America is too big for planes, too. If your transportation solution is flying, now everyone has to get around via endless highways or big, complicated regional airports, and you can only have so many of those. There’s a reason why rural areas in North America have completely different politics from urban areas, and why so much of it is driven by a sense of isolation and abandonment. Trains promise to help here because they are able to stop in small places that will never, ever have practical airports.
A good rail network provides a reliable, consistent, repeatable, and straightforward three hour connection from Nowheresberg to the nearest city. Slow, but good enough to feel like they exist in the same planet. Unfortunately, that promise is subtle, and it plays out over decades, so the reward system we’ve created for ourselves is incapable of supporting it. And thus, we have Amtrak and confederate flags
Rural America is covered in local airports. No large commercial carriers, but the airports exist.
We need more rail. The argument starts from a bad premise.
Why not though? Honest question, I’ve been to an airport that had a terminal of around 30 square metres with decent passenger service in the EU.
I’d say it’s the flying that’s not scalable, not the airport footprints.
Flying is much more energy intensive, there are heightened security concerns and pilots are expensive
I’ve tried to use them and they’re generally not affordable for most people, since you’re comparing to cost of driving a relatively short distance.
- The town I grew up in had a small airport where you could buy a ticket on a prop plane to get you to a bigger airport to make your flight. But it was cheaper and easier to drive an hour, and buses are even cheaper
- similar to where I went to college
- now I live just outside a major city, but it’s possible to take a small plane to a nearby tourist destination. Sure it avoids traffic but you need a car there and it’s cheaper to pick an off time for travel and drive the two hours
Edit to add: yes it’s also the airport that’s not scalable. A small airport requires minimal infrastructure, mostly provided by businesses. But for passenger service, someone needs to build a terminal, make sure there’s parking, have security staff on duty, install scanners, etc. d you have enough business to support that?
Most municipal airports can’t handle jet engine planes around here. They are all just small body, single engine aircraft on poorly maintained and non-level runways. They are fine for recreational flights, crop dusters, or flight instruction, but most rural airports here are little more than a few hangers and an administrative building with a runaway.
Literally no idea how a regular person would actually use those for realistic transportation. I figured those places were for private jets, people learning to fly and cargo/farm/industrial flights.
Would booking a flight on somebody’s cesna even work and be affordable/safe?
It takes a high level license to be paid to fly people.
It is fairly applicable to learn enough to fly one self (in theory from reading). There are airplane clubs where one owns a tiny part of a plane. Fuel and maintenance are not free, but not horrible for a few hours travel.
A very cleverly designed club could work somewhat for weekend trips within a tank of gas distance. Maybe.
