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Comment by mlinksva | Hacker News Reader

I wonder if long term plan ought be to shut down and redevelop SJC. Has this been studied? I know that SAN relocation is periodically studied but not gotten far (too bad, I'd like San Diego better without the low flying planes). SJC is closer to downtown and there are existing alternatives (SFO and OAK) so would seem to be a more attractive candidate.

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SJC is actually very convenient for shorthaul business trips along the western US given shorter drive times from major SV campuses compared to SFO, shorter security times, shorter walk time to gate, etc.

There'd probably be a decent amount of economic collateral damage by moving all that air traffic out of SJC and into SFO/OAK.

Also given SFO's sky high airfare prices, further consolidation will not help residents wrt that cost line item in their lives.

SFO is prone to weather delays. I've never flown through OAK, because it was always less convenient than the other two (for me, living in Sunnyvale and San Jose), price was about the same and no better routes. It might make more sense to expand one of San Jose's municipal airfields to replace SJC than to just abandon it.

I imagine shutting down SJC would be much more palatable if you could hop on a BART from the major South Bay downtown areas and easily get to OAK or SFO.

IMO, they should look at commercializing NUQ (Moffett Field) in Mountain View and make it the new SJC. It would be a great location since it's not surrounded by a city as with the current SJC.

One downside though would be it would add to the already crazy traffic in the 101-237 corridor.

I think that the residents of Sunnyvale, Mountain View, and Palo Alto might have a few issues with that.

Personally, I hope Silicon Valley maintains its backward nimby-ism so the rest of the country can benefit from some of the proliferation of tech companies.

I would happily take a deal where all the advertising tech companies leave, and only the hardware companies remain (remember why it was originally called silicon valley, not adtech/web/social/... valley).

I wouldn't be surprised if the opposite happened first.

I'm not sure whether you're being sarcastic, but more geographic diversification in the tech industry would be a good thing for the country as a whole.

Google will never allow it. They dont need an international airport in the middle of the campus.

Ah yes, I forgot that Mountain View//Sunnyvale is now a dictatorship under Google /s

They do have dominance over Moffett Field runways.

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