Tag Archives: Airports

HSR and Air Travel – partners and competitors

Alon Levy wrote about the USDOT’s airfare database and the implications for potential high speed rail markets. Alon’s broad conclusions are that the regional markets suitable for HSR haven’t changed all that much in the last decade – the NEC is the most promising corridor, California is second, and others also make sense – but short of a true national network.

His post sparked me to ask – what are the best practices for integrating HSR with airports? High Speed Rail networks have different characteristics from airline networks. Some elements of the services are competitive, while others are complementary. A big part of the political sell for HSR in California was the counterfactual of required airport investment to facilitate travel in the state – but what’s the real impact on airports and airline service?

HSR Corridors vs Airline Hub Networks

Even modest rail systems can effectively compete against air travel in given corridors. Amtrak often brags about the barely-high-speed Acela earning an 80% share of the air/rail market (a notably smaller portion of the overall travel market) between NYC and DC. American and Delta still offer their Shuttle flights between DCA and LGA, but they don’t dominate they way they used to.

Amtrak has the advantage along a linear corridor, where one train making multiple stops serves multiple markets – If United Airlines wanted to match service along the NEC, they’d need a lot of feeder flights from DCA, BWI, and PHL into EWR – and they’d have to run them far more frequently to offer as many departure times.

Airline hubs are a different beast – the spokes all feed traffic into the hub. They’re not flying a route solely for the local traffic, they’re also feeding traffic into their hub to connect to other routes.

International Comparisons

Despite the track record for HSR in other countries, there are surprisingly few examples of excellent air-rail integration. Only a handful of big airports have quality connections to HSR networks: Frankfurt, Paris-CDG, and Amsterdam are most prominent. I found this paper exploring the history of both FRA and CDG:

In Frankfurt, the addition of HSR service allowed Lufthansa to decrease domestic flights and increase international flights without losing domestic passenger feed:

With the opening of the Frankfurt–Cologne and Frankfurt–Stuttgart HSR lines, Frankfurt Airport increased its catchment area by 10 million people who suddenly lived within 2 h of the airport…
Whereas Frankfurt Airport may be limited in terms of capacity, it has managed to support an increase in international passenger traffic and to maintain dominance in Germany as the major long-haul international airport serving the country.

Conversely, at CDG, Air France retained a small number of domestic flights to feed their long-haul flights, despite the TGV’s dominance in markets to/from Paris:

The other two routes, Paris–Lyon and Paris–Montpellier, experienced a relatively flat trend in passenger traffic, although there are competitive HSR alternatives that link these cities directly to CDG. In particular, the capacity on these routes has remained relatively stable, supporting research claims that airlines are likely to maintain a certain number of flights at their hub airports to maintain their network, even with the presence of fast and reliable HSR–air connectivity (7).

The paper’s conclusions about the characteristics of a successful HSR/airport integration:

Infrastructure. To provide feeder or transfer service between HSR and air transportation, the rail station should be located at the airport. If the HSR connection at the airport is constructed as a detour from the primary network patterns on the rail system, it is unlikely that the airport will be served with enough frequency.
Schedule and frequency. Rail operators and airlines often have the same goal of optimizing their networks, but they are separate networks. Coordinating timetables to ensure that rail service meets banks of connecting flights is an important consideration.
Market characteristics of the airport. In the two successful cases in this study, the primary airports with HSR links were the dominant international hubs of each country. For both CDG and Frankfurt International Airport, domestic traffic declined and international passenger traffic increased. Two key factors may have influenced this growth: partial alleviation of congestion at the airport by decreasing domestic flights and success of the HSR lines as feeder service for international flights.

In other words: lots of similar patterns to good transit planning on the rail side of the equation: Be on the way; frequency is freedom, etc. The key difference is about integration: is HSR service best thought of as a means of ground transportation – just extending an airport’s catchment area? Or is it best considered like a true connecting flight – integrated into an airline’s ticketing, loyalty programs, baggage handling, etc.

For airports and airlines, things are a bit more complicated. Both CDG and FRA are huge hubs, and the primary international connecting hubs for their respective countries.

In the US, the airport/airline situation is quite different. As a much larger country, no airline operates a single hub that dominates international traffic the way that CDG and FRA do in France and Germany. Far more medium-distance air travel is domestic travel; US visa rules and unfavorable geography make international-to-international connections less common – meaning domestic feed at big connecting hubs is even more important.

Future US HSR/Airport Links

Alon’s conclusions:

In the Midwest, the core lines remain strong, but more peripheral Midwestern lines, say a bypass around Chicago for cross-regional traffic or improved rail service due west toward Iowa, are probably no longer worth it. The Cleveland-Columbus-Cincinnati corridor may not be worth it to build as full HSR – instead it may be downgraded to an electrified passenger-primary corridor (as I understand it it already has very little freight).

Now, Alon was using this air travel data as a proxy for overall travel demand. Assuming the demand is still there (even if the recent growth has been mdoest) Chicago strikes me as a market with great potential as an air/rail hub – a huge hub airport, located near existing candidate HSR lines, and wouldn’t require a large detour to serve. The full Midwest HSR network centered on Chicago could extend ORD’s catchment area (connecting MSP, MSN, MKE, DTW, STL, CLE, and others) and potentially free up airport capacity for longer-haul, higher-value flying.

SFO is another airport that stands to benefit from HSR. SFO’s airfield is constrained and unable to expand; United’s trans-pacific hub depends on feeder flights often limited by poor visibility; the airport’s location is immediately adjacent to the planned HSR service.

Better planning for CAHSR would add even more value to the connection at SFO – particularly had planners used Altamont Pass, the airport would have a faster connection to Sacramento, increasing SFO’s catchment area.

The Northeast Corridor has lots of potential air-rail connections. The rail line itself passes plausibly close to lots of major airports: DCA, BWI, PHL, and EWR. DCA lacks international flights and is can’t grow; BWI’s hub carrier is almost entirely domestic and doesn’t have many international flights to feed.

Both PHL and EWR are interesting candidates for American and United, respectively. Newark in particular meets all of the criteria for success described in the paper. United already uses EWR’s proximity to code-share with Amtrak in lieu of flying short connecting flights from Philadelphia (though the business practices of Amtrak and United are quite different and can make for a challenging passenger experience) and United recently announced cutbacks to flights within the NEC to EWR – dropping the 4x daily BWI-EWR service due to airport constraints.

Philadelphia would require an airport station along the NEC that doesn’t currently exist. The airport’s proximity to New York and the larger travel market there means a bit of a precarious existence, but PHL’s hub carrier (American) has recently been shifting connecting traffic to PHL and away from their greater New York operations, which are split across LGA and JFK and increasingly focused on serving local traffic.

