When the first one out the gate is also the last.

Several weeks ago I explored one of the most obvious consequences of the veritable implosion of the commercial airline industry.  After several years of declining enplanements and repeated consolidations of the major airlines, we will inevitably confront many manifestations of what I saw at Cleveland-Hopkins International Airport: virtually an entirely vacant concourse.  This blog article on CLE's emptiness generated a fair amount of discussion on social media, with others pointing out similar vacancies in airports such as Cincinnati, Milwaukee, and St. Louis.  CLE might not be the greatest example, since the metro has suffered quite a bit more than the average metro: both the city and suburbs lost population over the last few decade.  Even the most superficial application of the inverse of the multiplier effect would lead to the conclusion that demand for flights out of CLE is lower than it was in 2000; after all, metro Cleveland has fewer people than it did ten to fifteen years ago.  But even metros with vigorous job/population growth have experienced a similar predicament.

The photo above shows the first check-in/baggage claim station at Indianapolis International Airport (IND).  To the best of my memory, it was fully operative a year ago, hosting passenger services for Delta.  Now it appears almost completely empty, with the exception of “Airline Charter Services” (indicated by the perfunctory sign), but apparently that isn’t active enough to justify the self-service check-in computer kiosks that we would normally see.  The Indianapolis Airport Authority removed those when Delta left.  And this isn’t the only check-in station with vacant space:

Neither US Airways nor American Airlines are using all of the check-in computers available at their respective stations, as indicated by the fact that their logos do not stretch across the back wall.  Instead, Visit Indy (formerly the Indianapolis Convention and Visitors Association) fills the remaining space with skyline and streetscape photos.

Naturally, one could rebut, “What if US Airways really is using the entire check-in counter from end to end, and Visit Indy just wanted a little room for self-promotion?”  I grant that could be true, but it wouldn’t explain why Delta’s new location doesn’t have any Visit Indy placards:

Apparently, even in its new location, Delta is using its entire counter.  Compare each of the aforementioned airlines to Frontier’s dinky space:

Again, I apologize for the terrible photo quality, but Frontier only occupies the section with the green placards to the right side of the photo.  The remaining 75% of that station consists of more “Visit Indy” signage—i.e., completely vacant.  Granted, Frontier Airlines is much smaller than the others.  But further contraction is on the horizon: after all, US Airways has bought out the bankrupt American, and last month a US Bankruptcy Court approved their eventual merger. 

If the administrative space claimed by various airlines at IND recedes this visibly in the public sections of the airport, one can only imagine what’s taking place in the sections that are off limits to general passengers.  It is reasonable to assume that the merger between US Airways and American will significantly reduce the staffing needs by close to 50%, so the back-of-the-house sections of the airport are probably going to look much the same as the photo below.

Hardly a soul arriving at the airport at 9pm on a Friday night.  Although the FAA classifies it as a medium hub, IND’s annual average of approximately 3.7 enplanements (nearly a million fewer than CLE) would by most considerations rank it as a third-tier airport, at least in terms of passenger traffic.  By the time of night that I took the photos, the majority of the airport’s storefronts are typically closed.  It’s just never a terribly busy airport.

Like Cleveland’s Hopkins International Airport, it would appear that IND has a glut of unused space that is only likely to grow after the US Airways-American merger that will eventually form the world’s largest airline.  But two other factors that distinguish IND from CLE only amplify the mismatch between our airports’ sizes and our ability to fill them.  First of all, metro Indianapolis is generally growing at a robust clip: Urbanophile blogger Aaron Renn recently pointed out that BLS metrics placed Indy at number 10 in the nation for job growth (2.84% from 2011 to 2012) after some sluggish previous years.  Cleveland’s 1.54% over the same time period ranks it at the middle of the pack among large metros. However, since the interval years are mismatched (FAA stats for 2012 aren’t available until July), I must draw from a 2010-2011 BLS report on metro job growth to form some broad-brush conclusions.  Incidentally, a cross-referencing between BLS employment growth and FAA enplanements from 2010 to 2011 reveals little to no correlation between job growth and shifts in passenger traffic.  For example, Louis Armstrong New Orleans International Airport (MSY) enjoyed a solid growth in enplanements of 4.07% from 2010 to 2011, even though the metro’s job growth has been negative during that time frame.  Meanwhile, CLE declined in enplanements at about the same rate (-4.14%), yet metro Cleveland’s job growth, though modest, was positive.  Apparently, any change in metropolitan employment numbers offers no indication of the respective airport’s vitality.

