A likely showdown between Lindbergh Field and Marine Corps Air Station Miramar came into clearer focus this week after a market feasibility study presented to airport officials effectively dismissed all other site options.
A study by Eclat Consulting projected that the selection of any of the four remote sites, including March Air Reserve Base, Borrego Springs, Imperial County and Campo/Boulevard, would result in “severe negative market impacts” and in most cases drop well below the current capacity of Lindbergh Field.
An airport site at Camp Pendleton would service Orange County residents far more than those in San Diego County and be largely unable to attract international flights from the more feasible Los Angeles market an hour north.
Essentially, findings show that it would be better to make do with Lindbergh, rather than move the airport to a far-off location.
Only two sites, Miramar and a hybrid Lindbergh-Naval Air Station North Island combination, would catch the majority of the market, as they are both near the county’s tourist destinations and population center.
Angela Shafer-Payne, vice-president of strategic planning for the San Diego County Regional Airport Authority, conceded to reporters during a briefing that the findings weren’t rosy.
“I think we could all acknowledge today that there’s no perfect site on the list,” she said.
The report, though, gave glowing marks for Miramar, which would be within a 45 minute drive for 81 percent of the county’s population in 2030. The Lindbergh/North Island site would catch 67 percent of the population. Those numbers increased to 94 and 84 percent, respectively, if the driving threshold was increased to one hour.
The fatal flaw for the other sites was distance, ranging from 69 miles for Campo/Boulevard to 104 miles for Imperial County from downtown San Diego. According to the study, among major airports worldwide, the majority are located within five to 20 miles from the city center.
Tokyo’s Narita International Airport is the farthest at 41 miles from the city’s core. But that airport draws a poor comparison as it serves only international flights and a metro population of about 25 million.
“Selection of any of the remote sites would result in severe negative impacts, the extent of which cannot be fully projected,” Bob Hazel of Eclat Consulting told the authority’s board Monday, April 24.
At the very least, a remote airport would severely impact access to international and short-haul flights and drive businesses away, the report said. The negative impacts to the city’s major tourist destinations, almost all of which are located near downtown, would also be severe.
“Am I going to drive to Camp Pendleton and then fly to LAX? I don’t think so,” Hazel said.
The contentious Imperial County Desert site, which has received strong lobbying from Rep. Bob Filner (D-San Diego), had among the worst projections.
According to the report, even with a high-speed maglev train, an airport in Imperial County would attract just 19 million users, a loss of 37 percent or approximately 11 million passengers.
The study’s projections spurred a call by board member Mary Teresa Sessom to revive a concept involving a North County supplementary airport, which the board had voted down last month.
Admitting she had made a mistake in joining the majority in that vote, Sessom gained the support of board members Robert Maxwell and Xema Jacobson in bringing a request for a more detailed fiscal analysis of that option to the full board Monday, May 1.
“We more or less arbitrarily threw out the North County site because it was financially infeasible and we haven’t done that with any other site,” Maxwell said.
But Lynch said he would oppose vetting the concept further, arguing the preliminary market study performed on that site was explicit in that per passenger costs for airlines would be too high and its distance from downtown San Diego for tourists was a major problem.
“I would not like to see us spend a whole lot of time and money going back down that road,” he said.
Given the market incompatibility between a North County supplemental airport with four major airports within the greater Los Angeles area, board members conceded the spotlight will likely be on Miramar and Lindbergh Field as financial and feasibility studies for the military sites are rolled out within the next few weeks.
“You basically have to work something out with the military or we’re stuck with Lindbergh,” Lynch said separately.
Marion Blakey, administrator for the Federal Aviation Administration, addressed reporters during a brief stopover from a city aviation conference, calling San Diego International Airport a “critical asset” in the federal aviation matrix.
“This is a job that needs to get done,” she said. “We do see the situation here as being at the tipping point.”
Blakey said that, unlike other densely populated areas such as Los Angeles or New York, Southern California has land options, even if they aren’t ideal.
“Some decision is going to have to be made,” she said.
That’s a truth board members are all too aware of as the deadline for picking a site fast approaches. The timeline for that ultimate decision has been pushed back to early June to allow time for the digestion of several heavy comparative and financial analysis reports on the remaining military sites due out mid-May.
“You need to put something on the ballot that is doable,” Jacobson said. “You really need to be honest with the voters.”
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In a related development, the authority’s board voted to reject “spot” bill AB 2230, introduced in February by Assemblyman Jay La Suer (R-San Diego). The bill would increase the total number of authority board members from nine to 11 and the executive member count from three to five.
The point of most contention in the bill would have board members being elected from districts identical to those of the County Board of Supervisors.
Board member Paul Peterson said those elections would “amount to a feeding frenzy.”
The bill’s passage would usher in 11 separate elections, with an untold amount of candidates. That would be a bad move for a process that should be independent of special interests, said board member and City Councilman Tony Young.
“We need to be concerned about politicizing this board,” Young said. “It is a dangerous proposition.”
Young went on to attribute the bill’s motivations to politics because of disagreement over where the site selection process is headed.
Sessom left the boardroom for the vote, telling reporters later that she was conflicted on the issue, agreeing that the board needs an evaluation, but that politics should be kept out of it.
“The legislature should be evaluating their creation,” she said.