Comparing flight paths means considering both how many people would hear the aircraft and how much they would be disturbed. The same jet can have a very different impact in a quiet valley than near a freeway.
Sonoma County's climate inventory counts the drive to Oakland but leaves out the flight from STS. Over the whole journey, growing local air service often means more aircraft movements, more emissions, and more travel. The lower-carbon alternative is the part the county can improve.
Flying from Charles M. Schulz–Sonoma County Airport (STS) saves some passengers a drive to San Francisco or Oakland. Saving the drive doesn't mean saving on pollution — one local departure can produce 19 to 35 times the nitrogen oxide pollution of the car journeys it replaces.
For fourteen years, the case for expanding commercial air service at STS has rested on jobs, spending, and growth. But figures for the whole airport are not figures for airline service, and economic impact is not economic benefit.
Whether the same jet is a heavier burden over a quiet valley than over a busy road is a testable question, not just a complaint. California law treats acoustic context as capable of mattering, and Sonoma County measured several of the things that difference turns on at this airport in 2011.
A paper submitted to the General Plan Sonoma update on August 31 proposes a landside terminal on the US-101 corridor, checking passengers in here and putting them on Oakland's existing route network.
Sonoma County's General Plan required a Board of Supervisors review once airport passenger traffic reached 474,500 a year. Airport figures show that threshold crossed in 2019. A county records determination found no responsive record that the review took place.
If a debate begins with present conditions, the 2024 routing change disappears into the status quo. The people asking to reconsider that change are recast as the people trying to impose noise somewhere else.
Total operations at Sonoma County Airport have halved since 1990. Air Carrier operations are at a record. Both are true of the same airport.
The EIR placed substantially the same growth in operations in its with-project and without-project scenarios. It assessed the resulting conditions, but not whether the runway project might contribute to that growth.
The EIR placed the same forecast growth in operations in its with-project and without-project scenarios. It assessed the resulting conditions and the runway project’s incremental effects, but not whether the runway project might contribute to that growth.
What Sonoma County's own records say — and don't say — about its aircraft-noise proposals.