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28–273 PDF 2006

MEETING FUTURE AVIATION CAPACITY NEEDS IN SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA

(109–58)

FIELD HEARING

BEFORE THE

SUBCOMMITTEE ON

AVIATION

OF THE

COMMITTEE ON

TRANSPORTATION AND

INFRASTRUCTURE

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

ONE HUNDRED NINTH CONGRESS

SECOND SESSION

MARCH 20, 2006 (CORONA, CALIFORNIA)

Printed for the use of the

Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure

(
COMMITTEE ON TRANSPORTATION AND INFRASTRUCTURE

DON YOUNG, Alaska, Chairman

THOMAS E. PETRI, Wisconsin, Vice-Chair

SHERWOOD L. BOEHLERT, New York

HOWARD COBLE, North Carolina

JOHN J. DUNCAN, JR., Tennessee

WAYNE T. GILCHREST, Maryland

JOHN L. MICA, Florida

PETER HOEKSTRA, Michigan

VERNON J. EHLERS, Michigan

SPENCER BACHUS, Alabama

STEVEN C. LATOURETTE, Ohio

SUE W. KELLY, New York

RICHARD H. BAKER, Louisiana

ROBERT W. NEY, Ohio

FRANK A. LOBIONDO, New Jersey

JERRY MORAN, Kansas

GARY G. MILLER, California

ROBIN HAYES, North Carolina

ROB SIMMONS, Connecticut

HENRY E. BROWN, JR., South Carolina

TIMOTHY V. JOHNSON, Illinois

TODD RUSSELL PLATTS, Pennsylvania

SAM GRAVES, Missouri

MARK R. KENNEDY, Minnesota

BILL SHUSTER, Pennsylvania

JOHN BOOZMAN, Arkansas

JIM GERLACH, Pennsylvania

MARIO DIAZ-BALART, Florida

JON C. PORTER, Nevada

TOM OSBORNE, Nebraska

KENNY MARCHANT, Texas

MICHAEL E. SODREL, Indiana

CHARLES W. DENT, Pennsylvania

TED POE, Texas

DAVID G. REICHERT, Washington

CONNIE MACK, Florida

JOHN R. ‘RANDY’ KUHL, JR., New York

LUIS G. FORTUN ̃ O, Puerto Rico

LYNN A. WESTMORELAND, Georgia

CHARLES W. BOUSTANY, JR., Louisiana

JEAN SCHMIDT, Ohio

JAMES L. OBERSTAR, Minnesota

NICK J. RAHALL, II, West Virginia

PETER A. DEFAZIO, Oregon

JERRY F. COSTELLO, Illinois

ELEANOR HOLMES NORTON, District of

Columbia

JERROLD NADLER, New York

CORRINE BROWN, Florida

BOB FILNER, California

EDDIE BERNICE JOHNSON, Texas

GENE TAYLOR, Mississippi

JUANITA MILLENDER-MCDONALD,

California

ELIJAH E. CUMMINGS, Maryland

EARL BLUMENAUER, Oregon

ELLEN O. TAUSCHER, California

BILL PASCRELL, JR., New Jersey

LEONARD L. BOSWELL, Iowa

TIM HOLDEN, Pennsylvania

BRIAN BAIRD, Washington

SHELLEY BERKLEY, Nevada

JIM MATHESON, Utah

MICHAEL M. HONDA, California

RICK LARSEN, Washington

MICHAEL E. CAPUANO, Massachusetts

ANTHONY D. WEINER, New York

JULIA CARSON, Indiana

TIMOTHY H. BISHOP, New York

MICHAEL H. MICHAUD, Maine

LINCOLN DAVIS, Tennessee

BEN CHANDLER, Kentucky

BRIAN HIGGINS, New York

RUSS CARNAHAN, Missouri

ALLYSON Y. SCHWARTZ, Pennsylvania

JOHN T. SALAZAR, Colorado

JOHN BARROW, Georgia

(II)
SUBCOMMITTEE ON AVIATION

JOHN L. MICA, Florida, Chairman

THOMAS E. PETRI, Wisconsin

HOWARD COBLE, North Carolina

JOHN J. DUNCAN, JR., Tennessee

VERNON J. EHLERS, Michigan

SPENCER BACHUS, Alabama

SUE W. KELLY, New York

RICHARD H. BAKER, Louisiana

ROBERT W. NEY, Ohio

FRANK A. LOBIONDO, New Jersey

JERRY MORAN, Kansas

ROBIN HAYES, North Carolina

HENRY E. BROWN, JR., South Carolina

TIMOTHY V. JOHNSON, Illinois

SAM GRAVES, Missouri

MARK R. KENNEDY, Minnesota

JOHN BOOZMAN, Arkansas

JIM GERLACH, Pennsylvania

MARIO DIAZ-BALART, Florida

JON C. PORTER, Nevada

KENNY MARCHANT, Texas

CHARLES W. DENT, Pennsylvania

TED POE, Texas

JOHN R. ‘RANDY’ KUHL, JR., New York,

Vice-Chair

LYNN A. WESTMORELAND, Georgia

DON YOUNG, Alaska

(Ex Officio)

JERRY F. COSTELLO, Illinois

LEONARD L. BOSWELL, Iowa

PETER A. DEFAZIO, Oregon

ELEANOR HOLMES NORTON, District of

Columbia

CORRINE BROWN, Florida

EDDIE BERNICE JOHNSON, Texas

JUANITA MILLENDER-MCDONALD,

California

ELLEN O. TAUSCHER, California

BILL PASCRELL, JR., New Jersey

TIM HOLDEN, Pennsylvania

SHELLEY BERKLEY, Nevada

JIM MATHESON, Utah

MICHAEL M. HONDA, California

RICK LARSEN, Washington

MICHAEL E. CAPUANO, Massachusetts

ANTHONY D. WEINER, New York

BEN CHANDLER, Kentucky

RUSS CARNAHAN, Missouri

JOHN T. SALAZAR, Colorado

NICK J. RAHALL II, West Virginia

BOB FILNER, California

JAMES L. OBERSTAR, Minnesota

(Ex Officio)

(III)

(V)

CONTENTS

TESTIMONY

Page

Kempton, Will, Director, California Department of Transportation ................... 6

Pisano, Mark, Executive Director, Southern California Association of Governments ..................................................................................................................... 6

Ritchie, Jim, Deputy Executive Director for Planning and Development, Los

Angeles World Airports (LAWA) ......................................................................... 6

Withycombe, William C., Regional Administrator, Western-Pacific Region,

Federal Aviation Administration ........................................................................ 6

PREPARED STATEMENTS SUBMITTED BY WITNESSES

Kempton, Will .......................................................................................................... 33

Pisano, Mark ............................................................................................................ 37

Ritchie, Jim .............................................................................................................. 47

Withycombe, William C. .......................................................................................... 51

SUBMISSIONS FOR THE RECORD

Calvert, Hon. Ken, a Representative in Congress from California:

February 15, 2006, Letter from Coto de Caza CZ master Association ............ 61

April 27, 2004, Letter from Trabuco Highlands Community Association ....... 64

December 30, 2003, Letter from Orange County Supervisor Tom Wilson ...... 65

January 4, 2005, Letter from Rep. Ken Calvert and Rep. David Drier

to FAA Administrator Marion Blakely ........................................................... 66

Letter from FAA Administrator Marion Blakely to Rep. Ken Calvert and

Rep. David Drier ............................................................................................... 68

March 20, 2003, Los Angeles Times Article, ′′FAA Sees No Violations After

Gripes About Daredevil Pilots.′′ ...................................................................... 70

ADDITIONS FOR THE RECORD

AirFair, Melinda Seely, President, letter, April 6, 2006 ...................................... 59

El Toro Reuse Planning Authority (ETRPA), Chairman, L. Allan Songstad,

Jr., letter, April 3, 2006 ....................................................................................... 71

Orange County Airport Working Group, Inc., Tom Naughton, President, statement ...................................................................................................................... 74

Orange County Pilots Association, Fred Fourcher, President, statement .......... 76

Polaris Group Financial consulting, Robert Rodine, Principal Consultant, letter, March 19, 2006 .............................................................................................. 78

San Diego County Regional Airport Authority, Thella F. Bowens, President/

CEO, statement .................................................................................................... 80

California Aviation System Plan--Policy Element, California Department of

Transportation, report, February 2006 .............................................................. 84

(1)

MEETING FUTURE AVIATION CAPACITY

NEEDS IN SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA

Monday, March 20, 2006

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, SUBCOMMITTEE ON AVIATION, COMMITTEE ON TRANSPORTATION AND INFRASTRUCTURE, WASHINGTON, D.C.

The subcommittee met, pursuant to call, at 10:00 a.m., in City

Council Chambers of Corona City Hall, 400 South Vicentia, Corona,

California, Hon. John L. Mica [chairman of the subcommittee] presiding.

Mr. MICA. Good morning. I’d like to call this hearing of the

House Aviation Subcommittee to order. This is a Subcommittee of

the Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure of the United

States Congress. We’re pleased to be meeting today in the beautiful

city of Corona and their new Council, relatively new Council Chambers. We are in the District of Representative Ken Calvert, our colleague from Southern California. We’re pleased to be here and

want to take just a moment to thank Ken for his hospitality in the

City of Corona for hosting this hearing on the future of aviation capacity in Southern California.

We’re also joined by Representative Campbell. John is a fairly

new Member of Congress, but represents an adjacent District and

spent yesterday with him in the air looking at some of the aviation

infrastructure sites across Southern California.

The order of today’s business will be as follows. Our Subcommittee has one panel of witnesses. Prior to hearing from those witnesses, we’ll have opening statements. I’ll have mine and then I’ll

yield to our host and also to Mr. Campbell, who is a Member of the

Transportation and Infrastructure Subcommittee. Then we will

hear from the panel of witnesses. We’re not taking public testimony

today, however, However, anyone who would like to have their

statement included in the record, an official proceedings of the Subcommittee hearing, can do so by request through the Chair or

through Representative Campbell or Calvert.

Without objection, we’re going to leave the record open for a period of two weeks for submission of additional comments or testimony and that’s so ordered.

With that, I will start today’s proceedings with an opening statement that I have and then I’m going to yield to—I think I’ll yield

first to Mr. Calvert, after that, and then to Mr. Campbell. Mr. Calvert is our host today, so we’ll do that in order of seniority and also

hospitality. But I’ll proceed with my comments and again, this

hearing, the title of this hearing is ‘‘Meeting Future Aviation Capacity Needs in Southern California.’’
2

We meet here today at a very critical time for aviation planning

and development in the greater Los Angeles region in Southern

California. The region’s airports, taken together, make Southern

California the busiest of all regions in the country in terms of total

aircraft operations. Fortunately, the Los Angeles basin currently

has sufficient, although somewhat limited capacity, to meet demand. However, the Southern California Association of Governments, also referred to as SCAG, which is the federally-recognized

metropolitan planning organization for the region, they predict that

passenger demand in the region will more than double to 170 million passengers and our air cargo will more than triple to 8.7 million tons in the year 2030.

