Runway merits lost on Massport foes

11 May 2001

Massport is the Middle East of Boston: The battles of today are really all about the grudges of the past. And that phenomenon is particularly on display when it comes to Logan Airport's proposal to build Runway 14/32.

The new runway itself is really quite modest: It's a 5,000-foot landing strip (Logan's other major runways are 7,000 to 10,000 feet long) designed to relieve air traffic delays. The argument for it is straightforward: Under most weather conditions, Logan is able to handle an hourly maximum of about 120 takeoffs and landings (or "operations," in air-traffic control lingo). Massport figures that for about eight hours a day, it's already close to capacity, averaging around 110 operations an hour.

But when the wind starts blowing from the northwest, Logan can no longer rely on all of the runways it usually uses. Its hourly capacity declines, meaning that those 110 operations an hour are now trying to land on runways with a capacity of about 90 or fewer. The result? Air traffic delays that affect not only Logan but - because airlines rely so much on connecting flights - reverberate through the air traffic system nationwide.

The new runway solves that problem so that, no matter which direction the wind is blowing, the airport can always manage up to 120 flights an hour. Logan has also committed that the runway would be unidirectional, meaning that landings and takeoffs would always be over water and hence would have a minimal impact on nearby residents. Massport also claims the new runway would more equitably distribute aircraft noise and reduce air pollution from circling airplanes.

Seems reasonable, right? Yet the proposal has prompted virulent opposition. In other cities, such as Atlanta, St. Louis and Chicago, politicians usually support airport growth because of air travel's importance to local economies. Not so in Massachusetts. Boston Mayor Thomas Menino has blasted the new runway, vowing to stop it. U.S. Rep. Michael Capuano has echoed that, saying, "This runway should be defeated at all costs." Indeed, I know of no local politician who has voiced support for Logan's proposal.

Why? The answer is simple. The agency's history of broken promises and unbridled expansion is catching up with it. It almost doesn't matter what Massport says: No one believes it.

Logan does not have a proud history when it comes to its relationship with its neighbors. Back in the 1960s, when the airport was dramatically expanding, residents were either ignored or belittled. There were no public processes and no environmental reviews. In just 20 years, Logan tripled the number of passengers it handled. Nearby residents in East Boston, Chelsea and Winthrop suffered the consequences in noise, traffic and ill health. Even Virginia Buckingham, Massport's executive director, acknowledges, "Massport used to conduct public policy with a bulldozer."

The wounds left by those bulldozers still fester today. Residents figure that as soon as it's built, the unidirectional runway will become two-way. They believe 14/32 is some sort of bait-and-switch game to expand airport capacity.

And they have reason to be dubious. By its own reckoning, Massport figures that the number of passengers it handles will climb from today's high of 27.4 million to 37.4 million by 2015. Massport claims that larger jets, improvements in the technology for handling aircraft and other efficiencies will help it handle that growth. Still, from a resident's perspective, any type of growth ultimately translates to more planes and more noise.

Thus, while the substance of Runway 14/32 may be about delays, politically it's being treated as if it were about expansion.

Massport's experience with regionalization provides an illustration of this. Regionalization was the mantra adopted several years ago by the opponents of Runway 14/32. Rather than every air traveler coming to Boston, why not improve other area airports?

It was a good point. Massport since then has worked aggressively to expand the use of T.F. Green Airport in Rhode Island and Manchester Airport in New Hampshire. Meanwhile, it has pushed to increase the availability of commercial service at airfields in Worcester and Bedford (much to the dismay of residents of Lexington and Concord).

It's worked, too. Logan hit a peak in 1998, with 507,449 operations. Since then, the number of operations has declined by 6 percent. The rise of the regional airports has caused Massport to revise growth projections downwards. So that should have made everyone happy, right?

Wrong. If anything the resistance to the new runway has become more intense.

It almost doesn't matter what Massport does because there's such a gulf in the way the two sides view the world. The agency believes that with Runway 14/32 it has a benign proposal that is the classic win-win. For opponents, it's a symbol of all of the hurts Logan has ever visited upon them.