Aviation Assets: The View From 35,000 Feet
Date Posted: February 15, 2018
Posted In: Ideas,
From St. Louis Post-Dispatch: The city of St. Louis was once the fourth-largest in the nation whose economic success allowed our forefathers to build some of the nation’s most beautiful neighborhoods and lay the groundwork for a city of a million people. Our city lost its competitive edge in large part because we lost our transportation advantage.
As railroads displaced riverboats as the prime means of transportation, St. Louis leaders bowed to existing business interests and secretly stifled railroad development to protect the riverboat industry. Chicago leaders, on the other hand, aggressively prepared for a changing economy. They encouraged railroads to build immense rail facilities, attracting the businesses that made Chicago one of the fastest-growing cities in the world. Today, Chicago is the third-largest city in the U.S., almost 10 times as big as St. Louis.
Airports are the railroads of the 21st century, and again St. Louis has an opportunity to prepare for our future.
The world economy will increasingly move by air. The International Air Transport Association projects a doubling of international air service in the next 20 years from 3.8 billion passengers in 2016 to 7.2 billion in 2035. Large airports in the nation’s midsection — Chicago, Dallas and Denver — are all currently leading the nation in delays and canceled flights, around 30 percent of all flights. These airports are not capable of absorbing the doubling of international flights or the resulting increase in domestic flights.