Business review; Travel time to airports

From the national educational radio network here is a Business Review ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR ROSS Wilhelm of the University of Michigan Graduate School of Business Administration presents his views and comments of business and economic activity. Recently Cleveland Ohio completed a major step toward reducing the time required to travel to and from any part of the city to its airport. Cleveland just completed an extension of its rapid transit system. Now any individual can travel to or from the airport to any part of the city quickly and economically. We've heard a great deal lately about the delays in air travel due to the stacking up of aircraft awaiting to land or to take off. However the facts indicate that the main delays which occur in air travel today arise from the time required to move on the ground to and from the airport on a short flight of under 300 miles an air traveler has to spend 50 percent or more of his time going to and from the airport. This percentage declines to about 11 percent of the total time on longer flights. Further there is every indication that the ground travel time will increase significantly by 1970 unless decisive action is taken now. For the past 15 years the revenue passenger

miles traveled on commercial aircraft has been increasing at a rate of about 13 1/2 percent per year. And in recent years this rate has been rising. On this basis travel on aircraft is expected to double between now in the early 1970s and to triple by the middle or late 1970s. Even if we take decisive action we'll be fortunate if the travel time between airports and urban areas can be held at the present level let alone reduced. The principle problem of travel to and from airports arises from the fact that the automobile is the main method of transportation used a high proportion of air travelers it's been estimated as being as high as 70 percent in some studies to travel to and from the airport from their homes in the suburbs and not from the downtown business districts. Since public transportation facilities from most suburbs to the regional or area airport are limited or nonexistent. It is understandable why the automobile is the main means for travel. The difficulty with automobile transportation and the reason it takes so long is because most planes leave or arrive at the very time when the roads and highways are clogged with people

going to and from work. Air travelers want to leave on their flights early in the morning and come back in the late afternoon or early evening. As a consequence air travelers are rushing to catch a plane at the very time when everyone else is rushing to work and planes are disgorging huge numbers of air travelers. When everyone else is rushing home from work the situation is going to be even worse when the new giant aircraft come in to use one large capacity planes carrying from 300 to 500 passengers coming to use in the near future. And then when three or four of these are simultaneously loading or unloading the situation will be intolerable. There's been many suggestions as to how the travel time to and from the airport can be reduced. There's been experimentation in equipping airport limousine so they can travel on railroad tracks as well as on roads. But this is not worked out too well because of the scheduling problems on the tracks and because of an excessive noise problem and because of union jurisdictional questions and other areas there's been work done on using helicopters and air cushion vehicles but the cost of these forms of transportation are very high.

The development of limited use highways for buses also has been proposed and again the cost problems are great and there also have been efforts to build hotels and restaurants at airports so that many of the incoming travelers need not leave the area during the rush periods. However all of these proposals are of limited value because of the reasons I have given plus. The fact that most are based on the assumption that most air travelers want to go to the downtown area of a major city. And as I've indicated this is not necessarily true. As a consequence it appears that for most cities the extension of rapid transit systems where they exist and where they service an entire area is the most hopeful means for meeting the problem. Many cities of found however that it's not easy to extend a rapid transit system when one exists and New York City the airport authorities resist extension of the subways to the airport because the airport receives large revenues from their limousine and bus franchises in Pittsburgh they've estimated that over 200 persons participating transit decisions due to the number of communities involved. And it's hard to get them all to agree. In San Francisco there are physical difficulties and large expenses involved.

However despite all such objections in each of the twenty two large air hubs in the United States had similar problems it seems likely that rapid railroad transit systems offer the main hope for solving the problem of traveling to and from airports. That was Associate Professor Ross Wilhelm of the University of Michigan Graduate School of Business Administration. With his views and comments on business and economic activity Business Review is recorded by the University of Michigan broadcasting services. This is the national educational radio network.