"California air-travel congestion will worsen"

Wednesday, December 26, 2007

California air-travel congestion will worsen 
By Dan Walters
The Fresno (CA) Bee


If you think commercial flying during this holiday season is a hassle, you
haven't seen anything yet. As California's population and the demand for air
travel continue to expand, the state's airports are feeling the pinch, but
their expansion plans have run into increasingly stiff resistance.

Environmentalists, nearby residents, voters and risk-averse politicians have
stymied plans to expand runways and terminals and/or build entirely new
airports from San Diego to San Francisco.

The rising level of frustration is exemplified by a recent editorial in the
Los Angeles Times, noting that Los Angeles International has the highest
risk for collisions between aircraft on the ground and chiding local
politicians for dragging their feet on reconfiguring LAX runways to make
them safer.

"The cowardice of L.A. elected officials, who tend to call for more studies
rather than making hard choices, is endangering lives," the editorial fumes.

Three hundred and fifty miles to the north, as a plane flies, the state's
second-busiest airport, San Francisco International, is facing similar
problems, but its plans to lengthen and separate its runways have been
blocked by environmentalists. The Federal Aviation Administration's
associate administrator for airports staged a news conference in San
Francisco in August to warn about congestion and to urge local officials to
act.

"We expect the number of air passengers to ramp up dramatically in the
future," Kirk Shaffer warned, with SFO's traffic increasing by 60% by 2025,
Oakland International's by 80% and San Jose International's by 100%.

Down in San Diego, meanwhile, voters have rejected much-ballyhooed plans to
build a new airport at Miramar, site of a Marine Corps airfield. The local
airport authority is now planning to expand terminals at San Diego's
Lindbergh Field, the state's third-busiest airport.

Traffic through California's commercial airports reached a peak of nearly
179 million passengers in 2000, then dipped to 159 million in 2002 in the
aftermath of the September 2001 terrorist attacks. Since then, however,
traffic has rebounded to near-record levels of just under 178 million in
2005 and 2006.

As major coastal airports approach capacity, more air traffic is shifting to
inland facilities such as Ontario International in Southern California and
Sacramento International. The city of Los Angeles, which owns Ontario, has
been trying to reserve space at LAX for international travel by encouraging
other, smaller airports to capture more of the regional air traffic.

One factor in the looming airport crisis, certainly, is that the airports
are owned by local governments and managed, directly or indirectly, by
elected officials who tend, like all politicians, to view issues on
short-range bases. Another is that as local entities, airports are under no
compulsion to act in concert.

Although state governments are often involved in airport planning and
construction in other states, there's been a hands-off attitude in
Sacramento. At the very least, it would seem, the Legislature should hold
some hearings to shine the light of publicity on what could become a real
crisis in the decades ahead.


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