Editorial: The long runway ahead
Recent news that Sen. John Kerry had attached an amendment to a Capitol Hill bill requesting $2 million in improvement funds for the Worcester Regional Airport might have seemed a little silly at first blush.
After all, the airport has been without any commercial service since Allegiant Air abandoned its four flights per week to Orlando, Fla., last summer. And it’s been a horrific drain on already strained city coffers, costing taxpayers $1 million every year. So, what on earth could $2 million – spread out over four annual installments – possibly accomplish?
Not a whole lot, but it’s something. And while it may be tempting to give up on the airport, it’s not in anyone’s best interest to do so, including the taxpayers of Worcester.
Aviation is only going to grow more popular as a means of transportation over the next several decades. Unless the technology to "beam me up, Scotty" is truly around the corner, the nation’s major airports will continue to face a growing demand for flights, without the capacity to significantly expand their facilities.
This is especially true in New England and Massachusetts, which has nearly every available square inch already spoken for.
And it’s not like they are making any more airports these days. Finding a site for a new major airport, or even a regional one, is an impossible task for today’s transportation planners. The days of Robert Moses’ massive eminent domain land-taking are over, and the likelihood of getting any kind of new facility approved anywhere near a major population center is slim and onerously expensive.
As a result, it is inevitable that the existing regional airports will some day play a much more crucial role in absorbing the need for greater air traffic.
Worcester Airport has long-term strategic value for the city and the region, and as tempting as a wind farm or expanded industrial park is, it’s clearly in the city and state’s best interest to not let the facility die and be converted to another use. Turn the airport into a McMansion farm, and then try explaining to all the new homeowners in the area that you want to turn it back into an airport 20 years from now.
That would be a cat fight the city or state would never win.
Closed door negotiations with MassPort are continuing, and the city of Worcester, feeling the pinch of a multi-million dollar budget deficit, is likely to muster the momentum to once and for all get out of the airport business. And that’s good news. MassPort is in a much better position to manage the facility, even in a deficit, for the long run.
The battle to be a major regional airport has been ceded to the aggressive expansions at T.F. Green Airport in Rhode Island, Manchester Airport in New Hampshire and Bradley Airport in Connecticut. It’s too late for Worcester to go for that same niche, and it was probably never a viable option all along given the siting of the Worcester facility.
What does need to be addressed – once the airport is off the city’s books – is better access. Not a half billion dollar, six-lane highway blowing through neighborhoods, but a strategic improvement to local roads and signage, and investment in improving Worcester’s major road infrastructure.
With the right leadership, much better access to the airport can be achieved while making improvements to the local road system – truly a win-win outcome.
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