Peotone DOES Threaten Midway!

Sorry for the sodapop fans, more serious topics pick up here.

You have to really know your stuff to land at Midway

Midway airport is one of the tightest packed airport in the world. Major roads ring the airport on all four sides, and important rail lines surround it slightly further out. There's a rail yard to the south, and an El line to the east; further compounding the ring around Midway. Even if you were to expand the airport by merely cannibalizing houses, you don't get THAT MUCH breathing room. You'd have to move some rail lines to get enough space to make a safe zone around the airport.

That airport is so tightly packed in that airplanes have to hit these things called "Reverse Thrusters" to stop the planes within the airport layout. I've landed there a couple times, you can always tell the landing here from elsewhere -- most airports don't have its customers feeling pressed towards the front of the airplane as the plane strains to stop like they do at Midway.

An airport out in Peotone would make more sense, especially if they targeted it towards the budget market Midway does now. While there would be no possibility of EL service to Peotone, the Metra Electric could run (complete with express service) between Peotone and Downtown with relatively little track work, and access to the newly-planned Star Line could be made for quick, freight-traffic-free access to Joliet and from there to suburban Chicagoland. Long, well-bordered runways would allow planes to land in a leisurely fashion, extending lifespan and easing stresses on the people. Plus a properly-designed airport would be the safest in the world outside of Israel (where they've done everything to make sure Terrorists can't do their dirty work).

While it's possible that Peotone could become a transfer-type airport, chances are that would take a lot of traffic from Midway (and O'Hare) simply by being a quick, easy, safe place for planes to land. While O'Hare would finally have enough breathing room to expand properly, Midway would have to readjust itself to the new status. And it may not do so. Considering that properly there's only two directions a plane can safely land (O'Hare impinges on the other two directions) and the limits to safety development, maybe one can say Goodbye to Midway.

(Reagan National suffers from the same problems. Maybe that place can be closed, as well. And no, I don't care if Mr. Dulles was the leader of the CIA -- I'm not suffering from what HE did. Reagan, on the other hand, harms me more today than ever, and his actions grow greater with time.)