Additionally, Los Angeles International Airport is, of course, the

busiest airport within the SCAG region and it’s not reached its

maximum practical capacity, but it will do so by the year 2013 at

its current growth. In 2004, which is the latest FAA data, the passenger activity and numbers at LAX were some 57.8 million passengers. Today, I’m told and figures that we received from the airport we’re approaching in 2005–2006, 61.4 million passengers per

year.

Local leaders have determined that there should be no airport

improvements at LAX that would increase capacity beyond a 78

million annual passenger total.

This hearing is not only important to Southern California, but

it’s important to our nation. I always tell folks that if we don’t have

the capacity or the ability to land and have planes take off from

LAX, that not only does Southern California suffer, but the entire

air system and air service operations of the United States are affected.

Other airports in the region, and I’ve had an opportunity to visit

some of these like Long Beach. Long Beach limits the number of

flights and they’ve pretty much maxed out in their number of

flights’ capacity. Burbank, I visited Burbank yesterday and we

have found that there is some reluctance to expanding that airport

and growth at the airport by local officials. And John Wayne, which

I visited in the past, I’m told John Wayne has reached 9.6 million

passengers annually and they have a capacity of 10.3 million passengers. They limit the passengers.

All of these airports can have additional capacity, but are heavily

constrained by noise limitations, by political considerations, and

also restrictions on development at those airports.

The Southern California region will be up against its maximum

capacity limits, unfortunately, in the not too distant future. The results, I’m afraid to report, will not be pretty. We can expect traffic

jams, long passenger check-in and security lines, crowded terminals, delayed flights, lost baggage, impacts, of course, to runway

and passenger flying safety, overall increased demand on our national and regional air transportation system, and of course, the associate cost to airports, passengers and air carriers.

The economic impact can also be damaging. Jobs, as we know,

depend on good infrastructure and that infrastructure, whether it’s

airports, roads, ports or transit, are all critical to economic development in the future. The good news is that unlike other major metropolitan areas in the country, many of which are in what we call
3

an air capacity crises mode, the Southern California-Los Angeles

region has time to plan and also to provide for that additional capacity.

There are some infrastructure improvements in air traffic control

redesign efforts currently in the works that will help partially alleviate some of the capacity demand issues, but with no new runway

construction plan and limited expansion in capacity, delays in the

region will worsen over time. It’s just inevitable.

I’m told that the local leaders believe a decentralized plan for allocation of aviation demand is the solution for meeting future aviation demand and that most future airport growth should be accommodated at airports other than LAX. And of course, today we’ll

hear what state, Federal, local officials propose.

More specifically, local planners, I’m told, would like to maximize

the use of airports in the inland empire and also the north Los Angeles County area including also careful review of former military

base use and joint-use facilities. SCAG believes that airport development should be focused on the under-utilized airports rather

than expanding some of the existing airports and we’ll hear more

about that again from our witnesses.

This Subcommittee is responsible for the oversight of a safe and

efficient national aviation and air passenger system. Therefore,

we’re most interested to hear about the region’s plans to allocate

future aviation demand. Given the decentralized approach being

pursued, we especially want to hear how planners intend to get

passengers to go to the suburban airports and how passengers will

travel to and from those airports.

The Federal Government cannot solve all the problems of congestion, whether it’s by air, by land, by sea, by itself. In fact, we know

we need the cooperation of state and local governments, as well as

all of the communities in the region. Congestion and delays in one

part of our national air system, as I mentioned, ripple throughout

the system and cause congestion and other delays in parts of the

system. Congestion also has safety implications.

Let there be no doubt without adequate infrastructure we cannot

continue as a region, as a state or as a country to grow and prosper. We must also have an aviation regional infrastructure in place

that’s capable of safely and efficiently handling double the number

of passengers and triple the amount of air cargo tonnage in less

than 25 years.

The crunch will be here sooner than we expect and some of the

solutions and projects will be handled by people probably after us,

but it’s important that we set groundwork like we’re doing here

today. There is simply no other alternative, especially if we’re to be

responsible public officials at all levels.

In this hearing, we hope to better understand the situation today

and our options for the future. I look forward to hearing from our

witnesses and I want to thank them for appearing and providing

testimony today.

Finally, once again, I’d like to thank the Mayor of the City of Corona, Karen Spiegel. I had the pleasure to meet Karen, Mayor

Spiegel, and the Council, Corona City Council Members just before

the hearing. And I want to thank them so much again for letting

us use this absolutely beautiful new public facility.
4

I’d now like to recognize someone who I have had the privilege

of coming to Congress with together some 14 years ago. It seems

just like yesterday, Ken, but he is certainly recognized as a leader

not only for Southern California and his District, but in Congress,

has an outstanding career and record of excellent representation.

I commented to someone, and I’ll put it in the record today that

we conducted a number of field hearings and I’ve chaired two other

subcommittees in Congress and no one has been more accommodating or helpful, both he and his staff, in accommodating our congressional field hearing and requests. With that, we’re pleased to be in

your District and I’ll recognize Honorable Ken Calvert.

Mr. CALVERT. Well, thank you, John. Welcome to the heartland

of Southern California, as we see it. When I was born in this town

there was 7,000 or, 8,000 people. Today there’s about 150,000 people. So that’s somewhat symbolic of what’s occurring in the Inland

Empire and throughout Southern California. But certainly welcome, you and your colleagues. I hope you enjoy your short time

here in California. I commend you for your foresight in looking at

the aviation needs of Southern California over the next 20 or 30

years where we can reasonably plan a workable solution to accommodate the expected growth in air traffic.

The need for additional airport capacity is clear. Today’s hearing

should help identify possible solutions and potential pitfalls.

Before we proceed further, I want to thank our host today, Mayor

Karen Spiegel, and the entire City Council. They’re very gracious

for allowing us to use this facility. They scheduled another meeting

today in another room so we can enjoy these facilities and I think

Mayor Spiegel did a great job and I certainly thank them for their

assistance.

I have three points, Mr. Chairman, I’d like to stress today. First,

the process for choosing locations to expand airport capacity should

be done in a transparent way in order to gain public support. We’ll

hear from many groups with diverse opinions. It’s always possible

that divergent opinions will paralyze the situation and even stop

any solution. That would be unfortunate. But I think opportunities

like this will help us address future aviation needs.

Although it’s nearly impossible to avoid upsetting some communities, I believe it’s possible to build confidence in the process and

establish the broad range of support needed to move forward with

solutions.

Secondly, I support the rights of the military to control operational use of their facilities. I’ve supported joint military civilian

use for air cargo and appreciate the positive economic effects that

it will continue to bring to the community of Riverside and Perris.

This agreement works because the military identified when it had

the capacity, but it was in excess of their needs rather than the

local agencies identifying military land that would be desirable for

civilian commercial aviation.

The military, obviously, is a conduit for the benefit of our nation.

Geography will continue to be a limiting factor in how and where

our military trains. Additional requirements which may be placed

on active military installations by civil and commercial aviation

must not impede the readiness of our military services. It is therefore critical that the military’s mission and existing bases remain
5

the top priority throughout the process. While other Southern California stakeholders may hold divergent opinions, I believe that the

regional congressional delegation is united on that point.

Finally, as air traffic has shifted and shared between regional

airports, it is vital that surface transportation is improved to move

people to the airports quickly. Our highways are filled to capacity

and the intercounty rail system needs significant improvement. It

is important to understand that part of the solution for local aviation is to improve surface transportation as well. For this reason,

I’m particularly looking forward to the testimony by Mr. Will

Kempton to hear the State’s plan to improve surface transportation.

Again, I thank and compliment you, Chairman Mica, and John,

my new colleague next door, for coming here today to look at this

problem first hand. Today’s hearing is a critical part of the process

of building consensus and hopefully we can reach consensus on how

the region can best absorb 170 million annual passengers and 8.7

million tons of annual cargo estimated to arrive by 2030. So again,

thank you and welcome to Corona.

Mr. MICA. Thank you again, Representative Calvert. We are

pleased to be here and your District is California 44, hard to believe that you have that many people in Congress, but John Campbell is California 48. What are there, 50? Fifty-three, oh my goodness. Florida has 25.

From—as you said, adjoining District has been most helpful in

our organizing this hearing. We wanted to bring this hearing not

to the downtown area of say Los Angeles, but to the suburbs which

can be dramatically impacted by any change in air traffic and capacity. We wanted to hold this hearing again in an area like Corona or Districts 44 or 48 so that we could hear again from people

who are in these communities and affected by some of these decision.

And John Campbell, although a new Member, and a Member of

the Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, has been most

helpful. He also took me on an air tour yesterday, led that effort,

pointing out many of the infrastructure sites, not just aviation, but

also transportation. You get quite a view from a thousand feet up.

But he’s also been very helpful with our conduct of this hearing.

So at this time I’d like to recognize a Member of the Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, our colleague, John Campbell.

Mr. CAMPBELL. Thank you, Chairman Mica, and thank you for

holding this hearing and thank you, Congressman Calvert and the

officials here in Corona for hosting this as well.

I’ll just make this very brief because I mainly want to hear from

all of you. Let me say though that I do agree with several of the

comments made by colleague, Mr. Calvert, both relative to the

precedence we need to give to military operations and to the issue

of surface transportation to get us to and from whatever airports

there are, because whatever airports we have that are able to grow,

they’re not going to dot the landscape. There aren’t going to be 10

of them or 15 of them. There’s going to be a limited number of

them and we will have to be able to get back and forth.
6

I was born and raised in Los Angeles and I have lived in Orange

County now for 30 years, so I’ve flown in and out of every single

airport there is in this region many times and I also have a pilot’s

license, although it’s not current, so I actually have flown in and

out of virtually every airport general aviation, that accepts general

aviation in the Southern California area in one point or another

and so I thought I’d kind of knew an awful lot, but I can tell you

the trip we had yesterday I learned quite a bit I didn’t know. I

didn’t know, for example, that the passenger count at LAX was actually still down below what it was prior to 9/11, an interesting

thing that I hope someone will comment on and address.

I don’t think I was aware of how much military use there still

was at March Air Force Base when I saw that yesterday and I

don’t think I was aware of just how much future capacity there is

at Ontario, both in terms of its size and in terms of the political

will there to have additional airport operations and capacity in Ontario. So I learned quite a bit yesterday and I’m sure I will learn

quite a bit more today.

Thanks very much for including me.

Mr. MICA. Well again, I thank our hosts here fellow Members.

