Why rebuild? Because the facilities are inadequate for the amount of passengers they serve. It’s nice that you can get from curb to gate in 15-20 minutes, but that also translates into cramped spaces. What was great about the Master Plan from 2005 was that it had bold vision—creating a new drop-off/pick-up zone off-site, shutting down the entire CTA to private vehicles, and replacing the parking garages with terminal space.
Also, “brand new terminals” is a stretch. They only plan on rebuilding T3, as far as I know. But with the MSC, T0, and T9 (at least 33 new gates total) coming, there might eventually be the flexibility to shut down terminals and rebuild. I could easily see UA moving their base operations to T9 and then knocking down and replacing T7 and T8 with essentially an extension of T9.
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“To tell a story is inescapably to take a moral stance.”
— Jerome Bruner
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