The other factor distinguishing IND from CLE—and virtually all other major American airports for that matter—is that IND is operating out of a brand new terminal.  The Colonel H. Weir Cook Terminal finished construction in November 2008—the first designed and built in the US since the September 11, 2001 attacks.  While few major airports are taking such radical steps as IND did several years ago, the New York Times reported last year that many of the largest airports are undergoing significant renovations or expansions, particularly at the major international gateways, in order to keep up with the amenities and services offered at the most prominent overseas competitors.  

An article as facile as this could hardly justify a critique on airport renovations at LAX, ATL, or JFK—after all, none of the second- and third-tier airports scrutinized in this article are facing the sort of international passenger traffic as the big guys.  But the emptiness at the smaller airports doesn’t auger well for what might transpire at the big ones; after all, even though Atlanta and JFK boast an array of other airlines that will buffer the impact of the US Airways-American merger, this latest absorption of an airline is still likely to free up at least a few baggage claim terminals, gates, and office space.  The ongoing trends in airline mergers and diminished passenger travel may not have an impact on infrastructural improvements taking place at airports, but it should seriously call into question the need for any major expansions.  And what airport authority would sensibly build a brand new terminal in these times of dearth?!  Although airport construction does not depend on taxpayer money—the local authorities finance capital improvements through the revenue they generate in passenger fees—the leadership of these businesses must account for their decisions through as consistent profitability as possible.  And it’s hard to imagine airports like CLE, IND, or MSY being able to justify any further upgrades, when their terminals have devolved into echo chambers that host a floundering industry.

An airport’s hollowed halls.

After a decade of persistent turbulence within the airline industry, it is no surprise that scarcely a year goes by that one of the big carriers merges with a second, or a third files for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection.  Among industries that the American Customer Satisfaction Index evaluates, airlines elicit some of the lowest scores—if not the absolute lowest, as they did in 2011.  (They performed a bit better in 2012, but still lagged in relation to other industries like shipping, restaurants, or hotels.) Within the past 18 months, carriers of widely varying sizes have filed Chapter 11, from regional contractors like Pinnacle to high profile global names like American,  while the military/postal contractor Ryan International liquidated just a few weeks ago.

Less publicized is the spillover customer dissatisfaction directed toward airports themselves.  While the airlines have responded to the industry’s contraction by slicing away at amenities and embedding new fees, many of the major airports are continuing to renovate (or even completely rebuild) their terminals as if they’re flush with cash.  Maybe they are, though the FAA and municipal governments typically share the funding for upgrades, while occasionally forging partnerships with the tenant airlines.  At any rate, the public dollars that fund the majority of improvements don’t seem to be in recession just because the economy is.  But J.D. Power and Associates’ North America Airport Satisfaction Study reveals that the operations at the airport terminals still receive lower ratings (690 on a 1,000-point scale) on average than affiliated services such as hotels (756) and rental cars (733).

During peak travel times in the busy core of major airports (those with over 30 million passengers per year), neither consumer malaise nor shrinking demand are likely to stand out.  But what about off-peak times at airports that, while prominent, fall short of the top ten busiest?  Sometimes it doesn’t take a great deal of scrutiny to see how little floor space these airports are using.  Take Cleveland-Hopkins International (CLE), for example: in Calendar Year 2011 it ranked as the nation’s 39^th busiest airport, with 4.4 million enplanements.  But you’d never guess it’s a busy airport from a trip through Concourse D.

 

As the Terminal Map reveals, this concourse is noncontiguous from the other three, linked only by a pedestrian tunnel.  Perhaps that’s why it seems to suffer the red-headed stepchild treatment.  United Airlines persistently uses the gates immediately adjacent to the tunnel, generating enough foot traffic to support a few fast-food and full-service restaurants, such as Gordon Biersch, Obrycki’s, Sbarro, and Subway.  But as one walks further to the edges of the concourse, everything thins out considerably.

Or it thins out completely.  Perhaps New Year’s Day (the day I took these pictures) is a slow travel day, but my hunch regarding people’s vacation schedules would suggest the exact opposite.  Yet the conditions of the gates here show no indication United has any flights scheduled for later in the evening.  (As always, my apologies for the poor quality of the photo.)