The potential is there for these airports – the big questions will be a) if HSR service ever exists (or improves), and b) what form the airline/railroad partnership takes – as a true connection, or as extended ground transportation?

TOD at IAD: a concept for developing Saarinen Circle at Dulles International Airport

As the Metropolitan Washington Airports Authority continues work on Phase 2 of the Metrorail extension to Dulles International Airport and beyond, it’s worth considering some of the transit oriented development opportunities at the airport beyond just the obvious connection for passengers at the terminal.

Airports around the world take advantage of their connectivity in developing an airport city: office space, warehouses, hotels all diversify an airport’s business income. It’s a virtuous cycle:

real estate connected to the airport has value;
rents from those spaces diversifies airport revenues and drives down their operating costs;
lower costs encourage more airline service which increase connectivity around the world;
increased connectivity adds value to the airport location.

Amsterdam Schiphol is one of the best examples, with nearly 6 million sf of commercial space on the airport grounds alone. They don’t just brand themselves as an airport city, but as the ‘Schiphol CBD,’ complete with new public spaces.

Munich Airport Center. Image from Wikipedia.

While that may be an ultimate goal, perhaps something closer to the Munich Airport Center (MAC) is a better match – particularly for any development in the Dulles parking bowl within Saarinen Circle. MAC is a pedestrian oriented retail and commercial complex connecting the airport’s two terminals and S-Bahn station, flanked by airport parking, buses, and a hotel. All of the key airport destinations feed pedestrians into the space: parking, taxi, drop-off, etc, increasing foot traffic to the retail spaces.

Schematic map of Munich Airport Center; note retail (red) and restaurants (yellow), Terminal 1 (top), Terminal 2 and the Forum (bottom), S-Bahn station (below), buses (left side) and taxis (right side).

The most iconic element is the MAC Forum, a large covered outdoor plaza surrounded by shops and offices. The airport operator extensively programs the Forum with a variety of sponsored events to draw in non-airport patrons (for whom parking fees are waived) in addition to workers and travelers.

Entrance to the S-Bahn at the MAC Forum; CC image from Jeromyu on Flickr.

Munich Airport Forum; showing roof over the open air public space. Creative Commons image from Nir on Flickr.

The key elements of the Munich Airport Center include retail, restaurants, public space, and public transit. For adjacent development, the airport offers flexible office and conference space for rent (and is working on additional office development – they do not yet have planning permission for office space on the magnitude of Schiphol) as well as a connected hotel.

MWAA is actively looking to diversify their revenues at Dulles. For development, MWAA is shopping the Western Lands on the far side of the airport, searching for interest in a second on-airport hotel, as well as other various sites on airport property that might generate some kind of revenue for the Authority. Among other development opportunities, they list ‘Saarinen Circle’ as something to watch.

Saarinen Circle surrounds the surface parking lot directly in front of the Eero Saarinen terminal building. The Metro station (under construction) and parking garage are currently connected to the main terminal via a tunnel beneath the parking lot.

The Saarinen Circle site has several advantages. Space is plentiful (there was plenty of complaining about the decision to move the Metro station to the opposite side of the parking lot from the terminal), but the distances aren’t overwhelming: The distance between the garage and the terminal is similar to the distance between Terminals 1 and 2 at Munich. Development in the circle has the potential to make that walk a pleasant stroll among shops and public space, rather than through the drab-but-functional existing tunnel.

Because of the iconic Saarinen Terminal and the views of it for drivers approaching via Saarinen Circle, any development within the parking bowl couldn’t be very tall. Several historic preservationists objected to the Metro aerial guideway’s potential to block views. While this may foreclose on a large structure such as the one covering Munich’s Forum (after all, the canopy over the forum is the signature architecture for Munich’s airport – Dulles already has an icon), it shouldn’t stop all development. Using the existing tunnel level as the ‘ground’ floor would offer some room for development above. MAC is similarly surrounded by roadways and airport infrastructure at different levels.

Munich Airport Center makes good use of changes in grade to connect pedestrians between the terminals at multiple levels. Relocating existing taxi, bus, and valet parking to flank a new multi-level development between the terminal building and the parking garage/Metro station. The development not only has the chance to aid the finances of IAD by generating non-aviation revenue, but also in attracting more use to the Metro station via old-fashioned transit oriented development.

There’s plenty of developable land at Dulles, but only Saarinen Circle has the key location between the Metro station and the terminal. Airports around the world provide models for better uses of the space than surface parking.

The good and bad of Denver’s new airport transit line

Denver RTD A-Line map.

Next time you fly into Denver, you’ll be able to hop on a train from the airport to downtown. There’s a lot to celebrate about this new transit line, and much to criticize. There’s plenty of effusive praise for Denver’s transit ambitions without much critical pushback in the popular press.

A few thoughts on the good and bad of the line and RTD’s rapidly expanding system, starting with the not-so-good.

This line is part of Denver’s large FasTracks system expansion. While ambitious in scope, many of the routing decisions are odd network choices. There’s a lot of reverse branching, use of freeway rights of way, and other opportunistic decisions to ease construction, but which may be regretted later.
FasTracks centers on Denver Union Station. DUS is a remarkable urban redevelopment project, but a huge missed opportunity in terms of transit operational design.
- Union Station is now a stub-end terminal for regional rail trains, limiting the station’s capacity and preventing future intercity or regional rail use of the station.
- Light rail trains stop 1,000 feet away from the regional trail platforms. The distance is creatively connected with an underground bus concourse, but the transfer environment is less than ideal – particularly given the almost-blank slate to work with.
- Real estate development projects advanced before any understanding of the transit right of way needs, and have now forever closed those avenues for expansion. The real estate framework for expanding Denver’s downtown matured before the framework for transit expansion.
Rail service to Denver’s airport is important, but commentators often place too much emphasis on serving airports instead of overall improvements to the transit network. This is less true for Denver, given the systematic transit expansion as a part of FasTracks (and the network benefits therein).

Critiques aside, there’s a lot to praise with the airport line.

Frequent, all-day, electrified main-line rail service – much of it built in a greenfield right of way.
- For all of the benefits of main-line rail as a means to offer rapid transit service, it’s great to see a project execute on those benefits
- Electrification offers great promise for frequent transit – taking advantage of performance benefits from using electric multiple unit trains with quick acceleration, instead of diesel-powered peak-only ‘commuter’ trains.
- Development of new regional rail transit lines along greenfield right-of-way opens up all kinds of planning possibilities for other regions.
The project demonstrates the benefits of risk-sharing public-private partnership deals. With the contractor responsible for long-term operating costs, their design efforts focused on the most efficient way to meet the parameters of the contract (all-day, frequent rapid transit service). For those reasons, the team embraced the electric commuter rail concept, opting for:
- Mainline rail vehicles to better handle interactions with adjacent freight rail corridors and meet regulatory requirements
- International standard electrification (25kV AC) to reduce the costs of substations while still providing the necessary performance
- off-the-shelf procurement of a proven design (Silverliner V vehicles) to avoid development costs.

