Mob hysteria fuels runway project, revisited

I've been a critic of the asinine Erie airport runway expansion project purported to cost about $80 million, but which will inevitably vastly exceed that misleading estimate.

An article in today's Pittsburgh Post Gazette reporting yet another huge decline in traffic at that city's international airport further confirms the waste of public monies here in Erie on this runway to nowhere. Following that is a blog I posted on this topic back in November of 2007.

Airport traffic declined again last year
Friday, February 12, 2010
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

Passenger traffic dropped another 7.8 percent at Pittsburgh International Airport last year, continuing a trend that began after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks and has yet to abate.

Overall, eight million travelers used the airport in 2009, compared to 8.7 million in 2008. That's only about a third of the 20.7 million passengers that used the airport in 1997, its record year, when it was a major hub for US Airways.

The Allegheny County Airport Authority attributed the latest decline to a 20 percent decline in passengers posted by US Airways, which eliminated its Pittsburgh hub in 2004 but still is the region's dominant carrier with nearly 29 percent of the traffic.

AirTran Airways posted a 24.8 percent gain in 2009 and Southwest Airlines, the airport's second largest carrier, showed a three percent increase, but neither was enough to offset the US Airways losses.


Mob hysteria fuels runway project

A contagious mob hysteria has overtaken Erie county council and executive Mark DiVecchio, egged on by the development-at-any cost crowd and its mouthpiece, the Times Publishing Co., as they bind taxpayers to superfluous runway expansion at the Erie airport to expand services already underutilized by Erie’s anemic air passenger market,which should be directed towards more traditional and critical county needs.

All county residents must pay one way or another for the runway project, despite the fact that nearly half the county’s residents outside city and Millcreek/Summit boundaries will derive little or no benefit from it. Most of the relatively few who use air passenger services at all, prefer to drive to Buffalo, Cleveland or Pittsburgh where a more convenient and timely array of flights await to serve them.

Any benefit to them from this wasteful expenditure is negligible or non-existent.While all council members share in the political depravity inherent in the airport runway scheme, the principal culprit is the county executive who is pandering to Times-News editorialists and their sycophants.

Proponents claim the runway project is needed to fuel future economic growth which will enhance the entire county. But no one has produced a single credible survey or study to support their contention, nor anything resembling a cost-benefit analysis. Rather, county officials are flying, so to speak, by the seat of their pants