We’re going to turn now to our panel of witnesses. What we’ve

tried to do is we’re to hear first from the Federal Aviation Administration. We have the Regional Administrator for the Western Pacific Region, William C. Withycombe with us. We have then from

the State level in the California Department of Transportation, the

Director of that office, Mr. Will Kempton. And then from the Southern California Association of Governments, also known as SCAG,

the Executive Director, Mark Pisano. And then from LAX and Los

Angeles World Airports representing those airports, the Deputy Executive Director for Planning and Development, Mr. Jim Ritchie.

Those will be our witnesses. I thank each of you for participating.

If you have lengthy documents or background information data

you’d like to have made part of the record, you can do so through

request of the chair and that will be made part of the official record

of today’s hearing.

With that, we’ll turn to our first witness, William Withycombe

who is again the Regional Administrator for FAA. Welcome and

you’re recognized, sir.

TESTIMONY OF WILLIAM C. WITHYCOMBE, REGIONAL ADMINISTRATOR, WESTERN-PACIFIC REGION, FEDERAL AVIATION

ADMINISTRATION; WILL KEMPTON, DIRECTOR, CALIFORNIA

DEPARTMENT OF TRANSPORTATION; MARK PISANO, EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR, SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA ASSOCIATION OF

GOVERNMENTS; JIM RITCHIE, DEPUTY EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR FOR PLANNING AND DEVELOPMENT, LOS ANGELES

WORLD AIRPORTS (LAWA)

Mr. WITHYCOMBE. Mr. Chairman, Members of Congress, I am

pleased to join you today in Corona and also to discuss with you

the aviation issues that I know are important to this region. Specifically, you’ve asked me to update you on the FAA’s airspace redesign efforts in Southern California and also the status of ongoing

efforts to reduce runway incursions at the Los Angeles International Airport. The FAA is well aware of the importance of
7

Southern California to the effectiveness of the overall national airspace system. We are working on these issues and several others

to preserve the safety and efficiency that is really critical to not

only the citizens of California, but the Nation as a whole.

The airspace over Southern California is highly complex. It includes high volume traffic in the north and also in the south; military airspace and eight busy airports located in close proximity to

one another. There are over 2 million operations a year in approximately 10,000 miles of airspace. Post September 11th, the total annual operations for the region remain lower than pre-September 11

operations, specifically with respect to the operations of Los Angeles International Airport.

In June 2004, the FAA published a report which is entitled ‘‘Capacity Needs in the National Airspace System: An Analysis of Airport and metropolitan Area Demand and Operational Capacity in

the Future.’’ It identified a need for additional capacity in Southern

California in the years 2013 to 2020. Because the airports in the

region are landlocked, the opportunity for capacity expansion lies

largely in the airspace redesign. Unlike other parts of the country

where the FAA has worked on airspace redesign because of existing

congestion problems which impact the National Airspace System,

this is not yet the case in Southern California. Therefore, we have

an opportunity to get out in front of the problem instead of waiting

for the situation to develop.

In order to prepare for the future, the FAA has identified four

program projects to support anticipated growth: Southern California redesign, central California redesign, by to basin redesign, and

high altitude redesign. For purposes of this hearing, I will focus on

the planning for Southern California redesign.

The Southern California redesign has three parts that will ulti- mately result in a $4 to $12 million annual savings due to reduced

delays and additional throughput. The first part of the project has

largely been completed. It optimizes the departure and arrival

flows into LAX. In September of 2004, FAA modified the LAX departure climb to permit a steady climb to more than 5,000 feet.

This change reduced the number of LAX departure transmissions

with air traffic control because it was a single direction to climb

steadily. It also removed an offshore conflict with north-south route

flown by most general aviation aircraft.

In February of this year, FAA announced that the LAX arrival

enhancement which became operations later that same month, just

this past February. The same procedure then applies should result

in arrivals being quieter, burning less fuel and producing less wear

and tear on the aircraft involved.

The second part of the redesign is the actual redesign of the airspace. The goal here is to take a ‘‘complete clean sheet’’ approach,

view of the airspace to determine how things should look if we

were starting from scratch. At the center of the redesign would be

traffic flow in the Los Angeles greater basin. This redesign project

is very ambitious and it will take several years to scope, design and

conduct the required environmental analysis and review before implementation can take place. As this Committee is well aware,

projects of this size and sensitivity must achieve industry and community consensus in order to be successfully implemented.
8

The final piece of the Southern California redesign project focuses on arrival enhancements into San Diego. Our ultimately goal

there is to conduct a more thorough analysis and redesign of this

complex airspace.

Turning now to runway incursions, I want to emphasize that reducing runway incursions is not just an FAA priority. We have

been working hard to reduce the most serious runway incursions

around the country. As outlined in the FAA Flight Plan for 2006

to 2010, the FAA is developing a range of initiatives from airport

design concepts to surface movement procedures. We have set performance targets and we are holding ourselves accountable for

meeting those targets.

To assist us in our analysis and review, we systematically categorized each runway incursion and in terms of severity. Severity

Categories A through D have been established, A being the more

critical. We considered factors such as speed and performance characteristics of the aircraft involved, the proximity of one aircraft to

another aircraft or to a vehicle, and the type and extent of any evasive action that was involved in the event.

Last year, Administrator Blakey from the FAA met with the City

of Los Angeles and discussed the chronic runway incursion problem

at Los Angeles International. In fiscal year 1998, there were 12

runway incursions at Los Angeles International. Since then, we

have made some progress. In fiscal year 2000, there were 10 runway incursions, 9 in 2003, and 8 last year. We see the trend improving, but there is still risk so we need to continue to reduce runway incursions at LAX as well as other airports around the country.

Roughly 80 percent of runway incursions at Los Angeles occur on

the south side of the airport. It is important to note that the current airfield layout was designed to accommodate aircraft that

were in service 40 years ago. The City completed Master Plan for

LAX identifies changes in the airfield layout to resolve this problem.

On May 20, 2005, FAA issued a Record of Decision for the City’s

Master Plan. The FAA issued grants to the city for approximately

$68.3 million for the relocation of the southern most runway and

the addition of a new parallel taxiway at LAX. This project is expected to significantly reduce runway incursions at LAX. The city

has an aggressive schedule for the project and should be commended for the vital safety initiative and encouraged to expedite

the project to the greatest degree possible.

Mr. Chairman, thank you for the opportunity to talk to you about

these issues. I am happy to answer your questions and submit our

formal statement.

Mr. MICA. Thank you, and without objection, your entire formal

statement will be made part of the record. We’ll withhold questions

until we’ve heard from all of the witnesses and the next witness

we’ll recognize is Will Kempton, Director of California Department

of Transportation.

Welcome, and you’re recognized, sir.

Mr. KEMPTON. Good morning, Mr. Chairman and Members of the

Subcommittee. I want to thank you for the opportunity to testify

today and also on behalf of Governor Schwarzenegger and Sec-
9

retary of Business Transportation and Housing, to welcome the

Subcommittee to California. I appreciate the Members of the Committee to take the time to travel to our State to learn more about

aviation issues. I also wanted to express our appreciation, literally,

on behalf of all transportation interests in California to the members of our delegation who worked so hard with us last summer

and into the fall in the passage of the Federal Transportation Reauthorizing Legislation. I think it’s a good sign that Mr. Calvert

and Mr. Campbell are here today in support of that litigation program.

And Mr. Chairman, thank you for taking time out of your schedule to be here and to listen to our interests and needs.

California has 254 public use airports and by the way, I’m going

to give just a brief overview of aviation in California and the specifics of some of the local issues that you wanted to address will be

covered, by Mr. Pisano and Mr. Ritchie. But in addition to our 254

public use airports which range from limited use landing strips to

international gateways such as Los Angeles International and San

Francisco International Airports, those airports are categorized as

commercial service and we also have general aviation airports, the

29 commercial service airports that are divided into large, medium,

small and non-hub airports or general aviation airports are divided

into metropolitan, regional, community or limited use type airports.

In terms of the program, California Department’s overall goal is

to assist in the development and preservation of a safe and environmentally compatible aviation system that meets the mobility

needs of the aviation community , air travelers and the public. The

Department responds to aviation issues through its Division of Aeronautics. Under State law, the Division’s primary roles are to encourage private flying and the general use of air transportation, to

establish essential regulations to enhance safety, capacity and the

capability of the State’s Air Transportation System, and to foster

the development of a stable and efficient regional air carrier system.

Additionally, the Division is responsible to assure that people residing near airports are protected to the greatest extent possible

against aircraft noise and to develop information and education

programs to increase the public’s understanding of current air

transportation issues.

In terms of our future aviation demands, California is a vibrant

and growing State. By 2030, the number of California residents is

expected to go from 37 million people today, to nearly 50 million

population which is an increase of almost one third. The State accounts for 15 percent of the nation’s gross domestic output and this

framework of growth and economic success is reflected in our aviation system which will play an increasingly important role to fulfill

its regional demands of the State’s population.

Air transportation, which increasingly relies upon small and medium-sized airports has to become more effective and efficient in

serving the mobility needs of our decentralizing population. Overall, future demands of passenger and air cargo service is expected

to increase significantly and you’ll hear all sorts of statistics today.

But in general, the State trend appears to be a doubling of pas-
10

senger growth and a tripling of air cargo over the next three decades.

The State has been working to accommodate this growth in a collaborative effort with regional and local and State agencies, along

with our Federal partners. California has converted several of its

closed Air Force Bases to cargo hubs providing needed capacity. An

example is the former George Air Force Base in San Bernardino

County which is now known as the Southern California Logistics

Airport. And I don’t know if the Subcommittee has had a chance

to visit that airport, but I would encourage, if at all possible, that

you do so.

Sacramento has also experienced success with its conversion of

Mather Air Force Base from military use to a metropolitan public

use network. Other airports are also looking at means to expand

capacity. Los Angeles World Airports have developed a plan to increase its capacity to reconfiguring its runway and through various

terminal improvements. The Los Angeles region has also examined

additional passenger service capacity in Palmdale and Ontario and

I think you will hear more about those initiatives from Mr. Ritchie

and Mr. Pisano.

There are other locations with limited capacity and some of those

locations face some serious limitations. I understand you’re going

to be in San Diego tomorrow for a meeting with the local airport

authority. You’re going to hear about some of those limitations as

they face the capacity constraints that exist at Lindberg field, looking for places, locations to expand. And that includes the need for

ground access and connectivity.

Regional planning agencies in the State have been hard pressed

to keep up with the necessary ground access to ensure the efficient

movement of goods and people. Airport capacity requirements and

the movement of people to less populated areas require the State

and region to coordinate ground transportation network improvements to ensure intermodal system connectivity.

