To the editor:
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I took several extra copies of the Reader article on the Peotone airport boondoggle [“Runway Inflation,” March 15] to the March 20 meeting of the Intermodal Advisory Task Force of the Chicago Area Transportation Study, where a variety of interested parties explore freight transportation problems of the region and seek solutions. As we introduced ourselves and reported recent news snippets, I made the extra copies available and said this is just the sort of boondoggling in transportation I am against, also that author [Robert] Heuer met named source Jay Franke at our previous meeting. Franke said he had never met Heuer before, but he seemed to be a decent fellow. Having previously proposed a monorail industrial district along Cicero and 75th at these meetings, I said it was an alternative to the airport, one that would create real factory jobs, not a lot of boondoggling. The IDOT representative said this was necessary to keep the economy going. I said I would take up that very topic at the College of Complexes on May 4, that dissipation of capital resources is just what stifles the economy.
The money taken in by license bribes is indeed nickel-dime compared to the billions blown on unnecessary construction projects such as the Peotone airport. Would anyone care to compare the license-for-bribes proceeds with the political contributions from the construction industry?
W. Hubbard
