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Layers of the airport onion

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* NY Times columnist Bob Herbert has written two columns this week about the forever-stalled third Chicago-area airport project…

The U.S. is in a world-class recession, hemorrhaging jobs and spending trillions of dollars trying to extricate itself from the mess. That this ready-to-go project is still sitting on the table, still waiting for state government approval after several long years have already been wasted, is plain nuts.

As is pretty obvious from that above passage, Herbert fully supports Congressman Jesse Jackson Jr.’s private airport plan…

The airport proposal has long been the primary focus of Representative Jesse Jackson Jr., a Chicago Democrat. He has spent years mastering its complexities, lining up financing that would keep taxpayer contributions to a minimum and fending off interests that do not want the competition that a third airport would bring, or who would like to carve out a corrupt stake in the project.

And he seems to understand a big part of the resistance…

The major airlines serving Chicago are not interested in seeing low-cost competition flying in and out of a spanking new airport, especially one with enormous growth potential. And many of the big-time politicians in and around Chicago are upset at the very thought of an airport being built in which they would be unable to control the jobs and the contracts. Airports tend to be monstrous patronage mills. This one would not be.

Nobody messes with Mayor Daley’s airports. That’s the Number One rule in Chicago. And a competing airport violates that “sacred” rule.

* But in today’s column, Herbert shows that he doesn’t fully appreciate the hurdles faced by Jackson’s plan…

No one that I’ve spoken with has found fault with the plan or its financing, which relies primarily on private capital. But there has been a palpable coolness to the project by some of the major political players in Chicago and in the state capital of Springfield. They have created a long-term behind-the-scenes bottleneck for the project.

Something that almost never gets mentioned is that the proposed airport footprint is not in Jackson’s congressional district, and some of the people who live in or adjacent to that footprint, particulary in Will County, don’t think that Jackson should be dictating to them.

Granted, the Will County folks never really came up with their own plan until Jackson rolled out a doable project. Some of this Will County resistance is just a plain ol’ turf war. But they do bring up legit points, so maybe Herbert could call Will County Executive Larry Walsh and hear him out. It didn’t help Jackson’s cause that the former Illinois Senate Majority Leader, Debbie Halvorson, lived next to the proposed airport and was a major opponent of Jackson’s plan. It also didn’t help that former Senate President Emil Jones didn’t particularly care for the congressman, to say the least.

Also, for years the third airport plan was allegedly used by political insiders in get rich(er) quick schemes. They bought and sold parcels of airport-area land and made a nice buck or two. The plan was mostly a fiction - and most everyone preferred it that way - until Jackson came along with a realistic alternative. For that, he’s to be commended. He does have a decent plan. What’s been lacking is real support from the powers that be in Will County. If Jackson can pull that off, then this thing might eventually fly.

* Peter Fitzgerald used to tell me that politics was like an onion, especially in Illinois. You had to peel layer after layer until you got to the truth. In reality, every one of those layers represents part of the truth, and there are a whole lot of layers here. So when Herbert concludes his column today with this…

The goal from the beginning has been to keep the proposed airport out of the clutches of Chicago’s notorious “pay-to-play” tradition.

That is the most likely reason that this project, with its potential to unleash so many jobs, has taken so long to get off the ground.

…I’d suggest that he has one layer right, but there are several others out there.

posted by Rich Miller
Tuesday, Mar 17, 09 @ 12:43 pm

Comments

A crosstown expressway would be much more valuable to the average citizen than a third airport. When things get bad enough at O’Hare, Mitchell and Gary will be more than happy to ease a bit of the strain.

Comment by lake county democrat Tuesday, Mar 17, 09 @ 1:16 pm
>Nobody messes with Mayor Daley’s airports. That’s the Number One rule in Chicago. And a competing airport violates that “sacred” rule.

Yeah right, except when you’re talking about Meigs Field. Wonder if Pat Quinn can take another look at how the overnight demolishing went down and go after the mayor for illegalities since Blago wasn’t willing to do it.

Comment by Segatari Tuesday, Mar 17, 09 @ 1:22 pm
This proposed one runway airport is a boondoggle in waiting. It is nothing more than a if-we build- it-they-will-come money pit much like the empty Mid America Airport in southern Illinois.

Looking at the macro situation we can easily see that airline traffic is down significantly and other than weather delays, disruptions to to crowded airways and airports are way down. Airlines, whose revenues are down, usually bear large costs related to airport operations are not interested in another peripheral airport in the greater Chicago metro area.

