Rapidly sinking Kansai International Airport has forced its operators to consider ditching construction of a rail link to a second artificial island due to be completed in 2007, it was learned Wednesday. Kansai International Airport, built on landfill, is sinking roughly 10 times faster than initially expected. That will make it difficult to secure the unmanned rail link to a second island currently being made through reclamation - and one that is now expected to sink even faster than the first. Builders started working on the second stage of Kansai International Airport in July last year. The aim was to build an artificial island of some 545 hectares, using 250 million cubic meters of soil in a reclamation project exceeding the scale of Kansai International Airport's initial stage.
Plans currently call for several bridges to link the two islands.
The most favored proposal for linking terminals on the islands was to set up a railway that ran across one of the bridges. But the first-stage island has placed operators in a quandary. Although the island was expected to sink, it was estimated to dip by only 11 meters over a 50-year period. It has already sunk further than that in some areas just six years after opening. KIAC doesn't know when Kansai International Airport will stop sinking, either.