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Concrete Island. The most promising solution to New Orleans' problems is a proposed $350 million supersonic jetport to be built above the shallow waters of Lake Pontchartrain on concrete pilings. One drawback is that its flight patterns would overlap those of the present lakefront jetport. Existing flight patterns also crowd New York planners. Engineer James J. Currey Sr. suggests rearranging them to make room for a new pile-supported jetport in the shallows behind Sandy Hook. Space Planner Lawrence Lerner would create new landing space by (in effect) moving a greatly enlarged J.F.K. Airport onto a nine-mile-long concrete island five miles off Long Beach and looping existing land transportation right through it, with parking garages and rapid-transit stops near every plane-departure lounge.
Lerner estimates that more than two-thirds of the $6 billion needed for his offshore jetport could be raised by the sale and development of the old J.F.K. Airport on Jamaica Bay. Chicago and New Orleans may finance theirs by charging passenger-use fees similar to those collected by many European airports. Any offshore airport, however, needs site and feasibility studies before construction can begin, and the task of draining or filling the enormous areas required is herculean. The proposed Lake Erie jetport would take an estimated ten years to complete, the New Orleans jetport nine, and even Chicago's optimistic Commissioner Downes figures on a minimum of four to five years for his Lake Michigan airport. Meanwhile air transportation is rapidly strangling on its own success, and costs, unlike planes, keep going up but never come down.