Wondering what thoughts anyone might have regarding Chicago’s existing and proposed airport facilities.
Ohare just opened up a new runway, and large parts of the burb (Bensenville?) west of Ohare are currently a ghost town, pending additional runway expansion.
And my understanding is that influential folk are still pressing for a 3d airport down in Peotone.
Every time I use OHare I’m impressed at how much it is the least pleasant airport I have the misfortune of using. The LAST thing it needs IMO is to get busier and more crowded. And whenever I drive my kid down to UofI I’m impressed at how far I drive before I get to Peotone. I have NEVER heard anyone other than a politician say they supported a Peotone airport. I understand that the airlines do not want to go there either.
ISTM that the sole logical solution is to address this as a regional issue, and relieve stress on OHare by beefing up Mitchell (Milwaukee), Gary, and Rockford. But I am not sure how well that could be accomplished logistically for either passenger or cargo flights. You wouldn’t want to fly into Mitchell and have to make a connection in Gary…
Gary is underutilized and already has a runway longer than the longest available at Midway. It’s politics that keeps it from being the “third regional” and nothing else in my opinion. As a bonus, the Gary area would LOVE some more jobs, unlike Peotone, where many want nothing to do with an airport.
(By the way, I live about 8 miles from the Gary airport so yes, I’d have some more noise, but really we could use the jobs and money)
I’m local to Gary, and here’s the problem - Gary is a cesspool of crime and violence. The buildings are crumbling, and the area around the airport is actually frightenting.
I could be at that airport from my house in about 25 minutes - but I always drive the 2.5 hours to OHare (or Midway). I went through that area just this past weekend on the South Shore train. There is an “airport” stop - and it’s in the middle of one of the scariest neighborhoods you could imagine. And there appears to be nothing there - the airport isn’t even visible, and there is a bus stop. So, you’re expecting people to get off that train and wait for a bus in the middle of a war zone? No way.
Gary has been royally screwed for decades now, and this airport won’t help things. Until they find the billions it will take to make the city acceptable to travelers, the airport will continue to be a waste of money.
It’s tough for the rest of the state, especially the collar counties, to shake off the political power that the city of Chicago has and it doesn’t benifit Daley (or Chicago) to have an airport not in Chicago city limits.
Not as bad as you think. I was based at Gary airport for two months. There is security around the airport (even pre-9/11, for that matter) and I am of the opinion that the neighborhood’s reputation is worse than the reality. I drove through that area daily for 10 years while going to the train station for my job in the Chicago Loop so I think I have some basis on which to make a judgment.
Uh… yeah. The neighborhood I happen to live in. Again, your imagination is running away with you a bit here.
I agree, calling it an airport “stop” is retarded, as the airport isn’t there. It would make much more sense to run a shuttle bus from the East Chicago train stop, which is an actual station, than from Clark Road.
Clark Road isn’t an affluent suburb but it’s far from a “war zone” (that’s further east, actually). See above comment about East Chicago making much more sense.
I’m not saying Gary doesn’t have problems - I’ve lived here 11 years, I’m well aware of the problems - but not all parts are equally awful. Many neighborhoods are run down due to the economy (which went sour long before the rest of the country) but poor does not equal “cesspit” in all instances.
Daley signed and agreement some years ago AND ponied up some cash for the Gary airport. As a result, the city of Chicago gets a cut of the airport revenues. So Daley/Chicago wins either way, whether they build the 3rd regional at Peotone or they develop Gary.
I agree that not all of Gary is a hellhole, but to the average traveler, it would be unacceptable.
I have several friends whose parents still live in Gary, around the 30s and 40s. They have not been killed or beaten, but theft is a constant concern. Several of my co-workers have lived there, and at least two cars have gone missing. I also read the Post Tribune and Times with regularity, and the news coming out of Gary has been bad for most of my life (we moved to Merrillville from Glen Park right before I started school, and now Merrillville isn’t even very safe anymore - and that’s just in the last 15 years) And even though the people inside are very nice, I’m sure, the junk outside of their homes and businesses make the area look frightening.
Point being - to the average traveler, if it looks like a hellhole, it is a hellhole.
I guess I’m a weirdo, but I like OHare. It’s better than Midway, that’s for sure.
I don’t expect that my airport experience should be happy and calm and nice. I just want to get on a plane, and I have never had a bad experience in that regard at OHare (at least, not with it being the fault of OHare).
I oppose Peotone, because I am in that “southern” area of the region, just over the border into Indiana. A large airport at Peotone would mean hundreds of planes circling over my nice farm town. No thanks - Bensenville is already ruined - why spread the mess?
