Regional Air Transportation Demand Task Force (1999-2000)
The Port of Portland requested that the Institute of Portland Metropolitan Studies convene a Regional Air Transportation Demand Task Force to investigate two questions arising from the preparation of a new master plan for PDX:
- First, is the forecast underlying the master plan a reasonable depiction of future demand for passenger, cargo, military, and general aviation usage of the airport?
- Second, what other alternatives ought to be considered in addition to those looked at as part of the PDX master plan process?
Note that the charge was not to determine whether the Port Commission should or should not adopt the master plan. Acceptance or rejection of the improvements identified in the master plan will ultimately require the preparation of at least one and probably more environmental impact statements. Through the environmental impact statement process, proposed improvements are subjected to rigorous analysis commensurate with the scale of the impacts and the nature of the process used to identify them. In contrast, this Task Force has been asked to provide a scan of possible alternatives to determine whether any warranted further review at this time. Actual analysis of alternatives would require funding and time commitments well in excess of those made to this initial process. Nonetheless, the Task Force has utilized its meetings to help clarify the questions that the Port Commission will have to address as it considers adopting the plan. At a minimum, the findings of the Task Force should be used as a starting point for broadening the Port's traditional approach to airport master planning at PDX.
Click here to read or download the Task Force's final report (.pdf file). You will need Adobe Acrobat Reader to access the document; a free download of Reader is available here.
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