This wing of the concourse is deserted, and other telltale details suggest this is business as usual.

The image almost recalls one of the many dead malls I have visited in the past.  Where are the kiosks or the restaurants?  While there are none to be found, the design of the terminal clearly would allow for them to flourish.  The second of those photos shows a door to a room that apparently contains “technical publications”, most likely a back-of-the-house feature that oddly sits in one of the farthest reaches of the terminal.  Why sequester it from all the other administrative operations?  I’m not an expert on airport facilities, and it’s highly possible that the far reaches of Concourse D never intended to host any major customer services, since foot traffic would inevitably thin the further one gets from the center of the terminal, much like a bell curve.  But a vibrant concourse usually still hosts at least a few retail options all the way to its endpoint.  The terminal map of CLE certainly indicates that Concourses B and C offer shopping all the way to their outer edges.  But the underutilized Concourse D is empty at either wing.  The above pictures revealed one side of the large hallway; here’s the other:

The final room is storage.  If CLE put these gates to use for conventional enplanements, it would logically follow for the authorities to lease this room to a restaurant tenant, transforming it into revenue generating floor space instead of highly inefficient storage in an otherwise public area.

I could be dead wrong in my assumptions regarding the organization of a concourse: it’s possible that storage facilities for certain emergency equipment must exist at particular intervals.  But the numbers for CLE suggest that the airport’s passenger traffic has lagged for some time.  The Federal Aviation Administration does not appear to release a trend analysis of passenger or enplanement, though Wikipedia takes FAA data and aggregates it for ease of analysis across multiple years.  The chart reveals that CLE’s enplanements have plummeted in recent years, from 5.5 million in CY 05 (when the airport was ranked 35^th in the nation) to its CY 11 ranking of 39, with 4.4 million enplanements.  This 20.4% decline doesn’t necessarily distinguish CLE, since a precipitous decrease in enplanements characterized a number of airports during the last decade, including 40^th ranked Sacramento (SMF) that dropped 14.4% in the same time frame, and 41^st ranked Memphis (MEM) plunged a staggering 22.8%.  But notice that booming Austin experienced a considerable gain in enplanements at its Bergstrom Airport (AUS) during the same time frame.

Unfortunately, CLE also claims the dubious distinction of resting in the middle what has for the last decade been one of the more economically stagnant major metropolitan areas in the country: not only is the population within Cleveland city limits projected to be the second-fastest shrinking in the country (behind only Detroit) between July 2011 and the April 2010 Census, but the entire Cleveland-Akron-Elyria Combined Statistical Area, including the majority of the population of northeast Ohio, lost 2.2% of its population between 2000 and 2010.  Population loss within historic city boundaries is hardly uncommon; a number of cities across the country suffer the same predicament as Cleveland.  But only a handful of the most depressed regions are enduring such outmigration that even the suburbs cannot compensate for the core city, resulting in a net loss.  Cleveland is not only one of those cities (most of which are concentrated in the Rust Belt region in close proximity to Lake Erie), but metro Cleveland reported population losses in the 1970s and 1980s as well.  Only in the 1990s did the metropolitan area enjoy a net increase, but its 2.9 million count in 2010 still registers as a loss from its 3.1 million peak in 1970.  Gross Domestic Product growth from 2007 to 2010 has been, at 2.2%, generally average (middle quintile) —an impressive feat in light of Metro Cleveland’s pervasive population loss.  But average gains during a slow economic period scarcely compensates for significantly below economic gains during the relatively flush period of 2002 to 2008.

In short, Cleveland’s current socioeconomic trajectory obviates the need for significant amounts of the space at the Cleveland-Hopkins International Airport Terminal.  I’ve blogged in the past on how the significantly smaller airport of Woodrum Field (ROA) in Roanoke, Virginia recognized after September 11, 2011 that demands on airport security superseded those of managing enplanements, particularly when considering the near-calamitous drop in passenger traffic after the fateful terrorist attack.  As a result, authorities at ROA eliminated one of its six gates to make room for the enhanced needs of the Transportation Security Administration.  CLE has surely long since adapted to changing counter-terrorism measures, but it does not seem to have found a use for the tens of thousands of square feet in Concourse D for which it no longer has enough air traffic or passengers.  One can only hope that the airport’s authority, as a good steward of federal tax dollars, bears this in mind when pursuing capital improvements, as well as any long-term plans that account for the maintenance and use of this underutilized space.

