dad. That carpet features in those memories.
darkwizard42 17 days ago [-]
Pittsburgh Airport also has some fairly "famous" carpet. I wonder when they will rip that out. I have fond memories of it!
fakedang 17 days ago [-]
The old carpet was replaced but the renovations are planning to lay out new carpeting with the original design, according to the Wiki article.
insane_dreamer 17 days ago [-]
It's new carpet but with that same design.
dylan604 17 days ago [-]
That wiki article reads much like a press release that I'm surprised that it has been allowed by the edit police
Sparkyte 17 days ago [-]
I believe the other improvement people don't pay attention to is the new TSA scanners you don't have to take your laptop out.
stackedinserter 17 days ago [-]
> people don't pay attention
Let's start from the fact that people never asked for TSA. It was imposed on them and never went away.
argiopetech 17 days ago [-]
There's nothing more permanent than a temporary government measure...
kube-system 17 days ago [-]
Almost nobody wanted TSA to be temporary. It was created permanently with near unanimous support, 2 months after airlines' own security had quite an infamous failure.
wkat4242 17 days ago [-]
You're lucky you get to use those.
In Holland they had those at Schiphol Airport and we were able to leave liquids in our bags and the 100ml limit was removed. But the EU ordered it to be reintroduced because they wanted the rules the same within Europe.
Edit: This previously said we could no longer keep the laptops in our bags but this part was not affected, I've amended this post to avoid confusion.
rsynnott 17 days ago [-]
> But the EU ordered it to be reintroduced because they wanted the rules the same within Europe.
This is incorrect, though there was so much confusion around the reporting on this that it's not surprising that people got this impression. The EC allowed the scanners in the first place, but has reinstated the 100ml rule because they don't work properly. This is implied to be a software problem, and the reinstatement is implied to be temporary, but there's no timeline to lift the restriction again.
As you have figured out this change was only about the liquids to adhere to EU standards, I of course dislike it as somewhat frequent flyer, but it makes sense to make a standard.
Now if only I could leave my laptop in everywhere, that would be nice. I never fly without my laptop and it gets old quite fast somehow having to figure out if I should take it out (and spent 5 minutes putting it back in, which sucks if it was not required) or try to take it out when people are waiting on you. I just wished airports would put clear signs up what you have to take out so I can prepare before I get to the belt.
Underpass9041 17 days ago [-]
A couple of days ago this was not the case, they use CT machines and did not require anything to be taken out of bags.
wkat4242 17 days ago [-]
Yeah it's a new EU law that takes effect soon. I'll look it up, one moment.
CDG in Paris did not need me to take out the laptops, so I'm not sure it's the EU fault for Schiphol
wkat4242 17 days ago [-]
Yeah I was confused, it was the new liquid rules that were a problem. Sorry.
I'm glad the laptops can still stay. I don't travel with liquids so much (I just have toiletries at the places I go to already) but electronics I have a lot.
vdsk 17 days ago [-]
Yeah, I saw your other comment just after posting. I didn't know there was a movement to increase the volume for liquids. Hope it gets done soon
paranoidrobot 17 days ago [-]
Sounds like the same scanner tech that has been deployed at some Australian airports.
Flying out of Melbourne 18 months ago and I'm getting ready to take my laptop and water bottle out. Nope, firmly told to keep it all in my bag. They still pulled me aside, but had a cool 3D model of the inside of my bag.
Of course they ruin the efficiency advantage of that by then putting us through body scanners. If you're not in the ideal BMI range the thing needs to fail three times before they ask you to grope yourself and then do a swipe/scan of your hands.
Sparkyte 12 days ago [-]
It is a little different, so you get to see the machine work. It actually does a 3D rendering of all the contents in the bag and the person running the scan can pull out the items without even opening the bag. It is wildly crazy futuristic tech.
I saw them look at my tiny notebook and go what is that then swiped it to the side and spun it around in a 3D space.
2 billion dollars to upgrade the airport wasn't just for the looks.
DiggyJohnson 17 days ago [-]
I got dinged by the hand wipes for "positive explosive residue". My only guess about that it could have been was I was still using the nicotine pouches at the time and they do have an interesting powder on them. They said it happens pretty often, but I was pretty wigged out and I'm usually a very calm traveler.
wkat4242 17 days ago [-]
Ahh is that why. I'm pretty heavy too and I've been groped way too much in Amsterdam too :(
bloomingeek 17 days ago [-]
Hah! When flying back to the states through Heathrow, some years ago, the TSA gentleman frisked me so well I jokingly asked him if I owed him dinner. He very briefly cracked a smile, then told me to move along.
WildGreenLeave 17 days ago [-]
Most people are within BMI range, I for one, actually enjoy the benefit. And as long as the majority of the people benefit from it I prefer it this way then the other way around.
insane_dreamer 17 days ago [-]
If you had TSA Precheck -- which if you fly more than a couple of times a year is well worth it IMO -- then you already didn't need to take your laptop out (or shoes off). (On the other hand I see no point in CLEAR over Precheck)
cosmic_cheese 17 days ago [-]
This varies from airport to airport in my experience. I’ve had precheck for almost a decade by now and have been through several precheck scanner lines where I’ve had to pull out laptops.
Sparkyte 12 days ago [-]
You don't need TSA precheck at PDX because the airport is sooooooooooooo fast.
kube-system 17 days ago [-]
The only point I see to CLEAR is to cut the line in airports where everyone has precheck.
insane_dreamer 17 days ago [-]
makes sense but so far I haven't experienced that -- well, one time the precheck line was longer than the regular line (so I just went to the regular line)
but maybe for travelers who regularly travel at super busy times (i.e., flying out of DC on a Friday evening) benefit from CLEAR
argiopetech 17 days ago [-]
They're back to making me take my belt off, though. I had purchased a belt with a plastic buckle specifically for this purpose...
xattt 17 days ago [-]
> … wayfinding … is much worse
I assumed they would have detached any signange hanging from the ceiling before lifting it. The text would be too small to read otherwise.
ciabattabread 17 days ago [-]
How much in additional HVAC costs result from having high ceilings though?
CrazyStat 17 days ago [-]
Portland has pretty mild weather. Probably not much.
lurking_swe 17 days ago [-]
society should have _some_ nice things, not everything needs to be cost optimized to the extreme with a microscope. :)
On the bright side, they used timber for almost all of the construction here which is effectively a “carbon sink”, which is unusual for an airport.
ralfd 17 days ago [-]
The indoor trees are wild!
wkat4242 17 days ago [-]
Oh yeah that was a dark hole. Brr.
Much better now.
im_down_w_otp 17 days ago [-]
I just flew through there and saw the renovation for the first time, and it is an absolutely stunning transformation. Just incredible. I loved it. The whole thing. From the ceiling to the ticketing islands to the reworked security to the amphitheater style seating areas at the terminal exit where friends & family can await your arrival.
It feels spacious, natural, functional, and hospitable.
georgeburdell 17 days ago [-]
Please tell me they kept a patch of the iconic carpet around
One of the host hotels for Dragon Con in Atlanta is the Marriott Marquis, which until several years ago had a very iconic carpet that has been since been replaced with something boring.
Many people who spent many hours staring at the old carpet while in line for panels missed it very much and founded the Cult of the Carpet[0]. It has "priests" that wear robes with the pattern, you can buy bags and t-shirts with the pattern, etc. My favorite is the guy who painted his storm trooper armor with the pattern.
If you'd like to join the "Cult of Marriott Carpet", here's a handy link with tilable patterns (1, 4 (2x2), 9 (3x3), 16 (4x4), 25 (5x5), 36 (6x6) premade), reference photos, and fabric sample tests of the pattern on 4 fabrics for costumes (Cotton Poplin, Basic Cotton, Silk Crepe de Chine, Organic Cotton Sateen)
bufferoverflow 17 days ago [-]
Sorry, but that's some ugly carpet. Doesn't mesh with the absolutely gorgeous wood design.
Not for smoking. Only for smuggling a shockingly low amount of 0.5 kg. Locals don’t get too upset when poor foreigners get executed.
If you’re caught smoking (citizens can be tested at the airport and a positive result is a possession charge) you’ll likely have to serve a 3-6 month detention at a drug treatment facility and so drug tests for the next 2-3 years.
If clean, you’ll be stuck with a criminal record for the rest of your life which will significantly minimize your career options.
If busted again using, you’ll get repeated higher and higher prison terms measured in years.
NBJack 17 days ago [-]
Not sure why folks are down voting you; it's a legitimate fact.
No, this is mostly the story of a small local airport that was dingy becoming more modern and airy. But it has nowhere near the traffic, amenities, or experience of Changi.
FollowingTheDao 17 days ago [-]
> It feels spacious, natural, functional, and hospitable.
If we want to solve the climate crisis, this is everything an airport should not be.
sojournerc 17 days ago [-]
How does a cramped, artificial, non-functional airport solve the climate crisis?
ddejohn 17 days ago [-]
Maybe by discouraging air travel? lol I dunno.. silly take
signatoremo 17 days ago [-]
That is indeed silly. Why air travel and not say, video games, or fashion? Which one is sillier by your definition? And why are you here on HN when you can be somewhere else more productive? Lot of silly things human do, all affecting climate, why single out air travel?
FollowingTheDao 17 days ago [-]
> Why air travel
Aviation accounts for 2.5% of global CO₂ emissions.
Yes, by making prettier and bigger airports do you think that encourages or discourages air travel?
rad_gruchalski 16 days ago [-]
And you think airports are in the green energy sector, or air travel? What about the co2 released while making concrete? What about used captured co2 as a building material? Some credit for that?
mionhe 17 days ago [-]
How should it be? Are you thinking it would be outside in the elements? Or is there a building type/design that you're thinking of?
DiggyJohnson 17 days ago [-]
Is there any room for ornamentation in your view then? I'm afraid that your cause is dead in the water with that perspective.
FollowingTheDao 16 days ago [-]
You know how you feel when you walk into a pron theater? That is how you should feel when you walk into an airport.
DiggyJohnson 6 days ago [-]
No I don't and that sounds miserable. Why would anyone want that experience?
lurking_swe 17 days ago [-]
so do tell, which airport do you like? Or should we just ban all air travel? I don’t think you’ll get many people to agree to that so that idea is dead in the water.
