Este texto presenta tres partes sobre la construcción ciudadana de Bogotá. La primera de ellas habla sobre su geografía física, sus colores, sus sitios, sus paisajes. La segunsa, sobre percepción ciudadana en población, estética, hábitos y vida cotidiana. La última de ellas deja ver cómo es percibida Bogotá por los ciudadanos de otras ciudades. Este enfoque se sitúa en el ciudadano como constructor de sus percepciones con las cuales ve el mundo y lo hace mientras lo percibe

Parrish, Wayne W.

Revista Educación y Ciudad

English

Southern Methodist University

Journal of Air Law and CommerceVolume 9 | Issue 4 Article 61938Washington ObservationsWayne W. ParrishFollow this and additional works at: https://scholar.smu.edu/jalcThis Symposium is brought to you for free and open access by the Law Journals at SMU Scholar. It has been accepted for inclusion in Journal of Air Lawand Commerce by an authorized administrator of SMU Scholar. For more information, please visit http://digitalrepository.smu.edu.Recommended CitationWayne W. Parrish, Washington Observations, 9 J. Air L. & Com. 641 (1938)https://scholar.smu.edu/jalc/vol9/iss4/6WASHIN GTON OBSERVATIONS*WAYNE W. PARRISHIDown in Kansas City last week there was a national air mailfeeder conference which some of you attended. It was a significantconference for several reasons, the most important reason being,in my opinion, that it was an outward expression of a genuinedemand for expansion of the air mail service in this country, andthe fact that if we are to have expansion of air transportation formail, passengers and express, this demand must come from thepublic and not from Washington. No great tangible results cameout of the Kansas City meetings. I don't suppose anyone expectedanything concrete to be accomplished. But the intangible resultsof that meeting are of prime importance.It was the first national meeting called together by laymen tooutline a program for aviation's expansion and, as I haveoften stated, aviation's expansion is going to follow publicdemand and public planning by laymen rather than official action bygovernment. You men of the N.A.S.A.O. have been endeavoringfor years to help the people of your states encourage aviation andget the airway aids and landing facilities that would bring aboutthe growth of a great new scheduled arid unscheduled transportationagency. Many times your efforts have made little headway becauseof retarding influence from federal Washington, At the KansasCity meeting we had speeches from federal Washington that car-ried the same old retarding tone and I know we all hope that thecontact of these federal officials with the laymen-your public andmine-will help them to realize that Washington departments areservice institutions and that the economic advance of the nationcomes through the interests and demands of the taxpaying citizensof the states.If the negative federal attitude demonstrated at Kansas Cityin connection with feeder services had been the attitude of thefederal government in 1925, as George Logan pointed out, air mailwould never have gotten the start that makes possible its presentnational position in world aviation.The state directors of aviation and the state aviation boards* Address presented at the Eighth Annual Convention of the National Asso-ciation of State Aviation Officials, October 13-15, 1938.t Editor, American Aviation.[641]JOURNAL OF AIR LAWor commissions are going to have greater opportunities for serviceas well as heavier responsibilities as the citizens of the state becomemore active in their demands for various forms of aviation de-velopment. The communities that ship produce and want air mailservice on waybills to marketing centers, the mining men of thewest who are rapidly learning the economy of doing business withthe fixed base operator, the isolated communities that come to knowthe winter advantages of airplane star route service, the hunterswho are learning that a few hours by air can get them to spots notformerly reached without days with a slow-moving pack train-allthese and many others will look to state officials for counsel andadvice in getting what they want.No one wants uneconomic or unjustified expansion in anybranch of aviation .any more than the public wanted unreasonablethings in connection with the automobile in 1912. Today we knowwhat the automobile has done for social and economic life. Avia-tion with its great flexibility can do still more. And aviation'spublic is going to look to state aviation officials for balanced judg-ment first and aggressive action second whenever that becomesnecessary in any difference of opinion with national planners.In the final analysis it is the public that deserves expansion ofair mail service. At Kansas City I gave an illustration which Ibelieve is worth repeating here. The expansion of air mail shouldbe similar to opening up a public water supply to a new subdivisionof