Agreed.

It reminds me of a mini Watergate

O'hare Expansion
 

Dupage Judge Popejoy doing his best to abuse his position and delay the project.. he didn't show up
tuesday.... and then postpones a hearing on a test he ordered 4 months ago to May.....


How can the city allow a county court to delay this, when it has gotten all fed judiciary approval already..... ?


Briefs: O'Hare hearing postponed
Published: 2/29/2008 12:06 AMSend To:
A court hearing on the findings of an environmental analysis of the O'Hare International Airport expansion zone in Bensenville was again postponed to May 27. DuPage County Circuit Judge Kenneth Popejoy is expected to preside over the session. O'Hare Modernization Program officials are expected to present the results of their environmental tests at that time. Bensenville attorneys said they have not yet seen the results. However, they expect Popejoy to grant the village at least six weeks for its own environmental experts to review the

Its dirty politics Chicago style reversed!!!

They need to get on with it.The Feds had already stated years ago that
the runways would happen no matter what Chicago,Bensenville or anyone else did.The delays are worse at O'hare then they have ever been(even worse
that during the PATCO strike)Its costing the airlines billions of dollars a year in fuel and cancelled flights.They like to blame everything on Weather.When
you see an airport like DFW running 90 arrivals an hour during a major summertime thunderstorm causing crosswinds you have to wonder how much politics plays into the delays at O'hare.They will complete the runways and for around 2 years things will be great.Then they will decide they need somthing else and delays will begin to come back.It started back in the
1990's when they needed new towers and an updated computer system.

The cause is more Federal than local.Its called an agenda.

fuck NIMBYs because a small population will be affected as apposed to a lot more people because you have to build freeways to the airport.

We need to charge DuPage residence a service fee to use the airport to pay for all the delays they are causing!

^ Elk Grove Village is in Cook. Bensenville is partially in Cook. Des Plaines is in Cook. This is not Cook vs. Dupage. It's about everyone vs. 3 or 4 suburbs.

I think the land grab Chicago did is good and bad.They should not have
been allowed to take the land,but since they did it will help keep the NIMBY
filled towns from holding up any project until hell freezes over.
Other states have state and local run airport athorities that hande most of the big airports.Chicago handles everything.Lets not forget most of the Ohare travelers come from the suburbs anyway.ALL OF THE OHARE LAND
WAS TAKEN FROM SUBURBAN TOWNSHIPS STARTING IN THE MID 1950'S!

By the way,I am all for ORD expansion.It needs to be done if Chicagoland
wants to stay on top of the transportation system in this country.
Right now O'hare is in real bad shape.Politics and ATC are killing O'hare.
ATL,DFW all want more.Other small cities have also built big new terminals
and are trying to steal some of the business from Chicago.These runways
should have been done in 1995!

^ Who cares about national prominence or "staying on top of the transportation system in this country". Most people and businesses here couldn't care less about whether O'Hare is the busiest airport in the world. They mostly care about the fact that it's expensive to fly in and out of Chicago and want to be able to do it for less money. That is why this expansion is so important. More runways and gates will mean more takeoffs and landings which hopefully will mean cheaper travel.

Interesting concept, but why not expand Midway, or create a third major airport??? O'Hare is so heavily trafficked at this point, adding a few terminals (or whatever the plan) will just make it busier. Air traffic is of course the larger concern over foot and car traffic.

Midway cannot be expanded, and the runway config basically sucks. Southwest will continue to control the "footpring" at Midway, much like Houston Hobby, Dallas Love field, and Burbank.

Gary is trying to draw in more service, and has grabed some charters and start-ups. The peotone idea is horrid; the FAA will not let it survive in its current form.

Ciao,
AWACS

There is no room for growth for Midway.

The [Peotone] 3rd airport option is moving rather slowly right now. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Propose...burban_airport

Some say Mitchell airport in Milwaukee already is the 3rd Chicagoland airport.

Rockford [Chicago-Rockford International airport] http://www.flyrfd.com/

and Gary [Chicago-Gary International airport] http://www.garychicagoairport.com/fastfacts.asp

are competing for more growth.

Notice how Rockford and Gary put the name Chicago first in their name.

