THEY SAY
Regional Airport Planning
Rick Bell, excerpted from the Sept. 22 San Diego Business Journal:
If leaders want to create a regional airport plan for Southern California, it would seem officials from Orange and San Diego Counties should be as involved as anyone.
Both counties are at a crossroads over where to relocate their airports.
Yet, when mayors and planners from Los Angeles to Victorville convened recently to announce what was termed as a “truly regional” airport plan, no representatives from Orange or San Diego were counted among the dignitaries.
Admittedly, Los Angeles faces a crisis of its own with overcrowding at Los Angeles International Airport, yet its potential relief valve lies just 50 miles to the east in underutilized Ontario International Airport, which some estimate could serve up to 30 million commercial passengers annually.
San Diego and Orange Counties have no such luxury. Orange County’s hopes of relocating tiny John Wayne Airport to the former Marine base at El Toro were quashed last year. San Diego airport planners similarly covet the Navy’s installations here,namely, MCAS Miramar.
But until the Navy decides one of its bases here is no longer a valuable military asset, any hopes of turning it into a regional airport are just wishful thinking.
Planners here have virtually eliminated local airports in Carlsbad, Oceanside and Ramona from its list of potential sites for San Diego’s new airport. Expanding Lindbergh Field is out of the question. That means locations in the Imperial Valley and Riverside County will get serious consideration.
The coalition pushing the “truly regional” plan makes March Air Reserve Base in southern Riverside County that much more viable. Long touted as an option for San Diego, the 2,400-acre airfield with a 13,000-foot runway alongside a major interstate,I-215,probably entices Orange County officials, as well.
The joint powers authority governing the 84-year-old air base is part of the Los Angeles-San Bernardino-Riverside coalition and has said in the past it is willing to team with San Diego on a regional airport.
That’s why the omission of San Diego and Orange Counties from any regional airport-planning group is so perplexing.
Ontario indeed can fulfill the needs of Los Angeles County and much of the Inland Empire but not at the expense of leaving San Diego and Orange County to struggle along on their own.