While it is possible that future growth in metro Cleveland will once again justify the full use of Concourse D (or other excess space elsewhere in the terminal) to accommodate passenger demand, the current condition begs for a creative overhaul, in pursuit of an adaptive re-use of what is likely highly specialized, inflexible space.  Perhaps the airport’s leadership could consolidate commercial flights in the main portion of the airport (Concourses A through C) and D could serve as a freight hub?  The challenge is formidable, but presumably it is also painful to bear the cost burden of supplying an empty airport wing with security, custodial services, functional restrooms, full IT, telecomm, and electricity.  And with such modest foot traffic in even the active portions of the concourse, it’s only a matter of time before Sbarro and Subway could bail as well, if the current conditions worsen.  It will be interesting to see if a future of persistently fewer passengers at airports requires local authorities to seek advice from other property management agencies…such as those trying to breathe life in dying malls.

Elevating street art, through both the laws of physics and of popular taste.

Murals are a time-tested method of urban beautification that generally eschew political controversy, thanks to a number of factors: the low cost when compared to other capital improvement projects; the minimal disruption of other routine urban patterns (traffic, utility operation) involved in the “installation” of the mural; their persistent success at attracting private or non-profit sponsorship to fund part or all of the artwork (few murals depend exclusively on city taxes for funding); their apparent ability to deter graffiti artists or other vandals; and, quite simply, the unambiguous ability to replace a formerly boring or downright unsightly blank wall with artistic content.  While of course the actual content of a mural could occasionally arouse objections as easily as any other piece of civic art, I cannot recall any murals attracting public outcry in recent years.  Most of them go up quietly.  Conversely, the disapproval of Fred Wilson’s “E Pluribus Unum” sculpture in Indianapolis was enough to convince its original sponsors to discontinue it altogether.   One can only speculate if Wilson’s installation, in which a prominently featured emancipated slave elicited a variety of remonstrations, suffered precisely because it was a sculpture, whereas the Arts Council of Indianapolis oversaw 46 murals across the city in conjunction with Super Bowl XLVI earlier this year—hardly an outcry.  Do people worry less about murals because of the expectation that they won’t last forever?  Any mural could meet a very sudden end if a developer constructs a building in the adjacent lot, thereby concealing the wall and the artwork.  Meanwhile, a particularly unpopular mural will not likely face much opposition if another muralist receives a commission to paint over it.

The relationship between a mural and the space over which it presides is critical in understanding how this genre of civic art has been able to endure and proliferate over the years.  I have touched upon this topic in two previous blog articles: one about a mural in Indianapolis that predates the big Super Bowl Initiative; another surveying some murals in Philadelphia (the nation’s leading mural city, with over 3,000) in particularly distressed neighborhoods.  In both cases, the murals overwhelmingly rest on blank walls that front vacant lots.  More likely than not, those vacant lots formerly hosted a building that concealed the currently “muraled” wall, and thus, a sizable painting helps divert attention away from the structure that is now gone from demolition; it almost functions as a proxy.  (Particularly in Philadelphia, murals often suffer an association with the low-income neighborhoods in which they are the most prevalent.)  But is it a suitable alternative?  A particularly beloved mural will mobilize a community to preserve it, both when the paint begins to peel and when a developer purchases the abutting vacant lot.  But since the mural owes its existence to a demolished building—otherwise there would be no “canvas”—is it wise to hinder development solely for the sake of a mural?  In previous blogs I have argued an emphatic no; let the mural survive through photographs, but don’t sacrifice a chance to restore housing in a neighborhood long neglected by investors.  I have yet to witness a situation where development faces hurdles due to the potential loss of an adjacent mural, but I am confident that it will happen someday, if it hasn’t yet already.  This tacit dilemma in mural site selection makes this latest artistic incarnation in Philadelphia that much more impressive.  The photo below comes from a rental car parking lot at the city’s international airport:

“How Philly Moves”, a celebration of dance, apparently is quite new, with a dedication of October 12, 2011.  The site selection here is particularly savvy: even if Hertz itself owns rental lot, everything in the photo ultimately falls under a single supervisory force: the City of Philadelphia, and the city would control any major developmental or infrastructural changes.  If the parking garage and the adjacent car rental lot don’t remain under these land uses in perpetuity, I have no doubt they will at least survive for decades to come.  Thus, chances of a new edifice concealing the mural are unlikely.  Quite frankly, “How Philly Moves” does not owe its existence to a demolished structure nearby, unlike so many others.  A closer view emphasizes the prudence behind both the site selection and the beautification initiative:

Without the mural, it was a very run-of-the-mill parking garage—the design of the garage had about as much architectural interest and originality as an unintentionally exposed brick side wall.  I have no doubt that the artist had to take extra care to position the dancing figures across the gaps in the wall so that it still visually communicated a desirable message.  This mural looks tough, and it seems particularly accomplished as a result.  While it would have been interesting if the figures and the mural extended downward to the lower two ribbons of concrete, the absence of paint there also helps emphasize the contrast.

I hope, in the future, cities like Philadelphia abide by this model, seeking unorthodox painting surfaces if necessary, but recognizing that strategic sites boost a mural’s staying power, perhaps to the level of a stone sculpture.  Elaborate commitments such as this airport mural are unlikely to convey the sort of bottom-up community collaboration that the aforementioned murals all demonstrate—something like this parking garage is simply too elaborate, too difficult to implement, and (I have no doubt) too expensive to reorganize en masse.  But its durability and technical accomplishment may compensate for the slightly impersonal approach.  Then again, the content may fall under much greater public scrutiny if the content seems dubious.  After all, a mural like this is permanent, right?

The safety of objects.

The escalation of airport security after September 11th has unambiguously complicated air travel. Hardly a year has gone by since that tragic day without the introduction of a new major regulation, generally enforced by the Federal Aviation Authority (FAA). The use of small box-cutters to intimidate the passengers of the four hijacked airplanes prompted the FAA to expand its restrictions on knives—formerly permissible if the blades were less than four inches long—so that no blades of any sort were allowed. This new regulation became a mandate just a day after the attacks , and restrictions since then have been, for the most part, cumulative. The most significant initiative took place on November 19, 2001—in time for the busy holiday travel season—when Congress passed the Aviation and Transportation Security Act, which officially formed the Transportation Security Administration (TSA).

Although the breadth and intensity of control of the FAA (under the Department of Transportation) still transcends all other aviation-related authorities—after all, it was the FAA’s decision that halted all air travel for a few days after 9/11—passengers are far more likely to experience a regulatory onus through their more routine engagement with the TSA. (Though also initially under the authority of the Department of Transportation, the Administration saw its authority shift in 2003 to the Department of Homeland Security, which was also created as a direct consequence of the September 11th attacks, under the original name of the Office of Homeland Security.) The TSA radically transformed the implementation of airline security, beginning with a fundamental nationalization of the process, which, prior to 9/11, usually involved airport authorities contracting out the passenger screening task to private companies. Though some of the earliest regulations appear relatively subtle from the passengers’ perspectives—criminal background screenings on 750,000 airport employees, locked cockpit doors, reduced partitions between first class and business class passengers—the majority of them directly affect the customer base, because the passengers are the target of federal scrutiny. Almost anyone who has flown in the past decade is familiar with the regulatory additions: sophisticated metal and explosive detectors, x-rays, and lighting to determine authentic watermarks on drivers’ licenses or other personal ID. Many of the interventions have forced passengers to change their behavior: removing their shoes and belts, discarding all liquids bought from outside the airport, bagging personal toiletries under three ounces (anything larger is prohibited), undergoing far more frequent hand inspections of bags and even occasional frisking from TSA authorities. Enhanced security staffing has allowed the employment of body pattern recognition (BPR), so that passengers exhibiting suspicious behavior—excessive sweating, thick clothes on a warm day, use of pay phones—may undergo additional questioning. Following the failed attempt on Christmas Day 2009 by Nigerian Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab to detonate plastic explosives hidden in his underwear, the recent announcement that airports would expand the use and availability of full-body scanners was more remarkable by how little controversy it aroused, even as civil libertarians have criticized numerous initiatives since 9/11 for privacy violations.

