COLUMN ONE : Regional Report : A Traffic Jam Up There Too : Southland airports are threatened with gridlock. And, with no centralized planning, it’s likely to get worse before it gets better.

Southern California--land of the jet set and the frequent flier--is edging dangerously close to airport gridlock.

Without new airfields or dramatic expansion of existing ones, flying to and from the Southland could become an intolerably expensive and punishing challenge by the turn of the century. Already, experts say, the region’s airport capacity shortage is the country’s third worst, trailing only Chicago and New York.

While alarming, the situation should come as no surprise to Southern California. Countless studies by planners and consultants have for years forecast mushrooming passenger and cargo demand--and warned that the air transportation system was simply not keeping pace.

But local officials--aware that airports, like trash dumps, can be treacherous political land mines--have not given the problem its proper place on the civic agenda, critics say.

Moreover, planning to expand and improve the regional airport network has mostly been a piecemeal effort, bedeviled by the independent nature and individual whims of each airfield’s operator.

Airport woes are not unique to Southern California. Indeed, national experts are hard-pressed to name more than a few major cities that have done a credible job on long-range airport planning.

But with its vibrant economy, rapid population growth and tourist attractions, the Southland’s situation is particularly precarious.

“We give talks about this (airport) capacity problem around the country, and one of our favorite examples is Southern California,” said Drew Steketee, executive director of the Washington-based Partnership for Improved Air Travel, a coalition of airlines, frequent fliers and shippers pushing for improvements in the nation’s air transportation system. “You’re in a real jam out there, and the consequences could be dramatic.”

Projections by the Southern California Assn. of Governments tell a large part of the story:

Without major expansion and improvement projects, Los Angeles International, Ontario, Burbank, John Wayne and Long Beach airports will be able to serve a combined total of about 63 million passengers annually by the year 2000.

But by then, public demand for airplane seats at those five airports will have surged to 93 million, leaving 30 million would-be travelers essentially out of luck.

In San Diego, where officials have been hunting for a new airport site for four decades, officials say pint-size Lindbergh Field will be at capacity within 10 years. Parking lots and roads leading to the landlocked airport already are jammed beyond the point planners consider tolerable.

“Ultimately, demand will so exceed supply that fares will skyrocket and people simply won’t be able to catch a flight whenever they want to,” predicts Michael Armstrong, an aviation planner with SCAG.

“We’ll be back to serving the flying elite,” Armstrong said. “The victim will be the middle-income guy who wants to spend a long weekend in San Francisco. He’s going to look at that $500 fare and say, ‘Forget it, I’m staying home.’ ”

Aside from the hassles awaiting travelers, manufacturers and other businesses that rely on aviation will suffer as cargo flights compete with passenger runs for available space. The regional economy could flag as tourists and industry--discouraged by restricted air access--go elsewhere.

“There are very few facilities in California, and especially Southern California, that generate more economic benefits and more jobs than do our airports,” said Rep. Ron Packard (R-Carlsbad), a ranking member of the House subcommittee on aviation. “When they get behind--when growth moves faster than the development of airports to accommodate that increased travel--we are losing that economic benefit.”

At the Federal Aviation Administration, Jim Wiggins agrees, calling the situation critical.

“If we don’t do something soon, we will have extensive delay problems,” said Wiggins, manager of planning and programming for the FAA’s Western Pacific Region.

The Southland, of course, is not facing this fate alone. Chicago, New York, Washington, Seattle, Atlanta--these and many other metropolitan areas are or soon will be plagued with airport capacity shortages that threaten to reduce service, drive up fares and make convenient flying all but obsolete.

Already, the FAA reports, at least 11 airports experience chronic delays because of traffic congestion. Absent any improvements, aerial gridlock will tie up 32 airports by 1996, causing a total of about 20,000 hours of delay. The cost of these holdups to passengers and shippers already totals about $3 billion a year.

The source of the crunch is clear: more people are flying, and many are flying more often. In 1977, the year before deregulation, 243 million people flew on commercial aircraft in the United States. A decade later, that number had almost doubled, reaching 468 million. And by the year 2000, the FAA predicts it will almost double again, climbing to 800 million.

Meanwhile, only one major airport (Dallas-Ft. Worth) has been built in the last two decades. And only Austin, Tex., and Denver have firm plans for new airfields.

“We’ve seen a doubling of passengers, a doubling of demand, and the infrastructure has just remained static,” said Southwest Airlines Chairman Herb Kelleher. “Isn’t it astounding that the United States, whose essential method for moving people is by air, has not built a new airport for 16 years? We must be mad.”

