Advancing the Practice of State Aviation System Planning (2022)

Below is the uncorrected machine-read text of this chapter, intended to provide our own search engines and external engines with highly rich, chapter-representative searchable text of each book. Because it is UNCORRECTED material, please consider the following text as a useful but insufficient proxy for the authoritative book pages.

1   S U M M A R Y Advancing the Practice of State Aviation System Planning If you’ve picked up this guide, it’s likely you have at least a high-level understanding of what a state aviation system plan (SASP) is, and perhaps you are preparing to undertake such a study or are actively in the process of completing one. While this guide’s intended audience is state aviation agency staff—often a division of a state department of transporta- tion (DOT) or an aeronautics commission—there are many stakeholders involved in the process who may find the content in this resource useful, including airport managers and sponsors, user groups, other modal agencies or departments, regional planning organizations, consultants, educators, students, and more. This guide is intended to serve as a companion to the existing FAA guidance on system planning offered through Advisory Circular (AC) 150/5070-7, Change 1, The Airport System Planning Process (FAA 2015b). The present guide is not to be used as a replacement of federal guidance. What Is State Aviation System Planning? To describe the practice of aviation system planning requires an understanding of what an aviation system is. Most commonly, an aviation system is composed of airports that are publicly owned and open for public use within a defined geographic area—a region, a state, or multiple nearby states. For example, a metropolitan region may have an airport serving commercial airlines and several general aviation (GA) relievers or other GA airports that cater to nonairline traffic. These airports work as a system to handle air traffic in and out of the urban area. At the state level, the system of airports likely includes multiple commercial service and GA airports (and some- times heliports, spaceports, and seaplane bases) that serve a wide variety of aviation activities— business operations, medical evacuation, cargo, law enforcement, and many others. This group of airports is referred to as a “state aviation system.” A state aviation system can be quite com- plex, with many states having 50 to 100 public-use airports or more. The practice of state aviation system planning is centered around the need to understand the relationship between the airports in a system and the relationship between the aviation system and other modes of transportation. The key objective is to identify and understand the financial needs of the system (primarily in terms of capital improvements) to (1) maintain existing infrastructure and (2) expand to meet future activity needs. As with any modal transporta- tion system—highways, rail, maritime, transit—the investment that has been made in the current infrastructure is significant, and planning for future needs is crucial to continued efficient operation. When faced with limited public resources (i.e., funding) and mounting project needs, state aviation agencies look to SASPs to help prioritize projects that serve the system and communicate funding needs to decision-makers, among other uses.

2 Advancing the Practice of State Aviation System Planning Role of State Aviation Agencies As the common voice of system airports to state legislators, the FAA, and the state DOT (as appropriate) and to other stakeholders, airports rely on their state aviation agency for support of their key needs to meet user demand. This can be realized through the estab- lishment of state policies, programming and allocation of available funding, prioritization of projects, education of stakeholders, and more—all of which can be fostered through the development of a SASP. While each agency’s level of involvement is dependent on the authority given by state law, at the very least agencies can act as the middleman between air- ports and the FAA to help align planning efforts at the local, state, and federal levels by • Evaluating and documenting the condition of their statewide network of public-use airports; • Identifying airport roles; and • Recommending, prioritizing, and justifying projects needed to maintain and enhance their aviation system. Specifically, state aviation agencies periodically conduct system planning that can be used to inform the development needs published in two federal plans: the National Plan of Inte- grated Airport Systems (NPIAS) and the Airports Capital Improvement Plan (ACIP). The ACIP is a subset of the NPIAS plan for airport development and “is the primary financial planning tool for systematically identifying, prioritizing, and assigning funds to help meet the capital project need of airports within the NPIAS.” Through the system planning pro- cess, state aviation agencies are able to identify needed projects at NPIAS airports and com- municate those needs to the FAA so they can be accounted for at the national level. (Note: Projects identified for airports not included in the NPIAS may also be important to the state system; they just aren’t necessarily reported to the ACIP.) Additionally, a state system plan may also identify changes to the airports included in the NPIAS by providing recommen- dations to add valuable airports or remove airports that are no longer serving the national airport system. In turn, the FAA provides technical advice, financial support, expertise in federal rules and regulations, and guidance on implementation. See The Airport System Planning Process (FAA 2015b), for more information on the FAA’s role in the SASP process. While SASPs can be conducted internally by state aviation agencies, they are most often conducted by aviation consultants who specialize in this particular field of aviation plan- ning. Therefore, agencies are also responsible for the procurement of a project consultant and administration of a contract and scope that meets federal guidance and individual state needs. This guide will help agency staff with this process. History and Evolution of State Aviation System Planning System planning has evolved over the past 50 years, passing through four distinct periods, as shown in Figure S-1. The practice of system planning changes as new regulations are estab- lished, new technologies become available, and new challenges arise for state aviation agencies. When the first SASPs were created in the 1970s and 1980s, they were heavily focused on expanding and developing new infrastructure to respond to changing aviation demand. The FAA issued three ACs in this time frame in response to the growing practice of system planning. By the 1990s and early 2000s, states had developed what were considered “mature” aviation systems that no longer needed significant capacity-related projects, but, rather, maintenance and preservation of the infrastructure that was developed during the previous two decades. It was during this time that the FAA cancelled the three ACs previously in effect and replaced them with one comprehensive AC, The Airport System Planning Pro- cess (FAA 2004). New technologies were introduced, including geographic information system

