Plans for Third Chicago Airport Unveiled

[question everything]

September 14, 2004- Updated 8:04 am - Will Co.

Plans for Third Chicago Airport Unveiled

by Steve Stadelman

Peotone, Illinois- Members of a group looking for a third Chicago airport showed off their plans for the project Monday.

Congressmen Jesse Jackson, Jr., and Henry Hyde joined forces with the South Suburban Airport Commission in unveiling the plan for the airport south of University Park.

Their dream even has a name- the Abraham Lincoln National Airport- and they hope it can be up and running sometime in 2009.

More..


http://www.wtvo.com/Global/story.asp?S=2296316&nav=0RePQs1m
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[sybylla]

1. Okay, they took out Meigs, what's number two?

I'm not familiar with any others.

[LoZoccolo]

2. Midway and O'Hare n/t

[sybylla]

4. Thanks

Forgot about Midway.

[JVS]

3. O'Hare and Midway

[ewagner]

5. What happened

to the plan to build one in Gary, IN?

[Walt Starr]

6. It wouldn't be a "Chicago" airport then.

The land will be ceded to the city of Chicago. If they built it in Gary, the land could not be ceded to Chicago as it is in Indiana.

[ewagner]

7. That's true

but as a "Regional" or "Reliever" airport, there was a group of politicians and businessmen trying to make the Gary option viable to the FAA.....just a couple of months ago.........don't know what happened to it.

[Mr.Green93]

8. and thousands of acres of prime farm land

will be lost forever.

[dbackjon]

10. No kidding - this sucks

My family has owned farmland in the area since the 1840s - my ancestors were the original homesteaders, and the land has been in the family ever since. The land is some of the most productive land in the world (and I am not exagerating). It pains me to see all the new housing down there as well. The proposed runway is aligned so that planes will take-off/land directly over our farm.

[barb162]

9. with so many airlines near or in bankruptcy

why is this airport even being discussed.

[Robbien]

11. Much of this bankruptcy talk is just a ploy

to reduce employee pay and benefits while getting government bailout monies.

[barb162]

12. oh I am sure

but they are also laying off employees left and right and retrenching.

I suspect the plans for that airport have a lot to do with politicians
having already bought up the land years ago and now they want to get their money out of it by selling it to the "airport authority" at inflated prices.

[Robbien]

13. Well of course that goes without saying. Political graft is SOP

Graft=Politics in any Chicago deal.

[ducque]

14. the third Chicago airport

Of course, the reality of things is usually a lot messier than we would like it to be.

There are several reasons for considering the new airport at Peotone:

1) Midway has nowhere to grow. It's in the middle of the city, and at peak times the number of airplanes arriving and departing over the city streets is really frightening.

To say nothing of the fact that it's less than 20 miles from O'Hare.

2) O'Hare and Atlanta jockey for position as the "busiest airport" (sometimes one in terms of flights, sometimes one in terms of passengers). In any case, O'Hare is drastically and unsafely overloaded; that's something no one disagrees about.

There has been a proposal for a new runway and terminal at O'Hare. Unfortunately, like so much other infrastructure in this corner of Illinois, the public infrastructure is butted up against the private infrastructure with no breathing space. That's one good reason so many of the limited-access roads in IL have such a bizarre hodgepodge of asymmetrical exit ramps and on-ramps.

There just ain't a lot of room for O'Hare to expand without knocking down a lot of houses and factories.

And, just as Midway is 20 miles from O'Hare, O'Hare is 20 miles from Midway...

I know several local residents who are pilots for American and United. They've told me that their final approaches can be as long as 60 miles due to the congestion and directional/safety limitations imposed by the current infrastructure. Holding patterns from Chicago extend as far west as the Iowa state line!

So what do you do if you're Chicago? The city needs a new airport desperately. The only question is "where to put it"?

And wherever you put it, there will be a cry of "that's my grandpa's farmland", or "hey, I'm not going to relocate my factory" or "who'd you pay off to get that piece of real estate".

I don't have a solution. As a traveller, I need a safe airport and reasonable schedules.

[HereSince1628]

15. Chicago's 3rd airport is located in Milwaukee.

REALLY!! But I have nothing against a 4th Airport on the south side of the metropolis. Whatever USAFR unit gets assigned there will finish the encirclement of the city--you can't NOT consider Homeland Security issues!