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Come Fly with Me
DeNardis articulates the case for an expanded Tweed
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Business New Haven
4/30/2001
By: BNH
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In addition to being a former congressman (R-3) and current president of the University of New Haven, Lawrence J. DeNardis last fall took up the cudgel to chair the Tweed-New Haven Airport Authority, which seeks to broaden air-transportation options from New Haven to the rest of the world. BNH interviewed him earlier this month to find out why.
What are the airport authority's short and long-term goals for Tweed?
Connecticut is facing a transportation crisis, and transportation is front-and-center before this session of the General Assembly. Southern Connecticut is facing a transportation crisis that threatens to lock us out of the global network. Our highways are growing increasingly congested; Connecticut's rail networks enjoy a reasonable passenger capacity, but freight capacity is limited, at best. There is not another 1.5-million population metropolitan region in the country that has as poor air service as southern Connecticut. Congestion is growing at the nation's largest airports, and Tweed is among a handful of under-served metropolitan airports where the potential [exists] to handle the spillover from the mega-ports. The problem is there; we think that Tweed is an important part of the solution - we're smack between a deep-water port, high-speed rail and two major highways. So a more reliable, small-hub regional airport, centrally located in southern Connecticut, can go a long way toward reducing the strain on the highways and the major urban airports in the region. What's more, thanks to our location, our airport can allow the region to retain and attract even greater activity among the bioscience and high-technology companies. Ninety-nine percent of southern Connecticut air travelers [fly] south or west, and a good deal of [flights] at Bradley and Providence [T.F. Green Airport in Warwick, R.I.] do not go in that direction. We have a great opportunity here, and [Tweed] is probably the region's No. 1 asset.
In terms of destinations, what is your specific goal?
Our goal is to reach two or three regional hubs within five years, and we think we can do that.
How about physical changes to Tweed?
In the near term we would like to add 1,000 feet at each end [of the Tweed runway] for safety. Those additions at the north and south ends, along with proper maintenance of the approach and landing zones by being able regularly to trim the trees, will allow us to make some modest improvements.
Such as?
That is, we can begin to negotiate with airlines that will take us to hubs [up to] 500 nautical miles away. Then, to reach major hubs [up to] 1,000 miles away - the major ones being Atlanta and Chicago - we need to have 1,000 feet of paved and usable runway] on each end, which would bring [Tweed's runway length] up to 9,600. That goes beyond our [present] footprint. But we think we can keep it within 8,600, which would keep it within the current footprint. That would require [Federal Aviation Administration] approval, which is what we are hoping to achieve. We do not want to go beyond the [existing] footprint if at all possible.
The conventional pro-Tweed argument says that businesses demand an expanded Tweed. But area legislators say that's not being communicated to them.
I think that's been changing. Part of the problem is that the [airport] authority has been tentative in its public pronouncements until this year. As of February that tentativeness ended [with the release of a public position paper] and we became more specific about what would like to see. Taking a stand, we are now able to communicate more effectively to the public and to the business community, we can get our friends to support a position
Why is this important to you personally?
I have been a native of this area since birth, and I have represented the airport and environs both in the state senate and in Congress, so it is a matter that I became familiar with. Now that I have been in the world of higher education - which is a form of business - I have a business perspective that prompts me to see the need and the potential for a good regional airport. [Last summer] I knew I'd be coming in at a time when the master-plan process would be coming to completion, and therefore would require that the airport authority manage this process as effectively as possible, keep open the possibility of specific alternatives to providing adequate facilities to serve the market demand, and then finally select the preferred alternative. And then, moving beyond the master plan, an extensive one- to two-year operations plan will likely be required, so we need to develop information in support of the recommended air site and land site expansions. So it was an interesting - and critical- time to be a part of this. We stand on the threshold of either moving forward in some fashion akin to what the master-plan recommendations will be, and making it work - or reaching a point where we have to throw our hands up in the air and conclude that under the current governance structure of the airport authority we cannot get the job done.
What would likely happen then?
Then the authority will probably give way to state governance. But I am trying dearly to convince everybody on all sides of this issue that we should try to work together and be the masters of our own destiny rather than to throw up our hands and see we can't get it done. We don't have, for example, the power of eminent domain. If we don't have the resources, if we can't convince the opposition to come to some constructive compromises…
…Then it will have to become someone else's problem.
It will become the state's problem. And the state, I think, will see the compelling need. After they're through their phase of 'Bradley fascination,' they will see that Bradley will not be enough. Then they'll say, 'Okay, what are we going to do in southern Connecticut - particularly [for] those people who would commute regularly to New York? How can we service them elsewhere in south-central Connecticut?'
By the time it gets to that point we will have lost X number of additional years and the ground-traffic congestion will have become that much worse.
Yes. But the jury is still out. I'm hoping that a rational resolution of this matter will prevail.
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