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DePaul Report: O'Hare Terminal Construction Lagging, City Urged to Act as Taxi Times and Passenger Frustration Mount
A new DePaul University report warns that O'Hare's prolonged terminal construction is driving up taxi times and sinking passenger satisfaction, and calls on the city to adopt measures like shifting flights to Terminal 5 and using modular construction to ease the pain.
O'Hare International Airport risks falling further behind its peers in passenger satisfaction and taxi times unless the city takes aggressive steps to manage congestion during its long-delayed terminal construction, according to a report released Wednesday by DePaul University's Chaddick Institute for Metropolitan Development.
The report, authored primarily by institute director Joe Schwieterman, found that O'Hare is the only one of the nation's 25 largest airports that has not opened a new terminal in the past quarter-century. Some sections of Terminals 2 and 3 date to 1962, while Terminal 5 was built in 1993 and expanded in 2023. The airport will appear increasingly outdated until two new satellite terminals open by 2030 and a new Global Terminal opens in 2033, the report says.
"Nobody envisioned it would be more than a quarter-century before we had a large new terminal," Schwieterman said, noting the project has faced delays since it began in 2001. He attributed the slow pace to a combination of delays and airlines balking at cost concerns after the COVID-19 pandemic. The report does credit the city for recently accelerating the construction timeline.
The construction comes as O'Hare handles record traffic. The airport has become a larger hub for United Airlines and American Airlines, whose competition for gates led the Federal Aviation Administration to cap flight numbers. It remains unclear whether the FAA will extend those cuts into next year.
Meanwhile, taxi times have soared. Outbound taxi times rose from 22 minutes in 2023 to 28 minutes this year, according to Schwieterman's analysis. Over the same period, the average taxi time at the top 30 U.S. airports grew by just a minute and a half, to 20 minutes. Passenger satisfaction ratings have also declined each year, according to the latest J.D. Power survey.
To ease the strain, the report recommends several steps the city's Aviation Department could take: shifting more flights to the underused Terminal 5, using modular construction techniques to build terminal components off-site, and considering boarding flights away from current terminals using next-generation mobile terminal technology. The report points to a Dallas/Fort Worth International contractor that installed six gates in two weeks using modular methods, and to Eero Nexus mobile terminals that can move 100 people at a time. It also suggests adding shuttle buses between Terminal 5 and Terminal 3 to improve access.
The Aviation Department, which is leading construction, said in a statement that the recommendations "would require detailed operational and engineering evaluation in consultation with our airline, federal and construction partners." The department noted the terminal project follows a 16-year runway modernization program that ended in 2021, giving O'Hare eight runwaysâmore than any commercial airport in the worldâand said it is sequencing construction to limit impacts and address taxi times.
The report's warning carries weight for Chicago travelers and workers alike: O'Hare is a major economic engine for the region, and a prolonged period of congestion and dissatisfaction could damage its standing as a global hub. With construction expected to continue for seven more years, the pressure is on City Hall to ensure the pain is minimizedâand that passengers aren't the ones paying the price for decades of delay.