Dispatch from the battle lines over Globalization: US Airlines take on the Middle East Carriers

Dubai International Airport. CC image from Raihan S.R. Bakhsh

There’s a fight brewing amongst big international airlines. The old guys are complaining that the new kids aren’t playing by the same rules; the new kids argue that the old guys need to step up their game. The dispute represents a fascinating window into a very public battle over globalization. What are the rules, and who gets to make them?

A coalition of the three major American airlines (American/US Airways, United, and Delta) combined with many of the unions that represent their employees are putting on a full-court press (complete with ads in DC’s Metro), arguing that the Big Three carriers in the Middle East (Emirates, Qatar, and Etihad – often abbreviated as the ME3) are undermining the principles of free and fair competition with subsidies that distort the market. The Gulf air carriers are pushing back against the accusations, arguing they provide a superior product at a lower cost. Vox has a brief article that summarizes the arguments for both sides.

The US carriers outline billions in subsidies to these carriers. They include everything from subsidized development of the region’s massive airports to interest-free loans and infusions of capital from the ruling families – who also own the airlines themselves. The alleged subsidies support Qatar and Etihad to a greater degree than Emirates (the paper alleges that Qatar and Etihad would not be viable commercial businesses without their subsidies; not so for Emirates). You can find the white paper and presentation here.

Summary of the subsidies alleged by the US carriers. Image from the Americans for Fair Skies presentation.

Central to the debate are the United States’ Open Skies treaties with Qatar and the United Arab Emirates. Open Skies treaties deregulate the routes and destinations for international air travel between the two signatories. The US State Department prioritized signing Open Skies agreements since signing the first such agreement between the US and the Netherlands in 1992 (see the full list of agreements here, as well as the text of a sample agreement).

There is an inherent asymmetry in any Open Skies agreement between the United States and Qatar or the UAE; due to the small size of those countries, the agreements only add two or three destinations worth serving for US airlines (indeed, there are only two scheduled flights to Qatar or the UAE from US-based carriers – Delta flies ATL-DXB and United flies IAD-DXB). Gulf airlines, however, earn rights to fly to a wide array of American cities.

Part of the success of the Gulf carriers is due to the geographic advantage of the Middle East hubs. Dubai has long served as a stopover point for refueling along the Kangaroo Route. Now, carriers like Emirates use Dubai as centrally located hub to efficiently connect air traffic between Europe, Africa, India, and Southeast Asia.

However, there’s more to the rise of the Gulf carriers than advantageous geography. For these Gulf states (often, effectively, city-states), focusing on aviation is a deliberate economic development strategy. When you’re talking about state-owned businesses, how do you differentiate between the viability of the various airlines as businesses from the state’s explicit policy of aviation-focused economic development? In their white paper, the US carriers make the case that Open Skies agreements assumed that an open market would provide a superior business model to state-owned airlines (and there is a long history around the world of poorly run state-owned airlines) and that competition would bring this truth to light. However, with the rise of State Capitalism, the US carriers argue, it’s not clear that assumption can be trusted.

It’s the next step in the idea of developing around the aerotropolis. Instead of building your economy around an airport, why not build it around an airline? Dubai’s success in developing their middle-eastern metropolis around a global aviation hub inspired Qatar and Abu Dhabi to do the same – a strategy that not only required the airport, but the airline to feed it.

The Gulf carriers aren’t just looking to their Middle East hub airports, either. Emirates took advantage of struggling Alitalia to earn a fifth-freedom route from Milan to JFK. Emirates makes no secret of their ambitions to offer service around the globe via some key fifth-freedom routes:

President Tim Clark has revealed the first details of what looks like the next step in Emirates’ march to become a truly global powerhouse. On the sidelines of last week’s International Air Transport Association (IATA) annual general meeting in Cape Town, the airline outlined plans to set up a major transpacific operation. Its aircraft would be flying through intermediate points in Asia to destinations in North America. What is making the threat even more serious for Asian and U.S. airlines is that Emirates has another 67 Airbus A380s on firm order, which—like its large incoming fleet of Boeing 777-300ERs—has the range capability to fly from many points in Asia to cities far beyond the U.S. West Coast.

Emirates can choose from several geographic points that offer the necessary aeropolitical framework. The United Arab Emirates (UAE) has an open skies agreement with the U.S. “It allows us to take passengers on a fifth-freedom basis from the West Coast and central points in the U.S. to points in Asia,” Clark says. In Asia, there are open skies agreements with Thailand and Singapore. Emirates also has similar rights for some destinations in Japan.

Bold added. This is the root of the entire debate: a battle over the details of a global aeropolitical framework. A battle over the rules.

When it comes to Emirates, their Dubai hub isn’t the concern from the US carriers. The real concern is these aspirations to cover the globe with fifth-freedom traffic. Delta claims that the ME3’s cheap connections in Dubai make it difficult to serve India directly from the US (and presents strong competition for the European joint venture partners if connecting to India in Europe). Flying to US cities from Europe or Asia directly (e.g. the current New York-Milan service, if expanded to other airports) threatens to undermine direct service to Europe; additional fifth-freedom routes across the Pacific could do the same. Brett Snyder notes the concern about hurting the overall network:

If the Middle East carriers skim the international markets with the most traffic, then the US carriers will have to cut back service. When international flights get cut, the whole network becomes vulnerable. The end result is probably less service for smaller and mid-tier cities. It’s just the way the network effect works.

While the American carriers are asking the US Government to revisit these agreements, the Feds must balance other US interests in the region beyond air travel. Qatar and the UAE host a number of US military facilities. The US has a large trade surplus with both nations, partly due to companies like Boeing selling lots of widebody airliners to the Gulf Carriers. American cargo airlines like FedEx take advantage of Open Skies in a similar fashion to the Gulf carriers, facilitating global cargo movement. In other words, it’s not clear the US carriers have a sympathetic ear from the Federal government.

The PR campaign from the US carriers is an attempt to change policy by influencing public opinion, but it will be an uphill climb with the general public. Counter-arguments from the Gulf carriers ask why the American carriers are afraid of competition. US airlines aren’t exactly earning lots of sympathy from the public.

