There’s an apocryphal story about a big corporation that assigned its scientists and nutritionists to concoct the healthiest dog food they could devise. After great effort, they unveiled the product. This dog food, they announced, would keep dogs fit and slender. It would give them thick, smooth hair. It would take away their bad breath. There was just one problem…. the dogs wouldn’t eat it.
I remember that story when I hear the claims, mainly from boosters of the Washington Dulles International Airport and economic developers in Loudoun and Prince William Counties, that building a $1 billion-or-more north-south corridor will stimulate the growth of the air cargo business at Dulles, creating thousands of jobs and millions of dollars in warehouse-and-distribution investment.
What if Virginia built this fantastic new intermodal highway connecting Dulles airport with points west and south for the purpose of stimulating air cargo business… and the air cargo companies turned up their noses?
Del. Bob Marshal, R-Manassas, took it upon himself to actually contact two representatives of major air cargo enterprises. He talked to a mid-level representative of FedEx at its New Jersey office. She had no knowledge of the North-South Corridor. If anyone at FedEx was open to establishing a major presence at Dulles, that knowledge had not trickled down to her.
More tellingly, Marshall also talked to Mark Alagna, vice president for corporate public affairs for UPS in the Washington, D.C., office. Said Marshall: “He told me that UPS does not support this road, that they are unaware of this road and they were not pleased that [Virginia Department of Transportation] representatives made that claim.”
If the McDonnell administration has expressions of concrete interest, Marshall said, “Please reveal your names.”
My sense is that all the talk of boosting air cargo at Dulles is purely aspirational — it’s something that Dulles officials and economic developers would like to see happen. Building the road would make it a lot easier to get a conversation going with major shippers — hey, come on down, and expand your operations here. But the McDonnell administration has provide the public no evidence that the shipping community is interested.
For all the talk comparing Dulles to the ports of Virginia in Hampton Roads as “engines” of Virginia’s economic growth, there are huge differences between the two. There is no question that the Panama Canal is expanding. There is no question that Hampton Roads has the deepest channels on the East Coast and will be the only port capable of handling fully-loaded post-Panamax ships for several years. There is no question that the shipping community is seriously interested in Hampton Roads. Whether that interest justifies an investment of more than $1 billion in public dollars to build the U.S. 460 Connector to create a second highway route out of Hampton Roads is another question. But the business potential is widely acknowledged to exist.
No such case has yet been made for air cargo at Dulles. That’s not to say that conditions won’t change and interest in Dulles won’t materialize. But given what we know now, there is no evidence whatsoever that the dogs will eat this dog food.
— JAB
