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Stemerman: Try a new approach.
We’ll sell you the rights to operate money-making Bradley International Airport — if you agree to build up Sikorsky, to steal flyers from White Plains, and invest in New Haven’s Tweed-New Haven.
David Stemerman wants Connecticut to make that pitch.
David Stemerman argues that Connecticut can grow its air-travel infrastructure, and its economy along with it, by offering that deal to private investors.
Stemerman floated that idea, along with others for the state’s beleaguered transportation system, during the recently concluded Republican gubernatorial primary campaign, which he failed to win. The idea got lost in the noise of that five-candidate contest, one of more than a half-dozen contested primaries.
But his ideas are outliving the campaign. He expanded on some of them during an interview on WNHH FM’s “Dateline New Haven” program.
He said he came up with the airport idea from his own experience flying to Spain. His hedge fund, Conatus Capital (which he sold to run for governor), invested in a company that operated airports there under a privatization deal. He said he saw how private companies were running airports better throughout Europe.
So when he ran for governor, he spoke with investment bankers about the potential for a deal like that in Connecticut. He learned that the state’s main airport, Bradley International in Windsor Locks, already makes money; he concluded it could make more money by capitalizing on its proximity to I‑84 and I‑91 to build up its cargo business. “It’s a wonderful place for Fed Ex, for UPS. Amazon is already there,” he said. “And I suspect if you had a private business running it, they would develop that business.”
He also concluded that Stratford/Bridgeport’s Sikorsky Memorial Airport is primed to expand by competing for travelers with Westchester County Airport in White Plains for travelers. It could become a regional hub (assuming you can use eminent domain to obtain property for expansion) by luring flyers who don’t want to brave the traffic or other hassle to JFK, LaGuardia or White Plains, he said.
While Tweed is smaller, it too would benefit from a longer runway and more corporate flights to benefit New Haven’s businesses, Stemerman argued.
He floated the idea of contracting out the operation of all three airports to one private operator with a requirement to invest in and expand Sikorsky and Tweed.
“You would offer a concession. You don’t sell it. You give rights to operate for a period of years, 30 years. It would likely be for a package of those airports,” Stemerman said.
“The southern part of the state, Fairfield County to New York, and here in New Haven with Yale and the potential there — neither of them have appropriate air service. Southern Connecticut, the largest population center, [is] without regular air service. It’s underserved. That’s what’s interesting to a potential developer. …
“This should be about growth. This shouldn’t be about dividing a static pie. This should be about how do you create incentives to attract private investment. That’s the way you grow jobs. That’s the way you grow incomes.”
Not everyone in Europe has applauded airport privatization. Lufthansa’s CEO, for instance, called it “a big mistake” in a speech this year; he argued that it has “compromis[ed] efficiency and the ability to to keep pace with security demands.”
Congestion Pricing
A family trip to Miami planted one of Stemerman’s other transportation ideas.
It began with an observation by Stemerman’s then-7-year-old son. They were driving on I‑95. At rush hour. And they were moving.
“Is this the same 95 we drive in Connecticut?” his son asked.
Pretty hard to believe if you’ve ever tried moving on I‑95 in lower Fairfield County during rush hour (or often at other times as well).
Stemerman said he looked at what made Miami’s traffic move. For starters, he said, the median strips and breakdown lanes are narrower there, leaving room for an extra travel lane. And two lanes get reversed at rush hour to the direction with the heavier traffic flow.
Connecticut should immediately replicate those ideas, Stemerman argued. “That’s a no-brainer.”
He further recommended that the state adopt a form of congestion pricing. He advocated a version that would reserve the two newly created lanes for people willing to pay to use them, and thus travel faster. Drivers in existing lanes would not have to pay.
Stemerman was asked if his idea would unfairly benefit wealthier people who could afford to use the faster lanes.
“That’s the sad reality of the world in which we live,” he responded. “Having more money does give access to better” services.
But he also said his idea would benefit lower-income drivers, because the extra higher-cost lanes would ease the flow of traffic in the free lanes. (He opposed the idea of instituting highway tolls in general. On the campaign trail, he reported, “I felt with most people, if I said, ‘Yes I’m in favor of tolls,’ they would have decked me!”)
Another version of congestion pricing, advocated in 2008 by then-New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, would have charged all drivers different tolls on highways into the city at different times of day, with higher prices at rush hour. (The plan never came to fruition.)
Lower-income drivers are treated less fairly in that kind of plan, Stemerman argued, because they have less flexibility in choosing when they can travel to work. So they might not be able to avoid driving when it costs most.
“Some people with low-incomes, they just have to drive when they need to get to work. That’s part of what I liked about he solution in Florida. You had exactly the same number of lanes in each direction that were free. Nobody is worse off with this project. You’ve increased the capacity.”
Another former big-ideas gubernatorial candidate, Democrat Bill Curry, argued that the answer to relieving I‑95 traffic lies in “getting cargo off the highway” by fixing old rail lines: “I‑95 looks like a petrified forest of tractor-trailer trucks. Try to imagine what it would look like with half of the trucks on because the freight was moving by rail.”
Curry questioned whether I‑95 in Fairfield County has room to widen lanes. “He’s going to, what, make them more vertical?”
Overall, Connecticut needs to be willing to try new models for fixing its transportation mess, Stemerman argued.
“The trains are slower than in 1970. The strip of highway between Bridgeport and Stamford is now the third-most congested in the country. We lose 37 million hours of time struck in traffic. There are severe, server problems running it in the old-style way. I look at that and say, ‘It’s not working. We’ve got to do something different to change it.’”
Click on the Facebook Live video for the full interview with David Stemerman on WNHH FM’s “Dateline New Haven,” which includes a discussion of the potential benefits and pitfalls of privatization deals.
My opinion regarding I-95 in CT:
— In Connecticut, the reason why there's so much congestion is because the transportation system lacks good quality services for the most part. In the whole entire state there's really only one airport that's convenient to go to—and it's not even nowhere near I-95. That's sadly unheard of! However, I do agree that there should be a different approach for the highway system. Personally, I always liked how the highways were designed in New Jersey where there would be 12 lanes of traffic with 6 lanes going in both directions, but for every 3 lanes there would be a divider that separates cars from bigger vehicles such as tractor trailers and buses. Something like that should be the idea that Connecticut have in mind for the future of I-95. Congestion pricing for using "faster lanes" during the time of rush hour would be a great idea too.