The PR battle is also getting nasty: Qatar Airways’ CEO accuses Delta of flying “crap” planes without a hint of irony: it’s not hard to buy nice, new aircraft when you can fall back on massive capital infusions (as alleged in the white paper) to buy those expensive aircraft. Lufthansa’s CEO, facing a strike from his unionized pilots, joked that he should hire Qatar’s CEO as his union advisor (unions being illegal in Qatar and the UAE). And while customers might like the product and the price point offered by the Gulf carriers, it’s not clear than anyone in the US would be willing to accept the trade-offs that make that product possible.

The white paper notes that the subsidies documented meet the World Trade Organization definition. However, even though both Qatar and the UAE are part of the WTO, aviation isn’t a core part of the WTO’s agreements.

If aviation were a part of the WTO, there would be a specific process to raise and resolve disputes. In other trade areas, the WTO can authorize the use of ‘counterveiling measures’ against subsidies and dumping, such as tariffs or restrictions on trade volume. But here, there aren’t any specific rules governing aviation – hence the PR campaign.

In essence, this is a battle over the rules. If the story of the aerotropolis is the story of globalization, is this a tide that lifts all boats? Or is it a race to the bottom? Competition is good, but what if the basis for that competition is based on the rules governing labor markets in Qatar or the UAE? Will the fight over the rules of the game lead to improvements in working conditions for migrant labor in the middle east? While the US airlines are certainly acting in their own self-interest, is this battle similar to the public scrutiny over Qatar’s labor practices in advance of hosting the 2022 World Cup? Could this battle over the rules not only find room for fair competition, but also leverage an improved quality of life elsewhere in the world?

Or is all of that wishful thinking?

Perimeter rules – DCA, LGA, and the challenges of regulating both airline and passenger behavior

Recently, the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey floated the idea of eliminating LaGuardia Airport’s 1,500 mile perimeter rule. Only two major airports in the United States have perimeter restrictions that ban flights beyond a certain distance: LaGuardia and Washington National.

Both National and LaGuarida airports share a common history: both pre-date the jet age. both were constructed with the assistance of the Works Progress Administration, both later proved too small for jet traffic and the boom in air travel, requiring the construction of newer, larger airports.

Today, there are also several characteristics in common: both National and LaGuardia are governed and operated as a part of an airport system (administered respectively by the Metropolitan Washington Airports Authority, also operating Dulles International; and the Port Authority of NY and NJ, operating Newark and JFK airports), both airports are popular with business travelers, and both airports are subject to perimeter rule restrictions that limit the distance of scheduled flights.

The evolution of DCA perimeter restrictions. Rings around DCA show the 1965 650mi rule, the 1981 1,000mi rule, the 1986 1,250mi rule, and the current beyond-perimeter destinations. Image from the Great Circle Mapper – www.gcmap.com

The rule first appeared with the dawn of the jet age. National Airport had non-stop long-distance airline service via propellor-driven aircraft, prior to the rise of jets in commercial aviation. However, DCA was not equipped to deal with the different geometry required for efficient operations of jet aircraft. Dulles International Airport, purpose-built for the jet age, opened in 1962. Noise from jet aircraft was a large reason behind the perimeter rule, but part of the reasoning for the rule was to drive jet traffic to Dulles as well.

The first version of the rule, put in place in 1965, limited flights to a 650 mile radius of Washington, DC. This range just barely includes Chicago; airports that already had non-stop service into DCA (such as Minneapolis and Denver) were granted exemptions. Long-distance flights, exploiting the rapidly growing capabilities of jet aircraft, were forced to use either Dulles or neighboring BWI airport.

The perimeter expanded to 1,000 miles in 1981, allowing non-stop service to South Florida, Kansas City, Saint Louis, and others. In 1986, the perimeter expanded again, to 1,250 miles, far enough to allow non-stop flights from Dallas and Houston.

In 1999, Senator John McCain of Arizona campaigned to remove the perimeter rule entirely. As a compromise, Senator McCain’s hometown airline, America West (later merged with US Air, and now American Airlines) was granted new beyond-perimeter exemptions to serve Phoenix and Las Vegas.

In 2012, the FAA granted several new beyond-perimeter exemptions for new flights to Portland, San Juan, and Austin. The FAA was directed to allow these exemptions by Congress as a part of the FAA’s reauthorization.

Each successive modification of the perimeter rule involved direction action from Congress. As a quirk of DC’s status as a federal enclave, both DCA and IAD (despite both being located outside of the District of Columbia) were built and operated by the Federal government, acting in its capacity as the local government for the National Capital. Both airports were the only airports directly operated by the Federal Aviation Administration.

Since then, several conditions changed. In 1973, Congress granted limited home rule to the District of Columbia, thereby differentiating local government services from those provided by the Federal government. In 1987, Congress created (in conjunction with DC and Virginia) the Metropolitan Washington Airports Authority to operate both National and Dulles. The federal government retains ownership of both airports.

However, despite the move for increased local control for the region’s airports, much of the regulation surrounding them is still codified in federal laws and regulations.

1500 mile perimeter around LGA, with one beyond-perimeter exception for Denver. Image from the Great Circle Mapper – www.gcmap.com

Unlike National, LaGuardia’s perimeter rule is entirely self-imposed. The Port Authority imposed LaGuardia’s 1500-mile perimeter rule (with an exception for beyond-perimeter flights to Denver) in 1984 as a means to manage congestion at the airport and force some traffic to either EWR or JFK.

When looking into additional perimeter exemptions for DCA, the Government Accountability Office argued that the potential loss of flights from Dulles and BWI wouldn’t be catastrophic, and additional competition at the most central airport (in this case, DCA) would be good for consumers.

However, both MWAA and the Port Authority are tasked with managing an airport system, not just maximizing value at one particular airport. Data from MWAA shows a strong correlation between additional capacity for beyond-perimeter flights at DCA with reduced capacity for those same destinations at Dulles.

Dulles is now caught in a vicious cycle. To deal with growth in the mid-2000s, Dulles began a series of massive capital improvements to increase the airport’s capacity and address some of the inherent flaws in the airport’s design (e.g. replacing the plane-mate ‘moon buggies’ with the Aerotrain APM). Unfortunately, since MWAA took on these costs domestic passenger numbers are down, thanks to the collapse of Independence Air, the Great Recession, and the merger of United and Continental (making Dulles is no longer United’s primary east coast hub). All of these factors are driving up the cost per passenger for each remaining enplanement at Dulles. Add in the increase competition from new slots at DCA, and Dulles is struggling.

In response, MWAA is not only dealing with falling traffic at Dulles, but with DCA’s growing pains. The Authority’s new use and lease agreement with the various airlines that use the airports includes a substantial capital program over the next 10 years at DCA to accommodate additional passengers. Part of the Authority’s response is to argue vociferously against any additional exemptions to the DCA perimeter rule; however, they are at the mercy of Congress.