To a large extent, Americans have adapted to these restrictions with unusual reticence, most likely interpreting them as necessary precautions in the interest of national security and the prevention of another attack at the magnitude of the destruction of the World Trade Center. The most obvious burden the restrictions have imposed is one of time—it is no longer possible to arrive at a flight 20 minutes prior to departure. The TSA screening process, at its smoothest, will usually still take at least 10 minutes, and depending on passenger traffic (which often varies during different times in a single day), can last approximately an hour. Even smaller airports often induce a significant queue, particularly since they engage in the more nationally regularized process with fewer TSA staff. Most airlines recommend arriving at an airport 75 to 90 minutes in advance of departure, while checking in at least 30 minutes in advance. In an effort to abide by the restrictions, airline revenues have floundered over the past decade, instigated at least in part by the crippling FAA suspension on all civilian air travel in the days immediately after the attack, though escalating oil prices and the economic downturn have subsequently contributed to the airline industry’s woes. To counter these rising costs, airlines have stripped away benefits such as on-flight meals while adding fees for checked luggage. Neither of these policies, of course, makes air travel any more appealing to customers, and they only add to the accumulation of annoyances originally induced by TSA’s demands during the security screening process. At the end of 2009, the chief executives of several major airlines many airlines have argued that consumers’ perceptions of the inconvenience of flying may have had more of an impact on the industry than travelers’ concerns about another hijacking or bombing attempt. Prospective passengers have undoubtedly weighed the advantages of air travel versus automobile, bus, or rail travel, in terms of additional embedded or elective fees, and on-trip amenities. But the biggest variable undoubtedly remains temporal: all of these inconveniences amount to more time a passenger must invest in a flight, to the extent that short-haul trips between major airports such as JFT to BOS may take longer than a car, train, or bus ride. Maneuvering through the safety gauntlet slows customers down enough that airlines lose their biggest advantage: speed of travel.

Time from A to B isn’t the only dimension to suffer in the wake of September 11th. These intensified security measures have exerted spatial implications as well, and airports can suffer profoundly. The new equipment, increased personnel, elongated queues, and partitions take up much more space than the “old-fashioned” passenger screening measures, and my guess is that the smaller airports, with far less available floor space, suffer the brunt of these initiatives. Woodrum Field, the regional airport of Roanoke, Virginia (ROA), shows what happens when the primary terminal is unprepared for radical changes:

This photo represents nearly the entirety of the airport’s one concourse, visible as soon as a passenger emerges from the TSA security station. It isn’t large, of course, but that’s not a surprise, considering the airport serves a metro area of only 300,000 persons.
Here’s the overhead sign which I was standing under in the first photo:

Notice that it lists six gates. Immediately to my left and slightly behind the point I was standing (back toward the airport’s entrance) is the busy Gate 2:

But if I look over to my right, what do I see? The glass partition separating me from the people who are still making it past the Transportation Security Administration. Far more telling is the label directly above the partition:

It would appear that the sprawling security configuration induced from 9/11 takes up an entire gate. The last two pictures demonstrate this more clearly:


Roanoke Regional Airport apparently had to sacrifice one of its six gates for enhanced security procedures. It’s possible that such a shift amounted to no more than an administrative blip for the Roanoke Airport Authority. After all, the Roanoke metro is only growing modestly, at less than 4% since 2000. And, the number of enplanements at ROA declined over 5% from CY 2008, falling below 300,000 in CY 2009. But if two days of universally suspended flights after September 11 was enough for some airlines to skirt bankruptcy, one can imagine how sensitive the entire aviation industry is toward minor changes, and removing 16.6% of an airport’s available gates is hardly minor. The results of this cut undoubtedly impacted the airlines’ ability to schedule flights, as well as the timing of liftoffs on ROA’s two runways. Airlines most likely had to reduce the number of flights available during the day, juggle the times at which flights could arrive at the airport, or compress the headways between flights for the ones with highest demand, resulting in a greater likelihood of delays due to less cushion time between flights. If things got too bad at ROA, some prospective passengers may opt for other airports in the region, such as Lynchburg Regional Airport down the road (LYH), particularly if the later airport had a design that didn’t need to cut a gate to make room for new TSA regulations. While nearly all airports across the country have suffered declining passenger volumes over the past couple years, it is possible that having six gates available would have at least mitigated some of Roanoake’s diminishing enplanements. Falling passenger numbers and fewer available gates could ultimately influence some of the City of Roanoke’s own economic development initiatives, since passenger volume numbers generally correlate heavily to a region’s sphere of economic influence.

