According to CNN, JFK's airport's busiest runway will close today for four months for reconstruction. "Officials are reducing the number of arrivals and departures at the airport from about 1,300 a day to 1,050." Given the softness in the economy, this is a fine time to do the necessary work. (I wonder whether this is being paid for in part by stimulus dollars.)
1300 takeoffs and landings a day. 48 million passengers per year. One of two international gateways to -- and from -- NYC metro area.
Finite. There is no suggestion in the article that this project is going to increase capacity. The goal is to widen the runway by 1/3, and add taxiways, to ease air traffic congestion. The results should, I hope, include reducing fuel use by delayed flights, both on the ground and waiting to land; reduce time-wasting backups produced at other airports around the US caused by JFK delays. This will be good for the airlines, for air quality, for efficiency, productivity and stress levels of passengers. Its effects should reverberate through many other airports, here and abroad.
The project will cost $376 million. Quick and dirty, if there are 48 million passengers per year, a $1 surcharge on every ticket for the next 8 years would pay for the work.
So how should this be financed?We ought to be treating landing rights at JFK (etc.) as our common treasure, not the property of the airlines. Auction them off, 5 years at a time. Lease them to the highest bidder at the price bid by the second highest bidder. Use the revenue to finance airport improvements. This is one the Bush administration's FAA director got right, but she was shot down by what I assume were corporate interests or their very good friends.
Time to review that one, and get it right.
What the airlines are paying now is far below the amount they'd be willing to pay if we required them to bid for their slots. As I understand it, airlines own their slots, treat them as assets, and can sell them to the highest bidder, with no revenue going to we-the-people or to those who maintain the airports!
Airport landing rights might not have been known at the time of the classical economists, but they would immediately recognize them as "land" and thus rightly part of the commons, to be treated as our common asset rather than anyone's private property. Permitting the privatization of that economic value is a mistake.
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