The Port Authority might not need to protect JFK to the same extent that MWAA would like to protect their investments in Dulles, but MWAA’s current experience should provide a cautionary tale. Removal of the perimeter restrictions at LGA would certainly produce winners and losers among both airline tenants at each airport and for the passengers that use them; it’s certainly unlikely to decrease passenger loads at LGA. In fact, American Airlines’ president argues that any changes should wait until upgrades to LGA’s terminals are complete so that they can handle additional passengers.

First, it’s also worth remembering the reason for the imposition of the perimeter rule in the first place: managing demand for one particular airport. True, it’s a somewhat crude tool to manage demand (many are already predicting that DCA-style exemptions to the rule is where the PA will end up), and even without the perimeter rule, there are still slot rules to contend with (another tricky subject).

A second challenge is addressing uncertainty: with airport funding dependent on revenues from airline traffic, a small change can have a big impact. Dulles’ capital program has been greatly affected by changes in traffic levels and by mergers in the industry that shift the airport’s importance to their main tenant in an instant. The need for several of the projects (as well as Dulles’ unaddressed capital needs, such as a new C/D concourse) stems from the airport’s original design, unable to foresee the changes in security requirements, airline boarding practice (jet bridges instead of plane mates), or airline business models (deregulation, leading to the adoption of the hub and spoke model, requiring large concourses for transferring passengers). Dulles was planned and built for the jet age. The original decisions on runway geometry and airfield characteristics have proven to be very accurate; the decisions based on predictions about the behavior of both passengers and airlines has been less successful.

Finally, there’s the need to manage the behavior of two different kinds of users: passengers and airlines. Look at the comments in just about any thread about DCA’s perimeter rule and you’ll find plenty of frequent flyers arguing against the rule. Yet, MWAA can’t successfully implement any changes to their airports without the cooperation of their tenant airlines, acting based on their own set of incentives and preferences. In asking about DCA’s ideal role in the DC region, David Alpert asks:

Should DCA be a sort of niche airport with smaller planes to many little destinations, or an airport that tries to serve as much of the travel demand, close in to the center of the region, as possible? There’s no obvious answer.

Not only is the answer not obvious, but the question itself is more complicated: an airport’s role is only as good as the service that airlines provide; the economics of the kinds of service airlines can provide at any given airport will depend a great deal on a number of factors: airport capacity, costs per enplanement, demand for travel, location/role in an airline’s network, etc.

Shifting an airport’s role can’t be imposed on the airlines; it takes a partnership.

Miscellaneous information and visuals about Dulles International Airport

In the process of scouring the internet for sources for my previous post on growing air cargo traffic at Dulles International Airport, I came across a whole host of interesting documents and information that I couldn’t find a way to fit into the narrative. So, here’s a smorgasboard of some tangentially related items I found interesting.

The image above is one example, showing spacing for wayfinding signage at IAD. Some signage uses the ‘Saarinen’ typeface, designed by Eero Saarinen specifically for the airport. The graphic is from IAD’s extensive Airport Design Standards and Signing Guidelines document, a document that not only establishes standards for the aesthetics of the airport, but also reveals the future plans for expansion at IAD.

The challenge of costs: The cost per enplanement at Dulles has risen above the median for peer airports as MWAA engaged on IAD’s capital construction program. DCA’s constraints don’t provide room for growth, but don’t require large capital expenses, either:

Growth potential: Dulles has room to grow and handle 3x as many passengers as it does today, and with a significant increase in airfield capacity as well.

Future layout: While the planning consistently shows four tiers of midfield concourses, the schematic from the Design Guidelines re-names the terminals to follow the sequence of an Aerotrain trip, rather than the current nomenclature:

Regional competition among Washington-area airports: Dulles handled the most passengers in 2012, but all three airports are very similar in overall traffic levels. Dulles has the most connecting traffic (42% of passengers connect) and the fewest number of origins/destinations in the DC area. Dulles also has (by far) the international traffic:

At the same time, the FAA forecasts for growth show Dulles taking the majority of the incremental air traffic for the region:

Development opportunities: An illustrative example from MWAA’s strategic planning documents showing the land available for development at the airport:

The northern-most of those orange blobs is a potential transit-oriented development project at the Route 606 Metro Station.

Parking symbols: From the Design Guidelines, examples of sky-related symbols for parking wayfinding:

Growing cargo traffic at Dulles – the challenges of realizing the value of an aerotropolis

Dulles International Airport – from Google Maps

In DC’s western suburbs, two related battles concerning growth are at the forefront. One is a plan for a new highway, the other is the desire to expand air cargo operations at Dulles International Airport. Both concepts seem to be hitched to one another, but they ought to be considered separately on their own merits.

The Metropolitan Washington Airports Authority has expressed a desire to grow cargo traffic at Dulles. At the same time, sprawl interests are pushing the bi-county parkway, pitching the road as a benefit to Dulles. Jonathan O’Connell’s profile of several road advocates in the Washington Post shows how much of the advocacy is another verse of the same song.

Looking to untie the road interests and airport interests David Alpert asks why MWAA is pushing all things Dulles in a Washington Post op-ed, when passengers seem more interested in DCA:

Virginia and airport officials seem to behave as though their mission is to make more stuff happen at Dulles, whether that stuff wants to happen there or not.

A quick glance through an MWAA powerpoint from their strategic planning exercises explains the logic of focusing growth on Dulles. DCA is constrained (physically, legally) with room to grow only on the margins. DCA can never be the full-service International airport that IAD can; and MWAA fears maximizing value at DCA would hurt IAD’s currently fragile position – the FAA’s recently approved slot-swap gave JetBlue a foothold at DCA, with a corresponding reduction in flights at IAD (slide 16).

Dulles relies on air traffic for approximately 75% of its revenues. While Dulles has tremendous capacity to grow, realizing that potential requires additional capital investment, such as Dulles’ Aerotrain and other elements of the recent D2 program. Now, Dulles finds itself trapped with a higher cost per enplanement than other airports due to the capital program, and a revenue stream overly reliant on aviation revenues.

Increased air cargo has the potential to help on both counts. More freight means more flights, boosting aviation revenues without requiring new airport facility investments. More freight also means increased demand for revenue-generating uses of airport land that currently lie fallow.

The catch is this: it’s not easy creating a freight business out of nothing. Dulles does not have the central location like Memphis or Louisville, the central US hubs for FedEx and UPS, respectively. The area does not have a huge manufacturing base, either – air cargo shipments originating or terminating in IAD would need to focus on consumer goods. Likewise, the airport does not currently have a major cargo presence that would lure the manufacturing that does exist in the area to cluster around the airport. Chickens and eggs are both missing.

