Sky Bridge, originally uploaded by plemeljr

Airports Grow Apace, but the Timing Seems Off:

The biggest miscalculations in new construction occurred in hub cities where airports spent billions to meet the needs of a single carrier, only to see the airline drastically shrink its presence.
In St. Louis, the airport authority spent $1.1 billion on a new runway that opened in 2006, even though traffic is down 53.9 percent since 2000. American Airlines dropped many flights following its acquisition of Trans World Airlines, which had been the main carrier there.
The Pittsburgh airport authority spent $1 billion on a new terminal in the early 1990s for US Airways. But passenger traffic there is down by almost half this decade because of cutbacks by US Airways.
And in Cincinnati, the airport authority spent $500 million in the mid-1990s on construction that included a new terminal for Delta Air Lines. And it added a third runway in 2005, its busiest year. Since then, passenger traffic has fallen 36.4 percent as Delta cut back. On a recent weekday morning, half the parking spots were empty in the airport’s main garage, which was expanded only months before 9/11.

All of those cities are in the Midwest and easily connected with High Speed Rail; the $2 billion spent in the pull quote above would have qualified for matching grants from the FTA (even if Ma Peters was still in power). Now with Delta and Northwest merging, much of the infrastructure built in the last five years will lay dormant until the next surge in air traffic. (if there is another surge).