a community. No one expects a water supply in a new sub-division to pay for itself immediately, and yet no one denies thatthe extension of water mains is a vital need and a means to com-munity betterment. The extension of a public utility supplyingwater will lead to more homes being 'built and eventually the newwater mains will more than pay for themselves.. Following thissame line of reasoning, it could not be expected that a feeder airmail line would pay for itself directly in monetary terms in thefirst week or the first year, but yet the expansion of the air mail is avital economic service of benefit to the entire nation, profitable toits individual users from the very beginning. Why shouldn't feederand local air mail service be subsidized until this inevitable profit-less period draws to a close? What more effective collateral couldthe government or its citizens ask than a well organized, efficientand complete air mail service?Since the inauguration of the railroad postal service manyyears ago, the Post Office Department had been sending mail intoN.A.S.A.O. PROCEEDINGSplaces where it hasn't paid its own expenses and probably neverwill, but one letter from a copper mine in Montana to New YorkCity may be more important to public welfare than 100 pounds oftrivial correspondence from New York to Pennsylvania, for ex-ample. Rural delivery and star routes can never become self-sup-porting if the revenue from stamps is balanced against the actualcost of the service. In isolated communities and particularly in themountain regions, postmen struggle up the mountain roads formiles to isolated camps and settlers, and the stamps from the lettersthey deliver or collect wouldn't pay for the gas used in their carsor the hay for their horses. But that's all part of the economicsystem. If some mining camp deep in the Rockies is not guaran-teed the same right to a postal service as the Wall Street stockbroker, eventually both of them will face economic oblivion.Mail can't possibly be gauged merely by population served andrevenue obtained. A few of the largest post offices in the countryfurnish the Post Office Department with the vast bulk of its rev-enue, and yet what would happen if one of these large cities, sayNew York City, were set apart from the rest of the country? It isMontana and Idaho and Nevada and Nebraska, where the maildoesn't pay its own way, that keep the intricate business mechanismof New York City ticking economically. There may be numerousfeeder air mail lines established which would never pay their wayon the basis of the number of stamps placed on letters, but the busi-ness and cultural welfare of the nation would be benefitted manytimes over. If the ordinary slow postal service is admitted to beinvaluable, does it require some aviation enthusiast to point out howmuch more beneficial would be a closely knit air mail transportationsystem with service to any and all parts of the country? On theother hand, there are certain to be many feeder lines that wouldmore than pay their way financially even if no other considera-tions were involved.Air transportation opens the way to a new economic life, aneconomic life not limited by such natural barriers as mountainranges, rivers and oceans. So far our air routes have been builtto follow the old trade routes, just as trade routes followed theIndian trails which took the lines of least resistance over the ter-rain. With the coming of the automobile, the old post roads withtheir hairpin turns and meanderings over the countryside had tobe straightened out. Today we have more direct highways. Wehave abandoned the old Indian trails. But air transportation re-JOURNAL OF AIR LAWmoves the obstacles of terrain. Improved means of getting to newplaces will open up new trade routes of the air. Every city is aport today on the great sea of the air. Omaha, for example, ison a direct route to every other city of the nation if the air isthe mode of travel. We haven't yet realized what this means inrelation to commerce, to movement of mail, goods and people. Therestriction and limitations to travel have been removed by the air-plane, but so far we have only progressed through the initial stagesof development. We are just beginning to straighten our aerialhighways.So far in the brief history of air transportation we have de-veloped a de luxe form of travel. Passenger fares are high, be-cause we lack volume; air mail costs are double the regular firstclass rate, and air express is limited to shipments where the neces-sity for speed removes the obstacle of cost. But our aviation peopleare very short-sighted if they hold the belief that air travel is goingto work out its salvation on the basis of a de luxe service only.The vast majority of our citizenry have modest incomes and musthave reasonable fares. If travel is costly they will travel less fre-quently unless forced by necessity. Air mail will always be