W1W May Payoff Someday
I haven’t spent much time around the airport since the latest runway opened in 2006. Planned years earlier, it opened as flights at Lambert had been dropping. By 2008 the thought was get cargo flights:
The RCGA’s Susan Strauder, vice president for infrastructure and public policy, said the $1 billion W1W runway, considered a boondoggle by some in light of the drop in passengers, offers increased opportunities for the airport for expanded service. (stlbeacon)
But that hasn’t materialized either.
Last week at lunch at India Palace overlooking the airport I saw one small jet take off on the new runway. A few larger jets, mostly Southwest Airlines, took off from an older runway. Sad to have all that concrete without the flights.
Also, old streets in the area no longer connect. I compared 1958 to 2007 on HistoricAerials.com, massive changes. In 10-20 years we’ll know if the $1 billion dollar W1W runway was a good investment, right now it doesn’t look like it was.
— Steve Patterson
Add to that the $$$ spent on Scott for something that hasn’t happened. Same dollars would have built at least two more MetroLink lines.
Right or wrong, you could make the argument that $$$ for Mid America (which happened to be a runway almost completely funded by federal dollars) was about saving Scott AFB from the very first base closure round. Now Scott AFB is one of the single largest employers for southern Illinois and Metro East. A huge economic impact
Two comments…
First — The new runway was a necessity based on the volume of air traffic in STL in the mid to late 1990s. I had a job which required weekly travel during that period and the delays that occurred anytime bad weather hit STL were massive. I fondly (not!) recall my many holding patterns over Vandalia, IL waiting to land at Lambert. Hindsight says that we should not have built the new runway, but the airport was looking at a competitive disadvantage due to our capacity at the time.
When TWA went under construction could have been stopped. But by then homes had already been demolished and enough construction completed that the savings would not have been that great.
Second — The new runway is being used and saving time. I’ve taken a significant number of flights which have used the new runway. With winds out of the west, many DL and UA flights will take off from the new runway saving 5+ minutes of taxi time (and fuel).
You’re absolutely on the mark, Greg, except that in hindsight, I think STL made the RIGHT decision to build the runway. I too used to fly into St. Louis every week from my office in Los Angeles, on a TWA (now retired) L1011 (great plane!). And every time it rained, or snowed, or looked like it was going to rain or snow, air traffic over STL would backup, and we’d begin the inevitable circling mode. So Col. Grigg’s et al. decision to build W1W was justifiable, and now the runway is in place and ready for any good fortune that may shine on Lambert Field/STL over the next several years.
And, yes, Tom Shrout, we might have been able to build two more Metro lines, but Lambert isn’t about building Metro lines, and in my opinion, Metro should be essentially self-supporting.
With the clarity of 20/20 hindsight, probably not a great decision, but when it was made (with TWA still having its hub here), it made a LOT of sense. Unfortunately, given the ongoing consolidation in the airline industry and the scaling back of many former hubs (Cincinnati, Memphis, Nashville, Pittsburgh, to name a few), combined with the high landing fees required to pay off the cost of constructing W1W, the ONLY way this will really be needed in the future is if some new, upstart airline decides to make Lambert their hub. The tornado that hit the terminal a couple of years ago proved this – no airport should have enough capacity to instantly accommodate the relocation of an entire concourse!
The comments about circling/waiting flights only add to the argument that air travel in general is wasteful and overly polluting. Airlines only exist because of massive government subsidies, both on airports and petroleum. Changing the country’s business model to minimize long distance travel would have been far more beneficial than expanding airports, but then, the profiteers would have cried fowl, and the politicians they control would have caved.
By “profiteers” you mean ordinary citizens who want to be able to take a job in another city and still see their family on occasion?
You know full well that I mean airline, petroleum, and construction corporations. People traveled long before airports existed. One could still work in another city, but he or she had to live with the consequences of that decision. Destroying the ozone layer and spending many billions of public dollars so people can see family more frequently is absurd.
