Port Authority is expected to clear airport-taxiway study

by Amy Ellis Nutt/The Star-Ledger

Thursday March 27, 2008, 7:52 AM

The Port Authority of New York and New Jersey Board of Commissioners is scheduled today to vote on a project designed to ease runway congestion at New York's John F. Kennedy International Airport.

The $5 million effort is part of a $150 million Runway Access Improvements/JFK Delay Reduction Program approved by the commissioners more than a year ago. Among the options: the extension and reconfiguration of some taxiways and the construction of new ones.

Passenger traffic at the three major airports run by the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey increased by 5 million between 2006 and 2007 -- three times the rate of growth at the nation's other airports. Since 2002, that rate of growth has exceeded 35 percent.

"With every flight delay, with every hour of productivity lost to an aging and outdated air-traffic system, we harm not only our regional economy but the nation's economy as well," Port Authority executive director Anthony E. Shorris said in a statement re leased yesterday to the press.

The new access project, say Port Authority officials, will provide more flexibility in routing aircraft on the ground and provide more space for airplanes to get to, and depart from, individual gates.

Funding for the study is one of more than 100 recommendations made by the Port Authority's Flight Delay Task Force.