On a more local outlook, why do we want to take thousands of acres of good farmland out of production and introduce airport pollution in the form of noise and air quality to a new location.

This also does not consider the complications arising from the conflicts in the use of airspace by GYY and MDW, as well as the complication of operations at ORD and all the GA traffic that uses the air corridors to go south of lake Michigan on their E-W transit through the area.

The residents of the area do not want this, the airlines do not want this. This is being pushed by the politicians who have NO MONEY for the needs of the citizens, but seem to want to commit millions to satisfy their egos.

A better solution for the future of air travel would be to develop ways to utilize the existing airports of Gary, Chicago-Midway, Chicago-O’Hare, Milwaukee, Rockford and Chicago Executive in a coordinated manner. Perhaps those proponents of high speed rail would develop their plans in a manner which would be useful to a large number of travelers, rather than a boutique audience.

Comment by Plutocrat03 Tuesday, Mar 17, 09 @ 1:30 pm
Another crosstown expressway is the only idea worse than a third airport. Yes, let’s ram another elevated expressway through the city, destroying viable neighborhoods and property tax base, wasting billions on infrastructure that’s already doomed as we’ve started running out of easily and cheaply obtained oil (the Prairie Parkway or Route 53 extension are as stupid for the same reasons). Who would this benefit?

Politics aside — and I agree with Rich’s analysis here — the Peotone airport faces the same problem: As oil prices soar in the years and decades ahead, will enough people still travel by air to justify all the billions, and all the unsustainable suburban sprawl it will create?

We’d be much better off economically and environmentally investing those billions in regional transit and true intercity high-speed rail. In the medium-distance markets like Chicago-St. Louis, Chicago-Twin Cities, etc., HSR captures the majority share of the traveler market from airlines with more frequent, downtown-to-downtown service that’s a lot less damaging to the planet.

It’s what Europe, Japan, Korea, and both China and Taiwan are doing while we contemplate useless third airports and crosstown expressways.

Comment by Nort'sider Tuesday, Mar 17, 09 @ 1:37 pm
Lake County -

There is no doubt a Crosstown would be well-used if built. Figure it would cost $200-300 million a mile if elevated over the railroad tracks east of Cicero, and a few billion to make all the necessary connections. more $ than the starter airport, but agreed, probably more useful in the long run.

Segatari- all the king’s horses and all the king’s men, won’t put Meigs Field back together again. Time to move on.

Pluto- good points, although most of the farmland will still be farmland 30 years from now, no matter what happens. The 30+ square mile “ultimate airport” is a long way from being needed, if ever, unless O’Hare was demolished. In the meantime, corn and beans are harvested from IDOT-owned land.

Comment by Six Degrees of Separation Tuesday, Mar 17, 09 @ 1:41 pm
Nort’sider-

China is also building a few thousand miles of expressway every year.

Comment by Six Degrees of Separation Tuesday, Mar 17, 09 @ 1:42 pm
If its built with mostly private revenue Pluto, then those investors bear the risk of there being no need or desire for a new airport.

Whether this is a third air port or one that ultimately repalces O’hare, we could use the massive construction project and may find ourself with an airport that is not out of date and shabby appearing. WOuld also be nice if it could be up by the olympics.

Comment by Ghost Tuesday, Mar 17, 09 @ 1:45 pm
Six Degrees: I don’t doubt your figures - as I understand it the crosstown expressway is about 7-8 miles in length, which would put the cost right about at what Durbin proposed spending to cut an hour off of Chicago-to-St.Louis rail time. I wouldn’t mind seeing a study on the cost/benefits but just quantifying time at the minimum wage, I can’t imagine it wouldn’t be a benefit in the long run.

Nort’sider — I’ve taken Cicero Avenue from the Kennedy/Edens Junction to the Eisenhower — most of that route is hardly Lincoln Park and a good stretch of it is in the slums.

Comment by lake county democrat Tuesday, Mar 17, 09 @ 1:55 pm
I never understood what was in it for Cong. Jackson.

Comment by Cheswick Tuesday, Mar 17, 09 @ 2:40 pm
Six Degrees: Yes, they are, and they’re already paying the price in congestion and pollution. Why should we continue into that developmental dead-end?

