Potential 3rd Runway at PDX Out
Looks like those rascally, run-away oil prices have claimed another victim: the controversial third runway at PDX. While residents of Northeast Portland's Cully neighborhood rejoice, the Portland Tribune reports:
"The skyrocketing price of oil has killed the “800-pound gorilla” that had been hanging around Portland International Airport for much of the past eight or nine years: the possibility of a third parallel runway at the airport....
In 1999, the airport’s master plan forecast that by 2020, there would be 485,000 takeoffs and landings at PDX — which the master plan indicated would produce something close to airplane gridlock on the airport’s two parallel northwest-southeast runways. That 1999 forecast followed a significant increase in airport use, and number of passengers, at PDX throughout the 1990s. By 1999, there were 322,000 takeoffs and landings at the airport.
But the terrorist attacks of September 2001 decimated air travel for more than a year afterwards. And takeoffs and landings at the airport have yet to reach that 1999 level. Takeoffs and landings last year totaled 264,000.
Early this year, airport officials produced new forecasts. And the current “median” forecast — the middle number among three forecast scenarios — is that takeoffs and landings will total 385,000 by 2035. That’s still below the number where a third runway would be needed.
“We’re far, far away from needing a third parallel runway,” said Chris Corich, general manager of long range planning for the airport."
What say you Northeast Portlanders?
Posted on July 21, 2008
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