They don't care that it has the title "the busiest", but O'hare is a very important consideration for business location on account of it being both a domestic and international hub for 2 of the biggest airlines in the world, so its overall connectivity throughout the country and throughout the world is top notch. Being "world's busiest" or whatever is just a symptom of that, but it's not unrelated.

I would say "world's busiest" is more important than it sounds. The reason is that this title gets thrown around a lot in the media and in business circles, and every time you hear it, you think, "Wow, Chicago has a lot to juggle and manage with its airport system." Despite the delays etc, I always was impressed by Chicago's operation and ability before I moved here. Without the title, you don't get that advertising or recognition.

I am not saying that one should place titles like this in a position above other practical considerations, but they do have benefits.

There are serious benefits to being a transportation hub. As a consumer, it means there will be flights to anywhere. The connectivity helps the business and financial sectors. But then there is the simple economics of it. A lot of people work at O'Hare. Even if people never leave the airport and just catch a connecting flight to somewhere else, their money gets cycled into the Chicagoland economy.

I'm glad that this expansion is happening. I think it's needed to maintain O'Hare's importance and thus keep money flowing into Chicago.

I did some gross estimates a while back, comparing Chicago to similar but non-hub cities, and while there are other factors, I think being a major hub benefits Chicago by about 0.5% additional growth every year (as in 1.5% vs. 2.0%, not as in 1.5% vs 1.5075%) using broad basis stats that would indirectly account for both direct and indirect impacts, and at least $2 billion a year in additional economic value over and above just being a major airport using only direct impacts. If you factored in indirect impacts, the hub dollar value might be as much as 3-5 times as high.

In other words, O'Hare's hub value is probably one of the biggest single things contributing to Chicago's long-term health and keeping it as a major hub should rightly be viewed as do-or-die for area leaders.

I've never understood the drive for Peotone. Rockford is about the same distance from downtown Chicago, and tying Chicago and Rockford (and, by extension, Madison) better together is in the best interest of all parties. If Illinois and Chicago put the investment of a Peotone-type airport into Rockford, it would benefit a lot more Illinois residents than one in Peotone would.

In reality, helping expand Milwaukee, Gary and Rockford would help cement Chicago as the hub of a super-region than ignoring our neighbors and building a new airport from scratch. Not playing nice with our neighbors doesn't help anyone.

Peotone is much closer than Rockford(~45 miles vs. ~85 miles), but still too far away. Gary is where it's at.

Rockford is barely closer than Milwaukee, and Milwaukee is much more convenient in terms of accessibility for the heavily-populated far north suburbs. The people for whome Rockford is mildly convenient are much more conveniently located to O'hare. Peotone's justifiability will hinge on the direction of Will County's economy. Generally, it has had a very strong economy with substantial job growth and even faster residential growth. If these continue to the point where major companies are considering setting up HQs and Will keeps growing into the pre-eminent logistics/distribution center of the US economy, then an airport at Peotone could make sense.

:previous: Which is why IDOT is buying land now, so that they can build a DFW/DEN-sized airport without having to go through all this bullshit coming with O'Hare Modernization.

GYY is definitely worth expanding and luring for commercial service. You could build an airport the size of EWR there. But even then, it would buy another 15 years of air capacity at the most, and it doesn't even begin to address air cargo and intermodal transport.

Yeah, no argument from me on acquiring the Peotone/Monee land now. I can definitely envision the possibility wherein 10-15 years it's looking like a necessary project....but it's been about 10-15 years away for a few decades now. Not until the most recent economic boom has the Will County economy really started to take off again, so if that continues, the case will be a great deal stronger; if anything, the strongest justification to me is as a freight hub because of its Will County location near so many rail/truck intermodal facilities. Gary serves existing population and already has significant transportation infrastructure serving, so it's a no-brainer to use it for LCC spillover.

To bad Gary was not in Illinois. That would be the choice hands down.
The other problem for Peotone, its on a line wich could be called tornado
alley. If you watch thunderstorm and tornado paths during the summer
they do follow the line of the lake starting up in Wisconsin and going down by Rockford on into northern Indiana(20 miles south of the lake). The urban buildup also helps stop Tornado's but Peotone has more severe weather than O'hare and Midway. Even as close as the south side of Chicago gets more severe weather than O'hare as they are on the edge of the systems heading around the lake.