LCD: Oh. Well, so long as it’s not Lincoln Park, so long as it’s only the West side, bulldoze away! After all, THOSE neighborhoods aren’t nearly as important, right?

If the last 50-60 years have taught us anything, it’s that A) ramming multi-lane highways through cities destroys neighborhoods and property tax bases, and can damn near destroy the cities themselves; and B) building more multi-lane highways simply induces more traffic.

Vast stretches of River North and the near West Side were slums once, too. For that matter, Wrigleyville and Bucktown/Wicker Park before the mid-1980s were no shining real estate jewels, either. They rebounded in part because they weren’t bulldozed to make way for highways, “urban renewal” or suburban-style shopping malls. You want a highway that badly? Build the Route 53 extension and leave us our city.

Comment by Nort'sider Tuesday, Mar 17, 09 @ 2:41 pm
I’ve been hearing about this airport my entire life. Until Chicago figures out how to get a cut in it, there will be no airport. That isn’t a bad thing either.

Chicago exists because of location. It went from a mudflat into a city, thanks to a canal across the continental divide at Portage. From there it became the railroad hub of the United States and boomed into a global megacity, a 19th Century version of a city as Wal-Mart. When air travel was invented, once again, Chicago flourished.

So maintaining Chicago’s natural business edge - location, is the reason Chicago exists. The proposed “Third Airport” steals from the City in a way that suburbia stole from the City since WWII. And that is just not a good thing.

I would rather spend the money raised for a Third Airport for O’Hare expansion and updates. Instead of a greenfield project with a negative impact on the City, we would see an existing airport continue to flourish. Chicagoland continues to grow northwest, where O’Hare is located. An airport north of Kankakee would not be so favorably located.

If Chicago wants another airport, they should call the shots. Stealing from Chicago doesn’t help anyone because Chicago is the economic engine of Illinois. If we do not allow the City to do what it is Chicago was meant to do - we will all pay much more in the long run trying to funnel money into the City to make up the differences between their losses and suburbia’s gain.

Keep Chicago healthy - no - to the Third Airport.

Comment by VanillaMan Tuesday, Mar 17, 09 @ 2:46 pm
O’Hare is quickly becoming the last bastion of power for clout and patronage in the Daley empire. He will fight tooth and nail against anything that threatens this fiefdom. The third airport surely qualifies as such a threat. And considering the current state of the airline industry, plus J3’s recent troubles, the outlook for the proposal looks bleaker than ever.

I see meriot in both sides of the arugment for a crosstown expressway, but firmly believe that it should include a rail component if it advances.

Comment by The Doc Tuesday, Mar 17, 09 @ 2:51 pm
Haven’t all the major airlines refused to serivce a Peotone airport? We’d be much better off expanding Gary “International” Airport in my opinion.

Comment by Ben S. Tuesday, Mar 17, 09 @ 3:00 pm
All-

The SSA is not a “threat” to O’Hare if the airlines won’t use it. The SSA is not a threat to O’Hare if it is the “starter” airport with one runway and 5 gates…might be more of a (small) threat to Midway or Gary. The full blown SSA would be a threat and in fact could completely replace O’Hare if such a regional decision were made.

If we are thinking parochally, it’s one region against another to see who can grab the $ for their area. If we are thinking regionally, we should be taking inventory of what we have, what’s needed, and how to make the right investments for the needs of the next 50-100 years.

Another thing to keep in mind is the O’Hare expansion, which will cost billions, will only work best if the western O’Hare Access (transit and road) is also in place. This will also cost billions, with which some could be recovered in fares and tolls.

Also, time is money. The trip from downtown to an airport, or from an airport to the businesses surrounding it, represents $. There is virtually no support system or destination within 10 miles of the SSA, while O’Hare has countless businesses and support systems nearby, and is 20 miles from downtown.

Lots of factors here, just looking at the business end. The environmental factors are yet another story.

Comment by Six Degrees of Separation Tuesday, Mar 17, 09 @ 3:06 pm
When the Peotone proposal started, JJJ talked about the need for something to put the southside on the map – literally. He talked about all of the local maps only showing life north of the Eisenhower – with small call-outs for Midway and Hyde Park. [I was in a public meeting last week where the presenters talked about their great outreach across Chicago but their map was only the north side. The southside politicians did not smile.)

Somewhere along the way JJJ stopped trying to solve that problem and instead became fixated on this one proposed solution.