Surface transportation system congestion adjacent to airports

causes delay for passengers and goods and that negatively impacts

the State and national economy. The Governor recently proposed a

strategic growth plan which calls for a $107 billion investment in

transportation infrastructure over the next 10 years with a goal of

reducing congesting in that 10-year time frame to levels below

what is occurring today. That congestion reduction is going to be

vital for the State’s economy to continue growth. It’s certainly going

to be vital to ensure that we have the capacity and the

interconnectivity of our airport system.

The infrastructure bond package that was previously, just recently before our State legislation was not approved for the June

ballot, but there is a proposal still under consideration and we are

hopeful that it will be placed on the November ballot.

California general aviation airports are stressed to meet the existing demand and also to provide security upgrades for the users

of the system. There’s a strong focus on increased security, obviously, in this post–9/11 environment. The result, however, is that

security improvements are now competing with capacity improvement and small airport capital programs and funding is not keeping up with demand.
11

In addition, encroachment by incompatible land uses approved at

the local level have forced several smaller airports to close at a

time when the increasing amount of corporate aircraft is driving up

the demand for the services and conveniences that are provided by

general aviation fields. In fact, encroachment due to incompatible

land use is the greatest threat to increasing capacity and capability

and preserving the viable aviation system for future generations.

The goals for the California aviation system are to improve the

safety and effectiveness of California’s general aviation transportation system. The Department has worked closely with its aviation

stakeholders to develop a system plan for this purpose. The plan

is guided by the following goals that address the challenge to the

continued viability of the State’s aviation system.

These goals are to continuously improve operational safety at airports for users, workers and nearby residents and businesses; to

maintain and expand general aviation airport capabilities and system capacity; to improve delivery of State aviation products and

services; to product compatible land uses around each public use

airport and to preserve previous aviation system investments.

In conclusion, it is imperative that California airports continue

to receive Federal support to fully fund the Federal Aviation Administration’s Airport Improvement Program. This is a main source

of funding for major airport infrastructure improvements. The

State also needs more flexibility and Federal funding to provide for

ground access improvements to the airports. We also need funding

support for system planning so that our State-wide system operates

more efficiently.

We need to—another program that’s important to the State is

the Small Community Air Service Development Program and last

year a partnership of 14 small airports from Arcata to Imperial

Counties are using this program to work together to improve air

service.

It is an effective tool for stimulating air service in rural areas

that are beginning to see the impacts of population growth. As our

population shifts from the urban areas to those rural areas, and

you see the increased need for air service to those more rural regions.

As passenger and air cargo volumes grow and decentralize, airports are challenged to expand to accommodate the demand of California’s aviation system. While aviation planning has taken place

on the state and regional levels, many local airports face challenges

just to maintain their facilities. The inevitable need for increased

airport capacity due to growth in air travel is an issue that affects

policy makers, planners and airport administrators throughout

California. The Department will continue its work with our aviation partners and looks forward to continued Federal support and

presence to help address the needs of the Air Transportation System in California.

I do again want to express my appreciation for the opportunity

to make these brief remarks. I would like to now have my testimony entered into the record and I have some additional information here in terms of our California aviation system plan, that I

would like to also submit to the Subcommittee.
12

Mr. MICA. Thank you for your testimony and also without objection your entire statement will be made part of the record and we

will also refer in the record to the documents presented to the Subcommittee after your testimony.

Again, we’ll withhold questions until we’ve heard from our witnesses.

Our next witness is the Executive Director of the Southern California Association of Governments, SCAG, and that’s Mr. Mark

Pisano.

Welcome, and you’re recognized, sir.

Mr. PISANO. Thank you, Chairman Mica, first of all conducting

this field hearing on an issue of absolute critical importance to the

country, namely how does our aviation system enable this country

to participate in increasingly global economy in a global world and

it’s aviation, the major mode that we focus on in this century because of that fact.

Let me also thank the Representatives from Southern California.

I want to echo Will Kempton’s comment on thanking you for your

support and participating in the reauthorization and also for your

upcoming involvement in the reauthorization of the Aviation Trust

Fund.

Let me begin by noting that the region that you’re in, the region

that we plan for, if it were a separate economy, if we were country,

we would be the tenth largest economy in the world. Let me also

note that we’re one of 10 large regions that are experiencing explosive growth in the United States. It is forecasted that almost twothirds of the population and employment growth in this country

over the next 40 to 45 years will occur in 10 large regions that comprise approximately one third of the land area of the United States.

The rest of our country will either experience declines in population

and employment or a flattening of population and employment.

And these 10 regions are regions that have global ports and airports and teleports.

Let me also note that this region has the largest import/export

percentage of any region in the country, the second largest region,

New York, we have a 22 percent greater amount of import/exports

in this region.

And finally, the value of the exports that leave our airports is

greater than the value of goods that leave our ports. The airports

really do form the basis and support of the economy of Southern

California.

We have six—currently we have six established regional airports.

They are John Wayne, Long Beach, LAX, Burbank, Ontario and

Palm Springs. Four of those airports that are in the urban area,

namely John Wayne, Long Beach, LAX and Ontario, if you look at

the footprint of those airports you will find that they comprise

about 5,500 acres, which is substantially less than the 34,000 acres

that surround the Denver airport and the 7,700 acres that are in

the Chicago airport. The majority of our airports in the urban area

are highly constrained and impacted and as a result there has been

a regional policy of encouraging and using the outlying airports,

four of which are in the process of developing.
13

As Representative Campbell noted, we have 45 general aviation

airports and general aviation has been an important part of the

culture, history and future of Southern California.

Currently, the population of the region is about 18.2 million people, forecast to go by the year 2030 to 23.9 million people. Even

though the growth rate is not the highest, we’re one of the largest

growing regions, as I pointed out earlier in the United States.

In terms of air passenger, the forecasts have already been cited.

Going from 90 million annual passengers to 170 and 8.7 million

tons of freight.

The dilemma that we have face within the region is best shown

in this next slide. The majority of the people who will grow in the

future are located in the western part of our region for several factors. One, disposal income; secondly, the economic base of the western part of our region, mainly, trade, tourism, entertainment, business services and high tech are generally the industries in which

the employees travel. Now as I pointed out, the future is that we

will be relying increasingly on airports to the east and to the north

within our region. And that creates some unique problems, as well

as some opportunities for this region.

The strategy that the region adopted, we adopted this in our

2001 transportation plan and it was reinforced again in our 2004

transportation plan and before you is a one page summary of the

content of that plan is to use the outlying airports. Now the basic

concept behind the plan that we adopted is the outlying airports

have existing runways and existing terminals. And this may sound

odd, but for a modest investment of about $6.3 billion, we can

have—we have calculated and we have in this calculation the partnership of all these airports, we can add 80 million annual passengers of capacity with that amount of investment on the outside

facilities.

The dilemma, however, is how do we provide access to where the

people who really do fly the most, how do they get to those particular airports? By the year 2030, the demand in the region will still

be—the Los Angeles County will comprise 61 percent of the passenger demand and Orange County 22, with Riverside, 6; San

Bernardino at 9 percent and Ventura, 3 percent. The basic strategy

that we’ve adopted is to use the outlying airports, mainly Ontario

and Palmdale to take the majority of the demand off of LAX and

to rely on a ground access system to those airport, both short and

long term.

In the short term, we’re planning to take the highly successful

program of flyway systems that LAX demonstrated and Jim Ritchie

will talk more about the success of that flyway program to bring

passengers not only to LAX, but also to bring them to Ontario and

Palmdale. How? Basically, relying on the HOV system. In the short

term, the regional plan would suggest that we have flyway programs that would use an HOV system that we currently are completing out to Ontario as well as to Palmdale. We still have some

investments and gaps that we have to construct a union station

and we have a gap that we haven’t yet finished that would bring

passengers into the Palmdale airport. But between now and the

year 2015, 2020, the basic concept would be to use the flyway system using the HOV systems.
14

And in the next map I will show how we plan to complement

that system to the rest of the region, primarily to Orange County

and also to complete the system in San Bernardino.

In addition to the short term, we’re suggesting that the metro

line system that parallels the line going to Ontario be used to access Ontario and that the light rail systems be completed going

into LAX and also to Burbank.

In the longer term, what we’re proposing is a higher speed system be constructed that would access the airports of Ontario and

Palmdale and I would like to speak to the reasons for the reliance

on a higher speed system. If we rely simply on the HOV and bypass lanes to the flyways to the Ontario and Palmdale airports, because of the time required to get to the airport, we are forecasted

by the year 2020 that we will be able to increase Ontario to about

18 million annual passengers, and not reach capacity and furthermore that Palmdale would go from zero to 3 million annual passengers by the year 2018, 2020, with an HOV system.

If we were to develop high speed system and we are developing,

modeling the analysis, we’ve done preliminary feasibility studies on

these various lines, we are forecasting that Ontario would, in fact,

rise to a 30 million annual passenger which would be at its capacity and furthermore, we would anticipate that San Bernardino

International, which is located in the City of San Bernardino could

also increase to a 10 million annual passenger airport. And the

Palmdale Airport could reach between 15 and 17 million annual

passengers if it had high speed access.

The challenge on the high speed access is in fact how do we finance it? The region is proposing that we finance the system based

on a business model, that is if the various component price of the

system is used, that system would in fact pay for it. In the feasibility studies that we have conducted, and the business plan that we

are now just finalizing point out such a financing strategy. The

basic uses of the system would be 60 percent of the passengers

would be computer. Another 10 percent would be special event utilization. Goods movement would be 20 percent and finally the passengers at airports would be anywhere from 10 to 15 percent.

The challenge is how does the aviation system participating in

such a system, both the expansion of the airports, as well as the

crowd access system. In that respect, we make five recommendations to the Committee for you to consider as you go through the

reauthorization of the Aviation Trust Fund to help the region and

we believe the model that you see here could be employed in the

other large regions within this country.

The first is the Aviation Trust Fund be funded at an adequate

level to carry out the role that aviation is going to be needed to

play in the century we’re now entering, that we have to recognize

and we have to fund to the level of importance that the aviation

sector will play in the future.

The second is that we move to a performance-based system on

how we make decisions and how we operate airports within our

country and basically translating that into our region, if we’re able

to add the amount of capacity that we can within the outlying

areas for the levels of investment, we believe it’s extremely cost effective to use a full regional system as opposed to putting more and
15

more passengers in an impacted urban area that if we found and

that the plans at our various airports have developed to be very expensive and not cost effective.

The next feature would be that we allow the Aviation Trust Fund

to participate in the ground access systems up to the proportional

use of those systems, where there is an absolute nexus between the

ground transportation investment and the expansion of that airport

and when you put the two cost streams together, we’re absolutely

convinced in our region that it would be a cost effective system.

The next provision is that, in fact, as we look at the NPIAS system, the Federal system that we look at regional components of

that system and not on an airport by airport basis, that in large

systems and in the other nine regions and I’ve worked with my colleagues in those regions, they have very large numbers of airports

that could comparably be used to a type of system that we’re looking in Southern California.

