UNTANGLING AIRSPACE:
Tech, Design Changes Aim To Improve Boro’s Overcrowded Air Transit Hubs

By Domenick Rafter

The aviation industry is the second largest in the borough of Queens, according to the NYC Economic Development Corporation. The city’s airspace sits in the epicenter of one of the busiest travel hubs in the world. At any given time, around 20 percent of the world’s air traffic is traveling in the skies within 500 miles of New York City.

Nevertheless, the city’s airports, two of which call Queens home, are embarrassingly and dangerously obsolete, and in dire need of renovation, expansion and, in some cases, a complete overhaul.

“It’s almost embarrassing when people come into New York and say the airport in, say, Mexico City, is better than the airport in New York,” said Kathryn Wylde, President and CEO of the Partnership for New York City.

But the problems with our airports are not only rooted in the aesthetics of outdated structures, but also in the way traffic into and out of the nation’s busiest airspace is controlled.

“Until we can better manage our airspace, all these innovative ideas are trapped on the ground,” said Christopher Ward, Executive Director of the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey.

On Monday, June 14, officials and policy makers met for a conference in Rockefeller Center aimed at improving New York City’s airport and airspace. The day, sponsored by Baruch College, was rife with plans and ideas to move air travel into the 21st Century.

Tracking NextGen
NextGen, short for Next Generation Air Transportation, is a series of improvements to the air travel system that the Federal Aviation Administration calls a “comprehensive overhaul” aimed at making air traffic more convenient, dependable and safe, all while reducing fuel consumption and noise pollution.

“NextGen is most the important innovation this nation can undertake for the aviation industry,” Ward said at Monday’s conference. Instead of relying on radar, some of which dates from the 1950s, NextGen will allow air traffic controllers to guide and control air traffic using a satellite-based system, called the Automatic Dependent Surveillance-Broadcast (ADS-B), which will be fully implemented by the end of the decade and has already been put in place in the airspace around Louisville, Philadelphia., Juneau and the Gulf of Mexico, the latter of which was previously unreachable by radar.

The new system will also offer more streamlined tracking and guiding from gate to gate. According to the FAA, NextGen will allow planes to fly closer together, allowing airlines to keep up with current and future demand, and reduce delays while also helping the environment by lessening the number of idling planes at airports.

The system is being implemented gradually. In 2007, the first year NextGen was funded by the federal government, only $127.6 million was allocated, but in next year’s budget, more than $1.142 billion will support NextGen, which is a major priority for the Obama Administration. U.S. Secretary of Transportation Ray LaHood called NextGen the FAA’s “top priority” shortly after taking office last winter.

According to the FAA, by 2018, NextGen is estimated to reduce delays by 21 percent, cut carbon emissions by 14 million tons and reduce fuel use by as many as 1.4 billion gallons.

Ward urged the FAA to begin implementation in New York.

“New York City is the bottleneck for the whole system,” said Ward. “It would be smart to implement NextGen here. Let it open on Broadway.”

U.S. Rep. Greg Meeks (D-Jamaica), whose district includes JFK Airport said NextGen will not only make air travel better and more efficient, but is a job creator.

“If and when NextGen is fully funded, it will not only make our skies safer, it will also create jobs,” said Meeks.

Last year, Secretary LaHood urged airline executives to join the government in pushing NextGen. It appears that the major airlines are supportive. Lorne Cass, Director of Industry Affairs at Delta Air Lines, called NextGen “key to the survival” of Delta and other airlines.

Options For Travelers
Regional jet traffic is on the rise in the United States, according to Roger Cohen, President of the Regional Airline Association. In 2009, more than half of all air traffic into LaGuardia came from regional jets, as well as just under half of all traffic into Newark Liberty and one in five flights into JFK.

Regional jets have been held responsible for clogging up the airspace. One solution to this problem is improving high-speed rail between major cities in close proximity to each other.

The Obama Administration announced it would spend $13 billion on building and improving high-speed rail between heavily traveled, short-haul routes that are currently served by regional jets. The idea is to entice those who normally travel short routes by air to take the train instead, freeing up airspace.

But this alone doesn’t solve the problem. Air travel will still be the mode of transportation of choice for most in the 21st Century and will be what seaports were in the 18th century, railroads in the 19th and interstate highways in the 20th.

Ground Improvements
“The best JetBlue experience can be completely ruined by the Van Wyck Expressway,” said Robert Maruster, COO of JetBlue.

New York may be known and respected worldwide for its state of the art mass transit system, but that system is designed to move people into and out of Manhattan. The city’s airports are not easily connected to the system and traffic to and from the airports, especially JFK, is a notorious problem.

Pointing out the elaborate ferry and train system designed to move people into and out of Hong Kong International Airport, Robert Davidson, Senior Vice President, Aviation and Transportation Facility Development at STV, an aviation infrastructure design firm, said New York needs to find better ways to get people directly to the airport.

The AirTrain has been a good step, and enormously successful, with ridership numbers way above expectations.

“There was a lot of initial oppositon to [AirTrain],” said Rep. Meeks, pointing out that the opposition has disappeared once people saw how little of a negative impact it had on the community, and its positive ramifications.

“Every person on the AirTrain means less cars on the Van Wyck,” he said, “And that means less pollution in South Jamaica.”

But AirTrain is still not as convenient as transportation systems connecting airports elsewhere in the country and the globe. Ward said a “one-seat ride” from Manhattan to the city’s airports is preferable, and the AirTrain was designed not to preclude that possibility in the future.

The reconstruction of the “bay runway” at JFK, which will be completed at the end of the month “on time and on budget,” according to Susan Baer, the Port Authority’s Director of Aviation, was also aimed at improving the long takeoff queues that have plagued JFK. The new runway, along with NextGen, will allow more takeoffs and landings per hour. Ward said getting funding and building such a runway would have been “impossible” a decade ago.

Terminal reconstruction and redesign is also being considered. The use of terminal space now is different than it was decades ago because modern technology and terrorism has rendered the need for ticketing halls obsolete.

“Big lobbies just to get a document or get rid of a bag are a little absurd,” said JetBlue’s Maruster, who noted his company’s new terminal has a very small ticketing hall, but a large area beyond security for passengers.

Out of date and archaic terminals create crowds at security lines. American and JetBlue have undergone extensive renovations of their terminals at JFK, and Continental did the same at its Newark hub. Delta plans later this summer to announce a major renovation of its decades-old terminal at JFK, which once housed Pan Am.

Paying For It All
The core problem right now for improvements in the aviation industry is lack of funding. With government budgets running in the red and corporations recovering from the recession, many projects, such as the project to reconstruct the Central Terminal at LaGuardia, have been put on hold.

One option Ward supports is raising the Passenger Funding Charge from $4.50 to $7, also supported by Mayor Mike Bloomberg and other policy makers.

Neysa Pranger, Director of Public Affairs for the Regional Plan Association, who was heavily involved in lobbying against MTA cuts, said a grassroots movement for airports and air travel is needed to put public pressure on politicians to support funding for airport and airspace improvements.

Pranger is helping put together a group called Better Airports Alliance, aimed at lobbying for federal and state funding for airport improvements.

Reach Reporter Domenick Rafter at drafter@queenstribune.com or (718) 357-7400, Ext. 125.