The Chicago Tribune is reporting that construction begins this week on a new east-west runway for O'Hare International Airport, which the city says will help reduce delays and spread the pain when it comes to jet noise, officials said Wednesday.

The new 9C/27C runway will be the airport's sixth parallel runway, and at 11,245 feet long and 200 feet wide will be O'Hare's second largest. The runway accounts for about half of a $1.3 billion infrastructure project announced earlier this year and will open in 2020.

The city said the runway will improve on-time performance through increased capacity and flexibility. The runway will be able to handle the biggest planes — the kind that come from and go to Asia and Australia.

Adding another runway will ease jet noise in some areas, the city says, though anti-airport-noise activists say they're concerned that more jet traffic will mean more noise.

Source: The Chicago Tribune