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Just why a dysfunctional baggage handling system should delay the opening of Denver International Airport is something of a mystery to me. My baggage often gets lost or shredded, and if they've got machines to perform this vital task that was once done by humans, why can't we just realize that it represents another advance for labor-saving automation?
However, the TV footage of the new baggage system -- state of the art and the first of its kind in the world -- looked like something I'd seen before, although I couldn't remember precisely where.
It dawned on me last week during a conversation with Steve Voynick of Leadville. Steve used to make an honest living underground making big rocks into little rocks, but for the past 15 years or so, he's had to get his livelihood by writing.
Among his other works, he's something of a revisionist
historian. While every other history of Leadville focuses
on glittering silver barons or kind-hearted prostitutes,
Steve's book, Leadville: A Miner's Epic,
covers the
daily life, and early dismemberment or death, of the
thousands of men who toiled underground for $3 a day.
Anyway, we were talking about the glory days of Climax Molybdenum, and I then remembered a media tour of the mine in early 1980. One impressive spectacle was the crusher, so big that it was fed directly by a train.
About a dozen ore cars, each filled with 10 tons of rock from the slusher drifts, rolled down the narrow-gauge track; at the crusher's mouth, they were tipped. Rocks tumbled down into the maw of the noisy machine to be reduced from boulders to brick-sized cobbles in a matter of seconds.
Substitute luggage for molybdenite, and you've got the essence of the DIA baggage delivery system. It's really nothing new. Just bring in some experienced giant crusher operators who got laid off in 1982 from Climax, and they'll have that baggage system operating properly in no time.
Now that that problem is solved, there remains the question of what to do with DIA.
Like President Clinton, Wellington Webb is a shrewd politician who wants to accommodate everyone. He's managed that feat with his handling of the new airport. It's still under construction, which pleases the advocates, and Stapleton remains in use, which pleases the critics. The costs of the delays are willingly being borne by the airlines, so they must be pleased, too. Who's left to complain?
But how long can he maintain this pleasant state? Along about May 1, they can discover problems with the runway concrete. It will take all summer and fall to repair those defects. Then it's holiday travel season, no time to be changing airports.
With any luck, Webb should be able to keep everyone happy until the 1995 mayoral election.
After his record-setting landslide re-election victory, Webb will announce a major discovery -- Denver doesn't need a major airport of Stapleton's size, let alone of DIA dimensions.
The fiber optics spreading across the country eliminated about 80 percent of the need for business travel. People traveling for pleasure take to the rails or drive. Regional air traffic from Grand Junction and Casper went to Centennial Airport. There was air freight, but other metro airports could handle that, too.
Given all those trends, and that every major airline has been losing money for the past decade, the mayor realized that investing in an airport was like investing in a molybdenum mine -- it was a good idea in its day, but its day was past.
The Stapleton Redevelopment Commission, having completed its work, went to work on finding a new use for DIA, where the utilities and transportation systems were already in place.
Front Range growth, instead of chewing up farmland and open space, all went to the DIA site, which soon held homes, office buildings and factories. Suburban real estate developers complained mightily, but other Coloradans were thrilled to see the end of helter-skelter growth, urban sprawl and land speculation.
So, don't worry about the delays. They're all for the best.
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