He needs to go to the basic problem. There are many ways to make the southside more culturally and socially interesting for the area’s residents that don’t involve billions of dollars and the entire political infrastructure.

Comment by Redbright Tuesday, Mar 17, 09 @ 3:11 pm
The environmental factors of the Peotone airport cannot be considered “yet another story” in this day and age. Not with all the induced sprawl that would be inflicted upon the folks who live there.

The Peotone airport would pave over thousands of acres of the world’s best farmland, and do so at a time when local agriculture is starting to become critically important. I strongly suggest reading James Howard Kunstler’s “The Long Emergency,” which discusses what could happen to us as peak oil occurs and the implications for a petroleum-based economy, including our petroleum-based industrial agriculture. He’s a bit of a polemicist, but I fear he’s more right than wrong in this case.

If we must have a third regional airport, Ben S has the right idea. Gary Municipal already exists, it’s in an industrial wasteland so no homes or fields need be destroyed, and it’s within a mile or so of the South Shore Line — EXISTING transit to downtown Chicago and Northwest Indiana! Moreover, if future demand ever warrants, I’m sure the airport authority and NICTD could figure out a way to extend a short spur from the South Shore mainline to, or near the airport’s terminal.

Comment by Nort'sider Tuesday, Mar 17, 09 @ 3:25 pm
I admire Bob Herbert, but this comment is plain nuts: “Airports tend to be monstrous patronage mills. This one would not be.”

Who is he kidding? Why do you think Jesse Jr has been on this issue like a dog on a bone? He would control the jobs, contracts, vendors, etc.

To “Segatari”, Meigs Airport was open under an agreement between former Governor Edgar and the City of Chicago, an agreement that had expired. While the City may have been in violation of an FAA requirement to notify the FAA of the impending closing, I hardly believe something illegal was done, and please, how many years ago was this? People, move on. Meigs will never, ever reopen, nor should it!

Comment by Joe in the Know Tuesday, Mar 17, 09 @ 3:31 pm
And yet another MSM columnist barfs out yesterday’s tired old substitutes for thinking.

The “third airport” would generate sprawl, destroy valuable farmland, and serve no particular purpose in a contracting market for air travel in which both low fare and legacy carriers and their customers are well served by current infrastructure. And it would divert resources away from substitutes that would be far more useful. How about a high-speed rail line along the proposed Crosstown Expressway route to link the city’s neighborhoods with Midway and O’Hare, and possibly Gary Airport too? That would open access to jobs far more than a third airport in the cornfields.

There is one more-or-less shovel-ready Peotone scheme I’m in favor of, however. Let’s extend Metra electrification to Kankakee as the first step in restoring double-track capacity to the entire former Illinois Central mainline. That would help people get to jobs faster and more reliably too. Electric all the way to Champaign/Urbana for frequent two-hour rail service to Chicago? It’s not far fetched at all — not like a white elephant airport.

Comment by Angry Chicagoan Tuesday, Mar 17, 09 @ 3:37 pm
Nort’ — pretty much. Those last couple miles couldn’t be much less of a desirable “neighborhood” than they are now — it was police blue light city on every other corner. And I can think of a bunch of neighborhoods that the Edens and Kennedy split which are far from “destroyed” so I don’t buy that premise either. But again, I said let’s have a study — if it’s such a no-brainer you have little to fear.

Comment by lake county democrat Tuesday, Mar 17, 09 @ 3:38 pm
Nort’sider, I’ve an even better idea for Gary. Why not build a new terminal at Gary, on the south side of the airfield, where there’s a lot more room, and . . . where the Indiana toll road and the South Shore Line are. No need for a spur at all. It would be like London Gatwick, you literally ride or drive into the terminal. There’s a river in the way, granted, but that kind of thing never stopped anyone around here before. . .

Comment by Angry Chicagoan Tuesday, Mar 17, 09 @ 3:44 pm
Not with all the induced sprawl that would be inflicted upon the folks who live there.

If SSA is built and turns out like Mid-America, there won’t be much “sprawl”, induced or otherwise.

Comment by Six Degrees of Separation Tuesday, Mar 17, 09 @ 3:55 pm
Ghost seems to have forgotten that the is no private money for this kind of development any more. At best analysis it is highly speculative and the market has no stomach for risk at this time. Furthermore you do not consider the environmental factors or the disruption to the current arrival departure systems. Where will the money come from to make the public improvements to get people to some sort of destination?