limitedin use so long as there are limited stops and pick-ups, and we can'tever have a mass volume of air express and air freight until ratesare reasonable for the faster air service.With volume, air transportation can be the cheapest mode oftravel ever invented. This may sound like a startling statement.Some of you can visualize air travel costs dropping down to rail-road costs, but the thought of its reaching the passenger cost ofthe bus may be a bit startling. But let's look far ahead and do alittle figuring, and once you are convinced that air transportationcan be the cheapest mode of travel ever developed, then you canbegin to visualize the enormous possibilities, not only for massmovement of mail, passengers and express over trunk lines but forfeeders.In the first place air transport has a unit, the airplane, thatoperates on its own power anl costs no more than a de luxe Pull-man car-which does not run on its own power. If the Pullmancar and the airplane have the same number of seats, that meansthat the airplane can carry three times as many passengers in agiven time period for the airplane travels at least three times fasterthan the Pullman car. And what do you have to buy to keep thePullman in motion disregarding upkeep and personnel? It must beN.A.S.A.O. PROCEEDINGSoperated over a roadbed that costs conservatively, $50,000 a mileto build. That's the basic improvement.An airliner needs nothing but a couple of mile-square airportsat either end of its route and airports at each stop on the way.The fewer stops, the fewer airports. More stops, more airports.It operates through free air. There is no comparison of the permile cost of installation of airway aids to the cost of a railroadroadbed. Perhaps the airliner will need more personnel per unit,but there need be no army of laborers on constant track maintenanceduty. And remember the pilot of a plane and his crew each travelsat least three times the distance of a trainman.Next, consider the bus. The cost of such a vehicle is about$20,000, while a 21-passenger Douglas DC-3 airliner costs about$100,000. The seating capacity of a bus is about 32, which meansthat three airplanes have a capacity of two buses. But the airplanehas four times the speed of a bus, which means that for every 63seats in a bus there are 252 seats in an airplane. As far as seatmiles are concerned, a 21-passenger plane is equal to two and one-half 32-passsenger buses.The bus operator has to pay obligations to states, he has topay a seat tax, a gas tax, a franchise tax, and in some states a taxbased on gross earnings. True, the airline also pays taxes but notin the same measure as the bus operator, because the airline usesless public facilities provided at public expense. At the present timethe bus still wins out in a comparison because the cost of 21-passenger planes is high, but with a quantity production, say of 200such planes, the cost may drop to around $50,000 per unit. Withvolume, air transportation can be cheaper even than bus travel.Of course some statistician could probably burn up a lot ofpencils to show that air transportation can never be the cheapest,but it is a safe prediction that the years ahead will prove himwrong. The advantage is all in favor of the air. The one answeris volume through public service and volume is as sure to come astomorrow morning.As a matter of fact we haven't even begun to figure out thepossibilities. The railroads have gone into the bus business andinto direct store-door delivery of cargo. Why shouldn't the air-lines do the same? Why shouldn't the airlines give a completeservice; for example, operate a limousine connecting communitiesthat have no airports with larger cities that do have airports? Wecarry passengers thirteen miles from the heart of Cleveland to theJOURNAL OF AIR LAWairport; why not carry them twenty-five miles from communities offthe airline to main airport stops?A while ago I mentioned subsidy for feeder lines and for gen-eral expansion of local air services. There is a prevalent idea thatthe airlines are being subsidized today, but there is also good reasonto believe that there is no subsidy for the industry as a whole. Afew weeks ago at St. Paul, Minnesota, Paul R. Youngs, postmasterat Charlotte, North Carolina, who was chairman of National AirMail Week last May, reported to the National Association of Post-masters that indications are that use of air mail will double merelyas a result of the advertising which Air Mail Week gave to flyingthe mail.Let's do a little more figuring. According to the 1937 reportof the Postmaster General, 12,732,530,874 pound miles of air mailwas flown in that year. The Interstate Commerce Commission airmail docket No. 19 report states that according to the Post Officecost ascertainment figures air mail postage revenues have been ap-proximately 1 mill per pound mile. Multiply the number of poundsby 1 mill and the 1937 postage