A New $516 Million Runway Opened Today At O'Hare

By Kate Shepherd in News on Oct 15, 2015 9:45PM

O'Hare (Photo by Duane Rapp via the Chicagoist Featured Photos pool on Flickr)

A new runway and air traffic control tower aimed at reducing arrival and departure delays opened today at O'Hare.

The 7,500-foot east-west runway is in the south airfield and will be mostly used for arrivals. It includes a parallel taxiway immediately north of the runway and a connecting taxiway to the south airfield, the mayor's office announced in a statement Thursday.

It's the fourth new runway component the city has opened since 2008 as part of the O'Hare Modernization Program and is supposed to improve the airport's efficiency and capacity. Adding the runway should improve arrival and departure rates from the east in all weather conditions and should ultimately reduce delays, according to the city.

It cost $516 million but no state or local taxpayer dollars were used, according to the statement. The new runway will handle 5 percent of daytime flights over the next five years, the FAA told the Tribune.

"When we invest in O'Hare's future, we are helping Chicago continue to grow economically and compete on a global scale," Mayor Rahm Emanuel said in a statement. "The new runway will reduce delays and increase airport capacity - a positive development for travelers and businesses who rely on O'Hare. And while O'Hare may be the busiest airport in the world, our goal is to make it the best airport in the world."

Here's one of the first landings:

A new $41 million FAA air traffic control tower was opened to manage the runway.

The O'Hare Modernization Program has cost $8.7 billion so far and it does not include new terminals or aircraft gates, according to the Tribune. The city, United Airlines and American Airlines have run into disagreements about the project.