The last provision is that funding for aviation and landing fees

for aviation be based not just on the weight of aircraft, but also on

the air quality and on the noise impacts that they have on communities. We feel that such a financing system would one, help us to

distribute demand within our region and further more we felt this

to meet some of the air quality requirements that the aviation system is confronted.

And I would just note in our region that the new standards being

proposed in the air quality, in our air quality plan by our Federal

EPA of 2.5, that that small particulate standard is directly related

to the nitrogen and oxides that do come from aircraft, so the ability

to finance based upon impacts, we believe, will distribute demand.

Let me conclude by noting that partnerships in conducting an

aviation system is absolutely essential. First of all, let me just note,

part of our large regional assessment is San Diego County. We currently handle about 20 percent of their passenger needs and twothirds of all their goods movement are handled out of regions, out

of airports within our region. Developing stronger relationship and

working partnerships with San Diego is important.

The next partnership is the airports within our region. We’ve invested in a management study. A copy of that management study

is in this one-page summary in your package. The basic recommendation of that study is that a regional airport system acts

as a consortium and then developing Memorandum of Understanding and agreements with other airports so that we can develop the

kind of regional system that we’re talking about today.

Another component is we currently are doing what is called a

local reading study as part of the high definition study so that we

can look at how airports operate within our region so that the way

the airports operate is compatible with airspace utilization, ground

access utilization and the operation of the airports themselves.

Looking at aviation as a system linked to growth, economic development, ground access, air quality and airspace that we can solve

that we’re confronted and with the recommendations that we’ve

cited today, we believe that it can be incorporated into the Federal

structure it will help us to accomplish our objectives.
16

Let me conclude by stating that I have a larger summary of my

testimony as well as the slide show and I ask that that be incorporated into the record. Thank you.

Mr. MICA. Without objection, we will include your entire statement and the slides and other information provided and we have

one additional witness, Mr. Jim Ritchie, who is the Deputy Executive Director for Planning and Development with Los Angeles

World Airports.

Welcome, and you’re recognized, sir.

Mr. RITCHIE. Good morning, Mr. Chairman and Members of Congress, thank you for the opportunity to be here today. I’m here on

behalf of my Executive Director, Lydia Kennard, who unfortunately

couldn’t and she has her Board of Airport Commissioners meeting

today to address.

Nonetheless, I would like to provide a summary of a more

lengthy testimony that I have provided to you earlier.

In the Los Angeles area, there is a consensus that a regional solution to air service demand is required, but as of yet there has

been no effective, coordinated plan put forth to implement such a

strategy. Los Angeles World Airports, a department of the City of

Los Angeles, which owns and operates four airports, LAX, Ontario

International, Palmdale Regional and Van Nuys General Aviation

Airport, has been actively addressing the forecast that we’re well

familiar with on regional demand through a variety of planning

and modernization initiatives.

I’d like to go over a few of those with you, if I may. In the recently approved Master Plan, LAX will be designed to accommodate an additional 17 million passengers over today’s figure of 61

million annual passenger. Congressman Campbell, you are correct,

an all time high in the year 2000 was 67 annual passengers and

our return from that level of activity has been slow. It’s been not

as fast as we would have anticipated. Domestic is moving a little

slower than international growth, by about 5 percent.

We certainly understand the finite limits to growth at LAX and

we will encourage the remaining regional airports to absorb the

other 60 plus million annual passengers over the next 20 years.

Realizing that LAX is currently handling a disproportionate

share of the aviation demand, Los Angeles World Airports is doing

all we can to plan for and encourage growth at our other airports.

Our first step and you saw part of it yesterday is the regional focus

on Ontario International Airport, really our crown jewel in the inland empire. With its state-of-the-art facilities that opened in 1998.

Ontario International Airport currently has excess capacity and

support for additional growth. In 2005, Ontario International Airport set a record exceeding 7 million annual passengers which was

a 4 percent increase from last year. And this year represents 8 percent of the regional market.

Other significant statistics for Ontario include an average of 108

daily passenger flights, more than 12,000 passengers monthly traveling to and from Mexico and Ontario International Airport is comparable to other international airports the size of San Antonio and

Austin.

Ontario International Airport is the fifteenth busiest cargo airport in North America with more cargo traffic than Philadelphia
17

and nearly as much as San Francisco. Our goal is to contribute to

the region’s demand by growing this airport to a goal of 30 million

annual passengers from 7 million annual passengers today.

Palmdale Regional Airport, our third commercial airport, is located on an attractive 17,000 acre parcel in the Antelope Valley

that presents unique challenges to the distance and accessibility to

that airport. Today, there is no commercial service despite the recent Scenic Airlines efforts to Las Vegas that ended in January of

this year. Regardless, we remain active in seeking air service providers and have development plans that will accommodate growth

from 2 to 12 million annual passengers a year.

Van Nuys Airport, meanwhile, continues to support a large volume of general aviation traffic which otherwise would flow into a

number of commercial airports to include Bob Hope Airport in Burbank, Ontario and of course, LAX. The Van Nuys Master Plan was

recently approved by the Los Angeles City Council in September of

last year. The intent for Van Nuys is to become a more communitysensitive aviation facility, while at the same time serving as a reliever facility for general aviation in the Southern California region.

A key component of our recent lawsuit settlement agreement at

LAX was the reinforcement of our commitment to regionalism.

Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa stressed this regional emphasis and

the Los Angeles City Council gave final approval to the settlement

agreement in early 2006 following approval by the city councils of

Culver City, El Segundo, Inglewood, the County of Los Angeles and

the Alliance for a Regional Solution to Airport Congestion.

Nonetheless, considering the jurisdictional limitations of Los Angeles World Airports, we welcome the opportunity to take a leadership role with other airports, agencies and communities to provide

a balanced aviation demand within our region.

Thank you very much and I await your questions.

Mr. MICA. Thank you and I thank all of our four witnesses for

their testimony today and what we can do is just get right to some

questions and I have a few for our witnesses and I’ll see if the

other members have questions that follow.

Mr. Withycombe, you stated that we have redesign of airspace in

Southern California underway. It’s my understanding that that redesign, the two redesign projects are both behind schedule. Do you

have any information on what has caused the delay or a new time

table?

Mr. WITHYCOMBE. Yes sir. We are obviously looking at the issues

of continued airspace redesign and that is still an FAA priority.

However, I understand that the air traffic organization that is the

parent organization that handles airspace redesign has temporarily

halted the activity that was due to, as I understand, budget constraint.

The schedule for that is not currently available. From what I understand it is still a priority which the FAA is not going to defer

for a lengthy period of time, but it is under consideration right now

to hold that project until budget funds are available.

Mr. MICA. Could you give us some idea what it would take in

funds to complete that work?

Mr. WITHYCOMBE. I do not have those numbers available.
18

Mr. MICA. Could you supply them as far as your guesstimate to

the Subcommittee?

Mr. WITHYCOMBE. Yes, we can.

Mr. MICA. We appreciate that. You testified that some $68 million was made available to LAX. We’ve had—well, first of all, you

have to deal with trying to have airspace and safety issues resolved

and planned for for the future. But in the meantime, even with a

reduce number of passengers, what are we on flights, as far as

backed up flights, Mr. Ritchie at LAX? You testified that passengers are still down, I guess it was 67 was your max.

Mr. RITCHIE. Correct.

Mr. MICA. What about flight movements?

Mr. RITCHIE. From 2200 operations with the goal of 2250 being

our maximum, but we’re currently running in the 1800——

Mr. MICA. So you have actually fewer flights than you had before

including passengers. Passengers, we know are less flights, so the

number of incursions that we’ve had may not be down too much.

I think you testified Mr. Withycombe about 12, I heard, and then

down to 8. Is that correct?

Mr. WITHYCOMBE. Yes sir.

Mr. MICA. OK.

Mr. WITHYCOMBE. That was eight last year. Currently, at this

particular point in time we have reported two.

Mr. MICA. Well, of course, incursions get people’s attention.

We’ve certainly had that attention in the last few months. I know

we had one close call recently. We have not had a major aviation

crash, passenger airline crash or incident where lives have been

lost on the ground for almost four years now. But my concern is

that we’re meeting also the current needs. You said that $68 millions in a grant was given to LAX, 80 percent of the problems we’ve experienced have been in the south side.

Mr. Ritchie, what’s the status of improvements to deal with sort

of our most prone area for incursions?

Mr. RITCHIE. Mr. Chairman, that is the South Runway Improvement Program. That’s a project that is underway thanks to the

support of FAA. We’re mobilizing a construction team. We expect

to shut down the south runway in July as we commence construction incidental to movement south.

Mr. MICA. So that’s underway. When would that be complete?

Mr. RITCHIE. It will start in July and be closed nine months,

under two years.

Mr. MICA. OK. That will also limit some of the air movements,

is that correct?

Mr. RITCHIE. Yes sir.

Mr. MICA. But under a bit of a crunch. OK, and the $68 million,

the Federal $68 million and whatever else is involved does cover

the expense for that safety improvement?

Mr. RITCHIE. Yes sir. It’s a contribution. The total project is

around $280 million.

Mr. MICA. All right. I’m not sure if I understand some of the

numbers. The testimony we had from the SCAG said we’re going

to double our passenger demand and passengers to 170 million in

2030. It sounds like we’re at 61 at LAX with the possibility of going

to 78. Is that correct, Mr. Ritchie?
19

Mr. RITCHIE. Yes.

Mr. MICA. OK. John Wayne was 9.3 and they have a cap of 11

something. I think that’s—Mr. Pisano, is that approximately correct? And they’re filling up quickly.

Mr. PISANO. That is correct.

Mr. MICA. And then Long Beach is like trying to get 10 pounds

of potatoes into an 8 pound sack. I’ve been there and I’ve seen that.

They have a maximum n umber of flights and we’re pretty much

maxed out on that, aren’t we, Mr. Pisano?

Mr. PISANO. Yes, we are.

Mr. MICA. And Burbank did not see people with open arms begging me and Mr. Campbell to bring more flights in there yesterday.

But they even have limited capacity, so even if we take the numbers from Ontario and we’re at 7 and you’ve got a potential of 23

and we packed a few more people in Palmdale and others, my numbers don’t add up, Mr. Pisano, to the 170 million or doubling the

passenger count, not to mention tripling the cargo.

Mr. PISANO. Mr. Chairman, there are a number of other airports

in the regional system; San Bernardino International, previously

Norton Air Force Base needs to be added to that system.

Mr. MICA. Do you have—I don’t see a plan here with the numbers that we’re going to put it, that would fill out this regional

aviation plan. Is that available?

Mr. PISANO. Yes, it is. It’s a table in the regional transportation

plan that must be forecast which are the policies of the region for

all the airports.

Mr. MICA. And does that match us to the——

Mr. PISANO. It matches to the 170.