There are opportunities, however. Dulles does have huge tracts of land, the ability for 24 hour operations, and lots of airfield capacity. Both FedEx and UPS operate regional hubs in the US to avoid the need to route all cargo through their core hubs in Memphis and Louisville. On the east coast, FedEx operates out of Newark while UPS operates their east coast hub in Philadelphia. Linda Loyd profiled the UPS operation in the Philadelphia Inquirer:

Starting at 7 a.m. each day, UPS planes arrive in Philadelphia from Cologne, which is UPS’s European hub, and from England and Paris. International flights from Louisville, Ky., stop in Philadelphia heading to Europe, and planes leave Europe, stopping in Philadelphia, bound for Louisville, which is UPS’s air headquarters. Each afternoon, flights arrive here loaded with packages from Dallas and Southern California.

UPS is the world’s largest transportation company, and the Philadelphia facility – second in size only to Louisville – handles 70,000 parcels and documents per hour. That number reaches 95,000 at peak times like Christmas, with parcels headed to and from 18 states, as far west as California.

…

Just before midnight, as passenger terminals and commercial flights are winding down, operations are heating up at UPS. Package sorting largely happens at night. More than 1,000 UPS workers report at 11 p.m. for the “night sort,” which continues until about 3 a.m., or until all packages are unloaded and sorted and put back into trucks, trailers, and planes to leave again.

Cargo moves around the world in multiple stops, not one long journey.

At each stop, planes and trucks are emptied, and packages are sorted and scanned, and reloaded on other flights. The network tracks packages on each leg of the trip, in order to maximize the weight and loads, through constant sorting and resorting. While a lot of the work is automated, it requires an army of people, along with bar-code scanners and a city of conveyor belts that crisscross like freeways.

Philadelphia’s UPS facility might be ripe for poaching: As Loyd’s article notes, the 212 acre site lies in the way of a proposed runway expansion at PHL. The airport’s proffered alternative location is smaller, closer to residential neighbors, and without room for expansion. Unsurprisingly, UPS does not favor the expansion (nor does PHL’s anchor tenant, US Air – fearing the increased fees that currently hurt an airport like Dulles).

In the case that UPS is looking for alternative airports, MWAA Board Minutes show the courtship in progress. Dulles can offer an east-coast location with room to grow and unconstrained flight operations, and hooking an anchor cargo integrator like UPS would be attractive to other air cargo operators, as well as businesses with lots of air cargo shipments.

While increased cargo is one option to grow non-aviation revenues through land development, it is not the only option. Increasing non-aviation revenues is important to provide a counter-cyclical revenue source for airport operations. It also represents a change in MWAA’s practices – while most airports have been increasing their share of non-aeronautical revenues, MWAA has been going in the opposite direction (page 28).

The options under immediate consideration, however, sound awfully uninspiring (if functional): more parking, another gas station, and an additional hotel (page 29). On the western side of the airport, near the proposed highway expansion, MWAA envisions industrial development that can benefit from direct access to the airport’s ramp.

MWAA supports road expansion near the airport because MWAA is not in a position to argue against improvements to airport access. However, that doesn’t mean the shape of development on and around the airport can’t move in a more sustainable direction. There are a great deal of opportunities to green the airport, but perhaps the most promising would be re-thinking the shape of airport development with the arrival of Metro into something akin to other ‘airport city’ concepts around the world – capitalizing on the real estate value Metro will bring, the on-airport location, and the virtuous cycle of improving IAD’s airport experience – certainly more ambitious than a second convenience store.

Part of the challenge is in counting on growth – the accuracy record of forecast traffic doesn’t exactly build confidence, but the future for more urban development, walkable places, and transit-oriented development in the region is promising. The challenge will be in taking the city approach to the airport; thinking beyond just infrastructure, cargo, and agglomeration economies. Airport terminals are already, by necessity, pedestrian-oriented environments between drop-off and the gate. Extending that mindset beyond the terminal is the next step.

The difficulty of unintended consequences – airlines, HSR, and deregulation

Pittsburgh International Airport - CC image from Fred

Philip Longman and Lina Khan make the case for re-regulating America’s airlines, claiming that deregulation is killing air travel and taking de-hubbed cities like St. Louis with it (hat tip to Matt Yglesias). The authors do indeed present compelling evidence that airline deregulation has indeed shifted the economic geography of many cities in the US – but as Matt Yglesias notes (channeling the aerotropolis thesis), in many cases this is merely an example of the air travel network’s ability to emphasize agglomeration economies:

They observe that… once the imposition of market competition caused some medium-sized midwestern cities to lose flights, the per flight cost of the remaining ones went up. That tends to produce a death spiral. Eventually the market reaches a new equilibrium with fewer, but more expensive flights. Except that equilibrium tends to drive businesses out of town. And once Chiquita leaves town, Cincinnati will have even fewer aviation opportunities which will further impair the business climate for the remaining large companies in the city.

This is a great concrete and usefully non-mystical illustration of agglomeration externalities.

Yglesias argues that fighting these agglomeration economies is counter-productive, but that’s not the only flaw in Longman and Khan’s thinking. Using the example of Pittsburgh, where the America West-US Air merger meant PIT losing hub status, they cite examples of the problems this represents for business travel:

K&L Gates, one of the country’s largest law firms, used to hold its firm-wide management meeting near its Pittsburgh headquarters, but after flying in and out of the city became too much trouble, the firm began hosting its meetings outside of New York City and Washington, D.C. The University of Pittsburgh Medical Center, the biggest employer in the region, reports that its researchers and physicians are increasingly choosing to drive to professional conferences whenever they can. Flying between Pittsburgh and New York or Washington can now easily take a whole day, since most flights have to route through Philadelphia or Charlotte. A recent check on Travelocity showed just two direct flights from Pittsburgh to D.C., each leaving shortly before six in the morning and costing (one week in advance) $498 each way, or approximately $2.62 per mile.

The problem is that Pittsburgh to New York and Pittsburgh to DC aren’t all that long as the crow flies. Longman and Khan explain why that’s problematic, thanks to those pesky laws of physics:

One reason this business model doesn’t work is that it’s at odds with the basic physics of flying. It requires a tremendous amount of energy just to get a plane in the air. If the plane lands just a short time later, it’s hard to earn the fares necessary to cover the cost. This means the per-mile cost to the airlines of short-haul service is always going to be much higher than that of long-haul service, regardless of how the industry is organized.

Indeed, part of the economic logic of the airline hub was to ferry passengers to the hub via loss leader (or, hopefully, less profitable) short-haul routes so that they can then use the more profitable long-haul services – transcontinental and international flights, and the like. The problem is that Longman and Khan can’t see beyond the end of the runway. We have a transportation technology that has a different economic calculus, one that works well for those shorter trips up to about 500 miles – high speed rail.

