Denver International Airport turned 15 years old over the weekend. A milestone for sure for a facility that had a difficult time in development and construction, and that many critics even predicted would never open or go belly-up financially within 18 months. But what was on the news about it? Cupcakes.
Gov. Bill Ritter has approved distribution of 50 grants worth $5.7 million to Colorado airports and one aviation association under a program administered by the CDOT’s Division of Aeronautics. The grants will leverage local and federal dollars, bringing the total value to $95.67 million for projects ranging from runway lighting improvements to runway maintenance and construction.
The Colorado Department of Transportation has put 40 highway and airport projects totaling $136.8 million on its wish list for federal grants in 2011.
DIA Media Release: Four million passengers in December push Denver International Airport to second-busiest year ever; yearly passenger total tops 50 million for only the second time.
The Denver Post reports that the average domestic airfare out of Denver plunged nearly 35 percent between the third quarters of 2000 and 2009, according to data released Thursday by the U.S. Department of Transportation.
In just a year’s time — between the third quarters of 2008 and 2009 — Denver’s airfares fell 16 percent.
In comparison, the U.S. average domestic airfare dropped 9 percent between the third quarters of 2000 and 2009 and 14.4 percent between the third quarters of 2008 and 2009. Bureau records show it was the biggest year-to-year decline on record.
DIA Press Release
Denver International Airport recorded 4,101,004 passengers in October, a 1.3-percent decline from the 4,154,517 travelers who passed through the facility in the same month last year. Despite the small monthly drop, it was the third-busiest October ever at the Denver airport.
“We continue to be encouraged by the relatively small decline in our traffic,” Aviation Manager Kim Day said Friday. “Because of the sagging economy and the resulting cuts in airline capacity, we had expected we’d see a 2 to 2.5 percent drop in passengers from last year. And that’s where it looks like we will end 2009.”
Year to date through October, passenger traffic at DIA totaled 42,436,235. That was down 2.4 percent from the 43,492,803 travelers who used the facility during the same period of 2008.
DIA handled 49,952 flight operations in October, a decline of 1.0 percent from the same month of last year. For the first 10 months of 2009, DIA’s operations totaled 512,545, 2.8 percent below the 527,163 operations recorded in the same period of last year.
The complete traffic report will be available on DIA’s Web site by following this link:
http://www.flydenver.com/diabiz/stats/traffic/index.asp
AASHTO Press Release
State transportation departments have identified 9,500 highway, bridge, transit, port, rail, and aviation projects worth more than $69 billion that, if funded, can be used to create hundreds of thousands of jobs across the country.
“State departments of transportation have proven that these ‘ready-to-go’ projects are a great way to put people back work, quickly and efficiently,” said John Horsley, executive director of the American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials (AASHTO). “We’re dedicated to getting these projects out to bid fast, but we’re also committed to making certain that every taxpayer dollar is spent wisely.”
Horsley was joined by House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee Chairman James Oberstar (D-MN), and House Subcommittee on Highways and Transit Chairman Peter DeFazio (D-OR) at a Capitol Hill news conference releasing the report today. AASHTO also presented the report today to Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-CA), chairman of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee. The report can be found online at http://downloads.transportation.org/Ready-to-Go.pdf.
‘Ready-to-go’ means a project that can move through the federal approval process within 120 days of enactment of authorizing legislation, thus enabling the State to proceed toward construction. Today’s report is based on responses from 50 states and the District of Columbia, and includes 7,497 in “ready-to-go” highway projects valued at more than $47 billion, and 2,091 “ready-to-go” transit, rail, port, aviation, and intermodal projects valued at more than $22 billion.
“We hope Congress will use this survey to make the case that investment in transportation infrastructure projects are guaranteed to create jobs,” Horsley said. “A bright spot of the economic recovery act continues to be state transportation projects that are pumping billions of dollars into households and businesses while fixing our broken transportation network.”
As of November 20, 2009, 10,600 transportation projects worth more than $30 billion have been approved for funding under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. Of the 9,300 highway construction projects authorized to date, more than half – 5,458 projects – were either under construction or had already been completed. Three-hundred fifty-five projects approved under the airport grants program and worth $1.08 billion are underway or have been completed. Of the $8.4 billion provided for transit, approval to proceed has been received for 690 grants valued at $7.19 billion. Thousands of buses and rail cars have been ordered and are being assembled, and service cutbacks and layoffs have been avoided.