And apparently private jets are of no concern! The average private citizen must suffer! lol. I’d recommend banning private jets to start…that might actually make a decent dent in air travel emissions without punishing normal travelers.
If you want to discourage air travel, tax the fuel appropriately. It’s not a hard concept. For the people that are traveling, i don’t see why it’s a problem that their experience is nice.
FollowingTheDao 16 days ago [-]
> Or should we just ban all air travel?
Yes, we should.
Do you have children?
lurking_swe 14 days ago [-]
Do you understand that this is an extreme view? It’s a valid one…but extreme.
I’m not sure how air travel would even be banned practically speaking. Would your country ban it, or a global ban? I doubt all countries would agree to that. If your country bans air travel, I suspect many people would just leave your country to move to one that permits air travel, for a better quality of life. A ban only works if it’s banned globally.
Also, banning air travel means none of this is possible:
• professional sports (teams can’t travel)
• olympics
• flying for funerals, honeymoons, or for a better life (war refugees)
• MUCH slower package and mail delivery across the globe
• is medical travel allowed? Not all areas in the world have good specialists or can do all procedures.
• scientific research in the wild
• leisure travel for vacation, spending time with family, etc
I could go on. You personally may not care about any of that, but many people DO.
I don’t have children but I plan to someday. Yes each future generation will likely suffer more from climate change, we are on a bad trajectory. But guess what? Life itself is literally suffering. From birth until death. People may need to migrate to new regions that are less affected by climate change. That’s life…suffering. And the climate change train left the station a looooooooooong time ago after the industrial revolution and population explosion globally. Future generations would be better served by humanity being more aggressive with switching to renewable energy instead of trying to ruin fun for everyone alive today.
just my opinions. clearly we disagree here. Hope you have a nice day and thanks for reading lol. :)
rad_gruchalski 16 days ago [-]
There we go, “think of the children”. How many do you have? How much co2 is it going to take for you to raise them until they can be used as a reliable workforce? Hopefully they don’t go sideways before…
Oh boy, have I got news for you. The best thing you can do to save the planet is not to have children. I’m pretty sure that my co2 footprint is going to be lower without children than yours with your children.
FollowingTheDao 15 days ago [-]
I do not have children, for this very reason.
But anyone with children shoudl be concerned for their future.
anon291 17 days ago [-]
If we want to solve climate, we should invest in nuclear, but those who want to 'solve climate' don't seem to care, so here we are
UncleOxidant 17 days ago [-]
We drove over to PDX a few weeks back not because we had any flights, just to check it out. It's gorgeous - I can't believe I'm saying that about an airport in the US - it's just an amazing space. In addition to the architecture there are huge video walls above the TSA entrance that have calming forest/coastal scenes.
evv 17 days ago [-]
If you prefer a video or want to see some of the construction techniques, the B1M recently did a video on Portland's new airport:
Pretty impressive how they pulled it off while minimizing impact on airport operations.
teruakohatu 17 days ago [-]
It looks beautiful. It talks about it being structural. Is it really? It looks more like a suspended ceiling below steel girders.
Our largest airport (AKL) is in the process of rebuilding both domestic and international terminals. They are trying for a timber ceiling [1] with rubber floors [1]. It seems a confused design.
> A ‘cost-effective’' mix of durable carpeted and rubber flooring was being used inside and tray profile steel on the exterior. [0]
It's a mix of steel and wood. Curved Glulam beams sits on top of massive steel trusses, which are mostly hidden from view. The steel trusses in turn sit on top of big Y columns. The roof is seismically isolated too.
Not the tallest in the world. It was surpassed by Mjøstårnet in Norway and now Ascent in Milwaukee is the tallest.
It’s not even remotely close to the height of these new buildings. It’s 26m, while the three tallest now are around 85m.
Not to say it’s not impressive anyway. I applaud all the progress that has been made in replacing concrete with wood in large buildings. We should build more buildings like that (as long as we source wood sustainably)
directevolve 17 days ago [-]
Whoops, thanks for the correction on the height - tallest in the US, at least at the time it was built.
17 days ago [-]
ajross 17 days ago [-]
It's the renovated interior of a pre-existing building, so yeah: not structural, at least no more than needed to hold up its own weight. But it really is very nice.
rootusrootus 17 days ago [-]
They renovated the existing structure and expanded it as well, doubling the capacity of the airport. They did a lot of interesting work to make it earthquake proof. Check out the video, I'm pretty sure someone posted it in this discussion.
morsch 17 days ago [-]
I agree it looks nice, but dressing up an airport in sustainable materials won't materially change the fact that a flight Boston - NYC (one-way!) blasts through ~0.7t[1] of CO2eq of your yearly budget of 1-3t[2]. It won't change the fact, but I'm sure it'll make it easier to forget or ignore.
The carbon emission is not a problem, the imbalance is. When we burn fossil fuels, we use carbon that was stored by dead plants being buried. We take carbon from the ground and dump it in the atmosphere. Plants take carbon from the atmosphere. If were to bury the equivalent amount of wood, we would be equal. Buried wood is not useful, but building from it also locks the carbon somewhere else that isn't an atmosphere. So... there actually is a finite number of wooden airports that completely offsets airplane carbon emissions.
closewith 17 days ago [-]
1 kilo of wood sequesters (temporarily for the most part) about 2kg CO2 equivalent, so for the GP's example of a single seat one-way from Boston - NYC, you'd need to sequester 350kg of wood.
To sequester the ~800 Mt of CO2 emitted by aviation annually, you'd need to sequester about 400 billion kilograms of wood. So a finite but absurd amount.
kjkjadksj 17 days ago [-]
Or you transition the airline industry to biofuels that are inherently carbon neutral.
LargeWu 17 days ago [-]
Not only that, you have to build new wooden airports every single year to keep up.
ericd 17 days ago [-]
There's a simple way to think about this that doesn't require doing a ton of research and number crunching. Think about the volume of fuel in a single airplane, about 7,000 gallons for a 737, or about 100 55 gallon drums. It's nowhere near exact, but you can roughly equate that volume of fuel to the volume of volume of wood to compare carbon - I'm pretty sure this is being very generous to the energy density of the wood, but it gives you an upper limit on what the wood could be sequestering (I think in reality jet fuel is something like 2-3x as energy/carbon dense per m^3). Now think about how many planes take off every day from an airport, and the volume of n*100 drums.
It's just nowhere near in reality, and we're not going to make a large dent via sequestration, the "finite" airports is functionally infinite for our purposes. We have to start making carbon neutral fuel.
That said, manufacturing concrete is incredibly carbon intensive, so avoiding making the amount we would've needed for this building is a pretty good win.
burkaman 17 days ago [-]
> If were to bury the equivalent amount of wood, we would be equal.
Burying wood that would have taken decades to decay is not equal to instantly releasing the equivalent amount of carbon. I'm not sure it's physically possible to remove CO2 from the atmosphere at the same rate a plane emits it, which would be the only way to genuinely "offset" the emissions.
katangafor 17 days ago [-]
Does burying wood actually work? I'm assuming it's a little more complicated than literally burying it, cause wouldn't it decay and release carbon at some point anyway?
devilbunny 17 days ago [-]
Without oxygen, any decay is going to be incredibly slow. They're still pulling usable timber from trees that sank in rivers after being cut in the southeastern US 200 years ago. It's not cheap, but if you want some real old-growth oak, it's a viable source. And that's not a completely anaerobic environment.
williamdclt 17 days ago [-]
200y is not really an incredibly long time at all
devilbunny 17 days ago [-]
No, it's not, but that's without any noticeable decay. A tree that's been felled in that environment and left above ground will rot very quickly.
Arrath 17 days ago [-]
As most of the heavy construction and earth moving equipment you'd use to bury the wood will be burning diesel and releasing carbon the entire time, you enter some new Tyranny of the Rocket/Wagon equation.
pmayrgundter 17 days ago [-]
Interesting point!
It looks like Skanska is GC for the Project, and cites it as a 9 acre (!) lumber roofing system[SK], and that it uses 3.5M board foot of Douglas Fir Project Lumber[PL].
Douglas Fir is 3.2 pounds per board foot, or 1.45kg [DFM]. So 1.45 * 3.5M = 5Mkg of lumber for PDX airport.
DF has an Embodied CO2 of 1.6kgCO2/kgLumber [DFC]. A little hard to believe? But maybe that's bc a lot of the mass of a tree is left in the ground. Worth following up.
1.6kgCO2/kgLumber * 5MkgLumber = 8MkgCO2 = 8KtCO2 embodiment/sequestration from the PDX roof project. (tho there's a lot more to the project that probably goes in the other direction)
Global CO2 emissions from commercial flights is ~60MtCO2/month [CF], so we need roughly 12,000 airports per month, 144,000/yr, to offset flight CO2 emissions.
There's 9000 commercial airline airports [NA] (tho obv many smaller than PDX, but they would also represent less CO2 from their flights), so 144,000/9000 is a 16x annual airport rebuild rate we'd need to offset CO2 emissions from the flights they service.
So yeah, this is absurd on the face of it.
But, how much of the mass of an airport is the roof? If it's like 1/100th the total mass, and you start building airports with all wood (foundation, runways, etc) you'd get to 16% annual rebuild rate to offset flight emissions. Still too high to be plausible. But another 10x somehow and you get to ~1% range of annual airport rebuild rate to offset emissions.
Based on the discussion in the descendent thread with morsch, it seems like the runways are the real story, at 1000x the mass of the airport roof.
But concrete is not so CO2 intensive. Lumber has a +1.6 sequestration factor of CO2 emitted vs built mass, compared with concrete at -0.8.
So we'd need runways made mostly of wood, or combined with a Woodcrete that was net sequestering, and then maybe there's a way to make even our most CO2 intensive industries net neutral so long as we rebuild continuously.
Also, since construction is about 40% of global CO2 emissions, if it could become a net sequestration as a whole, maybe it could flip the sign to -40% and offset most of the rest of our industrial emissions.
This also got me interested in what's a good number for rebuild rate.
Found a study that concludes the "Apparent ecosystem carbon turnover time [T]" is 43±7 years.
So maybe we should be rebuilding our built environment at 2.3%, or probably higher since species have evolved to be more energy intensive, humans especially.
