(The following editorial was posted on the Concord Monitor website on June 6.)
CONCORD, N.H. — If Concord’s Municipal Airport acquired a moose head for its back wall and a barbecue grill made from an oil drum, it could complete the feeling that one is coming into the city in a bush plane. Or it could tear down its Depression-era terminal and enter the new century. The city, which owns the airport, has chosen the second option.
The recently released master plan for the airport calls for a new 9,000-square-foot terminal, more hangars, an extended runway and additional land to provide a bigger buffer between the airport and its neighbors. Concord needs a convenient, modern airport to attract the business development the city needs. The improvements should be made.
Although completing the 44 projects called for in the plan will cost an estimated $31 million, it is easy to say yes to them because the federal government, save for the $2.6 million terminal, will pick up 95 percent of the tab and the state will kick in 2.5 percent. That subsidy explains why the nation’s airports are expanding while Amtrak, the nation’s railroad system, is dying.
America has roughly 3,000 public-use airports, and most of them are small. The federal government pays 75 percent of the capital budget costs for big airports and 95 percent for airports like those in Concord, Claremont and Lebanon. When measured against need, it pays almost nothing to help Amtrak rebuild its ancient infrastructure.
Blame cheap oil, transportation history and Congress, almost all of whose members travel to Washington by plane, not train, for this misplaced national priority.
In the early days of aviation, the postal service and the military pressured cities to build airports. When skies grew more crowded, the federal government took over the job of traffic control. Then, during World War II, when it became clear that many cities could no longer afford to build or improve their airports, it began to pay most capital costs.
Railroads were expected to fend for themselves. Commercial airports shrink distances for millions of passengers. But airports like Concord’s are used primarily by people with the means to indulge their hobby, the military in some cases, corporations and the truly wealthy. Jets pour into Concord for every NASCAR race, for example, and some St. Paul’s School students arrive and depart in them. Are such airports really in need of more federal help than the railroads that carry commuters between cities?
Amtrak was created in 1971 when privately owned railroads found they could no longer operate passenger trains at a profit. That’s not surprising, since few if any passenger rail lines in the world can succeed without a subsidy. According to the Washington Post, Amtrak has received$30 billion in federal money over the past 30 years. Federal subsidies for airline and highway travel over the same period came to $1.89 trillion.
The Bush administration tried to zero Amtrak out of its 2006 budget, but the House declined. It was given $1.2 billion, enough to keep the trains running but not enough to replace disintegrating tracks. The same budget gave the Federal Aviation Administration $14 billion for airport infrastructure.
Railroads can compete with planes and cars on some routes. Ridership on Amtrak’s Downeaster between Portland and Boston is up 35 percent over last year, and revenue is up 32 percent. Rail lines connect cities and small towns not served by airlines. They will never compete with planes for long-distance travel, but they are crucial to national security and easily as worthy of subsidy as the nation’s network of little municipal airports.