The Loma Prietan
July/August 2001
San Francisco Voters May Have Say on Runways
by Richard Zimmerman
In a move that should give Bay supporters hope, San Francisco Supervisors Aaron Peskin and Tom Ammiano introduced a City Charter amendment that would require San Francisco voters to approve Bay fill projects sponsored by the City.
The charter amendment would be on the November 2001 ballot if approved by at least six out of 11 supervisors. If San Francisco voters approve the amendment, any city-sponsored project requiring 100 acres or more of fill would need to be approved by the voters. A vote on Bay fill would not take place until an Environmental Impact Report was certified.
This amendment would put the decision for SFO’s proposed runways in the hands of the voters instead of officials appointed by the Mayor such as the Airport Commission.
One question that surfaced regarding the Charter amendment is why San Francisco voters should be able to determine the Bay’s fate; after all, it’s not San Francisco’s Bay.
An answer is that San Francisco has supervisors who are trying to protect the Bay and slow the Brown machine’s steamroller. The San Francisco vote would not preclude other counties bordering the Bay from allowing voters to vote on the project. However, beside San Francisco, only San Mateo has a formal say in this matter. The possible San Francisco vote would be binding on SFIA since San Francisco owns the airport.
Regardless, the full permitting process, including hearings and permit votes at the Bay Conservation and Development Commission, would still need to take place.
Speier Bill Moves Ahead
in Legislature
SB 244, by State Senator Jackie Speier (D-SF/San Mateo), would also assure the San Mateo County Board of Supervisors a vote on the runway expansion project. The bill, which has passed out of the Senate and is on its way to the Assembly, is not opposed by the Airport and seems assured of passage.
Voters in San Mateo County should make the runways a continuing issue in public forums. And it would be far better to have the San Mateo County voters decide than to let only the five-member Board vote on it.
SFIA Announces Demand
Management will Reduce Delays
SFIA must, as a part of the environmental review process, analyze at least one “no-build” alternative. Just to show how the PR machine at SFIA works, their press releases now refer to the no-build alternative as “do nothing,” trying to imply a no-solution alternative. But a consultant, Charles River Associates (CRA), hired by SFIA, recently released a report showing that demand management will reduce delays at SFIA without requiring new runways.
Demand management is a collection of techniques and mechanisms that attack airport capacity problems by reducing or redistributing demand. It’s interesting to note that the proposed expanded runway project will not increase capacity significantly; there are four runways now and there would be four runways at project completion.
Thus the future of the Bay around SFIA is extremely murky. Should this project to “reconfigure” the runways win approval, it should be assumed that San Francisco will be back in the near future with a request for more runways to handle anticipated demands.
Demand Management is the Future
CRA vice president George Eads, in a presentation to SFIA stakeholders on May 18, said that it’s not possible to lay enough concrete to solve delay problems. He added, “all major airports will have some form of demand management.”
Demand management techniques analyzed in the CRA report include regional coordination, slot controls, congestion pricing of runways, and using larger aircraft. While these techniques are not mutually exclusive, CRA did not analyze combinations of demand management techniques. This lack of a comprehensive analysis appears to be the fatal flaw in their study.
Regional Airports
Regional coordination of the major airports in the Bay Area as a single entity could reduce the operations at SFIA. For example, Oakland and San Francisco would combine operations. This could reduce the number of flights using SFIA and increase those using Oakland, an airport that currently has unused runway capacity. Including San Jose in the mix would further allow a better selection of flights at each airport. Inter-airport transportation would be critical to effective regionalization.
Advocates of a southern crossing, such as a tunnel under the Bay between SFIA and Oakland International, touted the idea as doing away with the need for new runways at SFIA. As a result of lobbying in the State Senate last year by the Sierra Club and other environmental organizations, SFIA must consider such a connection between airports.
As many as 35% of the flights at local airports are between Los Angeles and the Bay Area. Many of these flights could originate in airports closer to the passengers and avoid the crowded 101 corridor.
Slot Controls
Slot controls restricting the number of planes that can land in a given time are usually based on planes per hour. Currently, all airports except La Guardia (New York) and National (Washington) must allow unrestricted access to airlines as a result of airline deregulation legislation.
