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| RUNWAY BATTLE | |
 September 3, 2001 
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| ELIZABETH BRACKETT:
A few weeks ago, it happened again. Torrential rains on August 2 caused
flight delays of up to two hours at Chicago's O'Hare Airport, and more
than a hundred flight cancellations. 77 people spent the night at the
terminal.
PASSENGER: Instead of being at campus bright and early on Friday morning to take tours and go on interview appointments, we'll be spending the night on these comfortable, comfortable airport chairs. ELIZABETH BRACKETT: To many in the airline business, the answer is obvious: Build more runways. O'Hare is a major hub in the hub-and-spoke system for two mega-carriers with worldwide operations: United and American. At United's vast operations center, Vice President Peter McDonald can see the effects of bad weather at O'Hare, or congestion due to an increasing number of passengers, show up quickly around the country. PETER D. McDONALD: The airplanes coming in are delayed, all right? And so those customers may miss their connection, and then the outbound flight is delayed because of the inbound, so this ripples through the system. ELIZABETH BRACKETT: The Federal Aviation Administration says eight big airports around the country have significant delays. Yet runways have often been hard to build, mired in controversy and the conflicting demands of different political jurisdictions. SPOKESPERSON: Today we announce... ELIZABETH BRACKETT: So it was more than just local news in June when Chicago's mayor, Richard M. Daley, announced a sprawling multibillion-dollar redesign of O'Hare's runway system. MAYOR RICHARD M. DALEY: It will relieve the delays and congestion both in the air and on the ground, which are too frequent at O'Hare, especially during bad weather. ELIZABETH BRACKETT: Part of O'Hare's current problem is its antiquated layout. It has many intersecting runways, which slow operations in bad weather. The new plan would build one new runway, then decommission three others, building three new parallel runways in their place. That would give O'Hare a total of eight runways-- one more than at present. MAYOR RICHARD M. DALEY: I understand this proposal will be debated, and there will be many, many public hearings. But I believe that we must act at O'Hare soon to relieve the delays and congestions facing O'Hare. ELIZABETH BRACKETT: In fact, Chicagoans have debated O'Hare's future for years. But with powerful interests on all sides, that debate has stalemated. JOHN GEILS: If we were to have a debate tonight, it would be thoroughly one-sided. ELIZABETH BRACKETT: Some of the political issues are raised by the communities surrounding O'Hare, which stand to lose 500 homes and apartments under Daley's plan. JOHN GEILS: In our wildest dreams, we didn't believe that we would be seeing a six-parallel-runway configuration. ELIZABETH BRACKETT: John Geils, President of the village of Bensenville, has fought expansion for years. SPOKESPERSON: My concern is... ELIZABETH BRACKETT: His constituents include people like Donna Knoebel. She's lived in the same house for more than half her lifetime. DONNA KNOEBEL: And I thought I could die in this house, really. I really, really did. And you know, I think... I don't care if you uproot a younger person or older person; you are taking a person's life and dumping it upside down. ELIZABETH BRACKETT: Two cemeteries that would have to be moved-- one dating back to 1849-- also makes expansion controversial. The church attached to the cemeteries was already moved in the 1950s, when O'Hare first expanded. Bob Sell has more than 100 relatives buried here, and is one of the many parishioners who oppose moving the graves. BOB SELL: The ceremony of burial is sacred. It's a part of life, and it's a part of this church. They founded this cemetery next to the church to always have a connection with those people who are members. How can you take them from their final resting place and consider that to be proper? I just can't. ELIZABETH BRACKETT: But people who live near the airport aren't the only ones with something at stake. So are air travelers. SPOKESPERSON: My husband flies, and he's... When one airport's backed up, he's four or five hours late getting home. ELIZABETH BRACKETT: That's a bigger problem than one unhappy wife. Business groups estimates delays at O'Hare cost more than $100 million in Chicago alone. The civic committee of the commercial club of Chicago, a prominent business group, took out ads saying, "the time to act on O'Hare was yesterday." Lester Crown, who heads the committee's aviation taskforce, says the airport is an economic engine for the region. LESTER CROWN: People have obviously lost a tremendous amount of time flying to and from O'Hare. Supplies have not come into Chicago. We don't know how many have not come here. We know of businesses here that have said they're not going to expand in this area because they require an airport that doesn't is... Have the