The latest issue of CommonWealth magazine includes an article by staff writer Gabrielle Gurley questioning whether Bradley International Airport‘s new connection to Amsterdam is going to make much of a difference for the western Massachusetts economy. Starting July 1, Gurley writes, Northwest Airlines will partner with KLM Royal Dutch Airlines to offer daily nonstop service to Schiphol Airport in Amsterdam, "opening up Bradley to 81 destinations in Europe, the Middle East, Africa, and India."
Ideally situated for travelers hoping to avoid the congestion of New York and Boston, Bradley unfortunately suffers from being run like a government bureaucracy, Gurley notes. From the article:
Bradley is owned and operated by the Connecticut Department of Transportation, known as ConnDOT, and is one of just two state-run airports in the country. (The other is Maryland’s Baltimore/Washington International Thurgood Marshall Airport.) Some say the airport is run more like a government bureaucracy than an entrepreneurial enterprise, resulting in fewer route options, outdated infrastructure, and a lack of shopping-mall services found at many US and overseas airports run by quasi-public entities or private management firms.
Next Gurley appears to pose a question of sorts to those of us in Massachusetts:
Bradley is also a symbol of the potential, thus far unrealized, of interstate cooperation in a region artificially divided by a line on the map. With areas of western Massachusetts like the Pioneer Valley “seeking to break out of ongoing stagnation,” as Robert Nakosteen, executive editor of MassBenchmarks (a quarterly journal of the Massachusetts economy), recently put it, what happens in Greater Hartford, down the road, is likely to mean more than what happens in Greater Boston, across the state. And the best thing that could happen in Greater Hartford would be for Bradley to blaze a trail of commerce from the Pioneer Valley to Europe. But whether it will succeed in doing so is entirely in the hands of Connecticut officials.
Could Massachusetts get a representative on the airport’s governing board? Or could Bradley be put in the hands of an independent authority shared by the two states? Perhaps. But in Massachusetts, at least, neither option seems to be on the radar screen.
Gurley quotes Allan Blair, President and CEO of the Western Massachusetts Economic Development Council, and notes efforts underway to generate regional commuter rail and connect economically to the south. Still, she points out, while Connecticut seems to be working on formalizing cross-state matters at least at the level of those aspiring to the governor’s office, Massachusetts appears to be asleep at the wheel:
Some say the Hartford-Springfield ties should be drawn tighter by means of a cross-state airport and development authority, sort of a “Mass/ConnPort.” During the Connecticut gubernatorial campaign last fall, the unsuccessful Democratic nominee, John DeStefano, called for just such an entity, funded by the two states, to expand and market the airport, negotiate with airlines, and lobby for commuter rail and other transportation improvements. (No such idea was broached in the Massachusetts governor’s race, however.) Regional business leaders are all for the idea.
The article ends directed pointedly at Governor Deval Patrick and state legislators:
Ultimately, whether Bradley can become an economic driver for western Massachusetts may depend on whether Connecticut and Massachusetts work together to make the facility the priority it would need to be.
“I think an overture needs to be made by the governor of Massachusetts to the governor of Connecticut to say, ‘Look, we share a common interest here. How can we work out something?’” says Blair, of WMEDC. “Inducing the political leadership in Massachusetts to understand that in western Mass., in western New England, Bradley is an engine just as Logan is in the east, and, therefore, we need to be aggressive and more assertive in helping to grow it, that’s a tough educational hill to climb.”
On a separate but similar note, Vermont resident Eesha Williams published an article in this week’s Valley Advocate about the region’s Pan Am Railways, "an example of all that’s wrong with the way America moves people and freight."