“We need to keep the momentum going. The unemployment rate in the construction trades today exceeds 18 percent,” Horsley said. “There is still a need to invest more in transportation projects if that’s what it takes to create jobs and bring unemployment down. What the state DOTs have done over the past eight months to put economic recovery dollars to work shows there is no better way to create jobs and long-lasting benefits in every part of the country.”
DIA Press Release
Airlines say they expect 960,293 passengers to use Denver International Airport from today through Monday. The total is 31,073 higher than the 929,220 travelers who passed through DIA during Thanksgiving week last year.
The total makes this week the second-busiest Thanksgiving week in the history of the Denver airport. The busiest Thanksgiving week at DIA was in 2006 when, according to numbers provided by the airlines, 966,976 travelers used the airport.
Sunday, Nov. 29, will be the busiest day of the week with 160,854 travelers. That compares with 157,528 passengers on the Sunday after Thanksgiving last year. The following day, Monday, Nov. 30, will be nearly as busy with 160,063 travelers expected.
The busiest pre-Thanksgiving day this year will be Wednesday, Nov. 25, with 150,007 passengers. That compares with 146,325 on the same day of Thanksgiving week last year.
Other daily passenger totals for the holiday week are: Tuesday, 146,893; Thursday, 97,812; Friday, 106,042; and Saturday, 138,622.
The airport, the Transportation Security Administration, the airlines, and concessionaires will be fully staffed during the week.
Genetec Press Release
Genetec announced recently that Denver International Airport has selected Omnicast, Genetec’s advanced IP video surveillance solution, to secure its 53 square-mile facility.
Ranked the 10th busiest airport in the world in 2008 for passenger traffic by Airports Council International, DIA was looking to upgrade its outdated analog system to a newer and more advanced network-based solution that could evolve as newer technology emerged.
The entire system to date consists of 1,200 cameras and 12 archive servers that are expected to double in the next 18 months. Besides the airport protection and surveillance applications such as monitoring the facility, security checkpoints and passenger congestion throughout, they also intend to service external clients with the use of Omnicast. Currently, the Transportation Security Administration, airlines, airport operations, airport parking, Denver police department and Denver airport security, among others, all use video surveillance for a range of purposes.
To date, all our clients have been using their own systems from different organizations,” said Phil Medina, senior IT administrator for airport security at DIA. “Eventually, we will connect all cameras to the Omnicast system and offer it as a service to everyone.”
Some other features include the user-friendly interface, which would allow DIA to save time in training customers with all levels of experience, the multiple options to manage and store the video, as well as the watermarking options, which further protect the data.
Since DIA is also storing a lot of video recordings, it are able to reduce the amount of required storage using tools in Omnicast that efficiently optimize its bandwidth, such as multicasting and multi-streaming. The system’s open architecture contributed to additional flexibility, allowing DIA to preserve some initial investments including a storage area network, existing cameras and an access control system that will soon be fully integrated with Omnicast.
Apart from continually growing the system, there are still larger plans ahead for DIA and their new Omnicast solution, including integrations with video analytics and situational management software, as well as the introduction of a strengthened perimeter security program.
“DIA has really taken advantage of Omnicast’s unique capabilities by turning a typical large-scale airport application into one of the most cutting-edge deployments in the transportation industry,” says Danny Peleg, director of transportation market for Genetec. “We are glad to have been able to contribute to their pro-active security enhancements, as their efforts will certainly not go unnoticed.”
An outside study of the Erie Municipal Airport’s economic potential concluded that there are untapped opportunities to increase revenue, leading town leaders to make a controversial decision to nix an unused second runway, reports the Boulder Daily Camera.
The study, conducted by Boyd Group International for about $50,000, concluded that the airport “represents and enormous economic asset an opportunity to the town.”
Erie Mayor Andrew Moore said the study gives the town concrete ideas on how to make the airport self-supporting so it doesn’t need to be subsidized by the taxpayers — and how to potentially make it a revenue generator.
“It’s a major step forward to enable economic development at the airport,” he said.
But pilot Scott DeLuise, a member of the Erie Airport Economic Development Council, said the decision to remove the second runway is “ill advised and a knee jerk action.”
He said the town shouldn’t consider removing the runway until there`s a viable project proposed to build hangars — something he considers unlikely in a recession.
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