Clear a Lane to Palmdale : Site Is Far Ahead of Any Alternative for Airport Expansion

This month, America West Airlines will confirm its agreement with the Los Angeles Board of Airport Commissioners to begin service at the Palmdale Regional Airport, beginning in January, 1990.

To paraphrase former astronaut Neil Armstrong, this is one small step for an airline and one giant leap for air transportation in Southern California and the entire nation.

Everywhere in Southern California, complaints can be heard about traffic congestion on our freeways and in the sky. Our roads and our air traffic lanes are the most congested in the United States. And if we think there is gridlock today, imagine what it will be like in the year 2000, just a decade from now.

The L.A. 2000 Committee, a blue-ribbon panel organized by Mayor Tom Bradley, issued an imaginative report with a wide range of viable solutions to our region’s most perplexing problems, including airport congestion. But efforts to implement environmentally sound means to deal with Southern California’s population and economic growth have been stymied, often because of the influence of short-term special interests or political considerations.

The opening of the Palmdale Regional Airport is a vital element in meeting the regional planning challenges we face in the 1990s. It is the key to air transportation in Southern California in the 21st Century.

The farsighted acquisition of 18,000 acres for the facility by the Board of Airport Commissioners in the late 1960s has given us an extraordinary opportunity to develop a major airport in Southern California that could operate under a separate air traffic control system and that would not have an adverse noise impact on local neighborhoods. While reducing traffic in our skies, Palmdale would also ease gridlock on roads around existing airports, in particular at Los Angeles International, Van Nuys and Burbank.

Trying to build a facility today such as the one envisioned for Palmdale would be an impossible task.

The city of Los Angeles spent more than $100 million for the Palmdale site 20 years ago; this land would be unaffordable today. Moreover, it would take years, even decades, to acquire the necessary land for an airport at Palmdale or anywhere else in Southern California. And, because of an agreement with the Air Force, the Palmdale airport has a runway and other infrastructure already built, available for civilian use, and paid for by the nation’s taxpayers.

The only other alternative is to make the roads and skies at existing airports even more dangerously crowded, an obviously unpalatable option to airport officials as well as to citizen groups and their elected representatives.

By the year 2000, there will be a shortfall in airport capacity of more than 20 million passengers each year. The amount of air cargo shipped through Southern California airports will more than double by the year 2010. While the proposed expansion of Ontario International Airport--also owned by the city of Los Angeles is an important element in our planning, the Palmdale Regional Airport must be fully operational as soon as possible.

To do this, we need vision and political will.

First, the immediate designation of a multipassenger-vehicle, or “diamond,” lane along the 405, 5, and 14 freeways from the San Fernando Valley and south Ventura County to Palmdale and the Antelope Valley would encourage public use of Palmdale.

Second, planning should start on the construction of a rail system that would link Palmdale with other parts of California and the West. A linear motor-propelled rail vehicle, which would travel on freeway grades at reasonably high speeds, can be built today, bringing passengers from large population centers to Palmdale. The proposed Las Vegas-Southern California “bullet train” should be routed through Palmdale, to the benefit of all of Southern California, rather than directly from Las Vegas to Anaheim, to the benefit of only Anaheim tourist attractions.

Finally, all of Southern California’s elected officials must press for federal assistance for air transportation and other transit-infrastructure improvements. The $7-billion federal Aviation Trust Fund, financed by federal taxes on air transportation alone, should be used to stimulate the construction of airport facilities throughout the nation, including here in California. And Congress should give local airport authorities the power to assess a fee (a “passenger facility charge”), like that imposed by nearly every foreign airport, to finance airport improvements without raising the taxes of the general public.

All of us have a vital stake in the opening of the Palmdale Regional Airport. Its development offers one of the most cost-effective and safest answers to our regional air and ground transportation problems. And, if we can walk on the moon, we ought to be able to get out to Palmdale.