A Day in the Life…
Thoughts on the O’Hare expansion…
Went by way of Chicago O’Hare International for the Turkey Day festivities flew a United RJ from Austin to Chicago direct, seated for some two and a half hours in seat 16D. It’s a small window, but a window (if the world is going to pass you by, you might as well watch it). The laptop stayed aloft in the overhead bin; this is not a working environment, despite the flight time.
Everything on time; luggage arrives. (Way to go, United.) Leaving the Avis parking lot, one enters another — the Chicago freeway infrastructure out of O’Hare at 5 p.m. on a Friday.
O’Hare is a place of fascination for me. I grew up some 20 minutes to the southwest, in the flight pattern of southerly winds. I am here today because of the fascination of watching those planes fly overhead, that and the next door neighbor who was a United pilot. (As kids we would ask him, Where are you flying to? His answer, always, was, I’m going to the moon to get some green cheese.)
As a traveler, I’ve avoided O’Hare like the plague, despite my growing-up affection for the place. Two nights sleeping on its well-pedaled floors because of snowstorms cured me of my O’Hare addiction. (Former ORD director Mary Rose Loney once said that she had determined that when she arrived at O’Hare there were some 800 homeless people living at the airport. She helped orchestrate a homeless shelter downtown to relocate those they could find (pre-9/11, of course)).
The fact that O’Hare operates as smoothly as it does is a tribute to all who work there. But look at the geography, the demographics, the highway infrastructure, the industry all around. This is not an airport that needs to grow. Nor is it a place that needs to be reconstructing its runway setup when it is the cornerstone of the Midwest’s air transportation system.
Exactly what is the next level from already being a poster child for airline delays?
Chicago has an opportunity to remain the east-west keystone to commerce, but it needs another airport. Peotone is standing by. Reconstituting ORD is, from this vantage point, misguided vision. It is the consummate example of politics overtaking reason.
Returning to AUS from ORD, the flight is late. (Oh well, United.) At least the luggage is at the claim.
Thanks for reading.
My 11 year old son has a disability Spina Bifida. He is often in a wheel chair but can walk a few steps. He has a fasination with planes and wants to go to Chicago to see “big huge planes” in the air. WE would like to stay at a hotel to see them and view them from the best place possible. I live in NE Wisconsin and would be traveling south on 94.
Any help on the best hotel and best place to view would be appreciated.
Thanks,
JIm
As a local journalist from Peotone, I can assure you that if you want to talk about “misguided and political,” the Peotone airport proposal is the poster child.
I too grew up near O’Hare. It is a real airport with real issues, but Peotone is a ghost conceived for all the wrong reasons.
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Dear Mr. Infanger,
It might seem harsh or unfair to simply assert the worth of reconfiguring O’Hare without addressing the concerns of opponents, as I did above. They haven’t been addressed in detail yet here. If it’s all right to hear from a reader a second time, I can briefly examine those concerns as well.
Many have questioned the $15 billion current cost quote of the project. It is well known that airlines today can’t pass huge fee increases onto customers, and many airports have had to lower fees to keep or attract airline tenants. If O’Hare is reconfigured with four or five parallel runways instead of six, that would still be a major improvement. Chicago and the airlines should address these questions.
Also, some have questioned the need for a western terminal complex. O’Hare today seems to have enough gates for incumbent carriers, but it does not have enough for new entrants (JetBlue wants at least six to enter). Perhaps small extensions to existing buildings would be a less expensive option for now. Chicago and the airlines would presumably need to negotiate that.
Second, although it is not reasonable for people to move in around an existing airport and then demand it not expand to meet economic need, airports can, should, and do strive to mitigate noise impacts. I don’t know if the O’Hare project includes soundproofing for homes and schools in new noise impact zones (which is common for runway projects), but it is reasonable for residents to want these things.
The problem comes when people simply demand that an airport not expand at all, which is unfair to the rest of the community (and in this case, the country). Thousands–in O’Hare’s case many tens of thousands–of families depend upon the jobs that airports generate. Their concerns are worthwhile too.
Finally, saying as I did above that laws in many areas stack the deck against airports, is not to mean that there should be no environmental or financial limitations on airport projects. The problem comes when the legal hurdles become so overwhelming, as they have been for three decades with O’Hare, that a vital irreplaceable economic engine for the region and nation can’t be properly developed.
Sincerely,
Jim Kruggel
Washington, DC
Dear Mr. Infanger,
Reason is actually what calls for reconfiguring O’Hare Airport. You offered no reasons in your piece to oppose reconfiguration, other than calling it “misguided” and “political.” Reviewing some facts indicates that this assessment is inaccurate.
O’Hare is a the only remaining major hub for two network carriers in the country. Only the Chicago market offers the combination of dense local traffic and outstanding connection location to support two network-carrier hubs. The economics of network hubs demand frequent departures to suit business people. Thus both American and United need to be able to use small aircraft and offer numerous frequencies.
These economics clog O’Hare’s 1950’s runway layout. At that time, numerous overlapping runways pointing in different directions were thought to best offer options for wind conditions. However, the density of air travel grew wildly, and the science of airport design developed as well.
Crisscrossing runways only allow two aircraft to move at once even in good weather. Airport operators figured out that sets of widely-spaced parallel runways were the only way to efficiently move large numbers of aircraft, such as four at once. But O’Hare already had its terrible layout, and noisy neighbors who moved in after its construction and opposed any change.
Thus, Detroit Metropolitan Airport, and Dallas-Fort Worth Airport, which have such layouts, can move aircraft out much more quickly after a delay situation, say, after a thunderstorm.
You said that you avoid O’Hare. I don’t blame you; I avoid it too and have helped family members book away from it. As long as it has its terrible runway layout, it will be a mess. Competing hubs like Detroit, Minneapolis, and Cincinnati offer much less delay-prone options for connecting travelers. O’Hare may lose even more business to these airports if it continues to be delay-plagued.
Peotone is not a viable option and should be abandoned. Only O’Hare is located close to the traffic-dense northwest suburbs, as well as a reasonable distance from downtown. American and United aren’t going to move their hubs from O’Hare, and they shouldn’t. Midway of course isn’t an option for either of them because Southwest Airlines uses it heavily. Even with ATA’s pulldown, Midway would not enough gates to accomodate substantial AA or UA expansion.
O’Hare is the main traffic airport for Chicago, and there is no viable option to substantially reduce its share of the region’s traffic. O’Hare must be reconfigured so that it is no longer a major delay drag on the national air transport system. Sets of widely-spaced parallel runways will bring O’Hare into the 21st century and strengthen its position as Chicagoland’s biggest economic engine, and an engine for the whole country.
Mayor Daley is to be commended for getting the job going, against a stacked legal deck that makes blocking airport expansions much easier than building them. It is reconfiguration opponents such as Northwest NIMBY’s, not Mayor Daley, who have been the political obstacle to the right course of action.
O’Hare should be reconfigured without delay, for the economic benefit of Chicagoland and the nation.
Sincerely,
Jim Kruggel
Washington, DC