Mr. MICA. And cargo?

Mr. PISANO. Southern California Logistics Airport long term

would be able to also support passenger service. And then Palm

Springs Airport, we believe, can go to higher than the current utilization at that particular airport. When you add them all together,

we have the capacity for 170 million passengers and I would also

note that we’re working with Imperial County. There’s an airport

in Imperial County that can be developed with ground access. Imperial County could be an important component of both our region,

as well as the San Diego region.

Mr. MICA. One of the keys to your plan was having adequate

transportation to and from some of these outlying new capacity airports. What kind of dollar figure are we looking for those kinds of

improvements?

Mr. PISANO. The mid-term strategies of flyways with HOVs, the

HOV system we currently have programmed most of those improvements within the region. There are some gaps, particularly

the downtown LA gap. In terms of the HOV system that comes up

from the Harbor Freeway into downtown, that HOV system would

need to be connected to the northern HOV system and that would

be an expected gap to fill.

Mr. MICA. Now is most of that reliant, Mr. Kempton, on the $107

billion, at least in the near term, improvement package?

Mr. KEMPTON. Mr. Chairman, the $107 billion for the next 10

years included $22 billion for completion of the system’s statewide;

round numbers, if you took 60 percent of that for the Southern
20

California area would give you some indication of what kind of investment would be necessary in this region to complete that system

and we would agree with Mr. Pisano’s assessment of the short-term

solution in terms of providing for that type of connectivity. The

HOV system would be a good base——

Mr. MICA. So that’s only really a fraction of what it’s going to

take to get the infrastructure to support these new capacity locations, is that correct?

Mr. PISANO. When you throw in rail and particularly the high

speed connections in the future, there will be substantial additional

amount of investment required.

Mr. KEMPTON. Mr. Chairman, we have asked that the high speed

investment that we would need in the region would be $18 billion

and we look at a proportionate use system on aviation, somewhere

between 10 and 15 percent of that particular investment would enable us to flesh the system out. That does not include and I did not

show a slide that the rest of the regional system, particularly that

connecting the Orange County area with—through Corona to Ontario. I can display that slide, if you wish, but it does not include

the investment for that line. The reason it does not include the investment is we have not yet done a feasibility study in both a financial as well as a business plan for that particular line. That

work is underway right now and will be completed in time for our

transportation plan update which will be next year.

Mr. MICA. I think the key to the plan that has been proposed to

decentralize and disperse some of the future aviation solution is to

access conveniently some of these outlying airports.

We’re not only busted in the Aviation Trust Fund, we’re also

broke in the Highway Transportation Fund at the Federal level.

And one of the things that we’ve done—well, two policies we have

working against us is that we, first of all, we base our highway,

Federal gas tax on 18.4 cents a gallon on a gallon basis. Cars are

required to go further every day. I think the fleet gets a little bit

more efficient. They do go further, even though some of the standards haven’t been dramatically increased. And I guess $4 out of

every $5 is now used after we put $1 in for construction, we need

$4 to maintain the roads. That’s a strain when they’re going further and paying.

Also, with energy policy at the Federal level and particularly

here in California, they require use of more alternative fuels for

which we have a lower tax rate. So our fund is down. Same thing

is, well, a similar situation with the AIP Fund. Most of that comes

in from a passenger ticket tax and we have actually reduced the

average cost per ticket with the evolution now to more discount

and low cost carriers. Both of those funds are depleted. You recommended partnership, some changes in financing.

What’s your plan or do you have anything specific as to how we

raise more dollars if you want to, again, more Federal dollars available. We have to have some way to raise them.

Mr. Pisano?

Mr. PISANO. Mr. Chairman, you have posed the most serious

problem facing the transportation community, namely, the finance

structure and the plan that we have put forward in this region,

and let me just note the capital investment plan, the total for this
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movement for airport access, for completing our highway HOV system and to install the transit systems that we need in our region

is $96 billion. Our current flow of funds from gas taxes, State and

Federal, and let me note the most important funding source in this

region are local sales taxes, a portion of which are dedicated to

fund transportation. Currently 70 percent of all of our transportation expenditures comes from local sales tax, certain self-help

taxes within our region, but that system is now beginning to bump

up its financial limit. Therefore, the $96 billion we anticipate, the $30 billion will come

from sales taxes. These are real constant dollars, not future dollars.

$32 billion will come from sales taxes from our self-help, as well

as from gas taxes, State and Federal. And the remaining monies,

namely $64 billion will come from, we’re suggesting be the future

foundation of transportation funding, namely revenue taxes that

can be supported by users.

Let me state why we feel that that funding system is possible in

the future. One, technology has allowed us transponders and information systems to be able to have segmented funding streams that

can be associated with individual projects. Secondly, this region

demonstrated in the last 20 years that the Alameda corridor being

our first project and then a number of corridor projects in Orange

County in Congressman Campbell’s order, that this funding strategy can and does work. And therefore, we’re proposing that in the

future that revenue tax systems be the basis for the majority of our

investments.

In that respect, we thank Congress for the tools such as TIFICA,

Transportation Infrastructure Financing Investment Act. We think

that that instrument needs to be expanded and further developed.

We urge the State to include design/build and private/public

partnerships in State legislation, be it the bond legislation that’s

under consideration or in the future so that we have the instruments to enable us to fund these investments.

And let me conclude by noting the majority of our investments

being made at airports is done through this form of procurement

and partnership. And the airport system, at least in our region, has

demonstrated that that funding approach is feasible.

If we can, in fact, create those types of partnerships in the future, and those revenue streams, Mr. Chairman, we can keep up

with the—we can deal with the demands in our region, particularly

in aviation access and this movement in distribution in and access

to airports.

Mr. MICA. I thank you for your response. Let me yield first to

our colleague, Mr. Campbell and then we’ll go to Mr. Calvert.

Mr. Campbell.

Mr. CAMPBELL. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. A couple

of questions for whoever frankly wants to answer them. First is,

the first series of questions relative to understanding the growth

a little better. We talked about LAX count being down slightly

since 9/11. What has happened to the passenger count for the total

region, for all six airports in that nearly five-year period? Does anybody have that?

I thought someone said it was down as well. Did you say that,

Mr. Withycombe?
22

Mr. WITHYCOMBE. Yes sir, I did. The count, obviously, went from

a high of around 68 million annual passengers down to what it is

today, about 61.

Mr. CAMPBELL. That’s LAX?

Mr. WITHYCOMBE. That’s LAX.

Mr. CAMPBELL. I’m talking about all six regional airports addressed together. Mr. Pisano?

Mr. PISANO. The actual utilization at our other airports is down.

Ontario has increased by more than a million annual passengers.

Burbank, Long Beach, John Wayne, have all experienced increases

and we’re just about—we feel that the year we’re now in, we will

be at the level that we were prior to 9/11 when we had all the increases at the outlying airports and make the adjustments at LAX.

I think the report that I received is that this year, 2006, will get

our—the same level we were previously.

One of the primary reasons is there’s been more attrition, given

the security issues. You go to some of the outlying regionalized airports and then secondly our international, as Jim Ritchie pointed

out, our international utilization, both for passengers and particularly for goods is up.

Mr. CAMPBELL. I guess my question and we obviously want to be

prepared, we don’t want to miss this on the low side, but during

that five-year period from 2001 to 2006, the region has experienced

population growth, considerable economic growth, growth in just

about every factor. So if in a period of population and economic

growth we’ve seen zero growth in passenger air travel, why are we

expecting a doubling? What do we think is going to change that’s

going to, from what’s happened in the last five years, is going to

happen in the next 15 that’s going to greatly accelerate passenger

air travel growth relative to population and economic growth?

Mr. PISANO. Let me begin and I’ll ask my colleagues to add to

the explanation and that is in the last several years we’ve had an

adjustment to a security system that added inconvenience, that

cost other difficulties to the passenger and we now have implemented a system of security that is more efficient. It’s not necessarily at the pre–9/11 level of efficiency of getting through airports, but our traveling public has now become let’s say are more

used to it and have adapted to the system. We went through an

adjustment.

The second is that the level of population growth in the time period that you talked about is fairly substantial. We added more

than a million people to this region in a five-year time period. We

had a decline in employment for a number of years, but we have

also added employment in the time periods, so you’re correct, that

we have had an economic upturn.

We believe, as a region, that the most significant factor will be

the increasing role that this region plays in the global marketplace,

but for people and goods and that’s only going to increase in the

future and in fact, will increase probably at an ever-increasing

rate.

If you add that factor to the traveling behavior of the American

public and the decline—the FAA recently came forth with a national forecast that I believe had our region in the year 2030 at
23

about 168 million annual passengers. The demand forecast that we

did was several years old and we had our demand at 170.

The FAA forecast and our forecasts, both for people and for

goods, is on target. Let me just conclude in the area of which we’ve

had increases over and above what we had forecasted previously,

so the goods movement side of the equation has actually exceeded

our forecast, Congressman.

Mr. CAMPBELL. OK, in terms of the growth that we’re planning,

we talked about—you showed a slide, Mr. Pisano, about per capita,

but and again this is sort of anecdotal, but population growth within the region is, the actual population growth over the next 20 to

30 years pretty much can’t happen in Orange County because it’s

pretty much built out or in let’s call it the current urbanized section of Los Angeles County. And isn’t that population growth pretty

much all going to occur in Riverside, San Bernardino, Ventura and

the inland portions of L.A. County such as Santa Clara and Lope

Valley, etcetera. Isn’t that where most of the population growth

and therefore most of the travel, the air travel growth would come

in the next——

Mr. PISANO. If we look at the growth percentages within the region we find that L.A. County, the amount of growth in L.A. County, interestingly enough, its numbers, its percentage is declining

and it’s almost equivalent to the growth that will occur in Riverside

and San Bernardino and that Riverside and San Bernardino, without question, is the fastest growth area of the 6.3 million people,

we’re forecasting jointly with our members, about 3 million of that

will occur in the Riverside, San Bernardino and Imperial, mainly

Riverside and San Bernardino, but that there will be growth in Orange County and LA County and smaller amounts of growth in

Ventura that will be about the equivalent to the growth in the entire counties.

And the issue that—and the reason why I put on the forecast

and that is based upon surveys that we have been conducting and

we do conduct periodically on who travels, for what reason. And

what we’re finding is that the propensity to fly is still in the western part of our region, that the economy base that is in the inland

empire does not travel as often, primarily given the nature of the

industry mix. As you noted, the industries I ticked off, tourism, entertainment, professional services and higher tech multimedia industries by the power tech firms, that industry base has not yet

moved to the inland empire. We believe over time that it will and

it’s beginning to move, but the propensity to fly figure is the key

variable, so you can get your hands around, your arms around in

terms of understanding how do we provide for aviation in a regional system.

