San Diego airport expansion

from today's San Diego Business Journal

Agency Trying to Get $650M Airport Project Off the Ground
By MIKE ALLEN - 8/6/2007
San Diego Business Journal Staff

"Constrained on all sides, the single-runway Lindbergh Field has seen passenger traffic grow to the point that it needs at least two more gates to handle it. In addition, traffic going into and out of the airport continues to create bottlenecks.

“We are already behind the eight ball. Today we’re short by two gates,” said Keith Wilschetz, director of airport planning for the San Diego County Regional Airport Authority, the agency that manages the downtown airport. “And every year we’re going to be behind by another gate or two.” .....

"Airport managers say a short-term remedy is to expand Terminal 2 or the farthest west terminal by 10 gates from its current total of 41.

The expansion plan that is still being examined also calls for constructing an elevated road to the terminal for easier traffic access, a possible five-story parking garage, and an overnight parking area for passenger jets that must be grounded to comply with a no-fly curfew from 11:30 p.m. to 6:30 a.m.

The latest cost estimate on the project is $650 million, Wilschetz said." ...

"However, not everyone is convinced that the airport authority’s plans are best for Lindbergh and the region.

Fourth District Supervisor Ron Roberts is adamantly opposed to the gate expansion project, saying the authority’s immediate action plan makes no sense in light of the agency’s earlier plans to build additional gates at the northeastern side of the airport.

More than 10 years ago, Roberts said the airport plans were to construct a mass transit center at Pacific Highway, along with ramps that would take traffic from Interstate 5 into the airport. Also, there were plans to acquire land from the Marine Corps Recruit Depot to enlarge the airport’s taxiways, and possibly build another runway.

Roberts said he and other members of the San Diego Association of Governments’ transportation committee will be taking a hard look at the airport’s environmental report. Sandag is a regional planning agency." ...

"Passenger Counts Soaring

As more carriers, particularly regional airlines such as ExpressJet and Frontier, provide direct service to certain cities, the airport has seen its passenger counts rise annually in the last four years. Last year, 17.5 million passengers flew from and into the airport, up only 0.6 percent from 2005. But that number was up 6.7 percent from 2004.

In the first half of 2007, more than 8.6 million passengers came through Lindbergh, with the heaviest travel months, July and August, still to be counted.

Airport managers are also intent on using 44 acres of land just east of the existing commuter terminal the agency will get that formerly belonged to Teledyne Ryan. This year, the authority has begun assessing the extent of the site’s contamination in advance of cleaning it up. Teledyne Ryan used hazardous materials on the site during decades of aerospace manufacturing.

The gate expansion project was initially planned for the late 1990s when the airport expanded and improved Terminal 2, then called the West Terminal. At the time, the project included installing utilities and other infrastructure at the terminal that would permit adding a row of 10 new gates at a future date." ........

for the complete story see: http://sdbj.com/enews_article.asp?aID=18211637.7737948.1508871.4092485.210346.122&aID2=116058&lid=30&sid=&cID=Z