It doesn’t take an aeronautical genius to figure out how Southern California wound up in its particular mess. For starters, most residents don’t want new airports in their neighborhood, and many people living near existing airports would throw their bodies on the Tarmac--or, like Newport Beach homeowners upset by jet noise at John Wayne, sue--to ensure that those facilities do not grow.

Although airports can be lucrative for communities, many residents believe any payoffs in dollars or jobs are eclipsed by the noise, air pollution and surface traffic the facilities generate. These foes frequently win the ear of politicians, despite pressure for expansion from passengers, airlines and even the federal government, which requires airports to make reasonable efforts to accommodate airborne interstate commerce.

“Airports are NIMBYs (Not-In-My-Back-Yard), just like jails,” said Jerry Epstein, president of the Los Angeles Airport Commission.

In addition, although Southland planning agencies have completed enough airport studies to fill a jumbo jet, critics complain that a lack of unity has plagued efforts to attack the looming crisis.

The result, some say, has been a sort of political sclerosis.

“We’ve been working on this problem for 12 years and we’re no further ahead than we were when we started,” said Hank Wedaa, a Yorba Linda city councilman and chairman of SCAG’s aviation committee. “We’ve got tremendous knowledge, piles of reports . . . but we don’t have anyone with the (guts) to stand up and make a decision.”

Meanwhile, the pressure to find solutions to the congestion problems are mounting:

* At Los Angeles International Airport, the nation’s third-busiest, the passenger load is expected to grow to more than 60 million passengers annually by the year 2000. That’s 10 million to 15 million passengers more than the existing terminals can handle.

Plans are afoot for new passenger and freight terminals, as well as a rail “people-mover” system to ferry travelers around. But environmental reviews and community anxiety about such growth could stall construction for years. Moreover, the cost of expansion--along with the road and freeway improvements needed before all these people can get to the airport--would run into the billions.

* More than 5 million passengers opted for Ontario International Airport, owned by the Los Angeles Department of Airports, during 1989--twice the number that the facility was designed to handle. SCAG says that figure will more than double again during the next decade.

To handle the crush, officials are pushing for a $350-million terminal complex at Ontario, scheduled to open in 1995. But financing and environmental clearances have yet to be obtained. With its twin, 2-mile-long runways, Ontario probably could be redesigned to handle far more than 12 million passengers a year. But that’s the limit set by the California Air Resources Board, which says a greater level of operations would degrade air quality.

* Restricted by a court settlement to serving 4.5 million passengers annually, Orange County’s John Wayne Airport is already what manager George Rebella calls “maxed out.” Some relief will come next month when a new terminal--part of a $310-million expansion--opens and the allowable passenger ceiling climbs to 8.4 million. But Rebella said that by 2005, demand will have surged to 22 million passengers a year--almost three times the airport’s capacity.

Physical constraints and the threat of lawsuits make any further expansion of John Wayne unlikely, and the Board of Supervisors recently rejected potential sites for a new airport in Orange County. Instead, the politicians are looking for a solution 75 miles away and on someone else’s turf--the soon-to-be-closed George Air Force Base in San Bernardino County, which some hope will be converted to a commercial airfield.

* San Diego--the nation’s sixth-largest city--has outgrown Lindbergh Field, its tiny, landlocked airport on the edge of downtown. Aside from crowding problems, the field’s single runway is so short that a 747 cannot take off with a full load of fuel. A package of improvements totaling $350 million are on the table, but the new terminal gates, parking structures and people-movers would at most squeeze 20 more years of life out of the airport.

San Diego, once hopeful that the Pentagon might permit commercial air service at Miramar Naval Air Station, is now contemplating a binational airport on the U.S.-Mexico border. Boosters, who envision shared runways and linked terminals on opposite sides of the border, say the joint facility could fly easily by building upon Tijuana’s existing Rodriguez Airport. But skeptics say that hammering out the international agreements needed for such a venture could take decades.

* Burbank Airport stands as the only Southland field to record a decline in passengers in recent years, dropping from 3.2 million in 1987 to 2.7 million in 1989. The dip, however, probably has less to do with reduced demand than with airline mergers--which have led to cutbacks in the regional flights to which Burbank is restricted because of its short runways--and a policy allowing airport access only to “Stage III” aircraft.

