Solution to RDU parking problems isn’t a massive parking lot, it’s fewer cars | Opinion
You would think that airports are all about planes, but they are also very much about cars.
Nationally, more than 40 percent of airport revenue comes from parking fees. At smaller airports, the share is often higher.
That might explain why Raleigh Durham International airport (RDU) is proposing adding 7,000 parking spaces. The Raleigh-Durham Airport Authority, which governs the airport on behalf of its four local government owners – the cities of Raleigh and Durham and their two counties – wants to nearly triple the size of its economy parking lot No. 3. The project would involve clearing 120 acres adjacent to William B. Umstead State Park and paving 64 acres.
The proposal isn’t just to boost revenue. The airport is facing a rising demand for more parking. It will lose spaces with the demolition of old parking decks at the same time that air travel has rebounded sharply as the COVID-19 pandemic has faded.
Clear-cutting trees and adding more impervious surface would meet the parking need and bring in more revenue, but that may be the easiest rather than the best response. With climate change causing heavier downpours, flooding and heat islands, government entities should be leading on innovative responses. Adding acres of asphalt isn’t one of them, though the plan may be too far along – and the Triangle’s mass transit too far behind – to do anything else.
Jean Spooner, a retired N.C. State extension professor and head of The Umstead Coalition, a group that supports the park, said the coalition has “multiple concerns” about the proposed expansion.
“This is an extensive amount of deforestation directly impacting Umstead Park,” she told me. She said the expansion could result in flooding in the park, affect streams, eliminate wildlife habitat and create more light pollution.
Spooner, however, appreciates the authority’s decision to hold workshops on the project and listen to the public’s concerns. “We are pleased that they are allowing public consultation,” she said. “That is a big step forward we never had before.”
Reducing trees and adding pavement at RDU isn’t only a climate issue; it’s also a transportation issue. Given the rise of rideshare companies like Uber and Lyft, the expansion of private, off-site parking operations and the prospect of self-driving cars that would come and go on their own, should RDU be adding 7,000 parking spaces?
“It’s unclear that this number of surface parking spaces is a longtime requirement given that the times are changing in the way we utilize cars,” Spooner said.
While air travelers are increasing, it’s not automatic that more people should be parking at the airport. It’s more expensive and bad for the environment. The emphasis should be on supporting alternative ways of getting there.
Unfortunately and somewhat mysteriously, there is not a rail line to the airport despite decades of enormous growth in the Triangle region.
Sig Hutchinson, a former Wake County commissioner and the current chair of GoTriangle, told me that federal mass transportation funding has turned strongly toward bus rapid-transit systems (BRT) and that may bring BRT lines to the airport within a decade. But for now, he said, “The airport needs more parking.”
Or maybe what it needs is fewer parked cars.
GoTriangle should step up its airport bus service and local governments should consider ways to encourage more use of ride sharing, taxi and off-site parking operations. If RDU needs revenue, it can raise its parking prices instead of increasing its parking spaces.
That wouldn’t be the easiest or most popular response. But it would save trees and, in its own small way, help save the planet.
The Raleigh-Durham Airport Authority will hold a public workshop on the project on July 20, from 5 to 7 p.m. at the Airport Authority’s building at 1000 Trade Drive, Morrisville. Written comments will be accepted until Aug. 4.
Associate opinion editor Ned Barnett can be reached at 919-404-7583, or nbarnett@ newsobserver.com