This blog article does not intend to lambast the FAA, TSA, DHS or any of the other acronyms that have engendered the culture of aviation security we can observe today. The fact that attempted terrorist attacks on airplanes persist nearly a decade after the planes crashed into the Pentagon and WTC indicates that expansive and adaptive security measures are still worthwhile. But top-down initiatives elicit a bottom-up response that rarely meshes perfectly with the intended results. It is just as possible that other airports in the country had to make even greater spatial sacrifices in the interest of security; imagine what would have happened to an airport that had to sacrifice one of only two gates. Some safety measures incur the greatest cost at the point of installation, such as the square reflective devices embedded in streets that I blogged about earlier. Others have long-term implications. In the case of Roanoke Regional Airport, the culpability may rest on the TSA, or with the original aviation architects who failed to design a concourse that could adapt to changes. The wisest resolution would avoid ascribing blame and simply allow the airport authority and the airlines to continue collaborating to provide passengers with the most efficient mode of transit available, even if, someday, our TSA passenger screening stations require enough space to hold a passenger’s dressing rooms.

Hurdles on the runway.

For the most part, the scale of a city’s major institutions correlates directly to the metropolitan area’s size and economic power. Metros like New York and Chicago win the flagship luxury department stores, they have the highest number of super-tall skyscrapers, the biggest libraries, movie theaters, power plants, and so forth. Obviously Boston’s Fenway Park and Chicago’s Wrigley Field prove an exception to this trend, since the humble sizes of these stadia belie the heft of their respective cities. However, both cities claim many more alternate sports venues than much smaller communities such as New Orleans, Indianapolis, or Salt Lake City, so the total square footage of athletic facilities in the major metros roughly parallels the number of people.

One of the few major industries, however, where the importance within a locale routinely defies the city’s relative size is in commercial airports. For example, Ohio’s Port Columbus International (CMH) sits squarely in the center of the country’s seventh most populous state and is within ninety minutes’ flying distance of over half of the nation’s population. It is by far the fastest growing and most economically healthy city in Ohio. Yet the passenger traffic (measured by the FAA) at the airports of Cleveland (CLE) and Cincinnati (CVG) eclipse Port Columbus by far; despite being a relatively slow-growth metro of similar size, Cincinnati’s passenger traffic nearly doubles that of Columbus. Future forecasts suggest this is unlikely to change. Conversely, Salt Lake City’s metropolitan area is only a little over half that of metro Columbus; its vigorous economy suggests that it will grow increasingly prominent over time, but at this point it has a long way to go to equal Columbus’ size. Yet its airport (SLC) receives triple the passenger traffic of its Midwestern counterpart.

These disparities make fundamental sense, and it doesn’t require much scrutiny to see why. The biggest factors influencing the prominence of a city’s airport are 1) its historical size in relation to neighboring cities; and 2) its geographic proximity to other centers of commerce. In terms of both of these factors, the deck is stacked against Columbus. It was historically nowhere near as large of a city as Cincinnati just 110 miles away; the latter community achieved prominence at a much earlier date and therefore justified the aviation infrastructure worthy of its size. Columbus has only risen to the higher echelon of Midwestern cities in recent years. Meanwhile, Cleveland surged in the early 20th century to become Ohio’s largest metro, which it remains to this day (though if growth patterns in Columbus and shrinkage patterns in Cleveland continue, Columbus may eventually dethrone the Forest City). And Salt Lake City’s prevalence has less to do with its current impressive growth—it certainly didn’t demand a major airport forty years ago—than its relative isolation, with no other major city of any reasonable size within a 350 mile radius.



