T.F. Green Airport is re-evaluating a five-year, $125 million development plan after a cost analysis revealed the price tag would exceed initial estimates by $40 million.
The Rhode Island Airport Corporation had originally planned to make several infrastructure improvements to the small Warwick regional airport, including lengthening the main runway, moving a road that currently sits parallel to the terminal and improving safety measures on the secondary runway, said Peter Frazier, interim president and CEO of the Airport Corporation. Though the plan to move the road has been scrapped, Frazier said T.F. Green expects to go ahead with the runway and safety improvements.
Frazier said the corporation hopes that by improving its infrastructure, the airport can attract new airlines and increase business.
"We have the shortest primary runway in the Northeast for a regional airport," Frazier said. "It's important to maintain competitive parity on infrastructure."
"It would be cool," said Caryn Cobb '15, who flies out in and out of T.F. Green when she returns home to Norfolk, Va. Cobb said she always flies Southwest Airlines and would not be interested in more airlines serving the airport, but she noted that increased efficiency and more options for flight times would be welcome improvements.
But some students who fly through Providence frequently worry that scaling up the airport's size might result in larger crowds and increased delays at security.
Cobb said it might be good for the airport to expand but acknowledged that more people could mean more delays at the security line. "I don't think it would be that bad, though. T.F. Green is a relatively accessible airport," she said.
Though the two improvement projects will overlap in 2016, Frazier said, the airport will be working with its airline providers to develop a schedule that would minimize any delays.
Delta Air Lines spokesperson Anthony Black said while he could not speak to the specifics of T.F. Green's case, an airport's operating airlines are major players in the decisions being made in most development plans.
"It's a collaborative effort between the airport and the airlines operating there to ensure that the best ideas are brought forward and are put to a vote to determine what project will come forward," he said.
The safety improvement in question involves a crosswind runway - the runway used when the prevailing wind is in an abnormal direction - that runs perpendicular to the main runway and is used about one-third as frequently. The plan is to install an engineered material arresting system made of concrete blocks intended to stop an out-of-control plane.
"If you overrun the end of the runway, (the blocks) crush, and it slows the plane down," Frazier said.
The first stage of the corporation's process for development planning involved an environmental impact analysis and preliminary cost estimate. The original estimate for the arresting system in that stage was about $70 million, said Frazier, which was "at the high end" of federal standards for determining whether a planned safety improvement would be an efficient use of resources.
After the engineers began running a more rigorous analysis, the final figure - $110 million - blew past those guidelines, Frazier said.
After sending the design back to the engineers, the airport has a new plan that meets the federal standards and will cost only about $40 million, Frazier said. The design is currently going through the approval process, and Frazier estimated that construction will begin in late 2015.
The second stage of development, which will start in 2016 and be finished by the end of the next year, will extend T.F. Green's primary runway from 7,166 feet to 8,700 feet.
"It (will be) this incredible chess game of balancing when runways are closed," Frazier said, adding that the airport does not "anticipate any disruption in service."