> tho there's a lot more to the project that probably goes in the other direction
I mean, this is obviously why this is just a fun math exercise and not much else. Building an airport, even if you build part of it out of wood, is not net carbon-negative.
pmayrgundter 17 days ago [-]
Just finished the full edit.. check it out. If the full airport is made out of wood, seems like it's getting towards plausible, or at least not obviously wrong
Most uncertainty is how much mass the ceiling is compared to rest of airport. Maybe it's more like 1/10th. Hmm
morsch 17 days ago [-]
Apparently they used 4.4 million cubic yards of concrete during the construction of Denver airport around 1993.
That's 3.364×10^6 m3, 1 m3 of concrete weighs 2.4 tonnes (I'm sure it varies), so roughly 8 million tonnes of concrete.
I'm not convinced the wood used in the Portland airport project is net negative in itself, once you factor in the emissions of harvesting, processing and transporting it. I.o.w. leaving the ugly old roof in place would probably have been better, in terms of CO2eq emitted.
pmayrgundter 17 days ago [-]
I found a more authoritative reference, from the Institute of Structural Engineers, which appears to be a major international organization [ISE].
The Embodied Carbon figure they use is 1.64kgCO2/kg timber as a rule of thumb [ISE-EC], and agrees with what I posted above
For processing that yields built lumber, they account in stages, with % CO2 emissions added:
A1) Raw Material Extraction, 20-25%
A2) Transport to Facility, 8-10%
A3) Manufacture, 5-10%
A4) Transport to Site, 50-55%
A5) Construction, 10-15%
A1 to A3 reduce sequestration by 0.28, for a net of 1.36. They then say A4&5 account for 1.5x more emissions than A1-3, so .42kg total factor, for a net sequestration of 1.22kgCO2/kgBuiltLumber. They separate these as the transport is the largest variable between projects.
These figures are from Austria to UK. From the reporting, the PDX project is using mostly local wood.
So I think they're getting a net sequestration for the roof project.
It's really interesting that building with wood has this major sequestration factor. It'd be really something if we could build our way out of the environmental crisis just by switching to wood! :)
[ISE-EC] https://www.istructe.org/IStructE/media/Public/Resources/ARU..., p17: "The amount of carbon sequestered can be assumed as -1.64kgCOe per kg of timber when product-specific data is not available". I take the e to be emission, so a negative is a sequestration.
thanks. Also forgot to note size difference between those airports.. DEN is #4 in the US with 38M passenger boardings/year, PDX #33 with 8M. So maybe 4x larger
It is however looking much nicer. For that reason alone I would love to see more projects like this.
ddtaylor 17 days ago [-]
Sometimes, dressing up a problem can breed apathy and desensitize people to harsh realities.
dig1 17 days ago [-]
Sadly, it's true. In my opinion, this is the hypocrisy of the modern 'green' agenda - we endlessly discuss pollution, yet we cling to the comforts of modern life, many of which cause even greater harm.
TulliusCicero 17 days ago [-]
Personally I'd love to take more trains instead of planes, and bike more instead of driving, but the system (at least in the US) just isn't set up for that.
Train travel is expensive and sparse and slow, biking most places is uncomfortable and unsafe due to crappy infrastructure.
surfingdino 17 days ago [-]
I agree. Trains are often a more efficient, more comfortable, and greener way to travel. I would love to be able to take them more often on weekends here in the UK, but they are expensive to the point of costing more than air travel, which makes no sense.
darkfloo 17 days ago [-]
Planes are cheaper as a function of the infrastructure needed to allow their use (? Feel free to correct me). As long as we allow airplanes companies to not pay for the long term externalities that they are creating planes will stay cheaper.
TulliusCicero 16 days ago [-]
In the EU, jet fuel isn't taxed at all, quite the contrast with gasoline prices.
olalonde 17 days ago [-]
Isn't clinging to the comforts of modern life worth heating the planet a bit? It doesn't seem like an unreasonable tradeoff to me.
burkaman 17 days ago [-]
Yes it is, but we've already heated the planet a bit. What we're trying to do now is prevent heating the planet a lot, which will come with much greater consequences (mass migration to escape heat and rising seas, droughts, famines, "natural" disasters, etc.).
ianburrell 17 days ago [-]
Modern comforts like electricity, cars, heating, and cooling. Those are most of the CO2 that people produce.
It is dumb to give up modern comforts when we know how to make them green by making electricity renewable and electrifying everything. Changing habits like reducing driving and increasing transit would help. Some things will be hard, like airplanes and concrete.
I agree somewhat that there is lots of distractions. There is a lot of talk about plastic and recycling that really has little to do with climate change.
returningfory2 17 days ago [-]
We can have it both ways. In ~50 years in the US, 99% of cars will be electric and 99% of electricity generation will be carbon negative. We can keep our comforts of modern life, like cars, while not damaging the planet.
I accept there is not a story for air travel, yet.
kjkjadksj 17 days ago [-]
Air travel industry is investing into a biofuel future
Cthulhu_ 17 days ago [-]
Not to mention, besides the wood material being, well, wood... it's a relatively small amount when you think about it, and the amount of processing involved which basically turn it into a different material altogether outweighs any sustainability. Plus, with all the glues / epoxies / whatever they use, that wood-based material isn't going to be degradable at all. It puts me in mind of "bamboo" products, which also relies on a lot of glues and processing to make it a wood analog.
wkat4242 17 days ago [-]
> Plus, with all the glues / epoxies / whatever they use, that wood-based material isn't going to be degradable at all.
That's kinda the point though. You don't want it degrading in situ. That's why we treat wood.
In a situation indoors like here it will suffer less but still.. I used to live in a wooden house and the maintenance was a PITA. Having to repaint every 5 years or so. And that was wood that was treated already.
amelius 17 days ago [-]
Well the fact that it doesn't degrade means the carbon stays trapped.
wkat4242 17 days ago [-]
It boggles my mind why the US doesn't simply offer high-speed trains for easy distances like those.
That whole Northeast is just screaming for it with easily managable distances. Boston, NYC, Philly, Baltimore, DC.. All easily high-speed-trainable. Boston to Portland too, for that matter.
Instead of spending 1 hour queueing at the airport, spend one hour on the train and you're there.
bell-cot 17 days ago [-]
Flying has been the preferred travel mode of both the well-to-do and the aspirational for over half a century. Air travel only needs working airplanes, and a relatively simple airport at each end. So, in general, there's ample social pressure to get the job done quickly.
Vs. high-speed trains went out of fashion (in America) well before most people's memories. And their tracks have to be threaded, foot-by-foot, across a landscape which is overflowing with red tape and jurisdictions and NIMBY's and existing infrastructure. Said threading to be planned by yet more politicians and bureaucrats and planners, then done by America's low-functioning construction industry.
Nations with good high-speed rail systems have quite different priorities and local governance structures than America.
wkat4242 17 days ago [-]
> Nations with good high-speed rail systems have quite different priorities and local governance structures than America.
Hmm true but Europe has most of the same red-tape/NIMBY/environmental impact studies etc issues as America. Those are not unique.
However considering climate impact it pays itself back.
mavhc 17 days ago [-]
Plus you get to use the atmosphere as a free sewer, filling it with pollution without paying the actual cost to clean it up, which makes flying really cheap
matthewowen 17 days ago [-]
Boston to Portland, OR? The city discussed in the article?
It's 3000 miles! I would personally love to live in a world where you can go 200mph on a train and do it in 15 hours but I wouldn't call it easy.
returningfory2 17 days ago [-]
I'm guessing they meant Portland Maine, but yeah confusing given the article being discussed. :)
wkat4242 16 days ago [-]
Oh yeah I saw Portland on the map, thought was was the one discussed :) It was the one in Maine indeed
My understanding is that the problems of NYC -> Boston high speed rail are purely political, and basically come down to CT resistance to change
The current track alignment is not conducive to high speed travel, and CT as a state has no interest in supporting a new alignment that is conducive because they would likely get _negative_ value out of it: as it stands, Acela trains pretty much all stop in New Haven and Stamford: why wouldn't they?
If you go with a high speed link that aims to speed up Boston <> New York travel, it's more likely that you have trains that skip those stops, because additional stops are much more expensive for HSR from a speeding up and slowing down perspective, from a percentage of time added to trip perspective, and for an inefficient alignment perspective.
In my view this is kind of a microcosm of the political problems of the geographically small states of the north east: states like CT/RI/DE especially have very narrow and niche concerns but because of their geographical position have effective veto power over regionally important things like "how expensive are the tolls to drive between New York and DC?" and "can you have HSR between new york and boston?"
ciabattabread 17 days ago [-]
It's not about skipping stops, it's about the amount of eminent domain you'd have to do to eliminate curves thru Connecticut's oldest and richest suburbs.
Which is why proposals to route it via Long Island and building a 16-mile tunnel under Long Island Sound get consideration.
wkat4242 17 days ago [-]
Yeah that's true, even in the Netherlands our high-speed line between Amsterdam, Rotterdam and Antwerp was a nightmare. It cost billions, way more than budgeted, many of the bridges turned out to have construction faults (despite all the cost overruns) so the trains aren't able to actually go fast, and the high-speed trains were bought on a budget and had so many flaws that the Belgians refused to allow them. Now we're stuck with a non-highspeed train on the track that was supposed to be highspeed and cost a fortune to build.
In other countries like Germany, France and Spain the high-speed network works like a dream though. Though the good stuff is all nationally focused.
morsch 17 days ago [-]
I'm not surprised, building a new high-speed line between the largest cities in the Netherlands must be a nightmare, that's connecting and going through some of the most densely populated areas in Europe.
The German railway network (including the high-speed part of it) has loads of
issues, and it's hardly working like a dream. That said, the interconnect between large cities is pretty great when it works. For these intermediate distances (around 500 km) it's about as fast as flying would be once you factor in getting to/from the airport (vs the more central train station), being there early etc; and much faster than driving by car.
wkat4242 17 days ago [-]
> I'm not surprised, building a new high-speed line between the largest cities in the Netherlands must be a nightmare, that's connecting and going through some of the most densely populated areas in Europe.
Well, yes and no. Most of it goes through the 'green heart' of the most populated area. There's mostly farms there. The route also goes mostly along existing highways and train tracks so it was just a matter of widening the infrastructure zones that were already there. Holland is very planified so usually these things are already taken into consideration. We don't build housing right besides infrastructure anymore.