constrictions that O'Hare has. ELIZABETH BRACKETT: The mayor also has both united and American, usually bitter competitors, visibly working together on his plan. American's chairman, Donald Carty, spoke out recently in Washington. DONALD J. CARTY: Not only will the new and reconfigured runways reduce delays at O'Hare related to poor weather by an estimated 95%, as was suggested earlier, and overall delays at the airport by 79%, but they will also position the hub to accommodate an estimated 18% increase in air traffic demand at O'Hare in the coming years. ELIZABETH BRACKETT: John Geils agrees there's a problem, but says that simply expanding O'Hare isn't the answer to the region's transportation needs. JOHN GEILS: This becomes the most expensive public works project in the history of Illinois, a project that will not meet the traffic demands of the region under any build scenario. I mean, think about it. $15 billion and you're still short of capacity; you still need the third airport. ELIZABETH BRACKETT: Chicago's second airport, Midway, doesn't provide enough relief and cannot itself be expanded. So for years, people have been discussing a new third airport, built from scratch in the farm fields near Peotone, Illinois, 40 miles south of the Chicago loop. That airport has had many backers, including Congressman Jesse Jackson, Jr., who represents a suburban district near Peotone. REP. JESSE JACKSON, JR.: The people on the north side of Chicago have three jobs for every one person. In the 256 square miles that I represent, there are 60 people for every one job. With airports come Hyatt and Hilton and Fairmont and U.P.S. and Federal Express, cab drivers. With airports, given the fact that airports are central to the service-based economy, come the quality of life that millions of Americans have come to appreciate. ELIZABETH BRACKETT: But with millions invested in their hub-and-spoke operations here at O'Hare, neither United or American have expressed the slightest interest in moving any of their operations to Peotone. Shelley Longmuir is a senior vice president at United Airlines. SHELLEY A. LONGMUIR: Adding capacity is not simply just a zero-sum game of adding another airport somewhere within the country. You need to add capacity where the traveling public tells you they want to fly, where there already is a certain amount of connectivity with other flights of a particular network carrier, so that you get the penetration from the largest pool or collection of traveling people. ELIZABETH BRACKETT: In Illinois, as in 19 other states, governors have the power to build or block airport projects. With the pressure building for an expanded O'Hare, Chicago Congressman William Lipinski introduced a bill that would take that power away from governors. REP. WILLIAM O. LIPINSKI: Local politics are and will continue to be the major obstacle to expansion at O'Hare. Despite recent discussions between the city of Chicago and the state of Illinois, I am convinced that nothing is going to change at O'Hare unless the federal government gets involved. ELIZABETH BRACKETT: Lipinski is the powerful ranking Democrat on the House Aviation Subcommittee. He says he already has enough votes to get his bill out of committee. It probably wasn't a coincidence that Daley's announcement came just three weeks after Lipinski introduced his bill. Illinois Governor George Ryan strongly opposed Lipinski's bill, and joined with Jackson in arguing that it's unconstitutional. SPOKESMAN: Without question, I oppose this legislation... ELIZABETH BRACKETT: But all sides have worked to raise their profiles and trumpet their arguments in the weeks since Daley introduced his plan. O'Hare's neighbors are stepping up their organizing. SPOKESPERSON: I was young when this started. I was thin when this started. I'm a grandmother, and I don't care; I'll be out here. ELIZABETH BRACKETT: And on the other side, volunteers from united and American's Chicago staffs spent a morning touring boarding areas at O'Hare to hand out leaflets and solicit signatures. SPOKESPERSON: Like I said, if you are interested, take a look at the information there. The gold card you can send in and petition, "yes" for Mayor Daley's plan. SPOKESPERSON: And if you wouldn't mind filling these out, that would be great. SPOKESPERSON: That's what these cards are doing. They're being sent to Governor Ryan in care of Mayor Daley. "We support Mayor Daley's position." ELIZABETH BRACKETT: On the same day the airline employees were handing out cards, Governor Ryan announced he wouldn't seek another term next year. GOVERNOR RYAN: That's why I will not be a candidate for Republican nomination. ELIZABETH BRACKETT: Many observers think with no political future, the Governor will find it easier to negotiate some kind of compromise. The one thing everyone agrees on: There is a problem. The downpour that scrambled operations at O'Hare on August 2 was blamed for 40% of the total air delays that day around the entire country. |
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