Summary 3   (GIS) software, which fostered enhanced geospatial analysis previously not available to practitioners and agencies. Database software was also developed and marketed to state avia- tion agencies to manage grants, develop capital improvement plans, and document inspection data. Additionally, states began to look toward economic impact studies (EISs) to commu- nicate the value of their mature aviation systems to their legislators and the public, as well as to help support the requests for funding needed to maintain that infrastructure. In the 2010s, the FAA’s single AC continued to serve the industry, with the latest update to the AC having been made in 2015. Changes in the AC reflected a greater emphasis on coordination with multimodal transportation plans and inclusion of environmental con- siderations, among others (FAA 2015b). The period of accountability was highly focused on system efficiency and performance transparency, resulting in statewide policy changes, priority rating models, and performance-based funding allocation. As aviation transitions into a new decade, accountability remains important, but so too is the emergence of new technology, both in the air and on the ground, that is changing the way state aviation systems operate. New aircraft, such as electric aircraft, unmanned aerial systems (UAS), urban air mobility (UAM) vehicles, and commercial spacecraft, are changing infrastructure needs and airspace usage. Advancements in ground transportation, including the emergence of transportation network companies and driverless vehicles, are changing the way passengers reach system airports. Beyond airports and airspace, technology is having an impact on state aviation agencies through the creation of tools that take SASP data off the page and into interactive formats that support the practice of continuous system planning. How to Use This Guide The purpose of this guide is not to provide a step-by-step manual for state aviation agen- cies and aviation planning practitioners on how to conduct a SASP; rather, the intent is to provide insight on the considerations that must be taken into account during the SASP Figure S-1. Evolution of the system planning practice.

4 Advancing the Practice of State Aviation System Planning scoping process to develop a project scope and mission that follows federal guidance and meets the needs and constraints of individual state aviation agencies. As such, this guide can be thought of as a menu of sorts, outlining the potential challenges and opportunities that exist with each of the SASP components. For example, if your agency has a constrained budget, this guide will help you decide where you’ll get the most bang for your buck and the tasks in your SASP scope that should perhaps be given more emphasis than others. is guide is organized into three chapters, each of which addresses one of the three phases of SASP creation. Each chapter includes a discussion of the considerations that should be made to achieve the SASP’s objectives in a way that works for your airports and your agency: • Chapter 1, Scoping System Plans, covers administration, contractor selection, project budget, and more. • Chapter 2, Developing System Plans, covers data collection needs and processes, airport classication, setting goals and objectives, identifying needs, prioritizing projects, and more. • Chapter 3, Implementing System Plans, covers stakeholder rollout, integration with other plans, and continuous planning eorts. roughout the guide, callout boxes are used to provide additional context, specic exam- ples from state system plans, references to related resources, and links to companion studies. Examples of callout boxes are provided in Figure S-2. Figure S-2. Examples of callout boxes. The 2018 Arizona State Aviation System Plan Update compares current system performance with that from the 200 SASP for ob ectives that were carried over from the previous plan Ari ona DOT 201 a . The results are displayed in tabular format for easy comparison and identification of progress. STATE EXAMPLE ACRP Synthesis 69: Airport Sustainability Practices— Drivers and Outcomes for Small Commercial and General Aviation Airports Prather 2016) and ACRP Synthesis 10: Airport Sustainability Practices Berry et al. 200 . REFERENCE f you ve decided to include a complementary special study such as an economic impact study ma e sure to include the appropriate ualifications and expected outcomes in your scope. f A P funding eligibility is an issue you may need to develop an entirely separate scope for that e ort. More information on integrating economic impacts in a SASP can be found in Appendix F. LINK