However, the environmental red tape is pretty heavy these days. The whole country is at a standstill (house building, traffic, farming) due to limits of nitrogen deposits being exceeded.
So I think it was more that than actual infringements on people's living space. Some tunnels and overpasses were made, yes. Those are the ones that are falling apart already after 10 years :')
tsudonym 17 days ago [-]
I'm extremely pro-rail but Portland is not the city to bash for short haul domestic flights.
Amtrak Cascades is very popular for trips to Seattle.
anon291 17 days ago [-]
To put it in context: Cascades is popular because it magically takes the same amount of time (~3 hours), has no traffic, costs less than a tank of gas, and puts you into downtown seattle without having to park and potentially have your car stolen.
That is to say.. people will take trains as long as they're truthfully better. We should work on making them better. Even the lovely people of Portland, as concerned as we are about the environment, don't take the train out of the goodness of their hearts.
gosub100 17 days ago [-]
the same people telling me to save on my carbon emission are the ones who are ok with free trade to have stuff made thousands of miles away (in jurisdictions with very lax environmental laws) that could be made right here and employ blue-collar workers. Those container ships arrive full and leave empty. What's the CO2eq of that?
ianburrell 17 days ago [-]
Cargo ships are the most efficient form of transport. They use scale of big ships carrying lots of cargo.
It takes about the same amount of CO2 to carry container across the Pacific as to truck it across the country. Producing it here or there doesn't make much difference. If anything, it is more efficient to produce in China cause they have higher percent of renewable electricity.
burkaman 17 days ago [-]
Those are not the same people.
ericmcer 17 days ago [-]
It is the same people unfortunately. People who want to reduce the global carbon footprint should be rejoicing about tariffs and returning manufacturing to America. The two party system forces people to hold conflicting values though. Both sides have belief systems that are full of inconsistencies.
returningfory2 17 days ago [-]
I think it's a little bit misleading to casually drop a "yearly budget" like this, as if this is something we're currently following. In the US the average car emits 4.6t of CO2 per year [1]. If you really think we need to be following this yearly budget the implications on our society (including basically a ban on most car trips being currently taken) are extremely drastic.
Yes, the new terminal in Bengaluru is BEAUTIFUL! I was amazed walking through it with how lush it was. Really love that look and very fitting for the climate (more or less)
ryeguy_24 17 days ago [-]
Exactly. First thought in my head. It’s beautiful and so calming.
The celining in Madrid airport is gorgeous, but it feels completely disconnected from the actual space below. The end result gives a feel similar to a convention center, where they built a big enclosed space, then fitted an airport terminal into it.
Those pictures from the Portland terminal give a sensation of a much better integrated environment. It's the same vibe, but better executed.
lordofgibbons 17 days ago [-]
I wish we had more pretty architecture like this in the U.S. Our architecture is so utilitarian/corporate and built at the lowest price and just enough to meet building codes. I get why it is the way it is, but I can still wish.
astrange 17 days ago [-]
Much of the issue is that city planners like it that way. The building codes require it, and when they don't, they'll have design review requirements where the planners will make you change it.
There's a common modern look called a 5-over-1 which usually looks like a giant box made out of four different colored Lego sets. The random different colors are forced on them by planners who think it provides "articulation".
The giant box look is because of double-stair requirements, which the US thinks provides fire safety but don't, and which force all big residential builds to be hotel-shaped. The PNW actually doesn't have these rules, although the rest of the country hasn't noticed yet.
rootusrootus 17 days ago [-]
> The PNW actually doesn't have these rules, although the rest of the country hasn't noticed yet.
For all our warts, I continue to believe the PNW is the best area of the country to live. I'm obviously biased. But I've lived a lot of places and I keep coming back here.
wenc 17 days ago [-]
I mean to each their own.
The PNW is good for certain types of people: those who love nature, are less urban, who are more introverted, less interested in high culture.
I’ve also lived in many parts of the country and Canada, and the PNW has been the least favorite for me.
rootusrootus 16 days ago [-]
You know there are cities in the PNW, right? And I kinda, sorta want to know what your bar is for 'high culture.'
wenc 16 days ago [-]
I live in the biggest one in PNW and it still feels super small. A friend who moved here from SF (a relatively small city itself) and was surprised how small Seattle feels, even in comparison to SF -- he was wondering where 3 quarters of city disappeared to.
I'm thinking strong writing communities, world-class art museums (Portland Art Museum is good, while Seattle Art Museum is not so well funded compared to the east coast -- our billionaires don't care for art), great universities with top non-professional programs (UW is really good, but is not an elite college), etc. The food scene here is also not great -- it's got pockets of good eats, but in general not a foodie city -- nothing is here among the best. There are too many eat-to-live rather than live-to-eat types. (granted, Portland has a much better food scene — especially Thai and food carts —than Seattle, but it's not super diverse compared to most big cities like NYC or Chicago).
Even in tech, it’s pretty much a company town. Most people work for the few big names. Someone from Silicon Valley who lives here now told me Seattle has tech but has not really a strong startup ecosystem because most people are self selected corporate types (all of top 10 market cap tech companies are here, either HQ or branch). People who come to Seattle here mostly come to draw big tech salaries and be comfortable, not to change the world. Apart from a few people at the top of their fields, there is no sense of hunger here, not like NYC or LA or SF where people take risks to go there to make it big.
Like I said, it works for many folks, but if you're used to NYC and Chicago (or even SF), there's a lot that's missing.
rootusrootus 16 days ago [-]
Thanks for the detailed reply, you have good points. I have a different conclusion, but I respect yours.
Der_Einzige 17 days ago [-]
It's horrible, absolutely terrible! No one would ever want to live there! Please, do not move there! /s
17 days ago [-]
seanmcdirmid 17 days ago [-]
I think it’s 4 over 1 here in the Seattle area. Concrete floor one with retail followed by 4 wooden floors of apartments, although that is changing to 5 over 2 in the last few years. Developers love them because they are easier to build and maximize sellable space.
astrange 17 days ago [-]
The numbers actually aren't floors, they're sections of the building code. 1 is nonflammable materials like concrete and 5 is most flammable but cheapest. (Pretty sure everyone thinks it means # floors though.)
4 is mass timber, which is a newer very promising material. The article mentions the airport used it, but you can build towers from it quickly, safely, and less chance of hearing your neighbors through the wall.
Oh, that makes sense. Ya, 5 over 1 makes sense in that context. They just happened to be height/floor limited as well compared to a pure concrete/steel construction.
Schiendelman 17 days ago [-]
You can thank former Seattle CM Sally Clark almost singlehandedly for the articulation bullshit. And a lot of the dumb townhouse rules that made them all identical for a decade.
And you know design review was created by an initiative on an off election? 15% of registered voters voted in favor.
I think design review could be overturned constitutionally. But few people seem to focus on that issue for long enough to learn how to organize around it.
Yeah, but that just doesn't matter. Downtown Seattle is tiny, and it's an even smaller proportion of the space where we could be building housing across the city. Like 2%.
csomar 17 days ago [-]
It’s policy. Doha airport was designed by a company in St Louis. Doha airpot is a masterpiece and St Louis airport is a garage.
hodgesrm 17 days ago [-]
The International Departures hall at SFO is pretty nice though far more conventional steel and glass. I actually like it better than PDX, partly because they have the habit of showing excellent art at SFO.[0] That's true throughout the entire airport.
I was proud to be part of the mock passenger test days! The only time I've ever bought pen-knives through TSA (only to have to pick up a new fake participant script and return.)
blitzar 17 days ago [-]
How are their body cavity searches?
nxobject 13 days ago [-]
They just winked at me and gave me a stern talking to about "you know this isn't going to fly in the real world..." PDX TSA is notoriously friendly.
Is similarly curved, has exposed yellow wood, with the same spacious layering construction.
kQq9oHeAz6wLLS 17 days ago [-]
This is the first article I've read about it that doesn't mention the cost.
$2.15 billion (yes, with a B).
brailsafe 17 days ago [-]
It looks incredible and I'll take the first chance I get to go check it out, but the cynic in me bets that the international arrivals/layover/security
check area is still just as dull and depressing as any other in the states. 2 people barely churning through a line of 150 stressed travellers that need to get to their next gate in 45 mins. I'd consider paying a fair bit more if I have it next time to not transit through if I can avoid it, always feels like hell. But that is admittedly very cynical and I'm sorry.
BeetleB 17 days ago [-]
> I'd consider paying a fair bit more if I have it next time to not transit through if I can avoid it, always feels like hell. But that is admittedly very cynical and I'm sorry.
Surprised no one has pointed this out to you: Get Global Entry (it also comes with TSA Pre). You'll get to go in the fast TSA lines (no taking belt/shoes off). And international arrivals is a breeze. In fact, since I've got it, I've not had to wait in line even once at the immigration.
To give you an idea, I flew into Seattle this year. Went into the Global Entry area. Straight to a kiosk (no line at all). The kiosk took my picture, and figured out who I was and that was it. No customs declaration even (which was weird, what if I do have something to declare?).
So: No line. Kiosk takes a picture. Never took my passport out to show to anyone. Good to go.
In the old days, you'd have the kiosk scan your passport. And it'd ask if you're bringing in over $800 in goods (just yes/no - no need to itemize). But still, no line.
I don't know what they charge now, but it was $100 and lasts 5 years.
If you live close to the Canadian/Mexican border, consider getting NEXUS, which gives you the fast lane when driving to these countries. It's only $50, and it includes Global Entry and TSA Pre. Fantastic deal. The down side is the interview locations are only near the border.
brailsafe 14 days ago [-]
Great suggestions, and ya I was aware of NEXUS but just haven't got around to it
trevoragilbert 17 days ago [-]
I can't speak to international arrivals (though I can to the rest of the airport, it's gorgeous), but while PDX is international it only has 5 direct international flights other than Canada. Hardly going to be the focus of the airport.
brailsafe 17 days ago [-]
I suppose with such a large investment though, they'd want to plan for that possibly changing eventually, no? I'd be flying from/to Canada anyway, but if it was a viable and better option compared to others like SF, they'd get my business instead, not that there's much business to give
lotsofpulp 17 days ago [-]
At 2.5M people, Portland, Oregon metro probably cannot support many international routes (except Vancouver). And it has very few businesses that would necessitate international business travel.
