FAA Should Shut Most Air-Traffic Radar Rooms, Study Says

[Purveyor]

By Angela Greiling Keane and Alan Levin - Apr 3, 2013

The U.S. Federal Aviation Administration could save $1.7 billion up front and about $1 billion more annually by closing 187 air-traffic radar rooms and building consolidated centers to control flights over large regions, a study found.

Most of the U.S. centers and regional approach control facilities “can and should be shut down,” wrote the report authors, who included Robert Poole, transportation director for the Reason Foundation, and Michael Harrison, the FAA’s former director of architectural and systems engineering.

“They can be replaced by a much smaller number of facilities, many of which can be designed from the outset to function in the from-anywhere-to-anywhere paradigm,” the report said.

The study’s conclusions point to cost savings available to the FAA apart from automatic budget cuts imposed at most U.S. government agencies.

The $1 billion in annual savings, which the report said can be gained in productivity, equipment and facility maintenance, amounts to about 6 percent of the agency’s annual budget.

MORE...

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-04-03/faa-should-shut-most-air-traffic-radar-rooms-study-says.html

[Still Sensible]

1. While it may, in fact,, be a necessary upgrade and

viable move based on the factors noted in the story--and perhaps other considerations not shown here, it sounds like it would take more than 40 years of 'savings' to equal the capital costs.

[Blue_Tires]

2. +1

[hootinholler]

3. So the Libertarian think tank Reason Foundation publishes a report...

And Bloomberg jumps on it as gospel.

Even though the report states:

While it was beyond the scope of this study to estimate the cost of the consolidated facilities, the study did estimate the savings from closing and disposing of obsolete Centers and TRACONs.

Having watched the birthing pains of NEXGEN over the last 7 years, this report is nothing more than hand waving to bolster justifying cuts to ATC operations.

[ProgressiveProfessor]

4. Conceptually this has some merit. We now have much better tech than when the TRACONs were laid out

however ROI may be hard to come by and the FAA's ability to manage large acquisitions and change is clearly limited

[Hassin Bin Sober]

5. Because putting all your eggs in one vital infrastructure basket to save a buck is really smart!