# Don't close the airport. It's worth billions. **URL:** \ **Category:** Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share\ **Created:** [August 13, 2009, 3:56am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dont-close-the-airport-its-worth-billions/506253 "2009-08-13T03:56:29Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 3\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![mhendo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mhendo/32/3159_2.png) [@mhendo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mhendo)\ **Post date:** [August 14, 2009, 1:33am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dont-close-the-airport-its-worth-billions/506253/21 "2009-08-14T01:33:00Z")
> [@TJVM](#): > > From what I could tell, the report indicated that the vast majority of those billions comes from a small number of commercial (as opposed to general-aviation) airports. Again, I’m not saying that your local municipal airport doesn’t have value, but a general claim that “aviation is worth billions” doesn’t really tell you if a particular small airport is a net benefit or cost to the community. Right. Not only that, but reports like these often fail to take into account the substitution effect. That is, they just arrive at a figure for the economic impact of the facility, and then assume that if the facility were closed, then all of that economic benefit would simply disappear. But, as **Johnny L.A.** demonstrated quite well in his most recent post, if you suddenly removed Santa Monica airport, it’s not like all that business just disappears into thin air. It just moves elsewhere: > [@Johnny\_L.A](#): > > Closing SMO (to use it as an example) would double or even triple the time it takes them to get to an airplane (more, for West Side corporations). Businesses would need to put their people on commercial airliners, with all of the time-consuming (and thus expensive) procedures that entails; or they would have to shift their operations to LAX, which is already extremely busy and doesn’t really need more airplanes in the system. (Or they’d have to operate out of VNY or BUR, which are 20 to 30 miles away. They’d have to get to their businesses through the Sepulveda Pass, which is often stopped, or take the slow and winding two-lane roads through the Hollywood Hills/Laurel Canyon.) Exactly. If Santa Monica airport closes, those businesses aren’t just going to throw up their hands and say, “Well, looks like no-one is going to fly anywhere anymore.” They’re going to transport people in different ways, and those different ways will still put money and jobs into the economy. Yes, this might cause increased traffic, or increased hassle, or increased congestion at LAX. And that would have to be taken into account. But it’s not like all the money being spent at SMO is just going to disappear. I’m not arguing for or against local airports. I thought it was a great shame when Meigs Field closed. And i don’t know enough about SMO to say anything much about it. I’m just pointing out that studies of economic impact, especially ones that have a particular barrow to push, sometimes stack the deck in their own favor and fail to take account of the substitution effect. This sort of thing is particularly noticeable in the sports stadium business. Whenever a team wants a new stadium, and/or threatens to leave town, team boosters pile up numbers showing how much money and how many jobs the stadium contributes to the local economy. But just about every independent economic analysis shows that sports stadiums are massively prone to the substitution effect, and that if the stadium is closed (or not built), then people will simply spend their entertainment dollars at some other venue in the city. Instead of going to a ballgame, they’ll go to the movies, or a museum, or a fun park, or whatever. Studies of the 1994 baseball strike showed that, in aggregate, cities with baseball teams did not suffer at all during the time that baseball was shut down. One economist, a guy named John Zipp, reported that “the strike had little, if any, economic impact on host cities. Retail trade appeared to be almost completely unaffected by the strike” (cited in the Baseball Prospectus book, _Baseball Between the Numbers_, p. 219). Of course, some individual businesses sometimes suffer. If you own a bar next to the ballpark, you’ll probably be adversely affected by a baseball lockout. But we’re talking here about the big picture for a city or a region, not about one or two particular establishments, and studies generally show that the aggregate impact is negligible. ---
**Author:** ![Tim\_T-Bonham.net](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/46a35a/32.png) [@Tim\_T-Bonham.net](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tim_T-Bonham.net)\ **Post date:** [August 14, 2009, 2:08am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dont-close-the-airport-its-worth-billions/506253/22 "2009-08-14T02:08:02Z")
[quote=“1920s Style “Death Ray”, post:9, topic:506253”] Why should there be noise restrictions? Were the people in the neighbourhood not aware that noisy aeroplanes operate out of airports when they moved next to the airport? [/QUOTE] Sure. Sometimes as many as a dozen flights a day, when my uncle bought his house. And the Director of Wold-Chamberlin Field, whom they contacted, told them that it was possible that the number of flights might go as high as double that, in 25 years or so. In fact, there are probably that many flights every hour. Plus the major complaint is that “noisy aeroplanes” operate from that airport. Why don’t they replace them with modern, quieter ones, like they have been promising to do for years? That would satisfy most of the complaints, and would bring them into compliance with the laws. ---
**Author:** ![Broomstick](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/broomstick/32/246_2.png) [@Broomstick](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Broomstick)\ **Post date:** [August 14, 2009, 7:39am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dont-close-the-airport-its-worth-billions/506253/23 "2009-08-14T07:39:19Z")
No, it wouldn’t. “Modern, quieter airplanes” still make noise. Once in awhile we get an airport noise complaint in my area. Despite tests that show that many of the small general aviation airplanes produce noise significantly below the maximum permitted threshold, and none exceed it, the complainers still whine. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dont-close-the-airport-its-worth-billions/506253.md?page=1)