THE GEOGRAPHY OF TRANSPORT SYSTEMS


Country Airport Year Opened Cost (USD Billion)
China Hong Kong (Chek Lap Kok) 1998 20.1
Japan Osaka (Kansai International) 1994 14.4
Japan Nagoya (Centrair) 2005 7.3
South Korea Seoul (Incheon International) 2001 5.8
Germany Munich (Franz Strauss) 1992 5.3
USA Denver International 1995 4.2
Malaysia Kuala Lumpur International 1998 3.2
Thailand Bangkok (Suvarnabhumi) 2006 3.3
China Guangzhou (Baiyun) 2004 2.5
China Shanghai (Pudong) 1999 1.4

Recently Completed Airports by Cost

New airports rank among the most expensive infrastructure projects undertaken today and have been likened to great cathedrals of the past in the ability to shape a city�s image. In the past decade, most new large airports have been built in Asia. One factor that has raised the cost of the airports at the top of the list is land reclamation. Kansai (Japan), Incheon (Korea), and Centrair (Japan) were all built on artificial islands while Chek Lap Kok (Hong Kong) was built on a broad expanse of reclaimed land extending from the existing Lantau Island. Chek Lap Kok itself cost $9 billion but the associate rail, road, and bridge network linking it to the rest of Hong Kong raised the cost to more than $20 billion. Meanwhile the cost of expanding existing airports elsewhere in the world rivals the spending on new facilities. For instance, the cost of development projects at Washington-Dulles between1999 and 2009 will top $6 billion.