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"Monterey\u00A0Regional Airport\u00A0showed off improvements to its runway Thursday in a ribbon-cutting\u00A0ceremony.It's a project anyone who has traveled the length of Highway 68 in the past year has seen in part. The airport built an 80-foot\u00A0high retaining wall, terraced to hold in mounds of fill dirt,\u00A0on top of which a runway cushion now towers above the highway. At the other end of the airport,\u00A0a second cushion has been put in along the border with Monterey Pines Golf Course.\"We had a safe airport,\u00A0but this made it safer,\" said Mary Ann Leffel,\u00A0chair of the airport's board.The cushions are made of roughly 9,000 blocks of crushable concrete that would slow a plane down, similar to the way a runaway truck lane can slow a semi.In\u00A0its entirety\u00A0the project cost $52 million,\u00A0finishing on budget and on time in December 2015.Leffel said the investment shows carriers the airport is here to stay,\u00A0and for those hoping to fly out of Monterey it could mean more destinations.\"We are definitely in talks to bring in new flights, to bring in new service, to additional cities,\" said Leffel.The airport isn't releasing what cities might be added,\u00A0but Leffel is hopeful an announcement will be made next quarter.The federal government covered 95 percent of the $52 million for the project because the airport had to make the runway changes to meet new FAA standards. The other 5 percent came from an\u00A0airport fund built on Fly Monterey passenger fees.Rep. Sam Farr (D),\u00A0who was at the celebration Thursday,\u00A0said the money was well spent. He expects the airport will become more and more important to peninsula residents in the coming years.\"We need to either deal with the consequences of traffic jams or find more efficient ways to move people,\u00A0and I think the airport is going to be a part of that big solution,\" Farr said.The runway improvement project not only finished on schedule,\u00A0it's also done in time for both the Super Bowl and AT&amp;T ProAm. The two events happen within a week of each other,\u00A0and Leffel said the airport will be seeing increased traffic.Leffel said ticket prices are already spiking for the week and she expects there will be increased jet traffic for the two events as well."^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.ksbw.com/article/fly-monterey-runway-improvements-could-mean-more-destinations-for-passengers/1058619>