San Francisco on Thursday sued Oakland after officials there voted in favor of changing the name of the city’s airport to San Francisco Bay Oakland International Airport, saying the change will cause confusion and is already affecting its airport financially.
Last week, the Board of Commissioners for the Port of Oakland voted unanimously to move forward with the name-change and scheduled a second vote for final approval on May 9. The airport is currently called Oakland International Airport.
“We had hoped Oakland would come to its senses, but their refusal to collaborate on an acceptable alternative name leaves us no choice but to file a lawsuit to protect SFO’s trademark,” San Francisco City Attorney David Chiu said in a statement.
This is no more confusing than Washington, DC having three airports, only one of which is right next to DC. The Bay Area is hard enough to get around as it is, and BART goes to both airports. Depending on where you need to go, OAK may in fact be closer, even for people who want to go to SF.
But they would have been better off going with “Oakland San Francisco Bay” or even “Oakland East Bay”. After all, one of those DC airports is named “Baltimore/Washington”, so people clearly understand what it is closest to.
I was going to propose that it was similar to NY/Newark Airport being in NJ, but then I looked it up and it’s official name is “Newark Liberty”, with NY nowhere in the name. But this might be because so much of the transportation infrastructure in the area (including the 3 NY airports) are jointly manged by the Port Authority, a formal partnership between NY and NJ. Does the Bay Area have any similar organization that can coordinate across city and county lines? If not, and they have to rely on the State for all that, it could explain why they don’t talk to each other, and have to resort to lawsuits.
In some ways, administration of the San Francisco Bay region is simpler than the New York metro area, as it’s all in one state, not spread across three. (Connecticut)
But, to answer your question, there is the San Francisco Bay Area Rapid Transit District, which was specifically formed to manage BART, but doesn’t have any influence on the airports, sea ports, or bridges the way that the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey does.
Why not something like what with Seattle/tacoma did and combine the two city codes? Sfoak airport.
It’s so stupid, I’m sorry, the code for sf is SFO, and they want to rename OAK to “San Francisco bay Oakland”, so it has a more plausible acronym for the wrong airport. It’s a completely avoidable disaster…