Maybe a flight to Japan, London, mainland Europe, and Mexico.
bobthepanda 17 days ago [-]
PDX is probably the last remaining major west coast airport that isn't going to be physically constrained, if anybody wants to start a new hub.
17 days ago [-]
bear141 17 days ago [-]
There is a Delta direct to Amsterdam just because of Nike and Adidas.
17 days ago [-]
rootusrootus 17 days ago [-]
100% agree, the international arrivals area is dreary and depressing. And slow. Get off the plane, go directly to a shuttle bus, drive around a while, then go in and wait in what was clearly never really intended to be an arrivals area.
I gather than there are so few international arrivals that it will likely never be upgraded, but I sure would love to see the fancy face scanning electronic passport reader kiosks like other places have. And in a place that is reachable in the main terminal, without the shuttle bus experience.
jeffbee 17 days ago [-]
It's a miracle that Portland has direct international service at all. They probably had to bodge on the customs area after the place was built to pick up that route to Vancouver. Also good to keep in mind that a lot of older airports seem kludged together because they were. Fifty years ago passengers were screened at the gate. Then they invented central screening. Then they invented TSA and stopped letting non-passengers into the terminals.
rootusrootus 17 days ago [-]
I'm very happy they have a direct route to LHR. I wish BA was more pleasant to fly, but at least they're using 787s for the route.
> they invented TSA and stopped letting non-passengers into the terminals
I'd like them to uninvent that. I so fondly remember when family could take you to the gate, and meet you when you came home. Now that planes have impenetrable doors, I don't think we need to keep up the absurd level of "security"
jdenning 17 days ago [-]
I really wish we could get rid of the TSA, but I don't think it'll ever happen. It's not about security, the whole thing is a jobs program (and always was IMO).
fakedang 17 days ago [-]
I think studies have shown that the TSA sucks at threat detection, but is a significant factor in threat aversion in the first place.
It sucks but in the current world we live in, the alternative is travel bans placed against many countries a fraction of whose citizens have a propensity for terrorism. That would include a bunch of American allies and even the US, incidentally.
cozzyd 17 days ago [-]
Vancouver has preclearance no?
jeffbee 17 days ago [-]
I don't know what it was like in the 60's though.
sverhagen 17 days ago [-]
It is stunning, indeed. Now, I was there a few days after this new area opened, to pick up some family, so I didn't go through the security check, but from a distance that part still looked like the same unwieldy bottleneck with the messy temporary-yet-permanent barrier belts. Some airports have already re-envisioned their security check, Amsterdam/Schiphol looks nice, I hope that's still in the works for Portland, instead of perpetuating this narrowing trap.
bobthepanda 17 days ago [-]
correct, they're redoing a different part of the concourse now, and once it's all done the temporary stuff will go away.
that's just what's required to rehab an airport while it is still in active use.
rootusrootus 17 days ago [-]
I've seen the pictures, and it's amazing. PDX was already considered a pretty decent airport before, I can't wait the renovated terminal in person.
astrange 17 days ago [-]
It is indeed a very nice airport, but I think the secret is they copied Tokyo Haneda, which is just about as woody.
(The international part anyway - the domestic terminal is plainer.)
stackedinserter 17 days ago [-]
As any airport, it's still a horrible place that you can't even leave until you get to your destination.
Think of it: the moment you get into your airport of departure, you become a hamster that enters a giant virtual tube that ends at the exit doors at your destination airport. You are not even allowed to go outside and breathe fresh air, like in hi-security prison. A prison with nice wooden ceilings though.
int_19h 17 days ago [-]
You can leave and re-enter just fine, unless you're in an airport in a different country which requires you to have a visa to enter.
stackedinserter 12 days ago [-]
Be real.
cozzyd 17 days ago [-]
I flew into PDX last weekend and was very pleasantly surprised. Now if only they had managed to put the MAX terminal indoors...
17 days ago [-]
dcchambers 17 days ago [-]
Wow. Modern architecture doesn't often leave me at a loss for words but that is stunning.
really cool! I've been interested in mass timber as a building material for a couple of years now, it has a lot of potential as a replacement for steel and concrete, with the benefits of being carbon-negative and completely renewable. The world's tallest "plyscraper" is currently (as of 2022) the Ascent MKE building in Milwaukee Wisconsin at 284 feet tall and 25 stories[1]
Definitely my favorite local airport. It's beautiful and the flow of the airport has been much improved over the last few years, IMO.
Highly recommend Screen Door for southern breakfast when stopping through.
noisy_boy 17 days ago [-]
Beautiful. Also, what about fire hazard? Ctrl+F fire had zero matches.
snakeyjake 17 days ago [-]
Wood burns, but modern suppression systems increase the time to evacuate.
Fires don't usually (hell, hardly ever) start with the structure wooden or otherwise, they start with the things inside a structure: wiring, upholstery, drapery, etc.
By the time the fire gets large and hot enough to fuel itself on the structure all of the occupants are already dead due to carbon monoxide and/or hydrogen cyanide poisoning, so the flammability of the structure is almost irrelevant to occupants.
Even in Type 1 (all concrete) and Type 2 (concrete and steel) structures, burning the structure's contents will kill every occupant the same as a building made wholly or partially from wood. That's why large steel reinforced concrete buildings have self-closing doors, smoke extraction systems, and areas of refuge: the building being on fire won't kill you, the smoke from the burning carpeting and paint will.
With the Station Nightclub fire, it started at 11:07pm. The wooden structure was compromised to the point that the roof partially collapsed at 11:57pm. All occupants who had not escaped were dead well before the five-minute mark (11:12) when flames were seen exiting the doors and windows with NIST estimating that anyone still inside the structure 90 seconds after initial ignition was already dead.
50 minutes for the wood to burn, 90 seconds for the stuff inside to burn and kill you.
All of that being said, wooden structures are more dangerous to firefighters due to the risk of collapse long into the fire as suppression and/or search and rescue operations are occurring.
noisy_boy 16 days ago [-]
I appreciate the detailed answer, exactly the kind I was looking for.
Etheryte 17 days ago [-]
Not familiar with the specific wood composite used in this construction, but generally wood composites fare really well in this regard. You can mix fire retardants into the adhesives and they char, which creates a sort of protective layer. They're not fireproof, but they're both hard to get going and they usually burn very slow once they do. Another good property is that they burn predictably, they don't have catastrophic failures, but gradual ones.
0max 17 days ago [-]
Natural features and characteristics are becoming in-vogue with airport design. Cebu and Clark in the PH have a similar timber roof design, as did Bangalore Kempegowda when I flew out of it.
Animats 17 days ago [-]
It looks like someone really liked wood slat room dividers [1]. Or maybe a lobbyist for the wood industry was involved.
Wood slat partitions were seen in mid-century modern designs, when rooms became more open plan but some sense of division was needed. They were also used in the 1970s to make small cheap apartments look bigger.
Still, it's good to see some US airports looking better. Most of the Asian countries have much nicer airports than the US.
Timber is basically one of the founding industries of the PNW, so it’s perfectly appropriate and local for PDX to use it.
seanmcdirmid 17 days ago [-]
Vancouver BC did a huge timber pavilion in Beijing around the 2008 Olympics. It was an interesting experience, I’m not sure what their goal was. I find Chinese airports to be really generic though, yes, they have high metallic ceilings, but they somehow still manage to be drab. Maybe Chengdu can do a bamboo airport or something.
wrp 17 days ago [-]
I traveled to Asia for many years out of PDX. Now I have to go through SEA, SFO, or LAX, all of which are a very inferior experience. What happened with PDX? I miss the PDX-NRT run.
tcmart14 17 days ago [-]
Flew out of there recently to a trip to Minnesota. I wasn't aware that they were redoing it, but when I walked in, I definitely enjoyed it. It really is a beautiful design.
jayski 17 days ago [-]
I might end up visiting Portland just to see the airport.
grigri907 17 days ago [-]
It really is a pleasant place to be.
There is a free theater with ~16 seats that shows 5-minute film shorts. And famously, any restaurant that has a brick and mortar in town can't charge prices higher in the airport.
I've often thought it wouldn't be a terrible place to take a date, at least in the pre 9/11 security days when you could access the whole terminal.
rrrrrrrrrrrryan 17 days ago [-]
Airports are starting to bring back the ability to walk around without a ticket!
You obviously still have to go through security, but a ticket isn't required.
Extropy_ 17 days ago [-]
Anyone know why Douglas Fir wood is considered a sustainable building material? A quick Google search says that species takes 50-100 years to mature
rootusrootus 17 days ago [-]
50-70 years is the typical harvest time in Oregon. This works out fine because we have a large amount of forest, douglas fir is the most productive harvested timber by acre, and they do not harvest the whole forest at once. They typically harvest 1 square mile sections at a time.
That just makes it slightly more expensive than a faster growing timber, most of the cost of timber production is labour, machinery depreciation, transport.
Steel is 100% recyclable, indefinitely, and energy source agnostic.
tills13 17 days ago [-]
I believe in this case they aren't waiting for it to mature. They use what's called LVL (laminate veneer lumber) which is basically thin sheets of the wood glued together (think plywood but thicker) and then recut into dimensional sizes. The end product is both stronger and straighter than conventional lumber. And because you don't need a large cross section (almost literally any size will do), you can have a pretty short planting -> harvesting cycle.
rootusrootus 17 days ago [-]
PDX is not using LVL, they're using glulam. That's 2x4 and 2x6 dimensional lumber glued together.
Sure, and there are tree farms that have been around for longer than that.
throwaway984393 17 days ago [-]
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omegaham 17 days ago [-]
I just flew through there, it's wonderful.
kjbreil 17 days ago [-]
This is just so fitting for Portland's airport; the entire article and the airport design are quintessentially Portland
wkat4242 17 days ago [-]
I thought it said Poland at first lol.
But this is nice. I like it. I wonder how well those trees do in such an indoor environment though.
armanhq 17 days ago [-]
This feels like a space designed with humans in mind as opposed to a purely transitory space. It's stunning
postmeta 17 days ago [-]
Please bring back PDX-NRT or PDX-HND Japan direct flight! and while im begging, with a 787 or nicer plane
osmsucks 17 days ago [-]
I wonder if they used galvanized square steel and eco-friendly wood veneers.
adolph 17 days ago [-]
The continued existence of airports terminals is weird. Its like a temple devoted to muda. They solve a synchronization problem by cacheing all the inputs for the flight manifest instead of making effort to pull all the inputs just in time.
swayvil 17 days ago [-]
How do they dust it?
tomcam 17 days ago [-]
Ex-Timberwolves
block_dagger 17 days ago [-]
Looks nice! Too bad it's at the center of some of the most polluting tech we have - jet travel.
dexterdog 17 days ago [-]
Also too bad it's just interior design and not being used for anything structural.
dataengineer56 17 days ago [-]
Does Portland airport have the same issues with homeless people as other major US airports?
