Monterey Airport safety project on budget, on time

If you’ve wondered what that big wall growing along Highway 68 in the past few weeks is, we have the answer.

It’s all part of a $50 million safety project at the Monterey Regional Airport.

Crews are building a retaining wall to expand the runway. The improved design will ultimately stop planes from going off the cliff should they lose control on landing.

“They all build up to be level with the runway, and that’s to put a lot of crushable concrete blocks at the end of the runway,” Mark Bautista, Monterey Airport Deputy-General Manager said.

The crushable concrete is designed to help planes stop. It’s expensive; the price tag for the material is $12 million. It’s designed specifically for every airport that uses it, and the types of planes particular to that airport.

From a bird’s eye view, the runway isn’t perfectly square, so the walls are being built to square it off.

When crews are done with the east end around next April, they’ll start doing the same thing on the west end.

“It’s a great feeling to know that everything is on track,” Bautista said. “None of us wants to think about the consequences of even one aircraft going of the end of the runway.”

The entire update should be done by the end of December 2015. Airport officials have been working on this project since 2007, when they knew they had to meet a national safety mandate.