Regional Airports Likely Destination for LAX Overflow

Farewell Orange County, Hello Inland Empire.

Southern California public officials, concerned about an impasse over expanding Los Angeles International and other airports in the area, now are focusing on Ontario International Airport and former military bases in San Bernardino and Riverside counties as part of a regional solution to transportation woes that threaten future economic development.

A delegation of area officials met last week in Washington with Transportation Secretary Norman Y. Mineta and Federal Aviation Administrator Jane Garvey to discuss how to cope with the region’s anticipated 50% growth in passenger traffic, from 102 million passengers a year to 157 million in the next two decades.

Expanding airport facilities always raises the same hackles and fears, but many lawmakers and planners say the time has finally come to take action because the stakes are so high. “The most important challenge facing Southern California’s economy is LAX and the airport problem,” says economist Stephen Levy, head of the Center for the Continuing Study of the California Economy in Palo Alto.

The message is that it’s time to deal with airports as a regional issue rather than merely a local one in the hope of easing the inevitable concerns of residents who worry they will pay for everyone’s prosperity with a decreased lifestyle.

Proposals to expand or build airports have aroused bitter opposition in Los Angeles and Orange counties. Opposition to an LAX expansion plan has been so potent that officeholders and both candidates for mayor in Los Angeles’ recent election never used the words “airport” and “expansion” in the same sentence.

In Orange County, the fight over a proposed international airport at the former El Toro Marine Air Station has set off a civil war between cities in the southern and northern parts of the county.

The region would suffer a double whammy if modernization at LAX were blocked and Orange County voters veto an airport at El Toro in a referendum scheduled for March. El Toro originally was seen as helping LAX share the growing load of international traffic.

Trying to change the subject from bitter arguments, officials at the Washington meeting emphasized “not barricades but modernizing LAX within the context of a regional solution that would include the Inland Empire,” says Rep. Jane Harman (D-Redondo Beach), who led the delegation in Washington.

“Underutilized” runways at Ontario, George and March Air Force bases and San Bernardino International (formerly Norton AFB) got a lot of attention in the Washington meeting, says Los Angeles County Supervisor Don Knabe, whose district includes LAX.

Proposals are being drawn up for an innovative mix of ground and air transportation, such as check-in terminals in Anaheim from which passengers could be sped by train to Ontario airport. Cargo traffic would be welcomed by the former air bases. The aim is to spread air traffic to several airports in the region, Knabe says.

To be sure, talk is cheap especially when compared to building infrastructure. If all the rail systems ever proposed for this region had become reality, there would be no freeway congestion. And suggestions of shifting air traffic from LAX to lesser-used airports elicit scorn from the airline industry, now caught in a slow economy with passenger loads falling and red ink rising.

But by shifting the focus to Ontario and LAX from anxious concentration on El Toro, the region’s officials have broadened the field of potential solutions.

Ontario can become an ideal junior partner for LAX. The airport, which hosts almost 7 million passengers annually, has two runways with an option of adding a third. Its ultimate capacity could go above 20 million passengers, provided future legislation overrides Air Quality Management District restrictions that limit Ontario to 12 million passengers. Most experts believe that state restriction can be overridden.

Ontario is in a region of rapidly growing population. The Inland Empire’s population is 5 million, and there are 2 million people and many international manufacturing companies in the San Gabriel Valley that are current or potential users of Ontario. Also, Ontario Airport is more convenient than LAX to many parts of Orange County and will become more so if envisioned ground transportation connections are built.

Most important, Ontario and its area want expanded airport traffic. “Companies moving to the Inland Empire to escape high real estate prices on the coast are bringing professional, high-income employees,” says John Husing, the leading economist of the two-county area.

Expanded airport facilities will bring more companies, Husing predicts. The Inland Empire has long sought such companies and employees as a balance to the lower-paid work force of its warehousing and distribution industries.

Then, with Ontario’s expansion demonstrating a regional spread of air traffic, the modernization of LAX could go forward. The airport’s four runways would be separated and lengthened for safety and efficiency in the most likely course advocated in the LAX Environmental Impact Statement, which is up for public comments.

Traffic congestion in the airport area, a major complaint of neighboring communities, would be eased by the addition of ramps, ring roads, rail links and other facilities. Under such modernization, LAX would expand over 20 years to 89 million annual passengers, from today’s 68 million, a growth rate of about 1% a year.

In Orange County, if El Toro airport survives the March referendum, a mid-size air facility with limited international service and restricted nighttime operations could be built. But voters may choose to convert the former air base into a park. The odds on the referendum are 50-50, local experts say. No one is venturing predictions.

San Diego will be affected by Orange County’s decision. San Diego expects its population to grow by 1.2 million in the next two decades, a 42% increase. The city’s Lindbergh Field is already crowded at 15 million annual passengers, but authorities think they can take it to 21 million.

But for international flights, San Diego will have to find new airport space at Miramar Naval Air Station, near La Jolla, or across the Mexican border at Rodriguez Field in Tijuana. U.S. passengers would check in and go through customs on the U.S. side of the border.

Finally, Palmdale, an airport owned by the city of Los Angeles in northern Los Angeles County, will shortly launch a marketing campaign to attract airline flights and passengers. But Palmdale, which also is a military facility, is in an area of low population. Most projections show the airport growing to 2 million passengers at most by 2020.

By their very public conferring in Washington, the Southern California public officials made a smart move. They changed the airport arguments and eased the way for Los Angeles’ new Mayor James Hahn to render favorable decisions this fall on LAX, Ontario and other vital facilities of his city and region.

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James Flanigan can be reached at jim.flanigan@latimes.com

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Flight to the Future

Beyond the rhetoric in often fierce arguments over the location and capacities of airports, the basic challenge for Southern California is to find space for an additional 55 million passengers a year.

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Regional Passenger Demand (In millions of passengers per year)

2020 (est.) 157 million passengers

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TOTAL CAPACITY (in millions of annual passengers*

‘00: 102.3

‘20: 165.5

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* Current passenger traffic, in millions of annual passengers, at each of the region’s airports and estimates of capacity in 2020

** Building of El Toro Airport subject to March 2002 referendum on land use

Sources: Los Angeles World Airports, Southern California Assn. of Governments, Orange County Business Council, Lindbergh Field, John Wayne International Airport, Ontario International Airport, Times estimates