11-23-2018, 11:33 AM
(11-23-2018, 10:28 AM)SammyOES Wrote:(11-23-2018, 07:27 AM)jamincan Wrote: You will notice that the GTAA master plan is predicting passenger volume to double over the next 20 years, but plane movements to only increase 40% or so. I'm sure they're already accounting for bigger planes and spreading traffic out throughout the day more.
I'm curious (genuinely, this isn't a trick question), what has their history of success been in predicting growth?
(11-23-2018, 07:27 AM)jamincan Wrote: It's kind of funny to me that so many people feel the free market will solve traffic woes, but not other social problems.
I believe the free market is the best way to solve problems when everyone's incentives are aligned and costs/benefits are well understood and accounted for by everyone (this is obviously a huge simplification - but hopefully enough for this topic). Most social issues have very poorly aligned incentives. Healthcare for example with private practitioners/insurers is a bad place for the free market because "optimizing profits" and "optimizing health of a population" are very different things.
My previous comment by the way, doesn't mean that I think we need a purely free market solution. You can still add regulations to keep incentives aligned properly. A large fee for an idle gate or low capacity or more drastic measures like "use it or lose it" can help here. Obviously an airline would choose to maximize their profits over the general benefit of the airport and its user base - but it seems easy enough to prevent that.
Restrictions like that work to a certain extent, but when availability is constrained, eventually the slot itself has value, rather than what it represents and then all logic goes out the window and you have airlines flying empty planes to an airport just to hold onto a slot. (I realize this isn't an endemic issue, but it's just the most stark example I know). It's sort of a similar situation to real estate.
As to GTAA growth predictions, I don't think they've been so good in the past. The 2008 master plan was predicting much greater growth on smaller planes, and hence had far more terminal growth planned. They ended up not carrying forward most of that expansion when it was clear that the nature of growth was far different than expected. It kind of goes to show how the whole planning process for an airport is somewhat fraught. If the primary tenant of the airport changes tack, the entire plan goes out the window.