Last week I had the pleasure of flying through Midway, twice. And as I had flights that were absolutely spot on-time - actually early - at the same time flights between the same cities coming into and out of O’Hare were hours late, I thought “how can O’Hare still be so fucked up?”
So I went back through my travel logs over just the last couple of years, and discovered that of the innumerable flights I’ve taken to or through Chicago, NONE of them going to O’Hare has been on time, but ALL of them going to Midway have been.
My thoughts are, “find out what Midway is doing right, and do that for O’Hare, no matter how harsh it may be.”
So the answer is to eliminate 2/3 of O’Hare’s runways and cut flights by as much if not more? Not sure that would really solve the problem of needing additional capacity!
Honestly, as a business traveler who is frequently held hostage at O’Hare or on airplanes going to or from O’Hare, sure. Keep all the runways open, cut the flights. The fact that so many times the airport is packed with flights hours late should be telling someone in charge that there are just too many flights.
It’s not just the sheer number of flights, it’s also how they’re scheduled. The airlines will routinely attempt to pack something like 120 departures/arrivals into an hour where, under the best conditions, 80-90 is the practical maximum. That means at least 40 flights for such an hour will inevitably be delayed. That’s 1/3 under the BEST conditions. If the weather is less than perfect (and so often that is the case in Chicago) the situation is even worse. Hence, O’Hare legendary mess.
The airlines don’t want flight caps at O’Hare, but really, either the FAA imposes them or the laws of physics will. Trying to force more airplanes into the airspace than the system can handle is asking for a Tragic Accident to eventually happen.
How big of an area does O’Hare serve? It seems like at LaGuardia/Kennedy, they serve a huge population, but it is local.
If the best place for Illinois, Indiana, Wisconsin and Iowa is O’Hare, then maybe we need to look further away. South Bend can serve much of the northwestern part of Indiana and much of Michigan. Where else can we put a major airport to siphon some of O’Hare’s traffic?
Putting another major airport so close by seems silly, since most people will stick with what they know, like O’Hare, and we won’t be killing large swatches of countyside so near each other.
It’s been done, and then undone. American had a hub in St. Louis (inherited from TWA) that they eliminated. Milwaukee was touted as the next big thing (it turned out to have the same weather problems as O’Hare and Midway – imagine that.) Indianapolis has loads of excess capacity and much less trouble with weather. FedEx uses it as a hub, but of 39 non-stop departures each day, 12 go to either Midway or O’Hare.
If the airlines wanted to avoid Chicago, they could do it easily. But Chicago has so much traffic originating and ending there that it makes more sense to also use it as a hub for connecting flights.
O’Hare has the worst on-time record in America. Midway cannot expand. Meanwhile, plans and funding for the proposed Abraham Lincoln National Airport are in place. Much of the funding is private and the plans are scalable. So what’s holding things up?
Surprisingly, Herbert does not mention Nimbyism. Rather it seems that certain members of Chicago’s political class are perturbed at the lack of patronage and payolla attached to the project. And the big air carriers at ORD don’t like the fact that the new airport is designed for low-cost carriers.
If Herbert is correct, the Great and the Good should really push this proposal: I can’t help but think a bigger Chicago hub would be a productive addition to the local and national infrastructure.
I really should have read this thread more carefully. (Thnx Broomstick)
Well, if I understand Bob Herbert correctly, hub traffic would make up a lot of the Peotone activity. Regardless, Mitchell et al are of course much further away from Chicago than Peotone. The status quo disadvantages budget airlines which lack the scale to have their own terminals: the majors would just as soon keep them shut out. And frankly all airports run into huge amounts of local opposition worldwide for understandable reasons.
Then again, I’ve only read that one opinion piece.
Gary, however, is closer than Peotone. Also, it is possible to take mass transit to Gary, although that could stand come improving. (You can also take a train directly into South Bend airport, but that is getting a bit far from Chicago).
Gary is such a depressed city that the locals would welcome a major airline or two moving in and noise be damned. This area needs jobs and money, both of which could be brought in by a expansion of air travel.
As I live in the extreme south suburbs, so far south that it’s probably not even suburbs anymore, I say either sh…or get off the pot. The state has already reclaimed lot’s of land in Peotone. Houses have been demolished, and forcibly bought out. The country roads around the footprint are being patrolled by private security. “State Property” signs have been posted all around. All this, and it’s not even certain that an airport will ever be built. W.T.F.
