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Among the many items in my past that I'd prefer not to remember, let alone explain, there are several columns in support of Denver International Airport.
Out here in the boondocks, it's safer to come out in favor of gun control, zoning or metropolitan water diversions than to speak well of DIA. It's too expensive, it will default and give Colorado such a bad reputation on Wall Street that no school district will be able to sell bonds for a new gym, etc. Rip into DIA, and you'll enjoy applause anywhere that cows outnumber people.
The Denver critics generally focus on how close and
convenient Stapleton was, and contrast that to the
remoteness and higher costs of Dumbbell
International.
But in most of the Rocky Mountain Empire, all airports with scheduled service are remote and expensive. Do I care whether it takes just under four hours or just over four hours to get to the Denver airport?
Either way, the day is shot, and either way, when I get there, I'll get honked at and hollered at because I don't know how to navigate such geographies. I'll pay captive prices for parking and food, and though I'll try to be timely, it won't matter, because the airline will find some way to make me wait interminably. If cattle got treated this way, the human society would investigate.
So why did I support DIA? Historically, Denver has had one big job: to serve as the transportation hub for the Mountain West. It started this job in 1859, when Denver's founders bribed the Leavenworth & Pikes Peak Express Co. to put its stagecoach terminal in Denver, rather than across Cherry Creek in rival Auraria. You can trace this pattern through the Moffat Tunnel and the routing of Interstate 70.
Here's Denver with a job. Its leaders, as well as people who know something about air transportation, believed that a new airport would help it do that job.
DIA made sense for other reasons then. Since airports are noisy and expensive, and I like cheap and quiet, it's a fine job for Denver. Somebody has to do it, and better there than here. The farther they put it out on the plains, the higher the jets when they cross, and the more serenity for our life here.
The DIA I thought I was supporting would have improved air connections throughout the region, linking Casper and Billings and Scottsbluff and Farmington and Goodland. We might start thinking of ourselves as Westerners, citizens of a distinctive region, rather than as mere provincials in a continental empire dominated by a bicoastal culture.
My envisioned DIA would have accomplished this because Denver would be desperate to pay off the bonds, which would require increased traffic. To get that traffic, Denver would have to market itself, start tending to a hinterland that it has largely neglected since World War II. All sorts of interesting things could result.
As for economic development, many small enterprises in the hinterlands rely heavily on air freight. This meant delays when bad weather hit and Stapleton was reduced to one runway. Those delays can be deadly when it's a part you've got to have to keep operating. DIA would eliminate those bad-weather delays and improve air freight service.
The DIA that opened this morning isn't much like that DIA that existed in my fantasy.
Air freight got treated like a stepchild during the airport's design and construction, and DIA will fragment our region, rather than unite it.
For one thing, DIA was built to serve national and city needs, not regional needs. About 60 percent of the passengers at DIA will never leave the airport. They're not coming to Colorado for business or pleasure; they're just changing planes, and they could do that in Kansas City or Omaha. DIA's better bad-weather capacity may improve the national air-transportation system, but it won't make it any easier to get from Salida to Scottsbluff.
This isn't a bad deal for Denver. Airline jobs pay decently, and Denver will get those jobs: mechanics, flight attendants, pilots, etc. But this won't mean much in regional terms.
Higher costs at DIA mean that smaller airports can offer competitive prices. So air traffic will increase in places like Colorado Springs and Grand Junction -- passengers that might otherwise have gone through Denver.
Those higher costs, and the greater distance from
mountain resorts, could mean other changes. Already the
promoters in Park County are talking up a Central
Colorado Regional Airport
to provide Summit County
resorts with direct connections. I can't tell you how
thrilled I am that this potential noise-maker lies only 40
miles away.
As it is, Aspen-bound passengers generally arrive in Denver from elsewhere, then board the jet for Aspen. But they could just as easily fly into Salt Lake or Albuquerque to board that Aspen jet.
DIA may thrive and prosper -- let's hope it does -- but
the sad fact is that Denver's role as the region's
port
is in jeopardy from DIA, the very enterprise
that was supposed to enhance that role.
Denver's a major-league city now, embarrassed by its cow-town image. The design of DIA means that Tokyo and Munich are more important than the Walsenburgs and Lamars of this world. Perhaps that's the new reality, but the Mountain West may still need a city, and from the way it built DIA, Denver has given up on that job.
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