Aircraft are but a small part of the equation – more people riding in more land-based motor vehicles is a much, much bigger problem. Just look at global population growth over the years:
1804 – 1 billion
1927 – 2 billion
1960 – 3 billion
1974 – 4 billion
1987 – 5 billion
1999 – 6 billion
2011 – 7 billion
2027 – 8 billion (projected)
Air travel for the general public didn’t really start to take off (pardon the pun) until after WW II, along with suburban sprawl, when the world’s population was 2.5 billion. Given that the world’s population has tripled in that time, and third world countries continue to invest in carbon-burning initiatives, it’s no surprise that the ozone layer is being assaulted.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_population
Not to mention that the ozone layer has nothing to do with global warming, and airplanes do little to damage the ozone layer.
Eric, if you’re a climate change denier, all the logic and data in the world probably won’t convince you. For everyone else:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Environmental_impact_of_aviation
Eric, if you’re a climate change denier, all the logic and data in the world probably won’t convince you. For everyone else:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Environmental_impact_of_aviation
That’s a great little restaurant, been there before
You can also argue that before the new runway that a whole new airport was being discussed for TWA. Could you imagine if the new airport went forward and you had an underutilized new airport and the ghost town of Lambert to boot. Not saying either was needed. Just saying that their was a real possibility of massive over runway capacity and under utilization of a massive amount of Real Estate.
Unfortunately, what was not incorporated into the new runway was a phased approach for other relevant airport infrastructure that should have included.
Second Phase – Rebuild terminal concourses. The authority has done a decent job of updating the concourses with what little money it can scratch together but what was really needed is a regional commitment to replace concourses outright. Now it finds itself with a terminal too small for Southwest and an older terminal with way too many gates. KNOCK down old Concourses B & D!!! Sorry, but having rows of empty gates with no planes is a worse perception then no gates.
Third Phase – Ingress and Egress improvements to the terminals themselves along with incorporating new airport metrolink stations that allow a run through/westward extension as well as a consolidated rental car facility. The region saved transit, probably should have scrapped the Arch tax in favor for a smaller dedicated Greenway tax increase and has completely under invested in infrastructure into and out of Lambert.
With Chicago, Atlanta, Dallas and Denver as major existing hubs, and all within easy flying distance, there really is no business case for rebuilding the concourses at Lambert. Regional jets and 737’s seem to be our future, not Dreamliners and 747’s. Throwing more money at the problem will just increase landing fees, which will further discourage any potential future hub operation.
Their is a business case for reducing the number of gates which Lambert has way too many. Having standing buildings such as concourse D of no use is pointless and still takes away revenues even if you put up a wall and tell travelers that they will have to wait outside awhile for a shuttle for the off reason you might have to go between Terminal 1 & 2 and/or international gates.
As far as the status quo, in way that is like saying their is no need to rebuild a highway interchange or bridge once it was built. Terminals, like any other infrastructure wear down or become functional obsolete. That is why they don’t build the bridges they way same they did 30, 40 or so years ago. At some point the region has to admit that Lambert terminals suck, outdated, and were a hodgepodge for TWA. The result for the region, Executives for a St. Louis based global business ask themselves why they are not in any of the communities you mentioned above? In time, they decide to move out of St. Louis if the status quo stays status quo.
Simply put JZ, runways are only one part of an airport infrastructure that is meaningful for the region is serves. Unfortunately for St. Louis, the bet should have been on a new terminal outright not a new runway or worse yet, going without a long term plan that goes beyond the new runway for the airport entirety. In the meantime St. Louis will remain a second tier region if the only thing they are willing to improve is a highway or add another lane across the Mississippi or Missouri.
STL will remain a second tier region as long as it has half the population of Houston/Dallas and a third the population of Chicago.
I don’t think anyone can do much to change that fact.
The runway was needed when TWA had its major hub here. Now, Lambert is a hub for no airline, although Southwest offers many connections. I don’t disagree that the main terminal and its concourses are not ideal, but we need to balance the desire / hope for a new and shiny terminal with the cost of building one. Recently, both Indianapolis and Austin built new terminals, not long after Pittsburgh and Chicago Midway completed theirs. I have no idea what impact each project had on their respective landing fees, nor if they resulted in more flights or new carriers entering the market, but the reality is that most flyers focus way more on where an airport is located (proximity to one’s destination) and what the fares are to fly there than on whether or not any specific terminal “sucks” or is functionally obsolete. If “new” were the silver bullet, traffic would already be migrating from Lambert to Mid-America in Muscoutah (and that ain’t happening)!