Mayor Rahm Emanuel on Thursday urged major airlines squeezed by skyrocketing fuel prices to come to the table a year early and negotiate a fourth new runway at O’Hare Airport as part of a $7.3 billion plan to rebuild Chicago’s infrastructure and create 30,000 jobs.
“I’m announcing this when we have everything secure on the very day Washington is doing a 60-day extension on the highway bill. The last highway bill was 2005. I can’t let the city be held hostage to that dysfunction,” the mayor told the Chicago Sun-Times.
The Sun Times points out a lot of these projects have been previously announced and this is just Rahm repackaging stuff that never got off the ground.
And some people are about to take baths on their property speculations:
Now, Emanuel is pushing that fourth runway and moving up the timetable for negotiations to reduce delays by 80 percent, boost capacity by 300,000-passenger-a-year by 2015 and eliminate the need for a third airport.
“If I owned property in Peotone, I’d be looking to put it on the market right now,” joked Ald. Pat O’Connor (40th), the mayor’s City Council floor leader.