In Chicago, town and country have finally reached agreement to expand Chicago O'Hare, although it was not exactly a compromise.
The state's governor, who sits in rural Springfield, tired of waiting for the city's mayor to compromise and turned to an Illinois Senator who promptly put the plan in as a bill. It will build the south runway at O'Hare, the most controversial part of the project because it will require 500 families be displaced when their homes are demolished.
So bitter were the city/state negotiations that Mayor Richard Daley refused to order any food even though talks went into the small hours of the morning. Govenor George Ryan was under time pressure to do an O'Hare deal since he decided not to run for a second term after being tarred by a federal corruption probe. But the state may yet regret having turned to Congress, where Senator John McCain says he will assert control and settle an issue that has turned into a fight between the state's two senators.
Other expansion projects have come to fruition. Detroit became the only major US airport to open a new runway in 2001 with the inauguration of a $225 million, 3,000m (10,000ft) strip that will raise its operations from a maximum of 146 to 182 per hour. In Newark, Continental opened its 19-gate terminal expansion three months later than planned, the centrepiece of $1.4 billion in work. Its new rail link to the Amtrak network is also doing well.
Source: Airline Business
