Why O’Hare’s terminal upgrades are falling behind

Welcome back. New research shows just how critical the next few years are going to be for O'Hare International. Chicago works to improve terminals, even add new terminals and get caught up. So joining me to discuss these findings is director of the Chaddick Institute for Metropolitan Development, Joseph Schwiederman. Dr. Schwiederman, thank you for being here this morning. You were just saying during the commercial break, we are well behind the eight ball here when it comes to keeping up with other major hubs. And it's been some time since we added a new terminal, correct? Exactly right. And you know, things are happening, big construction is occurring. But unfortunately, the big prize, O'Hare Global Terminal, which should be a great addition to O'Hare, won't be done until 2034. And, you know, that puts the seven years going to be a lot of transition until that opens. And, you know, things have just gotten a little tough out there. We have long taxi times. American United want more gates. And, you know, other airports around the world are a big finding is really building these beautiful, lavish terminals. So we're just in a tough spot right now. Okay, so in the short term, before this gets done, what challenges does the current configuration pose? You know, it's interesting, we have two big hub operators out there, American United, and the new satellite terminal going to be built, it's gonna be open in 2028, is gonna be primarily for United. And that's gonna help ease things for United a bit. And a few years after that, work on this gigantic global terminal begins, probably in 2029. So American has quite a wait until it's going to have, you know, brand new gates and so forth. And they're ready to expand, too. So we see that, you know, American and United increasingly dominate the airport. And keeping them both happy for these seven years is going to take some fancy footwork with their intention to grow. Yeah, I was looking at some of the renderings for what this will eventually look like. Terminal 2, the existing Terminal 2 is going to go away completely, replaced by this giant, what looks like a spaceship. It looks very lavish. This is going to be the new global terminal, correct? Yeah, that's right. And terminal two, 43 gates or so, built in 1962. You know, it does function, but you travel around the world and go to airports and big hubs, and it is surprising. We still have kind of this low ceiling terminal, you know, pretty small gates in some cases. So you really don't want to pull. Big jets up some of those terminal two gates because they're they're quite small. So it's mostly being used for smaller planes, regional jets and so forth. And and the difficult thing is that the taxi time problem, you know, we want those times to come down because it's hard to run a really good hub when and from. From gate to takeoff, it's about 28 minutes, so it's a long time, and that is the highest in the country. JFK and New York is close, but, boy, it's not a distinction you want. Yeah, this is a live look from what looks like Terminal 1, the United Terminal there. I was an hour delayed flying out on Friday, as a matter of fact. Joe, this study recommends some cost-saving and time-saving strategies in the meantime. Will you kind of run us through some of those ideas? Exactly, yeah, and thinking of the, in our case, what we don't wanna see is timelines stretched out. And they've already been stretched out, we had the pandemic, there was some negotiation of the airlines that had to happen, that added time, so now we're looking at 2034 before You know, a truly first-class terminal situation, and we think you can speed things up if you do something called modular construction, where you basically build large components of the terminals, like a lot of the gate areas and so forth, at the edge of the airport where you don't have impacts with the airlines. You can build them more quickly, if you have safety concerns, and then you bring those to roll those in and install them in place. We've seen Atlanta, Dallas, Portland, Seattle all do this, and it's saved at least a year in construction in some cases. So that can speed things up and actually help stretch the budget. We also think we just gotta use Terminal 5 more, the Southwest pulled out. So there's real potential to move flights there, but we need better shuttling so people can get there quickly. Those are two great ideas, that modular idea, like put it together like puzzle pieces, get stuff out of the way in the meantime. Well, we're bracing for the long haul, marathon, not a sprint, eight years. Okay, presuming things go as scheduled. Joe Schwederman, always nice to talk to you. Thank you so much. Thank you.