Expanding Airport Capacity
The long-term trend in aviation travel closely mirrors growth in the gross domestic product. As the U.S. economy and population grow and the globalization of the economy continues, air travel can be expected to increase as well. Airport expansion, however, is very difficult because of community opposition to traffic and noise.
The construction of major new airports ended with the opening of the new airport in Denver, Colorado, 1995. Attempts are being made to expand most major airports by adding runways. However, only seven new runways were added in the last decade, largely as the result of a lack of land and neighborhood opposition to aircraft noise. Despite these problems, many formerly secondary airports on the edge of major metropolitan areas have grown sharply and become desired destination airports in their own right. Even so, air passengers have been keenly aware of congestion and delay. Many delays in the air traffic system that are not attributable to weather can be traced to a shortage of places for planes to land during peak periods.
As with other infrastructure assets, the federal government provides substantial funding for airports, but decisions about siting, expanding, building, and operating the facilities are made at the state and local levels. There is no simple, universal, permanent solution to congestion and delay with regard to stimulating and ensuring adequate capacity. The committee that addressed this issue concluded that a combination of remedies is required, including financing of incremental expansions at crowded airports, improvements in techniques and technologies for managing air traffic control, support for advanced aircraft designs better optimized for passenger flows and the physical constraints of airports, incorporation of noise mitigation in aircraft designs and flight patterns, and support for alternative high-speed modes in appropriate markets (Special Report 226: Airport System Capacity: Strategic Choices; TRB 1990).