Mr. CAMPBELL. OK and the last question in this area for Mr.

Ritchie. Of the 65 million, whatever it is now, MAP at LAX, how

much of that is international?

Mr. RITCHIE. Good question. We currently service about 30 percent of that total as international. One of the key goals to the region demand and the dispersing of that demand is, as I indicated

earlier, we have seen international growth and we want to capture

that. We don’t want to let that go, while at the same time the encouraging of the domestic flying seen pushing out to some of the
24

airlines or other airports is very desirable, so our long-term goal

would be 30 percent, 60 percent in international travel, as our sister airports have more of the domestic load.

Mr. CAMPBELL. So do you see any of the other regional airports

really as absorbing any of the—the only one that even has a terminal now is Ontario, is that correct, of the six that we’ve discussed?

I think, so did you see that going, much of that going to Ontario

or anything or is all the international growth in LAX?

Mr. RITCHIE. Well, the passenger rate will be there and we certainly want to capture as much as we can in Ontario, but Long

Beach, John Wayne, while our domestic has been relatively flat,

we’re very confident it will return to 35 percent growth rate. So

there’s been a remarkable growth at Long Beach, John Wayne and

Burbank.

Mr. CAMPBELL. Oh right. I understand. I’m just saying if we’re

to take 15 years from now, a snapshot, and say where is the international travel flights going out of, almost all of it at LAX and then

maybe perhaps some at Ontario and that’s it, right? There’s no

place else we can put that, is there?

Mr. RITCHIE. I guess our long term goal would be to grow and

develop Palmdale, but——

Mr. CAMPBELL. Palmdale, of course.

Mr. RITCHIE. That’s some ways off to the accessibility to that.

But by and large, Ontario is we encourage the push to the maximum extent.

Mr. RITCHIE. I didn’t hear anyone talk at all today anything

about March. Is there discussion about March Air Force Base?

Mr. PISANO. Let me just say in our forecast that March primarily

is an air cargo facility that we’ve forecasted its use, that longer

term there could be possibilities of 1 to 2 million annual passengers

and that really depends upon the dynamics between San

Bernardino International and March Air Force and policies that

Congressman Calvert talked about with respect to military usage.

I think that the region is primarily going to be in San Bernardino

International and then out to Palm Springs.

There is the possibility and we haven’t—we have noted in smaller utilization possibly at March, but not reliance on it.

Mr. CAMPBELL. Thank you. Last question I have is for Director

Kempton. Relative to the Governor’s bond proposal, I think you

talked about the Governor’s bond proposal and it being less than,

only 100 days since I was in the State Legislature. I’ve been trying

to follow this from afar. But in the proposal that didn’t make it or

in the agreement that didn’t make it onto the June ballot, I was

trying to look through that to see how much of that had anything

to do with what we’re talking about here today which would be

aviation infrastructure or the infrastructure to transport people to

aviation infrastructure here in Southern California.

What’s in there? Where the discussions are, what are we looking

at there?

Mr. KEMPTON. Well, in the final package, if you want to call it

that that was before the Legislature and the closing hours of the

discussion, there was a package of about $19 billion that was dedicated for transportation and housing. About $17.5 billion or so of

that was for straight transportation. And again, the biggest com-
25

plement of those dollars that would benefit the aviation program

and goods movement would have been in the access to ports and

airports and the connectivity between the two.

In the Governor’s bond proposal, as an example, we had included

some substantial dollar amounts for access to the ports of Long

Beach, but also we included a pretty significant chunk of money

for—proposed for access across the high desert on State Route 58,

a fairly substantial sum of money going in there to provide for that

connectivity that Mr. Pisano, Mr. Ritchie and me agree is essential

to the viability of our airport operations.

No dollars directly related to airport expansion within the internal operations of the airports. And the other component that I

would mention is the public/private partnership effort that was

touched on by Mr. Pisano, but that was a critical element of attracting private investment to California’s transportation system,

not just in our ports, not just on our roadways, but also looking to

attract private investment for airport operations as well into—gaining that authority to enter into public/private partnerships, bringing those private dollars that would augment the public money to

the extent to upgrade our transportation infrastructure.

Unfortunately, that component of the program was not included

in the final version and Mr. Pisano and I were having a brief discussion at the start of it, before the start of the Committee hearing

to reassure ourselves that we want to see that reform included in

this overall package. Design/build will help us get projects done

more quickly, but the public/private partnership aspects of the Governor’s overall proposal are absolutely essential to the future of

California’s infrastructure in my view.

Mr. PISANO. Could I add to that response, Congressman Campbell, and that the Federal leadership that could be established

through policies and instruments that incentivise states to develop

the type of funding that Mr. Kempton and I are talking about, I

believe is absolutely critical.

We need to go through a transition on how we fund our transportation system. The needs are so great that we need new financial

instruments in the Federal Government and in the Federal reauthorization, you had private activity bonds that tipped the eligibility. And we suggested a number of other provisions being included in the Federal—both through authorization and in the tax

bills that are under deliberation in Congress. If those provisions

are in Federal statute, it helps us make additional arguments to

include those policies at the state level.

So I just want to note that in terms of the region’s perspective,

I note that two-thirds of our investment would come from those

sources of investments, namely bringing private capital to the

table. Without it, we’re not even going to address the issues within

our region. I think the equivalencies of what we would need to

raise the gas tax to make up for that private investment, it would

be greater than 45 cents per gallon.

Mr. CAMPBELL. Right, thank you. And I just, because I was—Director Kempton and Mr. Pisano, as I looked at that bottom thing

as it was coming out, it seemed like the place where we have the

greatest deficiency in infrastructure is in transportation broadly.

The term transportation, but yet less than a third of the money in
26

that bond issue, as it looked like it was agreed to here at the end

was going into actual transportation uses, be it rail, road, air,

whatever. So I was disappointed from looking at it from Washington, hoping that perhaps as these discussions go forward, whether

it’s—obviously, the Federal level would also, but also the state level

that we move that around a little bit, yes.

Mr. KEMPTON. And Mr. Campbell, I know from your times in the

legislature you’re a strong supporter of transportation. You were

right, the Governor’s original strategic growth plan did have almost

half of the dollars dedicated for transportation infrastructure in

terms of the $222 billion vision that he has for infrastructure development in the State. The actual bond proposal which is only a

piece of that, the final, as I described it, was about $48 billion for

levees, for education and transportation and as I indicated, $17.5

billion, as I recall, was the number that would be put into—dedicated specifically for transportation projects.

Mr. CAMPBELL. Thank you very much, Director Kempton. Mr.

Chairman, thank you and I yield back.

Mr. MICA. Thank you. Mr. Calvert?

Mr. CALVERT. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. First, I’d like to do a

couple of housekeeping—Mary Bono couldn’t make it here today

and she asked me if on the record to mention that Mr.

Withycombe, first thank him for the support for a new tower at

Palm Springs Airport. I know that that’s on-going and that I guess

the plan is in effect right now and for the record, when do you

think that the new tower in Palm Springs could be under construction?

Mr. WITHYCOMBE. Well, it’s in the FAA’s plans to build that

tower. Obviously, again, budget issues have become a problem for

construction schedule. The tower, of course, also has a Traycon Facility which is a longer-range radar facility that’s located on the

airport as well that controls air traffic within about a 50-mile radius, so Palm Springs.

We have taken action to move that facility to Southern California

Traycon which is located down in San Diego. That facility has been

there for well over 12 years. It’s exhausted its current useful life

and it also will be moved to this newer facility in Southern California to control traffic in the immediate area around the airport

within a 50-mile radius.

The air traffic control tower itself, I understand, was under

schedule for construction probably within the next four or five

years. I don’t have that figure available right now, but I could get

it for you, if you wish.

Mr. CALVERT. Certainly, if you could submit that for the record,

we would appreciate that.

Next issue, I just want to put aside also on the issue of aerobatic

flying concerns. I talked a couple of years ago over both the Coto

de Casa area in South Orange County. I’d appreciate your attention to that continuing urbanized area, that that’s a concern to the

residents within that community. I’d like to get with you on that

to find out what is occurring with that.

One thing, I don’t serve on this Committee. I didn’t have the

privilege to get on this Committee when I first came to Congress,

but I chair the Space and Aeronautics Committee in the House and
27

Mr. Mica and I share some jurisdiction as far as the new air traffic

control system that we’re trying to get implemented in this country, and of course, it has international ramifications, Mr.

Withycombe and I understand that some delays—we had quite a

little gathering the other day in Washington when we were all out,

the Secretary, Secretary of the Air Force and Mr. Mica and myself

and others that they’re going to move as rapidly as possible to

move to this new system.

So from your perspective, you’re in one of the most congested

areas, not just in the country, but in the world, how important do

you see in getting this system implemented as quickly as possible

for the air traffic control management here in the United States

and worldwide?

Mr. WITHYCOMBE. Well, as I mentioned in my testimony, we do

have some time to get ahead of this issue because of the levels of

traffic that we’re currently experiencing. But it is a very important

procedure, not only from a standpoint of operational efficiencies,

but also from the environmental benefits that we think will come

from this.

Being able to redesign some of the routes that have been place

for many, many years in the Los Angeles basin will give us an opportunity to use new technology such as satellite guidance and also

to take advantage of new technology that’s in the aircraft that will

be built in a newer environment these days. Technologically,

they’re more advanced than they were years ago.

We find that we can select routes that will be more beneficial to

people on the ground, reducing noise levels, and experience that

they may have by overflights in their communities. So these are all

important issues and we do intend to move forward with this as

fast as we can.

Mr. CALVERT. That’s great. And the technology, as you know it

exists, fly by wire systems, we’re working on new technology, hush

kits for engines, assisting new engine design, that would certainly

help in these urbanized areas.

One thing I want to get to and John and I obviously represent

adjacent Districts, but we hear probably, I suspect you do, as well

as I do, more about transportation than most any other issue in

this region, at least in my area. A lot of my constituents drive to

Orange County to go to work, so maybe a little bit more so here

than in Orange County, but I would say anecdotally to Mr. Ritchie

as one of the reasons why LAX has not experienced a rebound as

rapidly as say Ontario or Orange County or other airports is you

can’t get there. I can tell you that from the perspective of a person

who travels every week and about half the time out of LAX and

to plan to get to Los Angeles Airport you have to get up very early

in the morning, 4 in the morning to get through the 91 freeway in

order to get down to it, or very late at night or on the weekends.

And so I suspect that is the reason why LAX has not experienced

the increase in travel, to get back to pre–9/11, is—this is anecdotal

information, but I suspect is probably correct, is a big part of that.

So it gets back to ground transportation and that’s important because and all of the ground transportation has an effect. If you look

at the Port of Long Beach, Los Angeles and the effect of trains coming out of there and Mr. Pisano, I’m looking at you on this one,
28

coming down through the Inland Empire, through Orange County,

through the Inland Empire and down through the Cajon Pass, this

is having just an on-going effect on traffic flows through our entire

region. And ACE, as we call it affectionately, the Alameda Corridor

East, is something that’s important.