TulliusCicero 17 days ago [-]
Tons of US cities have issues with large homeless populations, but it being a problem for airports too is news to me.
dataengineer56 17 days ago [-]
O'Hare has a real problem, it was alarming to see when I was waiting at the baggage carousel.
quickthrowman 17 days ago [-]
There are airports with homeless problems?? It’s impossible to walk to my local airport (MSP), but you can take a train or bus there. I figured most airports were similar, but maybe I’m wrong.
Mpls/St Paul has lots of homeless people, but I’ve never seen one at the airport and I’m there at least monthly.
tomrod 17 days ago [-]
This is a great design!
FollowingTheDao 17 days ago [-]
This encapsulates neoliberal environmentalism perfectly! Lets expand airport which greatly increase CO2 outflows and pretend we are "environmental" by building a roof made of trees.
It would do more good to make flying less attractive (more difficult) and unpleasant. Airports should reflect the ugliness of what they do to the environment. It should feel,a and smell, worse than walking into a 70s porn theater.
awinter-py 17 days ago [-]
glulam archipelago
sam0x17 17 days ago [-]
fire risk?
throwaway984393 17 days ago [-]
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efitz 17 days ago [-]
[flagged]
billfor 17 days ago [-]
It would be nice if the article would mention how the fire resistance compares to regular wood. I found this document that indicates it should be good for an hour. What I'm not sure is even if it doesn't burn completely, how well its structural integrity holds up compared to steel.
https://rosboro.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/APA-EWS-Y245B...
rootusrootus 17 days ago [-]
As far as I can tell, those guys mostly only exist in the fever dreams of online commentators.
I also saw a video of a police car flipped and torched in Salt Lake City. Yet, I'm not going around claiming the city is a burnt out husk ran by "antifa" or whoever today's Boogeyman Tucker Carlson espouses.
rootusrootus 17 days ago [-]
> Stop gaslighting. We saw it.
Yeah, you saw Fox News. The people living here continue to be amused at the caricature. During the worst of the 'riots' we were all just living our lives as normal, because that all happened in like two blocks right next to the courthouse. And that was as bad as it ever got.
Portland is very boring, very safe [0]. And for better or worse, not nearly as weird as it aspires. It has been getting steadily less weird, sadly.
[0] From antifa, at least. Rough homeless camps are not an ideal place to hang out if you don't have to
seanmcdirmid 17 days ago [-]
> Stop gaslighting. We saw it.
FoxNews recycled video footage of the same dumpster fire every week to give an impression that Portland was burning down in 2020, so a lot of people are skeptical.
I’m totally going to trust what someone who was actually in Portland saw over what someone saw on FoxNews or some other right wing media source.
h_tbob 17 days ago [-]
I do not want to criticize anybody. But I think this is a fire hazard and I would not recommend it in a place so close to jet fuel and jet engines.
sameoldtune 17 days ago [-]
If a planes jet engine gets close enough to the roof of the airport to burn this treated lumber, there’s bigger problems afoot.
mofunnyman 17 days ago [-]
Certainly less miserable to look at inside than it was 20 years ago. Much better than the brutalist hell that is most of Portland.
hipadev23 17 days ago [-]
Brutalist hell? It’s a vibrant city interlocked with greenery and flanked by Mt Hood
ianburrell 17 days ago [-]
There are few Brutalist buildings around PSU.
Downtown has a lot of bland fifty year old buildings. But I like them more than the complicated new ones. But downtown also still has a lot of old buildings.
astrange 17 days ago [-]
To be fair, I've been to Portland maybe 3-4 times including a few weeks ago, and this year was the first time I could actually see any of that because it wasn't raining.
rootusrootus 17 days ago [-]
You should come visit during summer. June, July, August, and September are typically very sunny and dry, it's a wonderful time of year to be in Portland.
staplers 17 days ago [-]
PDX has ranked at or near the best airport in the country for decades. I imagine you watch a lot of fox news.
The environment certainly cares about whether you watch Fox News or not while polluting the earth flying around in a plane
mulderc 17 days ago [-]
I flew out of PDX all the time around 20 years ago and it was by far the best US airport I went through back then. I'm not sure what you could mean by brutalist hell in terms of portland. There is a ton of green space throughout the city and little if any brutalist architecture.
rootusrootus 17 days ago [-]
Are we thinking of the same city? Maybe you're thinking of the one on the other coast? I'm not familiar with it, but the Portland in Oregon doesn't have much of anything brutalist about it.
Rendered at 13:14:43 GMT+0000 (Coordinated Universal Time) with Vercel.
The major functional drawback is that wayfinding for both arrivals and departures is much worse. The overall flow of foot traffic is way more confusing than say, the newer terminals at SFO.
https://crp.trb.org/acrpwebresource2/improving-intelligibili...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portland_International_Airport...
> She also said that the Port of Portland "understand[s] that people have an emotional connection to the carpet".
Not a phrase I expected to read today.
We hate your "mood-enhancing" attempt and obsessively collect the old carpet so our living rooms can have actual mood enhancement from the carpet we actually liked. Such demand businesses "could request 1,000 square yards (840 m2)" (out of approx 100,000 m2). Only four (4) were actually made available. [1] Still goes for decent ($200 / sq. ft.) prices online [2] and people still freak out when they spot it somewhere. [3]
[1] https://99percentinvisible.org/episode/pdx-carpet/
[2] https://www.ebay.com/itm/176478315730
[3] https://www.reddit.com/r/Portland/comments/10aikmb/old_schoo...
> 2022, iconic carpet would be returning to the airport after the terminal was remodeled.
Anyways, rabbit hole relevant. "For long you live and high you fly"
Let's start from the fact that people never asked for TSA. It was imposed on them and never went away.
In Holland they had those at Schiphol Airport and we were able to leave liquids in our bags and the 100ml limit was removed. But the EU ordered it to be reintroduced because they wanted the rules the same within Europe.
Edit: This previously said we could no longer keep the laptops in our bags but this part was not affected, I've amended this post to avoid confusion.
This is incorrect, though there was so much confusion around the reporting on this that it's not surprising that people got this impression. The EC allowed the scanners in the first place, but has reinstated the 100ml rule because they don't work properly. This is implied to be a software problem, and the reinstatement is implied to be temporary, but there's no timeline to lift the restriction again.
Vaguely coherent, though still not great, explanation here: https://www.euronews.com/my-europe/2024/08/23/100ml-limit-on...
Now if only I could leave my laptop in everywhere, that would be nice. I never fly without my laptop and it gets old quite fast somehow having to figure out if I should take it out (and spent 5 minutes putting it back in, which sucks if it was not required) or try to take it out when people are waiting on you. I just wished airports would put clear signs up what you have to take out so I can prepare before I get to the belt.
Edit: Ok oops I was wrong, it was about liquids. This had been relaxed with the new scanners too but it had to be re-tightened on EU orders. https://www.trbusiness.com/regional-news/europe/dutch-airpor...
I'm glad the laptops can still stay. I don't travel with liquids so much (I just have toiletries at the places I go to already) but electronics I have a lot.
Flying out of Melbourne 18 months ago and I'm getting ready to take my laptop and water bottle out. Nope, firmly told to keep it all in my bag. They still pulled me aside, but had a cool 3D model of the inside of my bag.
Of course they ruin the efficiency advantage of that by then putting us through body scanners. If you're not in the ideal BMI range the thing needs to fail three times before they ask you to grope yourself and then do a swipe/scan of your hands.
I saw them look at my tiny notebook and go what is that then swiped it to the side and spun it around in a 3D space.
2 billion dollars to upgrade the airport wasn't just for the looks.
but maybe for travelers who regularly travel at super busy times (i.e., flying out of DC on a Friday evening) benefit from CLEAR
I assumed they would have detached any signange hanging from the ceiling before lifting it. The text would be too small to read otherwise.
On the bright side, they used timber for almost all of the construction here which is effectively a “carbon sink”, which is unusual for an airport.
Much better now.
It feels spacious, natural, functional, and hospitable.
Many people who spent many hours staring at the old carpet while in line for panels missed it very much and founded the Cult of the Carpet[0]. It has "priests" that wear robes with the pattern, you can buy bags and t-shirts with the pattern, etc. My favorite is the guy who painted his storm trooper armor with the pattern.
[0] https://www.11alive.com/article/news/weird/dragon-con-cult-o...
There's looottts of the 2015 carpet as well.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disneyland_with_the_Death_Pe...
If you’re caught smoking (citizens can be tested at the airport and a positive result is a possession charge) you’ll likely have to serve a 3-6 month detention at a drug treatment facility and so drug tests for the next 2-3 years.
If clean, you’ll be stuck with a criminal record for the rest of your life which will significantly minimize your career options.
If busted again using, you’ll get repeated higher and higher prison terms measured in years.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cannabis_in_Singapore
https://www.cnb.gov.sg/educational-resources/myths-and-facts...
If we want to solve the climate crisis, this is everything an airport should not be.
Aviation accounts for 2.5% of global CO₂ emissions.
https://ourworldindata.org/global-aviation-emissions
Yes, by making prettier and bigger airports do you think that encourages or discourages air travel?
And apparently private jets are of no concern! The average private citizen must suffer! lol. I’d recommend banning private jets to start…that might actually make a decent dent in air travel emissions without punishing normal travelers.
If you want to discourage air travel, tax the fuel appropriately. It’s not a hard concept. For the people that are traveling, i don’t see why it’s a problem that their experience is nice.
Yes, we should.
Do you have children?
I’m not sure how air travel would even be banned practically speaking. Would your country ban it, or a global ban? I doubt all countries would agree to that. If your country bans air travel, I suspect many people would just leave your country to move to one that permits air travel, for a better quality of life. A ban only works if it’s banned globally.
