Demand and Capacity

SFIA likes to say that there are no alternatives except for runways. Anything else, goes the mantra, is a short term Band Aid. Let's look at the numbers and see who is selling Band Aids.

The actual number of operations at SFIA from 1986 to 1998 according to two different sources is shown below. There are several forecasts of what the demand will be at SFIA. The most recent is the 2000 RASP forecasts; the oldest is the Master Plan Forecast. You can see where each forecast was made by where the dashed lines start.

What can you conclude from this graph? Note that, even with new runways, SFIA runs out of airfield capacity before 2020. In fact some times, they claim no increase in capacity - due to the proposed runways - which would mean that they hit the limits in 2006. If we use the RASP(and that's questionable) then they hit the stops in 2018.

Why is this important? Because the runways will take at least seven, and more like ten, years to complete. See this URS Greiner estimate. Have you ever heard of a large controversial project that wasn't tested in court? Or one that came in on-time and on-budget? Thus the lifetime of the runways would be no more than eight years. Talk about short term Band Aids.

And that's only runways. What about airspace capacity? RAPC commissioned a study but the results of that study are not available. Here's what a SFIA consultant said:
"In conclusion, airspace constraints are not expected to constrain the growth of aviation activity in the Bay Area until near the end of the 23-year planning period(1998-2020) considered in this study. As airspace congestion increases, however, demand-responsive operational procedures, modifications to the Bay Area airspace structure, and improvements in ATC technology may reduce the impacts of this congestion on aircraft delays and airport facility capacity."
Working Paper No. 8, Page 3-11, Analysis of SFIA Runway Reconfiguration, P&D Aviation, January, 1999

Clearly SFIA has things backwards. But, what about alternatives that might work? The RASP indicated "Demand Management" and SOIA would come as close to meeting envisioned demands as new runways. Let's look at how that works.