Cubreporter (Cubreporter)
Username: Cubreporter
Registered: 6-2003
| | Posted on Saturday, June 03, 2006 - 9:56 pm: | |
Saturday, June 03, 2006
L.A. seeks a new airport panel
City officials are urging regional politicians to encourage outlying airport growth in the hope of easing the congestion at LAX.
By Doug Irving
Daily Breeze
Los Angeles officials have begun trying to recruit neighboring counties into a regional alliance charged with encouraging the growth of smaller, suburban airports.
Such an alliance has existed before, but never quite lived up to its promise and broke apart in recent years. On Friday, Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa announced plans to bring it back as part of his campaign to ease congestion at Los Angeles International Airport.
The alliance will bring together leaders from across the region in a search for ways to better disperse air traffic, Villaraigosa said.
It also will help coordinate airport development and marketing efforts that foster smaller airports.
"People are fed up with (airport) gridlock; we've had it," said Councilman Bill Rosendahl, who will represent the city of Los Angeles on the resurrected panel. Politicians elsewhere in the region, he added, "are going to have to come along or they'll get voted out of office."
The alliance, known as the Southern California Regional Airport Authority in its past life, would include representatives from Los Angeles, Orange, Riverside and San Bernardino counties. Rosendahl said city officials have begun calling and writing to officials in those counties asking for their support.
The original airport authority grew out of the idea that accommodating the region's air traffic will require the cooperation of the entire region. But Orange County resisted at first and later dropped out, along with Riverside County, over development issues.
The city of Los Angeles stopped sending a representative to meetings in 2004.
The city's renewed support of the idea "is really critical" to making it work, said county Supervisor Don Knabe, a longtime advocate of a regional airport authority.
"This is a great day," he said.
©2006 Copley Press, Inc. |