There is a lot in the news and the motor is firing up again. This epistle is about the delays in airline traffic and I have a brief comment on the Texas Transportation Institute 2007 mobility report.
There has been much talk in transportation circles about the TTI report, and in the interest of brevity, I will not say much here. Tim Lomax and company do say that, yes, building more roads does help with traffic congestion and we need to keep at it. Tom Bazan has written recently that 150,000 more vehicles were registered in Harris County last year than in 2005, so it is no surprise that traffic congestion has gotten worse. This mirrors part of what my public comment was to the 2035 plan. Additionally, heavy congestion is a sign of economic and social vitality in an urban area, so congestion isn't always a bad thing.
So, are you one of those who says that building more roads only induces ever more demand by current road users? Then try reading this article by Robert Cervero. Finally, I will state that traffic congestion is still not nearly as bad in Houston as it is in transit heavy Europe. Commute times in Europe vary by country with a mean of 38+ minutes. Note that the article I cited was 4 years old.
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We've been bombarded recently by a spate of stories about how bad air traffic has become and what remedies are there for alleviating the problem. Gary Becker and Richard Posner write about their ideas here.
When I flew to China in 1991, air traffic congestion wasn't too bad. When I went on holiday in 2000, the situation was much worse. I flew into O'Hare and had to go into a holding pattern which nearly made me late for my flight to Tokyo, and flights to Tokyo don't happen every hour. I and another passenger were then spirited through Narita onto our connecting flight to Bangkok.
Casual or long time readers of my blog will probably know by now that any time The Wizard reads about matters like these, I find it always helps to view the matter through the lens of history. This morning I awoke to watch a program on the History Channel entitled Our Generation: Fly with Me.
The Fly with Me program was a great one to watch and here are some of my hand written notes I took while watching the program:
1) The first really large scale passenger aircraft was the DC-3. It was mentioned on the program that in 1955, a cross country flight from New York to Los Angeles taken on a DC-3 lasted all day and had to include three stops to refuel. The Wiki entry for the DC-3 confirms this, as it mentions that the range of the aircraft is 1,025 miles.
2) The cost in 1955 to fly across America on a DC-3 was $1,000. Translated into 2007 dollars, that same flight would cost $7,500. So not only was travel by air a bit slow by today's standards, it was also expensive. Now where has that matter been discussed before?
3) As it was, flying was something for the rich and was considered to be a romantic thing to do. Going to the airport and getting on a plane was a special occasion.
4) The subsequent roll out of the Boeing 707, the first aircraft of the jet age, changed everything. Not only could passengers get to their destinations in one third of the time, but jet aircraft introduced economies of scale in the number of passengers it carried. Whereas the DC-3 carried 21-32 passengers in a noisy propeller driven aircraft that could not fly above the weather, the 707 could (somewhat quietly) carry 110-200 passengers 35,000 feet up.
5) The 707 was not the end of reaping the economies of scale from jet aircraft. 15 years later, my favorite plane, the Boeing 747 took to the skies. The 747 can not only fly twice as far as the 707 could, it can also carry 2-4 times as many passengers.
6) In 1978, Congress passed the Airline Deregulation Act, causing further drops in the costs of flying. Meanwhile, the standard of living in America has (more or less) doubled since 1950, allowing for more money to be spent on transportation and travel.
So what has all this meant for flying? I have flown with United Airlines since I worked in China because they offered me membership in their frequent flier program when I went over there. Just for kicks, I punched in a round trip ticket itinerary from JFK airport to LAX (New York to Los Angeles) for a 5-6 hour non-stop flight leaving on November 15, 2007 and returning on November 30. The response I got was that I could get a round trip ticket in economy class for $328, $302 if I used a nearby airport like La Guardia. Even first class flights could be had for $1,308. I am sure that if one looked hard enough, one could find cheaper flights.
As it is, these figures mean that flying by jet aircraft has dropped the cost of flying by roughly 80-95 percent since the DC-3 ruled the skies. Needless to say, flying by jet aircraft has democratized flying, just as the improvement of roads (and later rail transport) in Europe democratized travel. The number of passengers traveling by air in America has grown by 300% in the past 30 years. 80% of Americans have now traveled by aircraft and 50% have flown in the past 12 months. Then there is the issue of airport security and what it means for passenger inconvenience and delays.
And what about the supply side of airports in the United States? Well, America has built one large new airport in the past 30+ years!
Some of the supply has come online via private jets operating at smaller airports, especially for business executives or rich people who don't want the hassle of dealing with checking in at the big airports. The show mentioned that a typical private jet now runs some $40 million, but a company called Net Jets allows one to rent (or buy) into a private jet. Prices start at $412,000 and the program mentioned that a typical Gulf Jet ownership program will run you $2 million for 50 hours per year of flight time. Don't laugh. Net Jets operates 370,000 flights in 150 countries.
So what's the solution? Rail fans no doubt would dream of high speed train service, but realistically high speed rail can only compete with planes on a time basis over a distance of up to perhaps 600 miles once one considers the time differential of navigating the airports. Then there is the issue that capital costs of constructing high speed rail would probably average $30 million per mile and go up. Then, how do you navigate around in your destination city?
So should rail fans put their hopes in having the federal government fund a Los Angeles - San Francisco - Fresno high speed rail line, or perhaps one connecting Dallas - Fort Worth, Austin - San Antonio, and Houston? Well, let me put it to you this way: Each of those routes all connect destinations in only one state and if you are looking for the federal government to fund any big programs, you'd better make sure that the program in question benefits the entire country and not just one state! Get the message?
I had the opportunity, if I so desired, to take the Chunnel between London and Paris in January of this year. I opted for flying between Heathrow and Charles de Gaulle. When considering the time differential, it was only a one hour flight, but the train rides, navigating through customs, etc, made it a 4 hour trip. The chunnel trip would have probably come close in time terms, but the trip by air (and getting around in both cities) cost $90 less than by rail.
Any time I think of long distance travel by train, I think of Amtrak. One person I know who traveled by Amtrak wrote me a message a while back saying that Amtrak lost their luggage and did nothing to help them locate it!
My thought is that, considering the NIMBY'ism surrounding the building of new airports, we are going to have to continue with airport expansions for the near term future, along with better use of non - major airports. It's either that, or resort to using larger aircraft which can carry more passengers. Another idea might be implementing congestion pricing of flights at busy times at major airports. Bullying the airlines via legislation for their success in getting people to fly, but not increasing the supply of airport runways and terminals, is only going to drive up the price of flying because mandating the compensation of angry passengers who are forced to wait is going to force the airlines to raise their prices to come up with the money to do that.
Air travel will become more expensive in the future as petroleum prices rise, which may help alleviate the problem. It is difficult to fly aircraft using any other kind of fuel besides petroleum, although the Brazilians have made aircraft fly (albeit with major problems) with ethanol. However it remains to be seen whether or when alternatives to today's petroleum will become viable on an industrial scale. Some people are doing some really amazing and ambitious stuff finding a replacement for traditional petroleum as a liquid fuel.
I am going to stop now as this has been a long write. I may post more on this later.
Wizard.