A crisis in North Country transportation
This morning's NCPR newscast offers a fascinating snapshot of the North Country's regional transportation woes.
Two vital regional bridges are at the point of collapse -- the Crown Point bridge on Lake Champlain is already closed and the Batchellerville bridge over Great Sacandaga Reservoir is likely not far behind.
The St. Lawrence Seaway's traffic load is down 30%.
A massive drop in fuel sales at the Lake Clear airport means local residents in Harrietstown will have to subsidize the airport there with a 13% property tax levy increase.
Looming in the background? Debates over the future of the "rooftop highway" and improvements to the crucial border crossings into Canada.
What do you think? Will the Federal stimulus start answering some of these questions? Does the state (and maybe local officials) need to allocate more dollars for infrastructure and fewer dollars for job and social service programs?
Is there a danger that our already remote region will see even fewer transportation options in the future?
Labels: adirondacks
posted by Brian Mann @ 11/19/2009 08:24:00 AM
7 Comments
7 Comments:
Let's start by removing fraud in both the public and private sectors. Then let's keep promises of locked boxes for certain revenues instead of just pouring $ into the general fund to use as you like. Finally whoever raided these funds needs to be held accountable.
When the Crown Pt. story broke I said it was the tip of the iceberg. We have dozens of bridges in St.Lawrence County and only a few a year can be repaired. The whole thing is unsustainable. Town roads that were paved with CHIPs money in past years are now starting to break up. Just wait for scarce or expensive oil to kick in over the next few years. Our top priority should be maintaining the critical highway network, and what we really need is to preserve and upgrade our rail structure. As CSX says, they can move a ton of freight on a gallon fuel over 400 miles.
13% tax levy because fuel sales are down?
This doesn't sound right, some investigation might make a good story.
Current SLK fuel prices are $4.72 and $4.75 (100LL and jetA).
http://100ll.com/showfbo.php?HashID=981e3bafba2e6f6dee3b56617ed28a18
In Sept 2009, 8,000 gallons of 100LL fuel delivered to a north-country airport cost about $3.20 a gallon. If SLK paid similar prices, then after maintenance and insurance overhead they might be making $1 a gallon "profit".
If they pay one employee full time at $20K year + benefits (municipal owned, right?) so figure $28K minimum per year, they'd have to sell 28,000 gallons of 100LL to cover the cost of that employee to 'pump the gas'. Perhaps the same math can be applied to Jet-A.
Does SLK sell this much 100LL and Jet-A fuel per year? I don't know, but it's useful to compare operational statistics for airports in the north country region.
consider http://www.airnav.com/airport/KSLK at 22 operations per day vs. http://www.airnav.com/airport/Kmss (massena) at 25 operations per day.
These figures are self-reported by each airport. It might be worth calling around the various airports to see how much fuel they sell of each type and compare that to the number of operations they have.
SLK reports 15 based single engine aircraft. If each of these aircraft can hold 40 gallons of fuel, and each one makes 46 trips of about 4 hours each per year and they only refuel at SLK, then they could sell 28,000 gallons of 100LL. That's 184 hours of flying per based aircraft per year.
I believe the US average GA pilot flies about 20 hours a year. Of course transient pilots will also need fuel if SLK is a destination (vs. flying to lake placid)
Many airports offer self-fueling for 100LL, so that full time employee might not be required at SLK for "small" planes.
For Jet-A, fueling could be done "on-call" or the regional carrier could have their own staff pump the fuel.
Suppose SLK went from 28,000 gallons to 0 per year, why would the property tax levy increase a whopping 13% just to cover a fuel lineman's salary? I don't know the size of the tax base there, but I'm sure 13% increase is far far more than $28K
I don't think these numbers add up.
I suspect the fuel sales decrease is being used as an excuse to cover some other expenses.
Yes. There's a crisis and it involves infrastrusture in general terms - including rail, autos, air, and e-technology.
My fear is that this will not change until leadership across levels of govt can forge a consensus. In ny alone this will require village, town, and county officials to press Albany for assistance who then may have to go hat in hand to DC for assistance.
JPM
I'm sorry, but I just have to laugh at this. What did anyone expect? Look, if you want to live in the boonies, there are prices you pay. Keeping the Lake Clear/Massena/Oburg airports open is just dumb. If they can't make it, close them! How much traffic do they really handle? I used to have to provide security at Oburg for every "flight" that came in pre-TSA. 99% of those flights no a soul got on or off, but the plane had to land to fulfill the law. WHY? Close them, put the money into the roads and bridges. It's usually cheaper to fly out of Syracuse, Ottawa or Albany anyway.
Bret said: It's usually cheaper to fly out of Syracuse, Ottawa or Albany anyway.
Those airports receive even more federal subsidy than the smaller feeder airports. All of the transportation infrastructure in the US (and Canada) is driven by national investment. Every small town in the North Country used to have passenger rail because of huge federal giveaways to the railroads. That money, starting in the 50s, was transferred largely to airport subsidies and the federal highway system.
Left solely to market forces, much of the North Country would not have electrical service, just as it lacks good cell coverage and broadband. It took the Rural Electrification Act of the 1930s, and big federal subsidies to wire rural America. It take government regulation of utilities to keep it served today.
That's interesting Dale, but when is enough enough? All our little towns used to ahve their own power stations. THe ghost of one of the ones in Long Lake is located about 3/4 mile down the North Point on the right. Every little crick had a power station on it serving the local community. The REA put the sword through the heart of much of that. And mores the shame- look at the garbage it took just to run a line to Tupper Lake. You'd have thought they were clear cutting the whole Park!
I'm not sure what the percentage rail recieved vs airports recived is but it seems now we're subsidizing both, plus the highways. There have to be limits to the constant drains and inputs.
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