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posted by janrinok on Monday February 26 2018, @10:33PM   Printer-friendly
from the got-to-keep-movin' dept.

Source: City Hall close on $8.5 billion O'Hare expansion deal

Chicago is on the verge of striking a historic $8.5 billion deal with airline carriers at O'Hare to give the airport its largest-ever terminal expansion, adding dozens of gates and 3 million square feet to its footprint. Central to the plan to modernize and grow the airport is the construction of a new Global Terminal, which would replace Terminal 2 and serve larger aircraft for international flights, according to a source with knowledge of the deal.

[...] The expansion would be complete by 2026, and the work could potentially create tens of thousands of jobs over the next eight years, the source said. It could also give O'Hare a chance to rise above its routinely dismal ranking for on-time flights.

[...] [The] mayor has said he could deliver on the long-elusive dream of a high-speed rail line between downtown and O'Hare. Four powerhouse firms, including Elon Musk's The Boring Company, have shown interest in designing, building, financing, operating and maintaining an express train.The city is hoping for a travel time of 20 minutes or less, with express trains running every 15 minutes for most of the day at fares cheaper than a taxi or Uber ride.

Also at the Chicago Tribune.


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  • (Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Monday February 26 2018, @11:09PM (4 children)

    by Grishnakh (2831) on Monday February 26 2018, @11:09PM (#644291)

    It's wrong to put a train in between the airport and downtown; this transport function should be reserved for taxi cabs. Just ask NYC.

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 27 2018, @12:49AM (1 child)

      by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 27 2018, @12:49AM (#644340)

      Yeah they should dig up the blue line. /sarc

      • (Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Tuesday February 27 2018, @11:55AM

        by Phoenix666 (552) on Tuesday February 27 2018, @11:55AM (#644572) Journal

        That part perplexes me, too. Chicago actually does have a subway that takes you into O'Hare, unlike NYC. It's not terribly convenient if you're not coming from downtown, because you have to travel a long way cross town to get to the long diagonal that is the blue line. You have to ride your line all the way downtown to transfer to the blue line and then ride that spoke all the way back out, and that's the real time killer.

        Chicago would do much better with another L line that connects those spokes at one or more radii out from downtown so you can travel a more direct path. A fringe benefit would be to make it more convenient to take mass transit around town for all other trips that aren't commutes into downtown from the various neighborhoods.

        --
        Washington DC delenda est.
    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 27 2018, @01:14AM

      by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 27 2018, @01:14AM (#644362)

      well they couldn't get the hyperloop. too much water in the tunnels already, and they have to dig deep--to then go out to the suburbs since o'hare really is not in chicago.

      it's an old orchard, and there are a problem with subsurface roots, too, so tunnels there are a problem too, but not nearly the same problem.

    • (Score: 1) by Provocateur on Tuesday February 27 2018, @09:17PM

      by Provocateur (6855) on Tuesday February 27 2018, @09:17PM (#644811)

      Or ask the folks at Narita. What is wrong with you people? Meesa thinks you loves your cars too much-a.

  • (Score: 2) by bob_super on Monday February 26 2018, @11:10PM

    by bob_super (1357) on Monday February 26 2018, @11:10PM (#644292)

    They could invest a fraction of the cost of a new line into making the Blue Line faster and more comfortable. It's otherwise a pretty fast and reliable way to get straight into ORD (looking at you, dumb LAX).

    The other place to invest money to help accessibility would be a solution to ease congestion at The Junction (for those unfamiliar, that's where 90 meet 94, inbound, and comparisons to the 405 in LA are not an exaggeration). Adding lanes overhead (double-stack the express lanes), adding trains going up the 94... Things that would improve the daily life of so many Chicagoans.

    ORD itself is old, and it shows. But, having been to many other big US airports, it's actually not as dreadful as people stuck by a snowstorm keep claiming. If you know your way, the layout is decent, except for the lack of space near check-in (old airport problem). Adding bigger terminals and more gates should be done with an extra floor for check-in, and doubling of security areas, to avoid the legendary lines at peak hours.

  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 27 2018, @12:05AM (1 child)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 27 2018, @12:05AM (#644315)

    The city is hoping for a travel time of 20 minutes or less, with express trains running every 15 minutes for most of the day at fares cheaper than a taxi or Uber ride.

    I have a nice bridge to sell you, too...

    Running an express train every 15 minutes is a lot of trains a day... and a train takes you to a central location rather than your final destination.

    I'm not a civil engineer, and I haven't done "The Math." I can see it being theoretically possible that they'd have the traffic volume to support such a volume and such a low price. I'm guessing this is more likely a classic case of overpromise underdeliver, though.

    I hope if this does go through, the city has some good lawyers review the contract and that they explicitly define the levels of service this is expected to maintain at what price.

    • (Score: 3, Informative) by Snow on Tuesday February 27 2018, @01:02AM

      by Snow (1601) on Tuesday February 27 2018, @01:02AM (#644351) Journal

      15 mins isn't that frequent. My city has trains that go every 5 mins during rush hour. I think every 15 mins is the minimum and my city is smaller than chicago.

  • (Score: 3, Interesting) by Phoenix666 on Tuesday February 27 2018, @11:57AM (2 children)

    by Phoenix666 (552) on Tuesday February 27 2018, @11:57AM (#644575) Journal

    It seems to me that it would make more sense to add capacity at Midway Airport on the South Side. They have the land and it's connected to the L already. It's a shorter trip from downtown, too.

    --
    Washington DC delenda est.
    • (Score: 3, Informative) by bobthecimmerian on Tuesday February 27 2018, @12:19PM (1 child)

      by bobthecimmerian (6834) on Tuesday February 27 2018, @12:19PM (#644583)

      O'Hare does about 420,000 flights per year, Midway does about 80,000. (I work for a company that among other things tracks airline schedules.) If you're just flying into Chicago or out of Chicago, O'Hare and Midway are equivalent and it doesn't matter which one becomes larger.

      But if you're connecting through Chicago to another destination, naturally O'Hare gives you far more options both in terms of available destinations and in terms of convenient connection times. That is, if you land in Midway there might be flights that continue on to your desired destination but that leave in 30 minutes, so any delay to your flight to Midway ruins the connection. Or in Midway there might be flights to your desired destination that leave in 6 hours, so it gets you there but it's undesirable. Or simply Midway may have no flights to the place you want. In O'Hare there are five times as many flights, so there's a much better chance the connecting flights to your target destination are available in a convenience one to two hours from your scheduled landing. So from the perspective of maximizing available connections, it's far better to have one colossal airport than any number of smaller nearby airports, even if the pairs or triplets of airports add up to more total capacity than the big airport.

      • (Score: 3, Informative) by bobthecimmerian on Tuesday February 27 2018, @12:23PM

        by bobthecimmerian (6834) on Tuesday February 27 2018, @12:23PM (#644584)

        I just looked it up, O'Hare has flights to over 225 destinations though some only have one flight every few months. Midway only flies to about 90 destinations.

  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 01 2018, @05:52PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 01 2018, @05:52PM (#645871)

    We all know that the 8.5 number is what they throw around at this stage. By the time it is all done the total cost will be closer to 12 Billion. You can blame stupid governments, stupid unions, stupid Chicago mafia, it doesn't matter. It will be an overpriced cluster by the time it is done. And incomplete and partially broken.

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