Also, banning air travel means none of this is possible:
• professional sports (teams can’t travel)
• olympics
• flying for funerals, honeymoons, or for a better life (war refugees)
• MUCH slower package and mail delivery across the globe
• is medical travel allowed? Not all areas in the world have good specialists or can do all procedures.
• scientific research in the wild
• leisure travel for vacation, spending time with family, etc
I could go on. You personally may not care about any of that, but many people DO.
I don’t have children but I plan to someday. Yes each future generation will likely suffer more from climate change, we are on a bad trajectory. But guess what? Life itself is literally suffering. From birth until death. People may need to migrate to new regions that are less affected by climate change. That’s life…suffering. And the climate change train left the station a looooooooooong time ago after the industrial revolution and population explosion globally. Future generations would be better served by humanity being more aggressive with switching to renewable energy instead of trying to ruin fun for everyone alive today.
just my opinions. clearly we disagree here. Hope you have a nice day and thanks for reading lol. :)
Oh boy, have I got news for you. The best thing you can do to save the planet is not to have children. I’m pretty sure that my co2 footprint is going to be lower without children than yours with your children.
But anyone with children shoudl be concerned for their future.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MRAkjoUdN_I
Pretty impressive how they pulled it off while minimizing impact on airport operations.
Our largest airport (AKL) is in the process of rebuilding both domestic and international terminals. They are trying for a timber ceiling [1] with rubber floors [1]. It seems a confused design.
> A ‘cost-effective’' mix of durable carpeted and rubber flooring was being used inside and tray profile steel on the exterior. [0]
It can't be any worse than our current airport.
[1] https://www.nzherald.co.nz/business/companies/airlines/first...
This has more information about the structure including diagrams:
https://www.zgf.com/work/5683-port-of-portland-pdx-airport-m...
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon12
It’s not even remotely close to the height of these new buildings. It’s 26m, while the three tallest now are around 85m.
Not to say it’s not impressive anyway. I applaud all the progress that has been made in replacing concrete with wood in large buildings. We should build more buildings like that (as long as we source wood sustainably)
[1] https://co2.myclimate.org/en/portfolios?calculation_id=75775...
[2] e.g. https://ieep.eu/publications/carbon-inequality-in-2030-per-c...
To sequester the ~800 Mt of CO2 emitted by aviation annually, you'd need to sequester about 400 billion kilograms of wood. So a finite but absurd amount.
It's just nowhere near in reality, and we're not going to make a large dent via sequestration, the "finite" airports is functionally infinite for our purposes. We have to start making carbon neutral fuel.
That said, manufacturing concrete is incredibly carbon intensive, so avoiding making the amount we would've needed for this building is a pretty good win.
Burying wood that would have taken decades to decay is not equal to instantly releasing the equivalent amount of carbon. I'm not sure it's physically possible to remove CO2 from the atmosphere at the same rate a plane emits it, which would be the only way to genuinely "offset" the emissions.
It looks like Skanska is GC for the Project, and cites it as a 9 acre (!) lumber roofing system[SK], and that it uses 3.5M board foot of Douglas Fir Project Lumber[PL].
Douglas Fir is 3.2 pounds per board foot, or 1.45kg [DFM]. So 1.45 * 3.5M = 5Mkg of lumber for PDX airport.
DF has an Embodied CO2 of 1.6kgCO2/kgLumber [DFC]. A little hard to believe? But maybe that's bc a lot of the mass of a tree is left in the ground. Worth following up.
1.6kgCO2/kgLumber * 5MkgLumber = 8MkgCO2 = 8KtCO2 embodiment/sequestration from the PDX roof project. (tho there's a lot more to the project that probably goes in the other direction)
Global CO2 emissions from commercial flights is ~60MtCO2/month [CF], so we need roughly 12,000 airports per month, 144,000/yr, to offset flight CO2 emissions.
There's 9000 commercial airline airports [NA] (tho obv many smaller than PDX, but they would also represent less CO2 from their flights), so 144,000/9000 is a 16x annual airport rebuild rate we'd need to offset CO2 emissions from the flights they service.
So yeah, this is absurd on the face of it.
But, how much of the mass of an airport is the roof? If it's like 1/100th the total mass, and you start building airports with all wood (foundation, runways, etc) you'd get to 16% annual rebuild rate to offset flight emissions. Still too high to be plausible. But another 10x somehow and you get to ~1% range of annual airport rebuild rate to offset emissions.
Then you'd have something.
[SK] https://www.usa.skanska.com/what-we-deliver/projects/278172/...
[PL] https://www.forbes.com/sites/johnoseid/2024/08/19/portlands-...
[DFM] https://www.globalwood.org/tech/tech_wood_weights.htm
[DFC] https://www.douglasfir.co.nz/net/environment/carbon-footprin...
[CF] https://www.statista.com/statistics/1500409/global-aviation-...
[NA] https://sentinel-aviation.com/blog/over-40000-airports-in-th...
But concrete is not so CO2 intensive. Lumber has a +1.6 sequestration factor of CO2 emitted vs built mass, compared with concrete at -0.8.
So we'd need runways made mostly of wood, or combined with a Woodcrete that was net sequestering, and then maybe there's a way to make even our most CO2 intensive industries net neutral so long as we rebuild continuously.
Also, since construction is about 40% of global CO2 emissions, if it could become a net sequestration as a whole, maybe it could flip the sign to -40% and offset most of the rest of our industrial emissions.
This also got me interested in what's a good number for rebuild rate.
Found a study that concludes the "Apparent ecosystem carbon turnover time [T]" is 43±7 years.
So maybe we should be rebuilding our built environment at 2.3%, or probably higher since species have evolved to be more energy intensive, humans especially.
[T] https://essd.copernicus.org/articles/12/2517/2020/essd-12-25...
I mean, this is obviously why this is just a fun math exercise and not much else. Building an airport, even if you build part of it out of wood, is not net carbon-negative.
Most uncertainty is how much mass the ceiling is compared to rest of airport. Maybe it's more like 1/10th. Hmm
That's 3.364×10^6 m3, 1 m3 of concrete weighs 2.4 tonnes (I'm sure it varies), so roughly 8 million tonnes of concrete.
https://www.concreteconstruction.net/_view-object?id=0000015...
I'm not convinced the wood used in the Portland airport project is net negative in itself, once you factor in the emissions of harvesting, processing and transporting it. I.o.w. leaving the ugly old roof in place would probably have been better, in terms of CO2eq emitted.
The Embodied Carbon figure they use is 1.64kgCO2/kg timber as a rule of thumb [ISE-EC], and agrees with what I posted above
For processing that yields built lumber, they account in stages, with % CO2 emissions added:
A1) Raw Material Extraction, 20-25% A2) Transport to Facility, 8-10% A3) Manufacture, 5-10% A4) Transport to Site, 50-55% A5) Construction, 10-15%
A1 to A3 reduce sequestration by 0.28, for a net of 1.36. They then say A4&5 account for 1.5x more emissions than A1-3, so .42kg total factor, for a net sequestration of 1.22kgCO2/kgBuiltLumber. They separate these as the transport is the largest variable between projects.
These figures are from Austria to UK. From the reporting, the PDX project is using mostly local wood.
So I think they're getting a net sequestration for the roof project.
It's really interesting that building with wood has this major sequestration factor. It'd be really something if we could build our way out of the environmental crisis just by switching to wood! :)
[ISE] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Institution_of_Structural_Engi...
[ISE-EC] https://www.istructe.org/IStructE/media/Public/Resources/ARU..., p17: "The amount of carbon sequestered can be assumed as -1.64kgCOe per kg of timber when product-specific data is not available". I take the e to be emission, so a negative is a sequestration.
https://chancerylaneproject.org/glossary/carbon-dioxide-equi...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_the_busiest_airports_i...
Train travel is expensive and sparse and slow, biking most places is uncomfortable and unsafe due to crappy infrastructure.
It is dumb to give up modern comforts when we know how to make them green by making electricity renewable and electrifying everything. Changing habits like reducing driving and increasing transit would help. Some things will be hard, like airplanes and concrete.
I agree somewhat that there is lots of distractions. There is a lot of talk about plastic and recycling that really has little to do with climate change.
I accept there is not a story for air travel, yet.
That's kinda the point though. You don't want it degrading in situ. That's why we treat wood.
In a situation indoors like here it will suffer less but still.. I used to live in a wooden house and the maintenance was a PITA. Having to repaint every 5 years or so. And that was wood that was treated already.
That whole Northeast is just screaming for it with easily managable distances. Boston, NYC, Philly, Baltimore, DC.. All easily high-speed-trainable. Boston to Portland too, for that matter.
Instead of spending 1 hour queueing at the airport, spend one hour on the train and you're there.
Vs. high-speed trains went out of fashion (in America) well before most people's memories. And their tracks have to be threaded, foot-by-foot, across a landscape which is overflowing with red tape and jurisdictions and NIMBY's and existing infrastructure. Said threading to be planned by yet more politicians and bureaucrats and planners, then done by America's low-functioning construction industry.
Nations with good high-speed rail systems have quite different priorities and local governance structures than America.
Hmm true but Europe has most of the same red-tape/NIMBY/environmental impact studies etc issues as America. Those are not unique.
However considering climate impact it pays itself back.
It's 3000 miles! I would personally love to live in a world where you can go 200mph on a train and do it in 15 hours but I wouldn't call it easy.
The current track alignment is not conducive to high speed travel, and CT as a state has no interest in supporting a new alignment that is conducive because they would likely get _negative_ value out of it: as it stands, Acela trains pretty much all stop in New Haven and Stamford: why wouldn't they?
If you go with a high speed link that aims to speed up Boston <> New York travel, it's more likely that you have trains that skip those stops, because additional stops are much more expensive for HSR from a speeding up and slowing down perspective, from a percentage of time added to trip perspective, and for an inefficient alignment perspective.
In my view this is kind of a microcosm of the political problems of the geographically small states of the north east: states like CT/RI/DE especially have very narrow and niche concerns but because of their geographical position have effective veto power over regionally important things like "how expensive are the tolls to drive between New York and DC?" and "can you have HSR between new york and boston?"
Which is why proposals to route it via Long Island and building a 16-mile tunnel under Long Island Sound get consideration.
In other countries like Germany, France and Spain the high-speed network works like a dream though. Though the good stuff is all nationally focused.
