As the state begins scrutiny of Mayor Richard Daley’s massive plan to expand O’Hare International Airport, city aviation officials say they may have been overly optimistic about how quickly the project can be completed while understating the number of flights the airport could handle.
The officials acknowledged that their timetable to complete airfield improvements and a series of road and transit projects within 10 to 15 years was based on the assumption that the controversial plan wouldn’t encounter opposition or technical problems.
“Yes, this is an extremely optimistic deadline, but we are setting some goals not only for ourselves, but for the federal government and everybody else involved in the process,” Chicago Aviation Commissioner Thomas Walker said. “Our intent was to set the tone for moving forward with this thing and that taking your own sweet time was not an option.”
Under the city’s plan, planes would be operating on the first new runway in just five to seven years–a feat that the Federal Aviation Administration said has never been accomplished at a major airport undergoing reconstruction.
“This is a concept that we think will work, but nobody has a crystal ball regarding the timing,” Walker said. “To meet an optimistic deadline like this, the approval process must be streamlined and many other obstacles removed from our path.”
City aviation officials also said their predictions that the project would allow O’Hare’s new eight-runway configuration to handle up to 1.6 million flights a year through at least 2030 may be too low. That is because the estimates do not fully take into account technological improvements and procedural changes that will increase flight capacity, they said. About 909,000 flights a year now depart from and land at O’Hare.
Opponents of the project say city officials are intentionally underestimating the number of flights the expanded airport could accommodate to bolster the city’s assertion that the noise levels will be manageable.
Project’s price questioned
Meanwhile, state transportation officials, who are reviewing Daley’s plan before passing their recommendations on to Gov. George Ryan, are making it clear that they still prefer a new airport near south suburban Peotone to expansion of O’Hare.
They are questioning the $6 billion price the city has put on the project as too conservative.
“What makes them think that building six runways up there at O’Hare, where you’d have to take things apart first, would cost the same as six runways at Peotone?” one transportation official said.
The state estimates that a six-runway airport at Peotone would cost $6 billion.
And they are raising doubts about the city’s timetable for a project that would require relocating three of O’Hare’s existing runways, moving railroad tracks and constructing of another runway and passenger terminal.
Peotone, they say, could be built in one-third the time.
Ryan, who also prefers a Peotone field, has authority over new runways at O’Hare. Congress has given Ryan and Daley until Sept. 1 to produce a plan for O’Hare.
The city’s attempt to qualify its initial assertions doesn’t surprise opponents of O’Hare expansion and supporters of Peotone. Both groups have alleged for many years that Chicago officials intentionally downplayed the severe capacity constraints at O’Hare as a way to fight off construction of a third airport and misled the public about the existence of “secret” plans for new runways.
While the debate over O’Hare has raged for years, the recommendations that were given to Daley were actually hurriedly stitched together while the mayor was in France last month, according to mayoral aides.
Upon his return, Daley wasted no time in selecting the most ambitious package of runway enhancements to reduce flight delays as well as prepare O’Hare for the 152 million passengers a year projected over the next several decades, the aides said.
Daley, who had faced a July 1 deadline to submit an O’Hare plan to Ryan, “easily and quickly put together what he wanted … a day or two before the plan was presented” on June 29, Walker said.
“The mayor picked what we labeled the ultimate buildup scheme,” Walker said. “There is no fallback plan. This is it.”
At least 4,400 planes would be able to take off and land each day at O’Hare on completion of the project, which city officials said represents the only viable answer to the region’s flight capacity problems. O’Hare handled about 2,500 flights a day in the last two years, amid record delays.
Despite the urgent need for short-term remedies to increase O’Hare’s capacity, airport officials agreed that a complex reconfiguration of the airfield could easily drag on for years.
Daley’s “ultimate” O’Hare buildup includes not only the new runways and the new terminal on the west side of the 7,000-acre airport. Improvements also have been proposed on area highways and Chicago Transit Authority and Metra routes.
The transit moves would accommodate air passengers at O’Hare and Midway Airport as well as commuters in the northwest and western suburbs.
Although the mayor has said the non-airport improvements are essential to avoiding traffic gridlock and making his O’Hare plan work, the city has declined to issue even ballpark projections on the cost of those road and mass transit enhancements.
Preliminary estimates from the Illinois Department of Transportation, Illinois State Toll Highway Authority, Regional Transportation Authority and CTA indicate the cost of the road and transit projects alone could exceed $3.75 billion.
Parallel runways
“The mayor is advocating that the officials who have that area of responsibility proceed with the planning and the implementation of those projects,” Walker said. “We have presented a comprehensive plan for the region that addresses not just the airfield, but also the greatest efficiencies that are needed to improve the door-to-door experience of our passengers at O’Hare.”
The centerpiece of the proposed remake of O’Hare is a series of six parallel runways running east to west. Two others will be northeast to southwest.
No airport in the nation currently has six parallel runways, although the Dallas-Ft. Worth International Airport is working on such a plan.
The calculations on the capacity of a modernized O’Hare were made by the city’s airport consultant, Landrum & Brown, based on the history of arrivals and departures, operational projections and the weather patterns around O’Hare.
But Walker said other factors may push the airport’s true capacity much higher.
He cited FAA and airline proposals to increase airport capacity by reducing the spacing between aircraft, and satellite-based technology that was recently installed at O’Hare to facilitate landing patterns that are more efficient than the straight-in approach that is now standard procedure.
“No matter if we say O’Hare’s capacity will be 1.6 million, 2 million or whatever, we will be damned if we do and damned if we don’t,” Walker said. “But that doesn’t worry us.”