The Olympic comment is over the top. Can you image the price of a cab ride to the Olympic venues. It would be higher than the largest costs to get from Denver’s main airport to their downtown.

I forgot to add two more existing airports which could be used to expand air capacity. Kenosha (KENW) and Waukegan (KUGN Willard Airport near Champaign). That brings the list existing airports that can be used to improve air travel to 9! There is no need for a Peotone airport.

Comment by Plutocrat03 Tuesday, Mar 17, 09 @ 3:59 pm
” low fare and legacy carriers and their customers are well served by current infrastructure”

Not even remotely. High costs, inflated overhead, poor baggage and people transporation. outdated airtraffic control. On the people side dirty and uncomfortable terminals etc.

Comment by Ghost Tuesday, Mar 17, 09 @ 4:00 pm
LCD: You’re trapped in typical suburb-think: Roads, roads and more roads! We’ve got one of the most congested regions in the country and we cannot drive our way out of it. But by all means, let’s do that study. Let’s see how a study, and the public — especially those whose homes would be bulldozed for your convenience — would rate a new highway ripping through the city vs. improved transit.

By the way, are you going to address the Route 53 expansion? Since you’re all for ramming through a highway in the city, I’m guessing you’re all for the same in Lake County, too. Right?

Angry: Great idea!

Comment by Nort'sider Tuesday, Mar 17, 09 @ 4:09 pm
Roads, roads and more roads!

Actually, Chicagoland is a lot less road-centric than most other metropolitan areas west of Appalachia, and has the nation’s second-largest commuter rail and transit rail system.

Comment by Six Degrees of Separation Tuesday, Mar 17, 09 @ 4:20 pm
well this is disappointing. Bob Herbert is a much better reporter than this article indicates. why is he digging so shallow and giving support (cover) to J3? sometimes i think the media has fallen right into the ugly politics in a much different way with the latest presidential election.

there is absolutely no rationale for this new airport. O’Hare is expanding and has a transit system at the ready. Midway has a transit system at the ready. Milwaukee and Gary are nearby and already constructed.

perhaps Herbert is the first salvo in the rehabilitation project of J3. it sure is not about substance.

Comment by Amy Tuesday, Mar 17, 09 @ 4:29 pm
O’Hare is too expensive to fully modernize and Midway is tapped - The FAA has stated the region will be out of air-service capacity in 2025 unless a Third Airport is built. Gary is land locked and has limited off-site facility development potential. Mitchell does not serve this market. The Third Airport would serve a population of over 2.5 million people - that’s larger than Lambert International’s catchment area in St. Louis. Wake up - what better way to secure our regional economic future than to build the safest, greenest, most secure airport in the world - plus it can’t hurt our chances for the Olympics.

Comment by Ecodeviate Tuesday, Mar 17, 09 @ 4:49 pm
Six Degrees @ 4:20: True, and thank God for those facts. Yet we, too, are afflicted by sprawl and congestion. And our transit system is not what it once was, and should be again.

Yet as LCD’s comments show, too many of us still believe that “Roads, roads, and more roads!” is the answer to traffic. Hence the occasional effort to revive the deservedly dead Crosstown Expressway, and the ongoing pushes for the Prairie Parkway and the Wisconsin DOT’s insane plan to expand I-94 from six to eight lanes between Milwaukee and the state line.

The era of cheap oil is over. “Roads, roads, and more roads!” is an evolutionary cul-de-sac (sorry about the pun); an idea that can’t adapt to conditions which are changing whether we like it or not. It deserves to go extinct.

Comment by Nort'sider Tuesday, Mar 17, 09 @ 4:49 pm
Let’s talk about environmental justice - the fairness in treating the south suburbs like the rest of Chicagoland, etc. One of the cases JJJ is making for the SSA is as an economic engine for the south suburbs, which are heavily minority, low income and high property tax areas. Whether SSA brings about fairness to south suburbia as well as the residents of rural Will County, will perform as intended, or whether this is the right or wrong project to bring about the intended result, are questions that Mr. Herbert should have been asking and answering in more detail with his article.

