from the NY Post: AIRPORT BAND-AID = By ROBERT W. POOLE, JR. = December 20, 2007 -- TRANSPORTATION Secretary Mary Peters yesterday anno= unced a plan to cut delays at New York's airports - but this "solution" = just puts a Band-Aid on a severed artery: It might help a little bit, bu= t doesn't fix the problem. = The Transportation Department's main fix is to ask airlines to move a fe= w flights out of the busiest peaks at JFK and Newark; it may also hold a= uctions to allocate the rights to use any new capacity that can be squee= zed out of these airports in the future. = In short, the plan leaves today's cockamamie system intact - and so send= s all the wrong signals to airlines and passengers about how to make the= best (most economically productive) use of these airports' valuable cap= acity. = We should start by asking why all three major New York airports (JFK, La= Guardia and Newark) are overloaded with planes at certain hours of each = day. The answer: Airlines knowingly schedule more flights than the airpo= rts and air-traffic-control system can safely handle, guaranteeing passe= ngers will be stuck on the tarmac. = To compete on frequency of service over the last five years, airlines ha= ve added flights and substituted smaller planes for larger ones. JFK is = the worst: Flights by planes with fewer than 100 seats having risen 128 = percent. = Sure, passengers like more flight choices - but the result at capacity-c= onstrained airports is ever-increasing delays. = The Port Authority, which runs all three airports, contributes to the pr= oblem because of how it charges to use the runways - namely, fees based = on each plane's weight. Despite using the same time and resources for a = take-off, a 35-seat regional jet pays just $181, while a 767 carrying pe= rhaps 250 people pays $1,600 = And those fees are the same at peak periods and off-peak times. = What if the fees were instead based on how popular (i.e., congested) eac= h time period is? = If the charge for taking off from JFK during evening rush hours were $2,= 000, the added cost for a 767 would average less than $2 per passenger. = But the extra cost for the 30 people on the 35-passenger regional jet wo= uld be $52 each. Passengers and airlines would want that flight moved to= a cheaper, less busy hour - making room for the 767 and reducing delays= . This approach is called airport congestion pricing. = Transportation Secretary Peters wants congestion pricing. But the Port A= uthority made it clear that it did not - and she lacks authority to forc= e a change. = In a major study released this week, the Reason Foundation urges the Por= t Authority to take a fresh look at congestion pricing. The report prese= nts evidence that, under this system, airlines would move many flights o= ut of peak periods and use larger planes on other flights - reversing th= e trend toward more flights on smaller planes, which has helped usher in= these delays. = It's important to realize that this reform would not cut back on total p= assenger volume at the NY airports to reduce delays. Rather, it would sh= ift passengers out of those hourly, small-jet flights to Boston and Chic= ago (which would be significantly more expensive) to less-frequent fligh= ts on larger jets. = By contrast, the new federal plan does cut back on flights - reducing pa= ssenger numbers and thus harming the New York area's economy. = The airlines - which oppose congestion pricing - have cleverly, but wron= gly, argued the reverse. By claiming that congestion pricing would reduc= e passenger throughput, they've managed to convince New York and New Jer= sey business and political leaders that it's a bad idea. = The airlines do have one valid concern - the fear that the Port Authorit= y would divert new revenues from congestion pricing to non-airport proje= cts. But the way to address this is to set up a "lockbox" to ensure that= all these revenues go to projects that expand the airport's runway thro= ughput. = Then congestion pricing would not end up as a "tax" on air travel, but a= s a tool to eliminate delays. It would motivate airlines to make the hig= hest and best use of runway capacity, while generating the funding to ex= pand capacity. = The new federal plan won't significantly reduce delays: You'll still be = stuck in the terminal or on the tarmac. = The Port Authority can change that by making airlines face real conseque= nces for over-scheduling and using those fees to create a fund that can = pay for needed capacity expansions. But until the PA changes course, fli= ghts in and out of New York will still be hours late. = Robert W. Poole Jr., the director of transportation studies at Reason Fo= undation, recently advised the Transportation Department on airline dela= ys. 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