This isn’t to counteract Matt’s first point – just because HSR can make travel time competitive with air travel over such distances does not mean building it will be cost-effective, but the broader point is about the need to think beyond the modal silos. Current rail service from Pittsburgh to DC and New York isn’t time-competitive with flying, even with those connecting flights. But HSR could be. Indeed, given the current economics of the aviation industry, HSR ought to have a larger role in key corridors.

Indeed, Longman and Khan do consider rail in their article, but they pick out the history of railroad regulation instead:

By the 1880s, the fortunes of such major cities as Philadelphia, Baltimore, St. Louis, and Cincinnati rose and fell according to how various railroad financiers or “robber barons” combined and conspired to fix rates. Just as Americans scream today about the high cost of flying to a city like Cincinnati, where service is dominated by a single carrier, Americans of yesteryear faced impossible price discrimination when traveling or shipping to places dominated by a single railroad “trust” or “pool.”

This, more than any other factor, is what led previous generations of Americans to let go of the idea that government should have no role in regulating railroads and other emerging networked industries that were essential to the working of the economy as whole.

The problem with applying this logic to the current airline situation is that the railroads of the turn of the century didn’t just have a monopoly over a given town as the sole operator of service along the line, but they had a monopoly on the very technology that could offer such increases in mobility.

That technological mobility is no longer the case. The excellent Mark Reutter article The Lost Promise of the American Railroad (now behind a paywall) documents the many reasons for the decline of American rail, including new competing technologies (both air travel and cars taking away long distance travelers as well as commuters), outdated regulations (such as WWII era taxes meant to reduce unnecessary travel during the war – and were quite successful at doing so – that remained in place until the mid 1960s), direct subsidization of competitors by the government (see taxpayer funded highways and airports, in the face of largely privately financed and taxed rail assets), and differing regulatory regimes.

The regulations present a compelling story. The original regulations, as noted by Longman and Khan, were devised in an era before heavier-than-air human flight had even occurred – yet alone before the rise of commercial aviation. Yet, the regulations devised by the Interstate Commerce Commission (formed in 1887) were the basis for a portion of the blame for the decline of American rail less than a century later. Longman and Khan defend the need to regulate, despite these shortcomings:

To be sure, any regulatory regime can degenerate and wind up stifling competition, and the CAB of the late 1970s did become too procedure bound, ruled, as it came to be, by contending private lawyers rather than technocrats. It would have helped, too, if the country had not largely abandoned antitrust action after the Reagan administration. But even strong antitrust enforcement wouldn’t have helped that much, because airlines— just like railroads, waterworks, electrical utilities, and most other networked systems—require concentration both to achieve economies of scale and to enable the cross-subsidization between low- and high-cost service necessary to preserve their value as networks. And when it comes to such natural monopolies that are essential to the public, there is no equitable or efficient alternative to having the government regulate or coordinate entry, prices, and service levels—no matter how messy the process may be.

While this can be a compelling case for the need for regulation in the abstract, it doesn’t present a compelling case for the content of those regulations. How can these regulations possibly change to reflect changing economic realities, such as the rise of new technology?

Chris Bradford put forth an interesting idea regarding land use regulation: give all zoning codes an expiration date (a similar idea to the zoning budget). If the anti-trust and equity concerns are so great as to require this kind of regulation, requiring some sort of periodic review is an interesting idea for simulating some of the innovation and competition that a freer market might provide.

The extreme positions aren’t that illuminating. Likewise, merely promoting the idea of regulation in the abstract (without speaking to the content and effects of those regulations) isn’t helpful, either. The specifics matter. Regulation for the sake of regulation is pointless, and we must have mechanisms for continual re-evaluation of the regulations we do have to ensure they actually work towards our stated policy goals. All too often, this re-evaluation falls short.

This isn’t meant to be a broadside against regulation – far from it. There’s clearly a role for it. Instead, I ask for periodic review to ensure the regulations are helping achieve our objectives rather than hindering them. Likewise, the inevitable reality is that whatever regulations we impose now will have unforseen, unintended consequences.

The Aerotropolis, continued

In the comments from yesterday’s post on Norman Foster’s aerotropolis (and the idea of the aerotropolis in general), author Greg Lindsay dropped a note in the comments asking for me to expand my own thoughts on the idea and the book. So, here goes.

Lindsay did note one specific comment from Aaron Renn’s review: “this is one of the best overviews of globalization I’ve read.” I can’t disagree, and would certainly recommend the book to anyone interested in cities, infrastructure, globalization, economics, or any number of related fields. The challenge is to separate the various threads that weave through the book. There’s the descriptive element, providing the overview of today’s airborne flows of commerce; there’s the proscriptive element, taking Kasarda’s ideas and baking them into tangible proposals; and there’s the analytical element that assesses the implications of these trends and ideas. Most of the negative reactions to the book I’ve read seem to conflate these elements together instead of teasing them apart – and for whatever flaws the aerotropolis-as-business-plan might have, the descriptive and analytic elements of the book are invaluable.

The book’s descriptive elements are fantastic. BLDGBLOG’s interview with Lindsay highlights one example of the book’s explanatory power, showing how these systems work in our day to day lives: “One of the things I tried to touch on in the book is that even actions we think of as primarily virtual lead to the creation of gigantic physical systems and superstructures without us even knowing it.” The descriptions of the logistics operations in Memphis and Louisville for FedEx and UPS are fascinating.

UPS WorldPort, from Bing maps

The accompanying narrative of aggolmerations of air freight reliant businesses near those hubs is equally fascinating. I write this having just placed an order from Amazon that I need delivered tomorrow, knowing the intricate dance that order will trigger. Knowing the physical processes behind a shoe order with Zappos is revealing, particularly given the level of automation and coordination required for fast delivery. The ‘cool chain’ explanation is equally intriguing. Simply from a standpoint of understanding how things work, the book does an excellent job of pulling back the curtain.

Beyond just the work behind the consumer’s experience, Lindsay and Kasarda do a great job of explaining the clustering and agglomeration of various industries around these nodes of connectivity – the physical mark they leave on a place. The explanation of what an ‘organic’ aerotropolis looks like is fascinating, offering a tantalizing description of something we’ve all seen many times with our own eyes.

The proscriptive elements of the aerotropolis are less convincing. There’s an element of the worst parts of civic boosterism built in. Others have hinted at the tendencies towards authoritarianism. Perhaps the more concerning aspect is the seeming simplicity of the application of the idea. The book’s own cover art evokes the simplicty of SimCity, even after the preceding detailed explanation of the various exceedingly complex networks and agglomerations of the aviation system. To be fair, neither Kasarda nor Lindsay advocate for a ‘build it and they will come’ approach, yet it’s hard to not come away with that mindset from some of the Chinese ‘instant city’ anecdotes.