Comment by Six Degrees of Separation Tuesday, Mar 17, 09 @ 4:55 pm
[…] Capitol Fax Blog says that Jackson’s plan is decent, but “something that almost never gets mentioned is that the proposed airport footprint is not in Jackson’s congressional district, and some of the people who live in or adjacent to that footprint, particularly in Will County, don’t think that Jackson should be dictating to them.” […]

Pingback by The Passenger Seat » Bored NYT columnist lobbies for Peotone airport Tuesday, Mar 17, 09 @ 5:01 pm
Nort’sider-

Roads and autos are seldom the panacea that their supporters claim, nor the evil that their detactors claim, in my opinion. It will take more than high oil costs to end the idea of personal transportation - someone will figure out this “alternate propulsion at a reasonable cost” thing sooner or later. And people relish the freedom that personal transportation gives them, even as they enjoy the break from traffic jam driving that good transit provides them, or the ability to go coast to coast in 6 hours that air travel gives them.

There will likely be some road expansions and new roads in the foreseeable future, just as there will be transit, rail and airport expansions. The challenge will be to spend our money wisely and integrate the systems for maximum benefit.

Comment by Six Degrees of Separation Tuesday, Mar 17, 09 @ 5:06 pm
Nort’ Yes, Route 53 expansion — why it ends at Lake Cook is beyond me.

To paraphrase our president, I’m not in favor of all roads, just smart roads, like one that corrects the design flaw in the current highway system that forces everyone downtown, causing gushing wastes of time and energy (and extra local traffic congestion). You previously suggested sending trucks and others around the 298 loop to avoid downtown — yeah, that’s going to save a lot of energy! But again, bring on the studies and the public transportation improvements you contend would be a better alternative. Let’s just do it quickly.

Comment by lake county democrat Tuesday, Mar 17, 09 @ 5:28 pm
6aayxk i just whant to say
http://trustedsitelist.com/search.php?q=v-seo-deneg-net

Comment by maxmud Tuesday, Mar 17, 09 @ 5:38 pm
I live in Will County. You are correct, we don’t trust anything or anybody that has “any connection” to Cook County or Chicago elected officials or politics. There has been a huge exodus of Cook County residents to Will County over the past decade because they also got sick and tired of the massive political corruption that is rampant up there.

Young Jesse Jackson might actually have a viable airport plan but we don’t even want to look at it for fear that is just another Trojan Horse being placed outside of the gate to our city. Perhaps an appropriate analogy would be if your neighbor (who, unfortunately, just happens to be a leper) brings over a casserole that she has just cooked for you. Now, that caserole is probably an excellent tasting dish that your good-hearted neighbor brought you for shoveling out her driveway last winter but “are you going to eat it?” I didn’t think so. Neither am I. Her affliction may not be contagious but I would rather be safe than sorry. Unfortunately, Jesse Jr. is viewed by Will County residents as “a possible carrier” who comes from the leper colony up north which is located in Cook County. I don’t know but I think that 90% of the people out there would also hesitate to trust Jessie Jackson Jr. if they were us.

Comment by Beowulf Tuesday, Mar 17, 09 @ 6:27 pm
–I never understood what was in it for Cong. Jackson.–

Now that I’m done laughing, I have to say, you’re out of your mind. Contracts, son, conracts. Federal, state, local, whether, the airport ever gets built or not, contracts.

Right on 90/94, there is Gary Intl. Airport. It’s 30 minutes from the Loop. It’s brand new. It’s runway is longer than Midway. It’s already there.

If it needs to expand, there’s plenty of brownfield that can be reclaimed on the airlines dime. What a great idea for a Democratic Congress and Administration.

Peotone is unnecessary, an outrageous scam and an environmental disaster. God help the folks who live within 60 miles of it.

You want to give an airport to the Jacksons? With River North Distributing, they already get a cut on every Anhueser-Busch product sold from Roosevelt to Devon, and the Lake to Harlem.

That’s a bigger territory than Bugs Moran or Al Capone evr had. Enough! I don’t know what Herbert’s problem is, but he doesn’t give a hoot about the quality of life in the south suburbs.

Comment by wordslinger Tuesday, Mar 17, 09 @ 7:15 pm
God help the folks who live within 60 miles of it.

Agree with a lot of what you say, word, but easy on the hyperbole. The folks in Peotone live within 60 miles of Gary and Midway, too, and right about 60 miles from dear old Orchard Field.

Comment by Six Degrees of Separation Tuesday, Mar 17, 09 @ 7:22 pm
While I don’t disagree with you Word, especially the Bud point you raised, which is spot-on, I’ll give Jackson Jr. a little benefit of the doubt on this.

