"Atlanta told to consider second airport"

Tuesday, May 15, 2007

Atlanta told to consider second airport
Feds put up money for study
By JIM THARPE
The Atlanta (GA) Journal-Constitution

 
The top U.S. transportation official said Tuesday that metro Atlanta should
consider a second airport, and she put up $1 million for the study.

U.S. Secretary of Transportation Mary E. Peters, who traveled to
Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport to announce the grant, said that by
2025 airports in Atlanta, Chicago, Las Vegas and San Diego could be
overwhelmed by passenger demand.

"Now is the time for Atlanta to consider having multiple commercial
airports," Peters said.

The money is a preliminary step, but airport General Manager Ben DeCosta
agreed the time was right for the metro area to begin seriously looking at a
second airport to supplement Hartsfield-Jackson, the world's busiest with
about 85 million passengers per year passing through its gates.

DeCosta said officials will study all options to increase capacity at
Hartsfield-Jackson, but the airport's 4,750-acre site is quickly running out
of space. The year-old 5th runway actually passes over I-285.

"You can get capacity without a second airport, but the most
straight-forward way to get it is a second airport," DeCosta said. "I don't
want to get into specifics, but a study would include the option of a second
airport."

The City of Atlanta owns tracts of about 10,000 acres in Dawson and Paulding
counties. It acquired the properties in the 1970s for a possible second
airport, but it was not immediately clear whether either property could be
considered in this round of study.

With the passenger load growing at about 3 percent per year,
Hartsfield-Jackson could reach capacity in just over a decade, DeCosta said.

He said a second airport could be operating by 2020 or so if all the pieces
to a complex puzzle fall into place.

Planning and building a second airport would be a major - and controversial
- undertaking that would involve federal oversight and approval from local
governments and major airlines. And there is no guarantee that a study would
lead to a second airport, even if all of the recommendations pointed in that
direction.

When state transportation officials in the 1990s proposed expanding a small
airport, such as Briscoe Field in Gwinnett County or Cobb County's McCollum
Field, into a reliever airport for Hartsfield, the idea was shouted down in
public forums by residents concerned about a noisy new neighbor.

In San Diego officials spent years studying a second airport, only to have
it voted down by local governing bodies.

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