The DIA Expansion: Fullfilling the Vision

There was great news today for Metro Denver economic development wonks. Jeff Leib’s article in the Denver Post, “$1.2 billion makeover for DIA” (http://www.denverpost.com/news/ci_6496074 ), explains that Denver is issuing municipal revenue bonds to pay for major airport expansion items such as new gates, a commuter jet terminal, a new automated baggage system (sound familiar?), the FasTracks commuter rail station at DIA, and additional parking facilities. I plan to devote a future blog about design considerations for Denver’s “Train to Plane” rail connection.

DIA is expanding its facilities and infrastructure to accommodate increasing traffic. This is an important milestone in the history of aviation in Denver. DIA was envisioned as an economic development engine for Denver in much the same way as DFW airport is for the Dallas Metro Area. Building DIA was always a strategically sound idea based on the fact that Denver’s location, between the population centers on the West Coast and the Midwest, makes it a natural transportation hub (see my blog from July 13, 2007, “Spatial Isolation and Punching Above Denver’s (Population) Weight”) . Denver needed an airport farther away from the urban core of the city with room to expand as traffic increased and with space for appropriately sized and configured runways to handle weather related challenges in Denver. DIA is one of the few major airports in the country with plenty of room to expand its facilities and with flight paths into and out of the airport over relatively sparsely populated land. I personally fly Jet Blue out of John F. Kennedy Airport in New York regularly and as Jet Blue has grown and expanded, the airspace around JFK has gotten so congested that flights regularly suffer from serious delays. This summer in particular has been a nightmare. Reducing this congestion will be a really hard thing to do for JFK and most other large airports in the United States because they can’t expand the same way DIA can.

DIA suffered a number of set backs early in its history including the abandonment of the Denver hub by Continental Airlines and problems getting the first attempt at an automated baggage system running. Just as air travel industry was hitting stride in Denver, the events of 911 and the resulting airline financial problems sent the whole industry into a downward economic trajectory. However, Denver’s natural strategic advantages as an air transportation hub have allowed DIA to steadily build into a powerhouse as United Airlines retained Denver as a hub, Frontier Airlines was launched from a base at DIA and has expanded tremendously and more recently as South West Airlines has aggressively entered the market. The airline industry will always have cyclical ups and downs and Denver needs to be prepared for the downturn which will eventually follow today’s boom in travel, but DIA is positioned to play an increasingly prominent role in the national air transport system and to help drive the Denver Metro Area’s economic growth.

Photos provided courtesy of Denver International Airport.