Eads, in his remarks to the Stakeholders, commented that slot controls were “probably the way to go” to achieve demand management absent new runways.
Currently, SFIA has a peak demand of around 50 arrivals per hour. Slot controls would limit that demand by a fixed amount. For example, peak arrival rates might be limited to 40 planes per hour, reducing delays.
With Simultaneous Offset Instrument Approach, currently being implemented at SFIA, the arrival rate could be as high as 45 planes an hour at least 88% of the time. Thus a slot limit of 40 to 45 planes per hour would result in minimal delays. And no damage to the Bay. But don’t forget that there is no solution that will reduce delays to zero at SFIA or any other airport. If you fly, you will be delayed once in a while.
Congestion Pricing
Another way to implement peak demand reduction is congestion pricing. This technique would allow airlines to schedule flights whenever they wanted, but the price of landing would depend on the time of day. More would be charged for times when the demand is high and in the end, passengers would pay more to fly during congested times. This, in turn, would reduce demand at peak times and therefore the likelihood of congestion-related delays.
Upgauging
Using larger aircraft, called “upgauging” in the airline business, would reduce the number of flights and is opposed by the airline industry. Current thinking in the airline business is that a company can control a market by overscheduling—scheduling far more flights than it can realistically fill.
The busy California Corridor between Southern California and the Bay Area is a case in point. United Shuttle schedules more flights than it can fill just to have a place throughout the schedule. This practice results in many delayed or cancelled flights.
A recent study by the San Francisco Chronicle found that United Shuttle schedules 54 flights a day between SFO and Los Angeles, almost 5% of the total daily operations at SFO. It would be simple to reduce the number of flights by using larger aircraft that flew less often. And a side effect would be that more people would get to their destination sooner and on-time.
(The fun-loving San Francisco Chronicle also reported that two reporters “raced” to downtown Los Angeles from the Claremont Hotel in Berkeley; one drove and one took United Shuttle. The driver won by over an hour.)
Demand Management Works
CRA, using a mathematical model that calculates delays based on demand for runways, found that each of these ideas could reduce delays at SFIA though it is impossible to accurately forecast them.
CRA’s earlier study found that approximately 20% of the delays at SFIA were due to weather, i.e., they could be helped by new runways. Real delays, as opposed to calculated delays, are due to factors such as crew availability, equipment problems and the “spinners,” among others. Spinners are what airlines call people who arrive late and then spin around in the aircraft aisle, trying to find a place to put their luggage.
The model used by CRA doesn’t attempt to predict such delays. The “delay” number is a figure of merit that does not indicate what the actual performance of an airline or airport would be. In fact, paving the entire Bay over would not affect 90% of the delays, according to George Williams, an airline consultant hired by the Bay Conservation and Development Commission.
A second major problem with the CRA report is that it does not consider combinations of ideas. Thus, slots, reducing cargo flights and upgauging are never considered together. However, since each idea, taken separately, reduces delays, a combination would presumably be an optimal way to proceed. Certainly this should be investigated in further detail.
Ignoring combinations of possible solutions is one of SFIA’s favorite methods to make alternatives to new runways appear infeasible. Consider this quotation from G and C Aviation, William’s consulting company, “The most grievous omission [in SFIA proposals], however, is the complete lack of consideration of multiple actions which, when taken together, provide significant potential for delay reduction and offer the possibility of a true Bay Area airport utilization plan.”
CRA points out that demand management would have to be practiced 100% of the time even though it is only required 20% of the time by their own measure. But they never point out that the runways would only help that same 20% of the time, at best, and would have forever destroyed a large part of an irreplaceable natural wonder.
San Francisco Magazine published an excellent article on the runway’s impact on the Bay. As of press time it was available at: but try to find a print copy. The pictures are well worth it.
Richard Zimmerman is Chair of the
Loma Prieta Chapter’s SFIA/Bay Protection task force. The task force meets the third Tuesday of each month. For more information,
e-mail windrider@protectourbay.com or call the Chapter office at 650/390-8411.