These late-model jetliners--quieter than their predecessors--make up only half the nation’s commercial fleet, and airlines with many older planes find it inconvenient to use Burbank. The older craft, however, gradually are being replaced, and Burbank officials predict that demand will surge to 7 million passengers annually by 2000. Plans for new facilities to accommodate that load are meeting resistance from homeowners’ groups--especially Los Angeles residents on the airport’s west side, land over which most planes departing Burbank fly.

* Nowhere is the power of neighborhood concern over airport noise more evident than in Long Beach. In response to damage claims from residents, the spacious, municipal airport allows just 41 flights a day by Stage III aircraft and limits hours of service to between 7 a.m. and 11 p.m.

The air carriers want more, arguing that the 1,166-acre field--convenient to the Long Beach, San Diego and San Gabriel River freeways--could play a vital role in solving Southern California’s air travel crunch. But the Long Beach City Council has shown no sign of weakening in its resolve to keep a lid on operations.

There are reasons that the construction of a coordinated, up-to-date system of facilities to serve the flying public is lagging, especially in a large and diverse region like Southern California.

Except for LAX and Ontario, both of which function under the authority of the Los Angeles Department of Airports, the Southland’s airports are a pretty independent lot.

“What you have are all these different groups going off and doing their own studies, rather than putting their heads together and cooperating,” said Barbara Lichman, a Newport Beach attorney who served on a panel that searched for a new airport site in Orange County. “It’s very shortsighted and stupid.”

San Diego City Councilman Bruce Henderson echoes that view, saying that “there has been a lack of forward thinking” on the airport problem.

“How do we coordinate all the Southern California airports and make the most efficient use of our runway space? That’s a question no one is asking,” Henderson said.

Rep. Packard hopes that part of the remedy lies in legislation he is drafting to require broad-based master planning of airports.

“Just think where we’d be if, 20 years ago, we’d come up with a long-term plan and set aside land and asked cities to protect that land from encroachment,” said Packard, who believes Southern California can serve as a model for an airport planning strategy nationwide.

Although SCAG officials favor more coordination, their top aviation specialist, Tim Merwin, suspects that local politics will always defy a cooperative solution. “Even if you get six counties in a given region to agree to build an airport in City A’s jurisdiction, it’s just not going to happen unless City A says it’s OK.”

There have been suggestions for some sort of regional super-agency--something more powerful than SCAG, which does overall planning but has no decision-making authority in the development of the region’s air facilities. But Cliff Moore, executive director of the Los Angeles Department of Airports, typifies many local officials who question the need for such an agency--and wonder how much muscle it could truly flex.

“Any time you get away from local control,” Moore observes, “you have to really have strong justification for it.”

Similar misgivings have greeted suggestions that the federal government play a stronger role in siting airports. Some experts believe the FAA could insulate airport construction from the perils of local politics by simply declaring a new airport a national priority, finding a site and getting the thing built. Others, however, say forget it: Congress would never usurp local authority over land-use matters.

Even when decisive steps are taken to remedy the airport problem, unforeseen gremlins seem to interfere.

The Los Angeles Department of Airports, for example, has for years been counting on Palmdale as a future relief valve for much of the region’s air traffic. Today, America West Airlines offers four round-trips daily between Palmdale and Las Vegas. But the Airport Department’s ultimate goal is to turn the 36 square miles of sand, cactus and sagebrush it owns in the Antelope Valley into a bustling “superport.”

A competing proposal, however, envisions converting George Air Force Base--on another swatch of desert in San Bernardino County--into an international “megaport.”

Experts agree privately that there is not enough demand for both airports, and with billions of dollars in enhanced real estate values hanging in the balance, the battle over the rival plans could span years.

Trouble is, there isn’t time for protracted fighting. Getting the necessary environmental clearances and then planning, building and opening new airport facilities cannot be done overnight.

“Denver has been at it for 10 years,” Wiggins said. “And they’re just breaking ground there.”

For this and other reasons, SCAG officials--frustrated after watching for years as studies warning of the coming crisis stack higher and higher on politicians’ bookshelves--are skeptical of the prospects for any significant near-term relief.

“It’s very likely that we won’t be successful in finding the new airport,” Armstrong said. “So the question we’re facing is, what do you do short of building a new facility to handle the demand?”

New technology is one option. Growing interest in high-speed trains offers hope that rail service in the busiest air travel corridor--Southern California to the Bay Area--might be in the offing.

And, in addition to the expected introduction of wide-bodied, large-capacity jetliners on short-haul routes, some experts say that a hybrid craft called the tilt-rotor--which takes off vertically from a small space, like a helicopter, and then rotates its engines to zip off like an airplane at 350 m.p.h.--might provide some relief.