Such aviational curiosities culminate with the unlikely prominence of Memphis International Airport (MEM). The metro area is not growing at anywhere close to the pace of Columbus or Salt Lake City, or, for that matter, the state of Tennessee’s booming capital Nashville, which has surged past metro Memphis in population. But the Memphis airport still averages at least a half million more passengers than Nashville’s in any given year, it remains a hub for Delta (formerly Northwest) and routinely flies to Amsterdam, and, most significantly, its role as the super-hub of FedEx Express has substantiated the airport’s reputation as the number one cargo operator in the world. In spite of these logistical advantages, Memphis was a higher profile city several decades ago, back when the local leadership assembled parcels for this moderately busy airport. Since the mid 19th century, several other urban centers (Nashville and Charlotte in particular come to mind) have shimmied up the ladder at a faster rate, but Memphis Airport still retains its extensive infrastructure—with room to grow—and its unsullied title as the capital of the Mid-South. As the map above indicates, no city of comparable size sits within three hours’ drive; even Nashville rests over 200 miles to the east. But its central location within the South in general makes it a remarkably convenient midpoint; most Southerners have undoubtedly experienced a layover in Memphis when flying Delta.

But is the Memphis Airport Authority thinking in terms of future growth? Some urban prairies to the west of the terminal, where eminent domain allowed the purchase and demolition of private residences, suggest that newer or larger runways form a part of the airport’s future. But the airport’s interior features suggest otherwise.

This photo, taken near the end of one of the sections to Concourse A, while looking back toward the central terminal, reveals an unlikely impediment: a short stairwell. About seven gates operate on the side of the stairwell from which I am taking the above two photos, while the vast majority of the concourse’s gates are on the inner portion of the concourse, closer to the vertex of these lengthy halls. Seen from the other direction, the stairwell and its respective change in elevation offer a distinct visual contrast.

Fortunately, the authorities at Memphis International aren’t dodging the stipulations of the Americans with Disabilities Act; an alternative to the stairwell and escalator is nestled in a corner just to the right of the above photo.

The elevator helps to avert a potentially serious problem for disabled persons with a reasonable solution. But this reasonable solution isn’t exactly modern. The elevator is only conspicuous from the lower level—the most likely destination for those using the stairs—and most people, unaware of its existence, struggle to negotiate their wheeled luggage down the stairs or escalator.

Now I’ll be bold and draw a broad conclusion from this minor obstruction. The leadership at Memphis airport, aware that their city handed the flag to Nashville long ago, has stopped thinking of itself as a critical airport for a prominent city. Its role as a cargo hub remains auspicious, but other cities with lesser airports may soon surpass Memphis’ infrastructure to support commercial flights. The airport’s tidy but faded interior—and its casual negligence of inconveniences such as the one captured in this photo series—collectively diminish the sense that this airport is scrutinizing a future in which it remains a major player in the field of commercial aviation.

Perhaps I’m splitting hairs by pointing this out. But a stairwell in the middle of a concourse is downright weird. I can’t think of where I might have seen it before. While persons in wheelchairs will always have the elevator, what will they do if a sudden evacuation precludes them from using electrically operated conveyances? Why didn’t the authorities at Memphis International install ramps? Ramps would benefit customers with suitcases, strollers, and Segways just as much. The absence of another, better way of managing the grade change here suggests that airport leadership made an effort to fix its problem by installing an elevator with the passage of the Americans with Disabilities Act and then hasn’t thought about this part of Concourse A ever since. And the ADA passed during the George H. W. Bush administration. As is often the case, this nonchalance toward humdrum spaces dampens the overall appeal of this otherwise perfectly decent airport, while capital improvements apply disproportionately to the showy centerpiece of Concourse B. Memphis may not be an Atlanta, but it also pulls a lot more weight within the south than Little Rock these days. One can only hope that the leadership of this Super-Hub for the Mid-South will prioritize universal design as an aesthetic the next time the place is due for a renovation.

Windblown bronze.

Without the time for a lengthy blog post, I leave one that I honestly mean to have no political implications whatsoever. This statue of former president George H. W. Bush may be among the most widely familiar of my photographs; it comes from his heavily trafficked George Bush Intercontinental Airport in Houston.

Regardless of whom it represents, the fact that his sport coat billows behind him instills the presence of wind. But the material that this statue of Bush is made of has a weight and density that even the strongest breeze would hardly stir. I know that plenty of other inanimate sculptures convey motion effectively despite the fact that they derive from inert materials, but the implied wind here only intensifies the sense of an apotheosis beyond the statue’s basic memorializing intentions. Or maybe former President Bush is bravely staring down a gale so mighty it really could blow his jacket behind him—perhaps he’s looking dead into the eye of last year’s Hurricane Ike. The billowing jacket doubles the hero worship.