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TRANSACTIONS NEWSLETTER ONLINE

October 2000

NEWS BRIEFS
Plan to Guide Airport Runway Decisions Approved

Airplane

With passenger and cargo traffic at the region's airports on the rise and projected to soar still higher, the Bay Area seems to be confronted with a clear choice: either find ways to accommodate the increasing demand for runway space or face ever-worsening flight delays at our overcrowded airfields.

For the past 18 months, the Regional Airport Planning Committee (RAPC) -- comprised of representatives from MTC, the Association of Bay Area Governments, the Bay Conservation and Development Commission (BCDC), the region's three international airports (San Francisco, San Jose and Oakland), and state and federal agencies -- has been updating a plan that is intended to inform this choice and guide decisions affecting runway capacity in the Bay Area over the next 20 years.

RAPC concluded its work in September, when it approved a major update to the Regional Airport System Plan (RASP). The updated plan was forwarded to MTC, which also approved it last month.

"As part of the overhaul," said Chris Brittle, MTC's planning manager and lead staffer to the RASP update, "the committee commissioned new aviation forecasts for 2010 and 2020, evaluated the runway-expansion options being considered by the San Francisco (SFO) and Oakland (OAK) airports, and reviewed basic environmental data on possible impacts to Bay resources."

In addition, Brittle noted, RAPC studied a range of alternatives to runway expansions, such as shifting flights from SFO to OAK or San Jose (SJC), building a new airport in the North Bay, restricting the overall number of flights, deploying new air-traffic control technologies, and instituting high-speed rail service to reduce flight demand in the busy Bay Area-to-Los Angeles travel corridor.

RAPC's forecast results and preliminary findings were shared with the public in workshops and public meetings held during the course of the study. The forecasts document the magnitude of the problem: By 2020, the annual number of passengers using Bay Area airports will double, air cargo tonnage will triple, while total flights will rise by nearly 60 percent.

RAPC concluded that the alternatives to runway expansion it studied would not significantly reduce current or projected flight delays. Thus, the best way to accommodate this heavy demand would be to add additional runway capacity at both SFO and OAK. SJC is currently constructing a new, second runway, which the study found will provide adequate capacity for the South Bay airport through the forecast period.

Significant environmental issues (concerning airport noise, air quality, bay fill, wetlands, wildlife habitats, etc.) remain, however, and the updated plan recommends that these be thoroughly examined during the environmental review process that is currently under way at SFO, and that would later have to be undertaken by OAK, should current runway expansion plans proceed to that phase. Any runway plans involving bay fill must first be approved by BCDC, which will look to the RASP to assist it in evaluating such proposals.
-- Joe Curley

To order a copy of the Regional Airport System Plan, contact the MTC-ABAG Library: e-mail library@mtc.ca.gov; fax 510.817.5932; phone 510.817.5836. An online version is also available.

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