Slopping runway only works if the wind is going in the right direction. When its not, can you still use it? Novel airport design finds little support Engineer proposes sloped runways enabling planes to burn less fuel on takeoff and landing By Sean Holstege, STAFF WRITER As Oakland International Airport was putting the finishing touches on its plans to expand its terminals, the lanky figure of Jim Starry entered the scene preaching an entirely different approach. Starry, a self-educated engineer, a pilot and a longtime government atmospheric research-er, likes to call the expansion -- any airport expansion -- "the dysfunction." "They are building the problem," says Starry, who began fighting "the problem" -- the increased cancer, asthma and global warming he calculates from more, bigger airports -- when Denver International Airport went in two decades ago. Ever since, he's been trotting the globe trying to sell his alternative design, an airport with runways that gently slope at a 2 percent grade to the roof of a 12-story terminal. He calls it the StarPort. The idea behind the StarPort is simple enough. Gravity slows aircraft as they land on the uphill runways. It speeds up planes on takeoff as they hurtle downhill. With the terminal underneath the runway, airplanes would have very short distances to taxi. Starry calculates that a typical Boeing 747 burns 500 gallons of jet fuel taxiing, 1,000 more gallons on takeoff and another 500 gallons on landing, because jets stop by throwing their engines into reverse thrust. He has another idea, one borrowed from BART. It's called regenerative breaking. On BART trains, the motors on each car are turned into generators, and as the train slows down electrical power is stored. On a plane, Starry says, kinetic energy can be saved by sending the wheels on the landing gear into forward motion when it touches down. By gradually decelerating the wheels, less energy would be needed for reverse engines. Starry calculates that the combined effects of his ideas would save a typical airport 300 million gallons of fuel a year. And it's not just fuel. A congressional study this year found that new Boeing 737s release 30 pounds of greenhouse gases during each takeoff and landing. Last year commercial jets alone accounted for 179,000 takeoffs and landings at Oakland International. That's a total of 2,685 tons of gases that have been linked to global warming, a figure that's expected to climb 80 percent by the end of the decade. The added bonus, Starry says, it can all be done on one-third of the land needed for a conventional airport. At arm's length, Starry has his admirers, but none in officialdom have taken up his cause. During the Port's Aviation Committee hearings last spring to pick a master contractor to build the bigger airport, then-committee chairman Phil Tagami applauded Starry for being years ahead of his time, but said he was out of synch with the airport's timelines. The airport's environmental manager Kristi McKenney, was curious, but skeptical. For one thing, Starry envisions two end-to-end 6,000-foot runways ending above the terminal, rather than the current 10,000-foot landing strips. "Obviously, anything that conserves resources is better, but I do believe we are operating at the margins," she said, noting that gravity could help, but there are huge unanswered questions about the safety of having runways end in the same place and the counter-terrorism security of having terminals underneath. "He's chosen to not share the science. He's only shown sketches," McKenney added. R. Austin Wiswell, who runs Caltrans' Division of Aeronautics, told Starry last summer that "StarPort is an intriguing concept, and one that deserves more research to move it further to practical implementation," before encouraging him to contact Congress. The Federal Aviation Administration, the state and national Environmental Protection Agency, the airlines, airports, Congress and local governments all have different responsibilities in planning and regulating future airports. Starry's frustrated conclusion: There's no accountability.> Transportation consultant Ezra Rapport, an adviser to Sen. Don Perata, D-Oakland, agreed and urged Oakland Airport officials to consider Starry's ideas seriously as part of their long-term plans.> The locals don't want to touch it because there's no federal support and the feds don't want to touch it because there's no local sponsor, so a good idea gets log-rolled, Rapport said.> This is the first airport design I've seen that addresses some fundamental issues. In speaking with a number of aviation experts, I saw no reason not to study it, Rapport said. It's a shame that nobody is willing to step forward.> Contact Sean Holstege at sholstege@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx . Roger EWROPS