"Sacramento: A no-fly zone for international trade"

Sunday, September 18, 2005

Opinion
You can't get there from here
Sacramento: A no-fly zone for international trade
By Jock O'Connell
The Sacramento (CA) Bee


In Maine, where I grew up, some of the state's more mischievous rustics
amuse themselves from time to time at the expense of wayward travelers.
Tourists already befuddled by roads which seem to follow the meanderings of
livestock (or inebriates) may receive an elaborate set of directions that
conclude, "then turn left where Tucker Drummond's barn used to be." More
famously, an unfortunate visitor asking the way from Arundel to, say,
Kennebunk, is apt to hear a more classic verdict: "I don't reckon you can
get they-ah from hee-ah."

If tourists are unlikely to rejoice in the news that "there" is not
reachable from "here," consider the exasperation of business people and
civic leaders when that line is applied to their city or town. For in
today's global economy with its burgeoning overseas markets, far-flung
supply chains and just-in-time delivery schedules, efficient and reliable
transportation links to the rest of the world are indispensable to any
region presuming to remain economically competitive.
   
And, considering that some 40 percent of the value of internationally traded
goods these days is shipped by air, staying competitive increasingly means
having ready access to an airport with planes departing every day for
faraway places.

So where's the Sacramento region stand in this regard? At present, the only
foreign country directly served by Sacramento International Airport is
Mexico. To reach any of the remaining 190 or so countries in the world,
outbound travelers have a drive/fly option. Either navigate some of the
state's busiest freeways to catch overseas flights from a Bay Area airport.
Or fly from Sacramento International to a major hub such as Dallas-Fort
Worth or Chicago's O'Hare, where you and/or your luggage may or may not
arrive in time to connect with an international flight.

As for air cargo, Sacramento area exporters and importers face much the same
gauntlet, whether their goods are in the bellies of passenger planes or
aboard air-freighters.

Will Sacramento see overseas flights anytime soon? This fast-growing region
with a rapidly expanding, increasingly diversified industrial base should
eventually attract airlines offering service to Europe and Asia. According
to Fred Davis, an independent aviation consultant to Sacramento airport
officials, sufficient passenger demand already exists within Sacramento
International's service area to warrant daily non-stops to London and as
many as five nonstops a week to a major continental airport such as
Frankfurt.

And, although the same market research indicates far less consumer demand
for passenger flights to the Far East, administrators at Mather Field hope
to establish regular air-freighter service to one or more Asian countries in
the near future.

But, if the experience of airports elsewhere in the state is any indication,
the advent of overseas fights at Sacramento International and Mather may
hinge less on favorable market forces than on the vagaries of regional
governance and, more particularly, the vicissitudes of land-use politics.

Although non-stop or even direct air service between Sacramento and Europe
would provide valuable commercial opportunities for regional businesses and
would be a welcomed boon to leisure travelers, efforts to increase the
number of flights or otherwise expand airport operations at either
Sacramento International or Mather will not go unopposed.

Just in the past few years, passionate foes have stymied expansion plans at
LAX, thwarted San Francisco International's attempt to construct a new
runway, doomed efforts to convert a former Marine air base in Orange County
into a commercial airport, and bedeviled San Diego's struggle to devise a
comprehensive regional air transport strategy. Across the Sacramento region,
homeowners in several neighborhoods as well as environmental groups have
already signaled their qualms about expanded operations, especially in the
case of nighttime carriers at Mather.

Unfortunately for those looking forward to the day when Sacramento
International lives up to its name, Sacramento area governments have been
breeding even larger anti-airport constituencies in the past decade by
indulging developers eager to build residential housing on land encroaching
on both Sacramento International and Mather Field.

Fortunately, more and more of these same representative bodies lately have
been embracing a blueprint scenario devised by the Sacramento Area Council
of Governments (SACOG) to guide land-use and transportation choices over the
next half-century. Assuming continued adherence to the blueprint, this
experiment could counter the time-dishonored process of incremental nihilism
in which each local jurisdiction made land-use decisions without any
explicit consideration of how neighboring communities or the region as a
whole might be affected.

SACOG's blueprint certainly advances the quality of regional land-use
planning. But it lacks a vital dimension because it fails to incorporate a
comprehensive assessment of the goods movement needs of all the new industry
this region will attract. As a result, local governments throughout the
region continue to make decisions critically affecting the status of the
region's key transportation assets - its highways, railroads, seaport and
airports - without much appreciation of the region's long-term goods
movement requirements.

In the case of the region's air transport needs, the kinds of industry local
economic development officials are most eager to attract are high-technology
industries that rely heavily on air cargo services, especially for business
abroad. That shouldn't be surprising. Goods shipped by air normally have a
high value-to-weight ratio, a hallmark of goods produced by advanced
technology companies of the sort that have tended to cluster in California.
And the preponderant role of technology companies in the state's economic
mix explains why more of California's $115 billion merchandise export trade
is shipped by air than by sea and land combined, according to data compiled
by the U.S. Census Bureau's Foreign Trade Division.

And it's not just high-tech goods that go by air. California's airborne
agricultural export trade last year totaled $669 million, up more than 60
percent over 2000, according to a report I recently co-authored for the
Center for Agricultural Business at Fresno State University along with Bert
Mason and John Hagen of Fresno State's agricultural economics department.

Locally, however, federal trade data reveal that Sacramento International
and Mather Field handled just $15.7 million in airborne exports in 2004, a
smidgen of the $62.7 billion in airborne exports from California last year
and not a terribly impressive total for a region which otherwise accounts
for nearly 6 percent of the state's economy. Instead, shippers in this
region rely very heavily on SFO and LAX for their international air cargo
services. And that's a potentially grave liability for businesses in the
Sacramento area that wish to compete in the global economy.

Last year, 98 percent of California's airborne imports and 93 percent of its
airborne exports went through just two airports, LAX and SFO. Both
airfields, however, are hemmed in, physically and politically. Neither has
much room for expansion. Both face intense political opposition from
neighboring communities to any increase in flight operations. And ground
access to both facilities requires truckers to negotiate some of the state's
most congested and increasingly dilapidated roadways. Ultimately, industry
in this region will have to rely more on local transportation facilities to
reach distant markets.

There is a lesson here for any Sacramento area official who wants to listen.
And it's this: In the global economy of the 21st century, building a better
mousetrap won't prompt the world to beat a path to your door, unless there
is a two-mile long runway or a deep-water port in your front yard.
Preferably both. Leaders of a metropolitan area with world-class aspirations
would be wise to keep in mind exactly what it takes, logistically speaking,
to get there from here.


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