revenue to the Post Office Depart-ment from air mail would be $12,732,530. Double this amount inaccordance with Mr. Youngs' report and the amount would be$25,465,061, which is somewhere near what the Post Office De-partment appropriation for air mail should be if air mail is to payits fair share of the costs of airline operation and normal develop-ment.But let's figure this another way. The annual report of thePostmaster General shows that 19,553,543 pounds of air mail wascarried in 1937. Once we took the trouble to weigh up a poundof air mail letters we were sending out and found that there wereabout thirty letters to a pound. Multiply the above pounds by 30pieces of mail and the answer is 586,606,290 pieces. Then multiplythis number of pieces by six, the postage in cents on each, and theanswer is $35,196,377. Even reducting 20% for the weight ofthe mail bags leaves an air mail revenue of over 28 million dollars.Also, something should be deducted for duplication in weighing.But it all makes some of us wonder how much more than the$15,500,000 paid air mail carriers this year the Postmaster Generalwill get from postage.By every reasonable calculation, the airlines have turned in aprofit to the Post Office Department for several years. This is along way from being subsidized and any Post Office profit mightN.A.S.A.O. PROCEEDINGSwell be spent in the public interest for air mail feeder and localservice.In passenger revenues, our major airlines have climbed steadily,perhaps more so than some realize. For example, last year Amer-ican Airlines had more than a million dollars more revenue frompassengers than the Missouri Pacific Railroad, and the railroad hasmore route mileage. This same airline had two and one-half timesmore passenger revenue than the Norfolk and Western Railroadand almost twice as much as the Chesapeake & Ohio. Another largeairline, United, received twice as much passenger revenue as theWabash Railroad. For 1937 there were only 18 railroads reportinggreater passenger revenue than the highest individual airline, butwhat happens when you double the airline revenue for a singleyear? Only seven railroads would have a higher passenger income.And certainly the airline revenue from passengers is going to doublein a very short time. Naturally the total passenger revenue fromrailroads far out-balances the total airline passenger revenue, butthe airlines will continue to gain and the figures do give an idea ofhow rapidly this gain is being made.I have been rambling along, touching on a variety of subjects,but in conclusion I would like to come back to the point first raised.The demand for expansion of air service must come from the public,from such groups as this. The Civil Aeronautics Authority pro-vides the first step in a series of necessary legislative moves thatmust be made to provide for sound progression of this service. Butthe Civil Aeronautics Authority does not have charge of the pursestrings. It can authorize and regulate competition in passenger andexpress service by issuing a certificate of public convenience andnecessity, but the Post Office Department has the answer on mail,and Congress has the answer on appropriations. Some day in thenot too distant future it may be found advisable for the Civil Aero-nautics Authority to have full control of the air transport systemso that the problem of subsidy, of extensions, of mail paymentsand mail service, can be centralized in one federal body. This hasbeen done under the Maritime Commission which now handleseverything pertaining to the merchant marine, including all formsof subsidy and compensation.So for feeder lines, for increased mail service, for extensionsto major systems what we want will come through local publicdemand as expressed through your Congressman. The state avia-tion official will have both the opportunity and the responsibility of648 JOURNAL OF AIR LAWso crystallizing the sentiment of his constituents that his Congress-man and Senator in Washington will have no doubt about the char-acter of the demand being made. Aviation planning must not bedone in Washington alone. It should be done in the states wherecitizens in a variety of activities know its real value. Planningmust be done by the people who use aviation and different states indifferent stages of development and having different sorts of ter-rain will know much better than Washington what they want andwhat they can use and what they are willing to pay for. The budgetfor aviation expansion in any field should not be formulated inWashington. It should be formulated in the sovereign states wherefacilities and service will be used in the public interest. It is theduty of state aviation officials to give voice to the public feeling inthis connection. It will be wisdom on the part of Washington de-partments to consult freely with the state aviation officials.

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