Cubreporter (Cubreporter)
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Registered: 6-2003
| | Posted on Sunday, July 23, 2006 - 12:08 pm: | |
LAX runway project lifts off
Officials hope shifting air traffic will not severely disrupt neighborhoods as a taxiway and runway are built on the airport's south side.
By Doug Irving
DAILY BREEZE
The clatter of construction will replace the whoosh of big jets on a runway at Los Angeles International Airport next week, as the biggest project there in more than 20 years gets under way.
The work will almost certainly cause disruptions over the next eight months, from flight delays to quality-of-life complaints. People living in El Segundo may hear the /thunk/ of machinery and trucks beeping as they back up; those in Westchester and Inglewood may notice more air traffic skimming past their homes.
The $333 million project will rip up the southern-most runway at LAX and rebuild it about 55 feet closer to El Segundo. That will clear the way for a new taxiway alongside the runway, giving airplanes more room to maneuver and reducing the risk of a collision on the ground.
The runway closure, beginning next Saturday, will put years of planning and preparation to the test.
Officials at all levels, from the LAX control tower to the local city halls, hope to make the massive project as easy to ignore as possible.
"I don't think our way of life in El Segundo will change a whit," said Mayor Kelly McDowell, whose city abuts the work site. "After the first week or two, I think people will forget that it's going on."
The runway project is the largest undertaken at LAX since the airport built new terminals in preparation for the 1984 Olympics.
It's also one of the more complex, with crews scheduled to begin laying concrete for the new runway even as they finish tearing out the old one.
LAX has four runways -- two on the north side of the airfield and two on the south. That means it will lose a quarter of its runway capacity when the work crews fan out with barriers and warning paint before dawn next
Saturday.
Airport officials have long believed that the layout of the two south-side runways contributes to potentially dangerous mistakes.
Airplanes landing on the southern runway have to cross the second runway to get to the terminals.
But airplanes occasionally fail to stop and wait for clearance before crossing onto that second runway. That could put them in the path of another jet landing or taking off.
The solution, according to airport planners, is to build a center lane between the two runways, where airplanes can pause before making the
crossing. That requires tearing out the southern runway and rebuilding it a few dozen feet to the south.
The work will shut down the runway until March, program manager Jake Adams said; building the new taxiway and other airfield improvements
will take another year after that. The noisiest part of the project -- breaking up the old runway -- will take about a month and a half.
"Obviously, it will have an impact," said Los Angeles City Councilman Bill Rosendahl, whose district includes the airport area. "Will it
create more noise, more problems, more community concerns? We'll see."
Air-traffic controllers have spent months preparing for the runway closure. They expect to route flights to the airport's remaining three runways without too much hassle, but acknowledge that any further
disruptions -- such as bad weather -- could cause delays.
The closed runway is one of two at LAX equipped with special instruments to help airplanes land in poor conditions, such as heavy fog. Without
it, the airport will be far more limited in how many flights it can receive in bad weather, a situation that could force carriers to divert
to other airports.
Airline officials have met regularly with air-traffic controllers and airport managers in recent months to prepare for the closure. Their representatives said that, for the most part, they expect the loss of the runway to cause few day-to-day problems.
"We're really expecting operations to be normal," said Frank Clark, executive director of the LAX Terminal Equity Corp., which represents the airport's international carriers. "We're hoping this will be very
much a nonevent for the traveling public."
But with the southern runway out of commission, more airplanes will have to use the airport's northern two runways -- increasing the jet noise on that side of the airfield. A project review released last year indicated
that thousands of people in Inglewood and Westchester could notice a significant increase in noise during the closure.
Then again, past runway closures that briefly pushed more traffic to the northern runways generated no real increase in complaints, according to Allen Kenitzer, a spokesman for the Federal Aviation Administration.
On the other side of the airport, El Segundo could notice less jet noise when the runway closest to its border shuts down. But its residents may hear the clamor of construction as heavy machinery bashes apart the
concrete of the old runway.
The work will be limited to daytime hours -- from shortly before 7 a.m. to about 7 p.m., Adams said. But breaking apart concrete and carting it to a recycling site on the west end of the airport will be a "really
noisy operation," he said.
At the peak of the project, about 300 trucks will pull into the work site, and another 300 will leave. Their route will take them from the Century (105) Freeway to Imperial Highway and then to Pershing Drive on the edge of the airport, to minimize traffic problems in surrounding neighborhoods.
Just a few months ago, the airport's neighbors were preparing for war over the runway project and other big-ticket construction plans at LAX.
They warned at the time that the runway work would drive down their quality of life with pollution, traffic and noise.
They reached a settlement with the airport in December that guaranteed them street improvements and money to insulate homes against jet noise. The deal also limited the growth of LAX and obligated the airport to
take steps to limit any construction impacts.
In El Segundo, McDowell now says he hopes the most noticeable change during the runway closure will be bigger noontime crowds -- "should the construction workers choose to eat lunch in our city."
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