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Comment by mortenjorck | Hacker News Reader

Seeing the headline, I thought that can't be right; there are plenty of airport runways built on overpasses over major highways.

The possibility of an at-grade crossing between a public road and an international airport runway was not even in the realm of imagination for me!

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It severely limits traffic, both air and land. There will be a tunnel for cars opening later this year. It is another kind of road rage sitting 45 minutes in a car in a queue when some dick decides to land with his private jet.

This doesn't seem like that much of a burden to endure.

There are many many places in the USA where vehicular traffic must defer to rail traffic at level crossings. Which can easily occur more often than 30x per week (30 number is from the article).

At some crossings it's not unusual to have a slow moving freight train take 15 minutes or more. How long is the road crossed for each plane? I'd expect 5 or 10 minutes max for a takeoff, I can understand they would want more time for a landing?

It's Europe, so the burden is the mere awareness that rich people exist who haven't been taxed into oblivion.

> This doesn't seem like that much of a burden to endure.

The road in Gibraltar is a main thoroughfare and I believe the only way to get to the Spanish border. Imagine a rail crossing going through the 101 in SF.

Considering Gibraltar has a grand total of 34,000 residents, it’s more similar to a rail crossing splitting Palo Alto. Which is the case. Similarly, probably as many people a day use the Fremont drawbridge in Seattle, which yields to boat traffic. I think this class of example is why people would be surprised so few cars would sometimes block air traffic.

Also the 101 has traffic lights in SF, when the freeway turns into Van Ness. If Van Ness had a rail crossing, I’d expect cars to wait on trains.

There's much more traffic than the residents. A lot of people work but doesn't live in Gibraltar, a lot of tourists and loads of people crossing the border just to buy cheap cigarettes. There are usually queues outside every cigarette shop. It's complete chaos at the border and nothing like any rail crossing I've ever seen.

Gibraltar has seen as many as 12M yearly tourists in its prepandemic peak https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tourism_in_Gibraltar

For comparison, New York used to get 66M yearly tourists https://www.nytimes.com/2021/05/13/nyregion/nyc-tourism-covi...

A couple of weeks ago I had to stop at a train crossing, arrived just a few seconds late to beat the train. It was a very long train. Then I noticed it was slowing down. As it got within one car of passing the intersection it stopped completely. A guy jumped off and did some stuff, then jumped back on. And the train started moving again - in reverse! I wasn't timing how long I was stopped, but it seemed like forever.

Almost as bad as a different country claim stealing a portion of your country and claiming it as theirs?

Like Ceuta?

Not only is that a tu quoque fallacy but it also fails to take into account that both Ceuta and Melilla are integral parts of Spain and have been since the 16th century, centuries prior to Morocco's independence from France in 1956, whereas Gibraltar, being a British Overseas Territory, is not and never has been part of the United Kingdom.

From Spain's perspective that's a distinction without a difference.

If sometime in the past 300 years the British government had formally incorporated Gibraltar into the UK the way Hawaii is a part of the US or French Guiana is part of France, would Spain's complaints about British sovereignty over Gibraltar, and periodic attempts to regain the territory, be any less frequent? I think not.

As long as we are talking (de)colonization, the distinction makes all the difference.

The difference in the treatment of a land and its people as equals to the rest of the country's citizens and states is what makes Hawaiians regular Americans and Ceuties regular Spaniards, and what keeps Llanitos from being British _citizens_.

To answer your question: yeah, if Gibraltar was a self-sufficient state within the UK (instead of an -arguably- geo-strategic colony that is a tax haven according to the OECD) you likely wouldn't hear as many complaints about it.

Take for example the cession of Sardinia in the very same Treaty of Utrecht. You ever hear complaints about its sovereignty?

You're saying that Spain wants Gibraltar back because it wants to liberate the benighted residents of the rock, which of course isn't true. Spain might claim as such as part of its overall case for regaining the territory, but that's certainly not the main, secondary, or tertiary reason.

If Sardinia were not an island hundreds of miles away, but a large peninsula physically connected to Spain, yes Spain would very much actively try to regain the territory. (Probably much more of a priority than Gibraltar.)

Gibraltar has the same status in OECD as USA, Germany, and is not classified as a tax haven. The regulation is the same as in any EU country, which Gibraltar was for a long time.

https://www.gibraltar.gov.gi/press-releases/gibraltar-retain...

Spain ceded Gibraltar in the Treaty of Utrecht in 1713. It wasn't stolen. Besides which, Spain isn't exactly innocent when it comes to "stealing a portion of a country and claiming it as theirs".

Fair enough, I was wrong so deserve the downvotes.

Very few European countries are innocent when it comes to taking land that wasn’t theirs.

> Very few European countries are innocent when it comes to taking land that wasn’t theirs.

Very few any countries are.

That wasn't the important part of the response to your post though, the important part is that it wasn't stolen or conquered.

Spain disputes that the land the airport is on was covered by the Treaty of Utrecht.

Gibraltar was ceded by treaty, and Spain has not one, but TWO exclaves along the Moroccan coast.

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