Originally designed to carry combat troops, the tilt-rotor is considered a promising craft for civilian use. Prototypes can carry only several dozen passengers and are limited in range, but supporters say future models could be practical for use on congested commuter routes. Another advantage is that the tilt-rotor’s vertical takeoff capability means it can be based virtually anywhere, and researchers already envision floating platforms and “vertiports” built over freeway interchanges and in urban centers.

But technological relief will take years--and cost millions--to bring to reality, and thus some suggest a quicker answer to the crunch lies in the military bases scattered across the Southland. In the past, installations like Miramar Naval Air Station in San Diego, El Toro Marine Corps Air Station in Orange County and Camp Pendleton have been flatly declared off limits by the Pentagon. Many feel it is time the Defense Department gave some ground.

“I like having the Marines around, but they have to share,” said Wedaa, who supports a commercial airport at El Toro.

Jack Koerper, special projects director for the San Diego Assn. of Governments, recalls an FAA study describing the nation’s 23 most congested commercial airports. Within a short distance of each, he said, sat an under-used military airfield.

“The relief valve at some point has simply got to be the military bases,” Koerper said.

But even if such bases suddenly became available, opposition from neighboring residents would undoubtedly be an issue. Each time talk of flying commercial jetliners into El Toro comes up, angry shouts erupt from the folks in Irvine, Leisure World and other communities near the base.

For this reason, many experts predict that only the severe pain of the pending capacity crunch will usher in relief. Much like the old argument that commuters will take the bus or car-pool once the traffic gets unbearable, this theory holds that, ultimately, intolerable fares and a scarcity of flights will persuade the public something has to be done.

“I’m enough of an optimist that I won’t say this problem is impossible, but it’s pretty close,” said Merwin, SCAG’s aviation specialist. “We will have to experience a good deal of the effects of the shortfall--higher fares, inconvenience--before there is any push to remedy the problem.”

Southern California Airport Capacities Here are the passenger and cargo figures for the Southland’s largest airports (See key at center) 1. Burbank Passengers A. 2.7 million B. 7.3 million* C. N/A Cargo D. 14, 853.3 E. 22, 000*F. 50,000* Growth is limited because of short runways, state statutes limiting geographical expansion and a decision to limit access to so-called “Stage III” aircraft, the quietest jetliners in the commercial fleet. 2. Los Angeles International Passengers A. 44.9 million B. 65.2 million C. 50. 0 million Cargo D. 1,099,000 E. 2,093,000 F. 1,111, 800 To meet demand, the city has several plans, which feature new freight and passenger terminals, a system of rail people-movers and the expansion of its regional airport at Palmdale. 3. Ontario Passengers A. 5.3 million B. 12.0 million C. 3.0 million Cargo D. 275,032 E. 477,000* F. 660,000* Plans have been drawn up for a $350-million terminal complex complete with parking. Environmental hearings are under way, but complaints in neighboring communities about noise threaten to stall construction. 4. Long Beach Passengers A. 1.4 million B. N/A C. N/A Cargo D. 17,000 E. 28,800* F. 68,000*Although considered vital to regional expansion, the airport has responded to residents concerns by limiting physical growth, as well as the number and times of flights. 5.John Wayne (Orange County) Passengers A. 4.5 million B. 8.4 million C. 4.75 million Cargo D. No cargo E. No cargo F. No cargo New terminal to open this year should ease some of the crowding, but physical constraints and lawsuits over noise make futher expansion almost impossible. 6.Lindbergh Field (San Diego) Passengers A. 11.1 million B. 22.0 million C. 16.0 million Cargo D. 45,305 E. 52,600* F. N/A Parking is inadequate, roads to the airport are clogged with traffic, and flight delays are common. The airport operator is weighing $385 million in improvements,including more gates, parking structures and people-movers. A. 1989 passengers, incoming and outgoing. B. Passengers estimate for 2000, incoming and outgoing C. Current terminal capacity, incoming and outgoing D. 1989 Cargo (tons), incoming and outgoing E. 2000 cargo estimate (tons), incoming and outgoing F. Current cargo capacity (tons), incoming and outgoing Source: * 1986 Burbank Airport Authority passenger estimate

**San Diego Assn of Governments’ 1982 Airport System Plan Update

*Southern Californaia Assn. of Governments’ report of June 1989 Air Cargo Assessment