Bored NYT columnist lobbies for Peotone airport

14 comments March 17th, 2009

I grew up reading and respecting Bob Herbert, but it must be a slow news week at the Gray Lady because he’s written not once, but twice in support of the proposed “third Chicago airport” at Peotone - here and here. He’s obviously good friends with Peotone proponent Jesse Jackson Jr, who has his ear for these columns. The most telling line is:

“No one that I’ve spoken with has found fault with the plan or its financing, which relies primarily on private capital.”

Funny how the Internets have found plenty of people who find fault with the plan:;

• Capitol Fax Blog says that Jackson’s plan is decent, but “something that almost never gets mentioned is that the proposed airport footprint is not in Jackson’s congressional district, and some of the people who live in or adjacent to that footprint, particularly in Will County, don’t think that Jackson should be dictating to them.”
• Blogger Carol Henrichs  notes there are five airports in the region (Gary, Rockford and Milwaukee) so it’s not a sure thing that Peotone would grow fast and bring lots of jobs. “Mid-America Airport is another Illinois airport in the cornfields studied by the same IDOT consultants that wrote reports on Peotone. But they built it and nobody came. Billed as a reliever to St. Louis’ Lambert Field, Mid-America has become nothing more than a burden on the local taxpayers who are now stuck with it. And, it has been virtually a ghost town for a decade. The same thing could happen at Peotone.”
• American Thinker says: “And the idiocy of building a small airport 40 miles from downtown Chicago that could “easily be expanded” begs the question; why build infrastructure and roads for a major airport and then open a facility designed not to relieve O’Hare congestion but simply steal revenue and traffic from other small towns like Rockford, Champaign, or even Gary, Indiana which has just received FAA permission to build another runway?”

Obviously, we in Rockford are biased - we want the passenger and cargo service to come here, not Peotone. But when you have three growing airports that could easily handle new traffic, maybe you should throw the infrastructure money there first? High-speed rail to Rockford, Milwaukee and Gary would make those airports just as usable as Peotone (assuming a lot of transportation connections there), and they’re already here.

Henrichs hits the nail on the head - “Gary/Chicago International Airport … is closer to Jackson’s constituency than Peotone. Different county/different state – what’s the difference to people who need jobs? Jackson is a U.S. Congressman who should concern himself with jobs in the country, not just the south side of Chicago, and at others’ expense. If airport jobs were available, Jackson’s constituents could get jobs at Gary much easier than at Peotone.”

Shouldn’t we bring the airport-related jobs to the areas that already have quality airports? Between RFD, MKE and GYY, we should be able to handle O’Hare and Midway’s overflow. Use the Peotone farmland for something that’s more needed.

EDIT: I forgot to include one more link. Steve Rhodes of NBC Chicago  makes the good point that, “That isn’t news to those of us in Chicago, but we’re not the target of Herbert’s columns. Is Obama?” Perhaps this is a push to get some stimulus money down in Peotone…