I grew up in Kankakee county. The east side of the county has the kind of entrenched poverty found in the Missippii delta. Few paved roads, no utilities, shacks instead of houses. The rural poverty found there is an extension of the suburban poverty found in the southern suburbs. Simply put, there is no economic engine for the south suburban and south exurban areas. Jackson’s efforts have shone a spotlight on this problem, and the airport was offered as a remedy to this. It’s been talked about since before Jackson was elected to Congress. It’s been talked about since the 1970s. It may never happen, and even if it does, it may not solve the poverty problem.

A better question to ask is, from a public policy perspective: should there be regional decision-making over transportation infrastructure or should Mayor Daley have the only say in the matter? When Jim Edgar pushed Daley on this, Daley shoved back.

As an economic engine, the airport has some appeal and some drawbacks as mentioned above and elsewhere. But as the poster child for the lack of regional decision-making that exists to our collective detriment, the Peotone airport is Exhibit A.

Yep, there are lots of layers to this onion. But only some of them stink.

Comment by 47th Ward Tuesday, Mar 17, 09 @ 7:32 pm
Um, I meant Mississippi.

Comment by 47th Ward Tuesday, Mar 17, 09 @ 7:34 pm
Lake county dem; 53 ends at Lake Cook Road because a bunch of legitimate environmentalists, Lake County NIMBY people and people-whose-homes-would-be-demolished sued to block it. In particular the proposed route would bulldoze a very exclusive small community, Long Grove, just north of Lake Cook Road. As far as I know there’s a non-binding referendum on the April 2009 ballot for Lake County.

Comment by Angry Chicagoan Tuesday, Mar 17, 09 @ 8:09 pm
Forgive me for the hyperbole.

I’ve got no problem with a state or regional airport authority at all. Pate and Lee’s motives for wanting one weren’t pure, but the current setup is just part of the ongoing RICO conspirarcy, as I’m sure Mr. Kelly will testify to in the near future.

I live in a nice community between O’Hare and Midway. I understand those airports are necessary. But there is an environmental cost for both of them in the immediate areas

I grew up in the country and I’d hate to see an unnecessary airport take over some beautiful countryside. Gary is half-built, right there on the Interstate. Let’s now plow up some of that golden Illinois topsoil.

Comment by wordslinger Tuesday, Mar 17, 09 @ 8:19 pm
Amy, by the way, you’re the voice of reason.

Good luck with that

Comment by wordslinger Tuesday, Mar 17, 09 @ 8:23 pm
It would appear to me that expanding the Gary Airport would be the more cost-effective approach to revitalizing economically-challenged communities in the region. You would be building on brownfield sites that are already served by public infrastructure. You also have a highly concentrated, trainable labor force nearby.

Forget the crosstown expressway. It’s a deadend project. I’d rather see the rapid transit system expanded to help people in the the south and western parts of Chicago find work in the northwest suburbs.

I don’t have an answer for the impoverished eastern parts of Kankakee County, but it’s certainly not a while elephant airport. It’s time to move on and focus on more sustainable economic development projects for the region.

Comment by Central IL Guy Tuesday, Mar 17, 09 @ 8:27 pm
Mass Tran in Chicagoland is a joke. Putting more money into a pit is not the answer. Go to the major cities with first class subways:Paris, D.C., London. Those tunnels go all over the city and into the suburbs. That is what Chicago needs. Then anyone can get to downtown or other parts of the city and suburbs without going downtown. We have buses drive for ten miles down a street, back up traffic, block lanes and sit through several cycles of lights, backing up more traffic and the worst el system in the world. CTA abd RTA should not get a penny more, running a debt, cut. You certainly cannot have a worse system.

Comment by Transporter Tuesday, Mar 17, 09 @ 11:17 pm
Meigs will not reopen, but the state can tell Daley NO, you had a third airport and you tore it down so if you needed a third airport so bad why did you tear this one down and expect us to build you a new one? You don’t get a new airport mayor.

Comment by Segatari Wednesday, Mar 18, 09 @ 8:59 am
Segatari, I am not sure you will see this since the blog has moved on, but you have it all wrong. You seem to be under the impression that Mayor Daley wants (or is in favor of) a Peotone Airport. He is opposed to the airport because he couldn’t control it and it would compete with his cash cows, O’Hare and Midway.

Comment by Joe in the Know Wednesday, Mar 18, 09 @ 9:23 am