A major airport has been proposed to be built in Peotone, Illinois, a suburb of Chicago. There is no official name and two separate plans exist, one known as the "South Suburban Airport" and another known as "Abraham Lincoln National Airport". The FAA refers to the two proposals as South Suburban Airport. The airport would serve as an additional airport in the Chicago metropolitan area. Supporters of the airport say it will bring new jobs to the southern suburbs and the entire Chicago region, while relieving critical runway and terminal congestion at O'Hare International Airport and Chicago Midway International Airport. A new airport would accommodate large jet service similar to that of O'Hare, but that Midway International Airport does not offer.Critics believe the airport is unnecessary and may be a failure like MidAmerica St. Louis Airport. Expanding O'Hare or other international airports in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, Rockford, and Gary, Indiana are thought to be viable alternatives. However, proponents of a third Chicago airport believe Rockford is not close enough to Chicago, and that expanding Milwaukee's or Gary's airport for Chicago-bound travelers is not as financially beneficial to the state of Illinois as it will be to the state of Wisconsin or state of Indiana.History of the proposed airportProfessor Stanley Berge of Northwestern University first proposed a Peotone airport site on November 13, 1968. His main arguments for the proposed site were that it could have fast access to Chicago by rail and highway, that the site was far enough from O'Hare Airport to avoid interfering with flight patterns there, that it would have all-weather flight safety, and that the site was environmentally compatible with the surrounding area. Professor Berge envisioned a high-speed train service to downtown Chicago.