The German railway network (including the high-speed part of it) has loads of issues, and it's hardly working like a dream. That said, the interconnect between large cities is pretty great when it works. For these intermediate distances (around 500 km) it's about as fast as flying would be once you factor in getting to/from the airport (vs the more central train station), being there early etc; and much faster than driving by car.
Well, yes and no. Most of it goes through the 'green heart' of the most populated area. There's mostly farms there. The route also goes mostly along existing highways and train tracks so it was just a matter of widening the infrastructure zones that were already there. Holland is very planified so usually these things are already taken into consideration. We don't build housing right besides infrastructure anymore.
However, the environmental red tape is pretty heavy these days. The whole country is at a standstill (house building, traffic, farming) due to limits of nitrogen deposits being exceeded.
So I think it was more that than actual infringements on people's living space. Some tunnels and overpasses were made, yes. Those are the ones that are falling apart already after 10 years :')
Amtrak Cascades is very popular for trips to Seattle.
That is to say.. people will take trains as long as they're truthfully better. We should work on making them better. Even the lovely people of Portland, as concerned as we are about the environment, don't take the train out of the goodness of their hearts.
It takes about the same amount of CO2 to carry container across the Pacific as to truck it across the country. Producing it here or there doesn't make much difference. If anything, it is more efficient to produce in China cause they have higher percent of renewable electricity.
[1] https://www.epa.gov/greenvehicles/greenhouse-gas-emissions-t....
https://celebrityprivatejettracker.com/leaderboard/#gr
Those pictures from the Portland terminal give a sensation of a much better integrated environment. It's the same vibe, but better executed.
There's a common modern look called a 5-over-1 which usually looks like a giant box made out of four different colored Lego sets. The random different colors are forced on them by planners who think it provides "articulation".
The giant box look is because of double-stair requirements, which the US thinks provides fire safety but don't, and which force all big residential builds to be hotel-shaped. The PNW actually doesn't have these rules, although the rest of the country hasn't noticed yet.
For all our warts, I continue to believe the PNW is the best area of the country to live. I'm obviously biased. But I've lived a lot of places and I keep coming back here.
The PNW is good for certain types of people: those who love nature, are less urban, who are more introverted, less interested in high culture.
I’ve also lived in many parts of the country and Canada, and the PNW has been the least favorite for me.
I'm thinking strong writing communities, world-class art museums (Portland Art Museum is good, while Seattle Art Museum is not so well funded compared to the east coast -- our billionaires don't care for art), great universities with top non-professional programs (UW is really good, but is not an elite college), etc. The food scene here is also not great -- it's got pockets of good eats, but in general not a foodie city -- nothing is here among the best. There are too many eat-to-live rather than live-to-eat types. (granted, Portland has a much better food scene — especially Thai and food carts —than Seattle, but it's not super diverse compared to most big cities like NYC or Chicago).
Even in tech, it’s pretty much a company town. Most people work for the few big names. Someone from Silicon Valley who lives here now told me Seattle has tech but has not really a strong startup ecosystem because most people are self selected corporate types (all of top 10 market cap tech companies are here, either HQ or branch). People who come to Seattle here mostly come to draw big tech salaries and be comfortable, not to change the world. Apart from a few people at the top of their fields, there is no sense of hunger here, not like NYC or LA or SF where people take risks to go there to make it big.
Like I said, it works for many folks, but if you're used to NYC and Chicago (or even SF), there's a lot that's missing.
4 is mass timber, which is a newer very promising material. The article mentions the airport used it, but you can build towers from it quickly, safely, and less chance of hearing your neighbors through the wall.
https://timberlab.com/projects/heartwood
And you know design review was created by an initiative on an off election? 15% of registered voters voted in favor.
I think design review could be overturned constitutionally. But few people seem to focus on that issue for long enough to learn how to organize around it.
[0] https://www.sfomuseum.org/
Here is an interesting video about its construction
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MRAkjoUdN_I
https://rarehistoricalphotos.com/world-largest-log-cabin-por...
https://www.npr.org/sections/shots-health-news/2024/11/03/nx...
And: it’s exciting to see more mass timber construction in the PNW. Closer to home for me is the University of Washington’s Founder’s Hall: https://www.archpaper.com/2022/10/lmn-architects-completes-u...
https://springvalleycorp.ca/index.php/td-place-stadium/
Is similarly curved, has exposed yellow wood, with the same spacious layering construction.
$2.15 billion (yes, with a B).
Surprised no one has pointed this out to you: Get Global Entry (it also comes with TSA Pre). You'll get to go in the fast TSA lines (no taking belt/shoes off). And international arrivals is a breeze. In fact, since I've got it, I've not had to wait in line even once at the immigration.
To give you an idea, I flew into Seattle this year. Went into the Global Entry area. Straight to a kiosk (no line at all). The kiosk took my picture, and figured out who I was and that was it. No customs declaration even (which was weird, what if I do have something to declare?).
So: No line. Kiosk takes a picture. Never took my passport out to show to anyone. Good to go.
In the old days, you'd have the kiosk scan your passport. And it'd ask if you're bringing in over $800 in goods (just yes/no - no need to itemize). But still, no line.
I don't know what they charge now, but it was $100 and lasts 5 years.
If you live close to the Canadian/Mexican border, consider getting NEXUS, which gives you the fast lane when driving to these countries. It's only $50, and it includes Global Entry and TSA Pre. Fantastic deal. The down side is the interview locations are only near the border.
Maybe a flight to Japan, London, mainland Europe, and Mexico.
I gather than there are so few international arrivals that it will likely never be upgraded, but I sure would love to see the fancy face scanning electronic passport reader kiosks like other places have. And in a place that is reachable in the main terminal, without the shuttle bus experience.
> they invented TSA and stopped letting non-passengers into the terminals
I'd like them to uninvent that. I so fondly remember when family could take you to the gate, and meet you when you came home. Now that planes have impenetrable doors, I don't think we need to keep up the absurd level of "security"
It sucks but in the current world we live in, the alternative is travel bans placed against many countries a fraction of whose citizens have a propensity for terrorism. That would include a bunch of American allies and even the US, incidentally.
that's just what's required to rehab an airport while it is still in active use.
(The international part anyway - the domestic terminal is plainer.)
Think of it: the moment you get into your airport of departure, you become a hamster that enters a giant virtual tube that ends at the exit doors at your destination airport. You are not even allowed to go outside and breathe fresh air, like in hi-security prison. A prison with nice wooden ceilings though.
[1] https://www.fs.usda.gov/inside-fs/delivering-mission/apply/w...
Highly recommend Screen Door for southern breakfast when stopping through.
Fires don't usually (hell, hardly ever) start with the structure wooden or otherwise, they start with the things inside a structure: wiring, upholstery, drapery, etc.
By the time the fire gets large and hot enough to fuel itself on the structure all of the occupants are already dead due to carbon monoxide and/or hydrogen cyanide poisoning, so the flammability of the structure is almost irrelevant to occupants.
Even in Type 1 (all concrete) and Type 2 (concrete and steel) structures, burning the structure's contents will kill every occupant the same as a building made wholly or partially from wood. That's why large steel reinforced concrete buildings have self-closing doors, smoke extraction systems, and areas of refuge: the building being on fire won't kill you, the smoke from the burning carpeting and paint will.
With the Station Nightclub fire, it started at 11:07pm. The wooden structure was compromised to the point that the roof partially collapsed at 11:57pm. All occupants who had not escaped were dead well before the five-minute mark (11:12) when flames were seen exiting the doors and windows with NIST estimating that anyone still inside the structure 90 seconds after initial ignition was already dead.
50 minutes for the wood to burn, 90 seconds for the stuff inside to burn and kill you.
All of that being said, wooden structures are more dangerous to firefighters due to the risk of collapse long into the fire as suppression and/or search and rescue operations are occurring.
Wood slat partitions were seen in mid-century modern designs, when rooms became more open plan but some sense of division was needed. They were also used in the 1970s to make small cheap apartments look bigger.
Still, it's good to see some US airports looking better. Most of the Asian countries have much nicer airports than the US.
[1] https://www.architecturaldigest.com/story/wood-slat-partitio...
There is a free theater with ~16 seats that shows 5-minute film shorts. And famously, any restaurant that has a brick and mortar in town can't charge prices higher in the airport.
I've often thought it wouldn't be a terrible place to take a date, at least in the pre 9/11 security days when you could access the whole terminal.
You obviously still have to go through security, but a ticket isn't required.
Here are some pictures to give an idea of the logging pattern: https://imgur.com/a/grid-grid-logging-oregon-ewNJL2e
Steel is 100% recyclable, indefinitely, and energy source agnostic.
https://www.apawood.org/pdx-gets-back-to-its-roots-with-engi...
But this is nice. I like it. I wonder how well those trees do in such an indoor environment though.
Mpls/St Paul has lots of homeless people, but I’ve never seen one at the airport and I’m there at least monthly.
It would do more good to make flying less attractive (more difficult) and unpleasant. Airports should reflect the ugliness of what they do to the environment. It should feel,a and smell, worse than walking into a 70s porn theater.
Oh look, here's a video showing a guy lighting a firebomb and throwing it - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EMkTfGlM-f0&t=190s
Hmmm, left a bomb behind (guy was caught, extradited and sentenced to 4 years) - https://apnews.com/article/race-and-ethnicity-portland-crime...
Analysis & statistics: - https://americafirstpolicy.com/issues/portland-on-fire-the-s...
Stop gaslighting. We saw it.
Yeah, you saw Fox News. The people living here continue to be amused at the caricature. During the worst of the 'riots' we were all just living our lives as normal, because that all happened in like two blocks right next to the courthouse. And that was as bad as it ever got.
Portland is very boring, very safe [0]. And for better or worse, not nearly as weird as it aspires. It has been getting steadily less weird, sadly.
[0] From antifa, at least. Rough homeless camps are not an ideal place to hang out if you don't have to
FoxNews recycled video footage of the same dumpster fire every week to give an impression that Portland was burning down in 2020, so a lot of people are skeptical.
I’m totally going to trust what someone who was actually in Portland saw over what someone saw on FoxNews or some other right wing media source.
Downtown has a lot of bland fifty year old buildings. But I like them more than the complicated new ones. But downtown also still has a lot of old buildings.
source: https://www.oregonlive.com/news/g66l-2019/07/a6f7a0d4698366/...