"San Diego airport board gets estimate on off-site costs for 2 options"

Wednesday, December 14, 2005

Agency board gets estimate on off-site costs for 2 options
By Jeff Ristine
The San Diego (CA) Union-Tribune


Airport board members got their first look at the dollar signs associated
with two sites being considered to replace or supplement Lindbergh Field,
numbers that left some on the panel figuratively gasping. 

A maglev train line, highway improvements and water and fuel lines could add
$10.3 billion to the cost of an airport in Boulevard and $13.2 billion to a
site in the Imperial County desert, a consulting team reported yesterday to
a San Diego County Regional Airport Authority committee. 

Daunting as the figures may seem, they do not include land acquisition,
financing, an environmental review - or the cost of constructing the airport
itself, which will come out next month. 

Consultants cautioned the airport board to treat the figures as rough
estimates, best used for comparison. But U.S. Rep. Bob Filner, D-San Diego,
who has been trying to keep alive the Imperial County option, said there
were too many questionable assumptions built into the cost analysis. 

To the board members, the numbers at least provide some context for a coming
debate on whether to give up on the so-called "civilian" options in the
airport site-selection project, shifting attention to prospects for joint
use at the Marine Corps' Miramar Air Station or some other military
installation. 

With costs for building a magnetic levitation line from the Miramar area to
Imperial County placed at more than $10.6 billion, board member William
Lynch said travel to the airport "could rival the cost of getting a ticket"
to fly. 

But colleague Mary Teresa Sessom, mayor of Lemon Grove, said there may be
benefits from cargo transportation or other unknown factors that offset
costs for maglev passengers. "I hear us gasping," she said, "but we haven't
even talked about where we get the financing from." 

The authority is expected to select an airport option by spring, to appear
as a countywide, advisory ballot measure in the November election. 

In a related move, the committee requested additional study yesterday that
could add civilian sites to the list before a final choice is made. 

Previous studies, which came up with Boulevard and Borrego Springs as
possibilities, had a 3,000-acre requirement so that two runways could be
developed to replace the current airport in San Diego. To fully explore
options in which Lindbergh Field would remain open but be supplemented by
some other location, the committee directed staff members to reconsider
smaller locations where only a single runway would be feasible. 

The analysis will be limited to North County, considered a possible draw to
travelers from Orange and Riverside counties. 

Boulevard, about 60 miles east of San Diego, and southwestern Imperial
County, nearly 100 miles away, are the only two non-military sites for a new
airport remaining on the list of candidates, which began with more than 30
ideas in 2001 under the San Diego Association of Governments, or SANDAG. 

The airport agency has been discussing maglev as a way of making the remote
locations acceptable to residents accustomed to the convenience of Lindbergh
Field, even though its prime consultants, Ricondo & Associates, estimate
that no more than one of every four air travelers would want to use it. 

Lee C. Warnock of Hatch Mott MacDonald, a consulting engineering firm, said
a maglev along a double-track corridor hugging state Route 94 and Interstate
8 emerged as the most practical of three options studied. It would cost an
estimated $8.4 billion (including a San Diego terminal) to build a maglev to
Boulevard; nearly $11 billion to continue the magnetic train link 33 miles
to Imperial County. 

Up to 24 tunnels and 45 miles of elevated structures would be needed to keep
the maglev guideway in the gentle curves and moderate grades needed to
achieve maximum speed, about 270 miles an hour. 

Filner, attending the committee meeting, dismissed the gloomy estimates as
the product of a biased process. 

"You can't put a maglev on (Route) 94 and you know it," he said. "You have
false assumptions built on false assumptions." 

A separate study of maglev feasibility is under way at SANDAG, using about
half of an $800,000 appropriation from Congress, which Filner secured. Its
final report is expected in April. 

Highway widening along Interstate 8, deemed necessary for the additional
traffic an airport would generate, represents another big off-site expense
for a remote airport. With one to three additional lanes all the way from
I-15 going east, Warnock said, construction costs could reach $1.7 billion
for Boulevard to $2.5 billion for Imperial County, not including the cost of
buying the land.

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