In this region, in Riverside County, we put an additional fee for

every residential unit that’s filled, every cost of construction on industrial and commercial and office projects, a significant fee. A lot

of regions have not done that as yet, along with our sales tax fee,

to match rather than coming in. We had a discussion about container fee. It may not be in direct venue of air traffic, it does have

an effect because it affects the traffic going in, Mr. Chairman, to

Los Angeles and getting to that airport or to Ontario Airport or to

any other airport. And so I just want to get, for the record, any information you can help us with as far as how you can help bring

some local revenue to the table outside of Federal dollars.

As Mr. Mica mentioned, we’re short of funds in Washington,

D.C., so we need some help.

Mr. PISANO. Congressman Calvert, there were several questions

in your last question. Let me just deal with what I interpreted to

be the first one and that is how do we deal with the east-west and

that is the east-west movement within our region?

As we’ve pointed out in response to Congressman Campbell,

there is substantial growth in the east and furthermore, there’s

movement of employment to the eastern part of our region. In fact,

Riverside, San Bernardino area is one of the fastest job growth

areas. It’s primarily in the logistics industry, so movement of people through the 91 corridor or between Riverside and Orange County, we have called for a new corridor. One of the alternatives being

considered is an investment concept that you have requested the

region look at and that the Orange County Commission and that

the Riverside Commissioner looking at that alternative, primarily

would be far better than the other alternatives in that corridor.

With respect to the funding system and the question of the funding system, we conducted what we called a port elasticity study.

What is the capacity of this region to put charges on the movement

of goods through one form of feeder or another and divert traffic.

In the course of conducting this, that study, the view of Secretary

Mineta and his entire staff is that there is enormous productivity

efficiencies that are gained to the Nation because of the role that

we’re playing in the movement of goods. I’m going to add airport

goods as well as port goods.

There’s are enormous savings that are derived to American consumers and to the shippers and for the retailers that are bringing

imports into this region. And we believe that a business plan, let

me emphasize the importance of dynamics, that these investments

be conducted on a business plan basis and that is an investment

can be made that demonstrates productivity, efficiency and cost

saving and value to the users and that they will, in fact, pay for

utilization of that investment. If one creates the right kind of

transportation investment, it creates the right partnership, it is the

model that we base the Alameda Corridor on. We believe that that

investment strategy can generate anywhere from $26 to $36 billion
29

that can help us address the goods movement, port, airport access

as well as air quality mitigation.

And there will be a willingness on the part of the private sector

to participate in an investment strategy.

The tools that we need to accomplish such a program are the following: it’s very difficult in the private sector who will not invest

in getting through the environmental clearance process. They feel

that’s too risky and they’re expecting government to pay for that

process.

Secondly, we need to bring the what are called financing packages to the market. If we have the investment seed capital to undertake that activity, it would help us bring those projects to market. Secondly, Federal incentives, tax or other types of underwriting investments would be helpful for us to enable those projects to

materialize and to complete the need. If we do not have legislation,

we can’t even start on these projects, that’s why Federal partnership with State enabling legislation, coupled with putting together

investment programs will enable to deal with the goods movement.

Part of the access system that I testified to the Committee on on

ground access to airports is based on the same model, Congressman.

Mr. CALVERT. Thank you. I think I just have one other question.

And that’s on the issue of shorter flights. Is there any information

out there that you can share with us, maybe Mr. Ritchie or Mr.

Withycombe, on flights to say to Vegas or Phoenix, San Francisco,

Bakersfield, these small airlines? How many gates do they tie up?

I’m just curious in the scheme of things. Is that 10 percent of the

business, 5 percent?

Mr. RITCHIE. I think, Congressman, I think the answer lies—

you’re correct. A lot of the commuter gates are tied up. For example, at LAX, we have 113 contact gates for traditional aircraft, domestic, international flights. We have another 50 gates that are

dedicated to remote gates, commuter routes. Our goal is that while,

as I stated earlier, our goal would be for the commuter flights to

migrate to some of the other region’s airports. We certainly still

need to maintain that capability for connecting flights from LAX to

other shorter——

Mr. CALVERT. The reason I bring that up is if, in fact, down the

road if some kind of, Mr. Pisano brought up high speed rail activity

is constructed say between here and Vegas, Phoenix and San Francisco and San Diego, not only would that help alleviate some of the

surface traffic, but would that also alleviate some of the future demand that you might have for airport growth?

Mr. PISANO. We have looked at the issue of such a system that

we have proposed for Southern California and we believe it can reduce anywhere from up to 8 percent of the trips going into LAX

that are intra-regional, that are accessing that airport primarily

because they’re making connections to other international or national and that that can be part of the relief in meeting our longterm demand.

Mr. CALVERT. Based on Mr. Ritchie’s testimony, I would think

that’s on the low end, 8 percent would be on the low end. At least

50 gates tied up doing commuter traffic.
30

Mr. PISANO. Some of those trips would be outside of our region,

Congressman. I’m just talking about the San Diego within our region.

Now the other issue that we have looked at and that is what

would a high-speed system within Northern California to Southern

California from Las Vegas to Southern California, what impact

would that have on aviation demand? And we have looked at those

numbers and they would raise a number to a higher level.

The question on that is is we have not been able to find a business plan model to make those investments work yet. But let me

underscore, it’s absolutely critical for us to look at transportation

investments in the future based on performance and one of the performance indicators being if capacity can have a return on investments so that users will pay more. And we have not yet been able

to demonstrate that a Las Vegas to Los Angeles or Northern California to Los Angeles investment fits in that pattern. Long term,

I believe it will. And if you look at the long-term growth patterns

for this region, for this State, you will find that within—by the year

2050, Las Vegas will be considered part of the economic base of LA

and in that sense it will be economically viable.

Mr. CALVERT. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. MICA. Thank you, just a couple of quick questions for Mr.

Ritchie. One, I had information that Los Angeles World Airports

has indicated a desire to create a larger regional aviation authority

that extends beyond their current structure.

What’s the status of that proposal?

Mr. RITCHIE. Thank you. As a regional airport authority, we have

always maybe boasted on the small scale within the City of Los Angeles; we were our own airport authority because we had three

commercial airports and we had things we could influence around

that small sphere.

We’re supportive. LAWA, LA World Airports, is supportive. I

sense the City of Los Angeles is supportive. That larger body needs

to define, to have the leadership role, but as we move outside our

jurisdiction into Burbank, Long Beach, Orange County, John

Wayne, we need a little assistance in that regard.

There was a body that was previously active, Southern California

Regional Airport Authority that is a good model to jump start this.

As Mr. Pisano points out, consortium is another approach. So we

may be able to provide that jump starting of a process by virtue

of the size of LA World Airports, but I would be remiss if I were

suggesting we could influence the size of Bob Hope or other airports.

Mr. MICA. Mr. Pisano?

Mr. PISANO. Mr. Chairman, on that issue we commissioned a

study by Steve Ary, a professor out of UC San Diego to look at the

experience of regional airport structures across the country and we

examined 10 such efforts. We looked at what worked, what didn’t

work, what steps were important in successfully developing more

effective regional systems, including the system and let me just

note in the Washington, D.C., the New York area, etcetera.

The basic recommendation of our report was that in order to

move this issue in an expedited way that we, in fact, encourage

LAWA to operate as a regional airport system and not have three
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separate airports, but operate the airports as a system and then

secondly, to start developing the necessary agreements and arrangements. And as we develop confidence and success in building

such a system that that may evolve into an authority.

And the reason we suggested a jump start on this was that 15

years ago, our organization, along with some of the other entities

within the region, established the Southern California Regional

Airport Authority and for whatever reason we weren’t able to make

such a regionalized system work. And the conclusion that we

learned and by the way, it was a learning experience we derived

from some of the other regions that we looked at is that you need

to have your key core aviation system operating if they have multiple airports, operating those airports as one system.

And in that respect, some of the Federal policies in terms of how

these systems are developed, in terms of how we looked at the financing structure at airports at the Federal level, could accelerate

the development of these regional structures.

Mr. MICA. Thank you. Final question, Mr. Ritchie. There have

been some problems with reaching agreement on a final LAX Master Plan. Maybe you could give us a quick update on where we are

with that effort?

Mr. RITCHIE. Yes, Mr. Chairman, I’d be glad to. That’s a, from

our vantage point, a success story. As we previously mentioned, we

completed the Federal and State of California Environmental Approval for the LA Master Plan. There were components in that the

City Council referred to as yellow Light Projects and asked that we

conduct additional study. That was tied up and incidental to the

settlement agreement of which we agreed to a report and analyzing

those, turning them green or red, as the case may be. I think there

was a preponderance on those projects in turning red. Nonetheless,

the remaining projects referred to as green light projects were more

readily received, although they were basically tied to safety and security issues, so we have started just in the last week a collaborative method that’s shaping, reshaping the Master Plan as we

note.

So the good news is that we’re moving forward. We’re moving forward on a smaller scale than the total program envisioned, but

we’re moving forward with community support.

Mr. MICA. Well, thank you. Do either of the Members have additional questions? Mr. Campbell? Mr. Calvert? No.

Well, I want to thank the witnesses today for their testimony

and participation on the Subcommittee hearing and also my two

colleagues, Mr. Campbell, a member of the T and I Committee and

Mr. Calvert who was kind enough to host us, one of the senior

Members in Congress, and he made reference to our joint efforts

to try to improve our national aviation air system. We share a

number of goals in that regard, looking at the whole country. Looking at this region is particularly important, as I said in my opening

comments. What happens in this area in region is not only critical

to its future economic growth and to accessing air transport for the

future, but it’s also important to our nation’s air transportation

system.

I sense some very good cooperation from various entities in trying to help us plan not only for the near future, but for the long-
32

term needs. We certainly have some challenges and some of the

local communities are faced again with difficult decisions, but also

we’re basically maxing out in some of our capacity in some of those

local airports as we can see from the testimony and what we picked

up in our visit, not only today, but in past visit or two here.

So I think rolling up our sleeves and all working together, we

can meet some of those challenges and I appreciate the cooperative

effort in making this hearing possible and also successful.

As I indicated too at the beginning of the hearing, we will leave

the record open. Anyone, organizations or individuals, or representatives of governmental agencies who would like to submit additional testimony or commentary or information to the record can do

so, directed to the Chair, Mr. Campbell or Mr. Calvert. Without objection that is so ordered and the record will be left open for a period of two weeks.

There being no further business to come before the House Aviation Subcommittee, I declare this meeting adjourned. Thank you.

[Whereupon, at 12:12 p.m., the hearing was concluded.]
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