SFO airport runway expansion put in holding pattern SAN FRANCISCO (AP) =97 An ambitious plan to overcome weather-related delays= =20 at San Francisco International Airport by building new runways into the bay= =20 has been put on indefinite hold after four years and $75 million worth of=20 work. Airport Director John Martin said Wednesday that a 27.5 percent=20 decline in passenger volume since the peak in 2000 makes the runway=20 reconfiguration project =97 which has been opposed by environmentalists =97= =20 unnecessary for the foreseeable future. "My recommendation is we put it on= =20 a holding pattern," Martin said, echoing long-held conclusions of the=20 plan's increasingly vocal and numerous critics. "I think it's a prudent=20 course of action, given the great difficulties in the aviation industry now= =20 and the large drop in traffic we've experienced." The existing runways at=20 SFO are 50 years old and 750 feet apart =97 less than a fifth the distance= =20 current safety regulations require for landing in bad weather. Plans to=20 fill in part of the bay to accommodate new runways and more planes carry an= =20 estimated cost of $2 billion to $3.5 billion. But the urgency of the project, which has been under discussion since the=20 height of the dot-com boom, has been diminished by the travel industry's=20 steep decline since the Sept. 11 attacks. With 30 million people flying in= =20 and out of SFO last year, airport traffic is at its lowest level since=20 1992. Martin said he thinks the plan should wait at least until annual=20 passenger loads return to 33 million, something that could take several=20 years. Even though the endeavor has been shelved for now, it may remain a=20 hot topic during the coming months. At the request of the San Francisco=20 Board of Supervisors. the city's budget analyst is preparing an audit of=20 the $75 million that has already been spent on environmental reviews,=20 engineering and planning, as well as on lobbyists and political=20 consultants, according to Supervisor Aaron Peskin. Martin is also planning to ask the supervisors' budget committee Friday for= =20 an additional $3.7 million to complete in-depth environmental studies that= =20 are already underway and that he says are not time-sensitive. Noting that=20 the money invested so far has come from a $4.50 per passenger airport tax=20 and federal grants, airport spokeswoman Kandace Bender said the expenditure= =20 would pay off regardless of whether the plan ever comes to fruition. She=20 described the environmental work that's gone into the project as the most=20 far-reaching study ever performed of the bay's ecosystem. "In some ways we= =20 are damned if we do and damned if we don't," Bender said. Stuart Cohen, executive director of the Bay Area Transportation and Land=20 Use Coalition, agreed that the information from the expansion studies may=20 be useful to marine biologists in the future. But with airports in Oakland= =20 and San Jose undertaking their own expansion plans, and with high-speed=20 rail service envisioned between San Francisco and Los Angeles, Cohen thinks= =20 it could be a decade or longer before runway reconfiguration resurfaces at= SFO. *************************************************** The owner of Roger's Trinbago Site/TnTisland.com Roj (Roger James) escape email mailto:ejames@xxxxxxxxx Trinbago site: www.tntisland.com Carib Brass Ctn site www.tntisland.com/caribbeanbrassconnection/ Steel Expressions www.mts.net/~ejames/se/ Site of the Week: http://www.cso.gov.tt TnT Webdirectory: http://search.co.tt *********************************************************