A five point plan to fix the nation's transportation problem
— -- Air travel in this country has become a miserable experience. There is gridlock on the ground and congestion in the skies. Many airports, ill-equipped to handle current passenger volumes and security chaos, are now places to avoid. Our country's airlines are in desperate financial straits. Years of cost-cutting and deferred investment have left most U.S. airlines with a spartan product, inferior in every way to foreign competition. Our passenger rail system lags behind that of almost every other industrialized nation and is virtually nonexistent outside the Northeast corridor.
In spite of this grim reality, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) projects U.S. air passenger volume to increase more than 60% by 2025. If drastic measures aren't implemented to address these problems soon, our entire transportation system will come to a screeching halt long before 2025.
A major overhaul of our nation's air and rail transportation systems is essential to support business travel and tourism over the long term and contribute to a robust economy. A significant investment in our transportation infrastructure now could help generate many of the millions of new jobs we need to reduce unemployment and stave off the effects of the current economic crisis, while building a foundation for future economic growth.
As part of a much-needed national transportation policy, here are five public works projects that would create many thousands of new jobs, bolster business travel and ensure an adequate infrastructure to handle the increased travel demand for the next several decades and beyond.
1. Airport improvements and expansion
Many large airports are already operating at or beyond capacity levels, often creating severe flight delays and frustrated travelers. The FAA's proposed solutions of altering flight patterns, capping flights at congested airports, opening a few new runways and implementing a new GPS-based air traffic control system will at best improve delays marginally and will fall far short of what's required to handle a 60% increase in flights and passengers in the next two decades.
Many airports are constrained geographically or by neighboring residential communities fervently opposed to expansion. For airports not constrained by these limitations, aggressive expansion - including the construction of numerous new runways - is vital to meet our future aviation needs.
Many airports which cannot expand are still long overdue for a major facelift. Most U.S. airports were designed before the advent of regional jets, ultra long range aircraft, expanded international travel, faster aircraft turnaround times, new security regulations, and many other changes of the last few decades. Lobbies, ticket counters, concourses, gates, security areas, aircraft aprons and taxiways, access roads, rental car facilities, and parking lots at many large airports are inadequate to serve today's travelers and must be upgraded and expanded to accommodate the greater passenger demands of tomorrow.
Improving existing airport facilities will diminish gridlock on the ground and make traversing the airport easier for travelers, while creating many new jobs in construction, manufacturing and at airports and nearby businesses. Additionally, investing in new and better screening technologies could decrease or even eliminate security wait times and eradicate the arbitrary, inconsistent, and dehumanizing screening process we endure today.
2. New airport construction
With most airports geographically constrained, the U.S. needs a new set of "super airports" serving our major population centers. Lack of available land and local community opposition preclude new airport construction near most cities, but there is no reason why new airports cannot be constructed on lands just beyond the outer edge of developed areas surrounding a major city. The new Denver International and Washington Dulles Airports are examples of large airports constructed on undeveloped lands 25 miles from their city centers.
When Dulles opened in 1962, there was little else in the vicinity of the new airport. Today, Dulles Airport is highly utilized and home of a major United Airlines hub. The once barren road between Dulles and downtown Washington, D.C., has become a high-tech corridor filled with businesses, hotels, shopping centers and towns that sprung up from nowhere.
Over time, the same thing will happen in Denver or any new airport constructed beyond the developed perimeter of a city. I'm not advocating the closure of any existing airports and I have no delusions that new super airports well outside city centers will instantly become major hubs, but new, much larger airport facilities will begin to alleviate the pressure on already saturated airports in cities like Atlanta, Chicago, Los Angeles, New York and half a dozen others, as we grow to accommodate that great increase in air traffic expected over the next few decades.
3. High-speed rail links between major airports and city centers
Denver and Dulles Airports don't have viable mass transit options from airport to city center (though one is planned for Dulles), but adding high-speed rail links to new super airports built beyond developed perimeters would greatly increase utilization of these facilities and allow these new super airports to be constructed further from city centers without increasing airport-to-city transit times.
Atlanta, Baltimore, Chicago, Cleveland, Philadelphia, San Francisco, St. Louis and several other major U.S. airports currently offer direct rail transportation from airport to city, and Phoenix and Seattle will soon join that list. These rail links would receive additional use if they were expanded to serve more local departure points and if the systems were modified to increase speed and decrease travel times.
Most airports in Europe have rail connections to city centers, and Shanghai now has a maglev train that whisks passengers 19 miles from airport to city center in less than eight minutes. If a developing country like China can build and operate a high-speed airport rail link, certainly the richest and most technologically advanced country on earth should be able to match such a feat at our major airports. Think of the number of new jobs created by the construction and operation of airport to city rail links, including the concessions and businesses in and around stations across a metro area.
4. High-speed rail links between major cities less than 500 miles apart
A well-functioning air transport system is vital to the U.S. economy, but air travel is not the most efficient or environmentally friendly travel solution for distances under 500 miles. Like many cities in Europe, we need high-speed rail networks connecting large metropolitan areas less than 500 miles apart. California voters recently approved a measure to construct a high-speed rail link that will connect San Francisco to Los Angeles in less than three hours. Amtrak's Northeast Corridor service continues to set ridership records, and while the Acela is speedy by U.S. standards, it falls far short of the fast trains in Europe and Japan.
High-speed rail must connect city centers, airports, and key suburban locations to achieve success. With a high-speed, intercity-airport rail link, passengers could connect between plane and train with no more difficulty than changing planes at an airport hub today, and they will reach a destination up to 500 miles away with no increased travel time and fewer delays.
Removing most short haul flights from the sky would greatly reduce air traffic congestion and carbon emissions. Once again, thousands of workers would be needed to construct and operate this system, along with personnel to staff new hotels, rental car facilities, parking lots, and other businesses at numerous city center and suburban rail stations required for a successful network.
5. Develop alternative aviation fuels
While trains can operate on electricity and battery-powered automobiles will likely be mass-marketed soon, aviation is much further away from breaking the shackles of oil addiction. As my final suggestion for improving the economy and fixing our national transportation system simultaneously, I would like to see the new administration fund a major research effort to develop alternative fuels for aviation that would be inexpensive, abundant, environmentally friendly, and produced domestically. Several airlines have already executed test flights using bio-diesel, and efforts are underway by the International Air Transport Association and other groups to solve this problem, but federal funds could hasten development of viable fuel alternatives and simultaneously create thousands of green jobs in research and development.
The price tag for the projects above will be huge, but the implementation would give our sagging economy a tremendous boost and the long term payback will be enormous. Based on the forecast for increased travel over the next few decades, we cannot afford to remain idle or trust a handful of cash-strapped airlines or self-serving cities and airports to solve a national problem. If we don't develop and implement a cohesive, multimodal, transportation policy now we will surely find our country perpetually stuck in gridlock while the rest of the world moves forward.
Readers, what would be on your list to address the nation's transportation woes? Tell us your fixes below.
Send David your feedback: David Grossman is a veteran business traveler and former airline industry executive. He writes a column every other week on topics of interest and concern to business travelers. E-mail him at travel@usatoday.com.