Sunnyvale Mayor Appointed to Regional Airport Planning Committee 

Sunnyvale, CA (02/06/03) – Sunnyvale Mayor, Julia Miller, was recently appointed to the Regional Airport Planning Committee (RAPC), comprised of representatives from the Metropolitan Transportation Commission, the Association of Bay Area Governments, the Bay Conservation and Development Commission, the region’s three international airports—San Francisco, San Jose, and Oakland—and state and federal agencies. 

An important project that the RAPC is undertaking is updating the Regional Airport System Plan to inform and guide decisions affecting runway capacity in the Bay Area over the next 20 years.  “Since Sunnyvale is home to Moffett Field, and the future use of this airfield and its runways is extremely important to the residents of Sunnyvale and our surrounding cities, it will be essential to have this perspective represented,” said Mayor Miller.   

The Committee has also commissioned new aviation forecasts for 2010 and 2020, evaluated the runway expansion options being considered by the San Francisco and San Jose airports, and reviewed basic environmental data on possible impacts to Bay resources.  In addition, RAPC has studied a range of alternatives to runway expansions, such as shifting flights from San Francisco to Oakland or San Jose, building a new airport in the North Bay, restricting the number of overall flights, deploying new air-traffic control technologies, and instituting high-speed rail service to reduce flight demand in the busy Bay Area-to-Los Angeles travel corridor.