The formulaic nature of Kasarda’s concept almost seems to be a deliberate misunderstanding of the powers of agglomeration and networks. It’s clearly not a matter of just building it and they will come, no matter how much transportation might be able to shape development and growth. As critical as trade may be, there’s more to it than just that. Likewise, as mammoth notes, airborne trade is but a small fraction of the overall flows. Even if the flows of capital, knowledge, and skills matter a great deal, there is still a physical component to all of this – and the dominant mode of that flow is still the intermodal container.

Problems with the aerotropolis aside, Lindays’s analytic discussions of the shortcomings of air travel are robust. The discussion of peak oil and climate change is particularly compelling, given the frequency of this critique. Assertions that the aerotropolis is irrelevant because of peak oil and/or climate change is just as absurd as the denigrations of high speed rail in the US based on some notion that any American system must also be a transcontinental one – neither critique expresses an understanding of the comparative advantages of the technology.

I hope that people don’t dismiss the book off-hand because of some notion of globalization or of climate change. The explanatory value alone is well worth the read, both in documenting today’s conditions as well as in discussing the implications of global networks more and more reliant on air travel and just-on-time logistics.

Norman Foster’s aerotropolis

Image via Foster+Partners

Norman Foster is working on a concept for a massive new airport complex for London along the Thames Estuary. I first saw this (via ArchDaily) thanks to a shared Google Reader item (alas, no more) from Neil Flanagan. Yesterday, Planetizen points to an Atlantic piece on the subject, featuring new renderings from Foster + Partners posted on DesignBoom:

understanding the transportation challenges facing britain, london-based practice foster + partners, have collaborated with consulting firms halcrow (international) and volterra (UK) for a self-funded study producing the ‘thames hub vision’, a detailed report that uses scale and strategic cross-sector thinking to design an integrated infrastructure network. the masterplan proposes to replace the existing thames barrier with a new crossing that will extend london’s protection from floods into the 22nd century. it will mitigate the capital from rising storm levels, free up vital land for development and harness tidal power to generate carbon-free energy.

building on existing transportation lines to the north, east and west of london ‘the hub’ will avoid future congestion into the city. an orbital rail system with a four-track, high-speed passenger and freight route will link london’s current radial lines, with a future high-speed rail line to the midlands and the north, the thames estuary ports, high speed 1, and european networks. by minimizing the developmental impact the environmental strategy aims to provides new wildlife habitats landscaped within the spine.

This is more or less the Aerotropolis in a tangible proposal. John Kasarda and Greg Lindsay’s book spends a great deal of time on Heathrow; the inability of various cities (Chicago, Los Angeles) to build new and needed airports for various reasons; and cities that have done so through planning or via accident (Dulles, Dallas, Denver). Heathrow’s capacity constraints serve as a drag on not just London’s economy, but as a drag on key link in the global transport network.

Having read the book but never gotten around to a review, I thought I’d take this moment to highlight some of the more interesting thoughts I’ve come across regarding the importance of aviation as well as the aerotropolis concept.

Recently, Aaron Renn penned a somewhat pessimistic review of the somewhat totalitarian implications of planned aerotropoli:

A few things jumped at me out of the book. One of them is the close linkage between the aerotropolis and its boosters with authoritarianism (and by extension, similarly for globalization and its boosters). The second is that, despite vast sums of money and authoritarian rule, I didn’t come away with a sense of anyplace in the world that had fully pulled off Kasarda’s vision. Indeed, there are as many or more failures than successes. And even those successes are far from perfect ones.

Renn does highlight the fundamental issue, regardless of Kasarda’s plans and predictions: that aviation is a tremendous force in globalization and the flows of commerce. (For more on the tension between singular vision and democracy, see Alon Levy’s post on consensus and vision) Back in March, mammoth made the case that the aerotropolis is merely the symbol of globalization. Air travel might be the sexy mode, but the real work of global trade should probably be symbolized by the intermodal cargo container and all of its associated infrastructure.

It seems to me that the “aerotropolis” (particularly on the more restricted Kasarda definition) is more a symbol of globalization than it is the ultimate instantiation of globalization. Sea shipping is (and was for centuries before the invention of flight) the dominant mode of global transport. To get an indication of the difference in magnitude between sea and air shipping, just look at Shanghai, the world’s busiest cargo port by tonnage, and Memphis, the world’s busiest airport by tonnage: Memphis sees about three million tons a year; Shanghai sees around five hundred million tons a year. This is not a statistical aberration.

(As an aside, Matt Yglesias makes the point that even in the age of global trade, geography and proximity still matter.) Renn also points out that theaerotropolis is ultimately a measure of connections and networks – and the idea of the aerotropolis as a proscription isn’t nearly as strong as it is in description:

The lesson I draw is that while good air connectivity is critical for a city in the global economy – indeed, I almost draw my threshold population for what constitutes a minimum viable city in the globalized world in terms of whether or not it is big enough to support a major airport – the airport is only one ingredient needed for success, not the entire recipe. Cities that pin their hopes too heavily on airport led transformation are bound to be disappointed. And even if you go in with the best of intentions trying to do airport development right, you are far from guaranteed to have success.

Renn’s critique is well put, though I feel it ends up talking past some of the broader themes that Lindsay and Kasarda highlight in favor of deconstructing Kasarada’s specific, proscriptive vision for the future of air travel. In many ways, their main thesis isn’t anything new, just another example of transportation infrastructure shaping human development.

Also disputing the tone of telling is what we want, Kazys Varnelis disputes the book’s tag line, “the way you’ll live next.”

The answer is that the Aerotropolis is already here and it’s really not all that exciting. I went on two international flights in the last two weeks. Newark International Airport is about a half hour drive from the apartment I rent while La Guardia is about a half hour cab ride from Columbia. Do I really need to be closer? Could I really be closer, like the inhabitants of Kowloon Walled City who had jets pass by a hundred meters overhead?

No. I am far enough away that I don’t hear the noise from the planes too often, don’t viscerally experience the pollution, and don’t feel something is going to crash on my head.

Today, the City Paper linked to some great photos from the National Archives from the 1970s, including one of the District as a parking lot during a 1974 transit strike. Varnelis’ words echo the last image in the set of a DC-10 on approach into Logan Airport in Boston in 1973:

For more on Aerotropolis (the book), see this excellent interview with co-author Greg Lindsey at BLDGBLOG.

City Block

a work in progress…