THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Monday, August 14, 1995 TAG: 9508140089
SECTION: BUSINESS WEEKLY PAGE: 04 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Column
SOURCE: Ted Evanoff
LENGTH: Medium: 86 lines
Americans have a habit of gambling on the future of transportation.
Norfolk and Portsmouth, astride one of the world's finest harbors, stood to become America's premier seaport until New York threw the dice in the 1820s and dug the Erie Canal.
For the next century New York City boomed as the nexus for trade between Europe and America's farm states and factory cities.
Now the dice are being picked up again.
FastShip Atlantic of Alexandria wants to build a freighter unusual for its ability to sustain 46 mph at sea even in storms and land cargo, probably in Philadelphia.
Bell Helicopter Textron and Boeing hope to evolve the V22 warplane into a small passenger airliner whose turboprops can rotate toward the ground, allowing the craft to land and lift off like a helicopter.
Eastern North Carolina's tobacco counties, left out of the Raleigh-Durham high-tech boom, want to build Global TransPark, a futuristic airport industrial park of such size it could easily service the entire Eastern seaboard and industrial Midwest.
If any of these ideas blossom, they could certainly bear on the future economy of southeastern Virginia, which has its own transportation strategy.
Hampton Roads has invested heavily in dockside equipment able to handle the proliferation of huge containerships that presumably would compete with FastShip as well as the airliners ferrying freight to Global TransPark.
And somewhere between Richmond and Tidewater, business and government officials want to build the superport, a major airport able to attract a passenger airline hub as well as international flights now congesting airports at Atlanta, New York and Washington.
Bell Helicopter's novel airliner poses an interesting question for the superport. Small aircraft flying off downtown skyscrapers could reduce the volume of planes on runways of the major airports. That could delay the need for another big airport in the mid-Atlantic region.
``There's been a lot of interest shown in this around the country,'' said Bell Helicopter spokesman Terry Arnold. ``A lot of planning people from the cities are coming to conferences to look at this idea.''
North Carolina also is trying to stir up interest in its idea.
``Speed, speed, speed. That's the name of the game for businesses that want to lead the way into the next millennium.''
So says the high-charged language on TransPark promotional brochures that suggest only Germany and Thailand have the huge airport industrial parks to match what's planned in Kinston.
Primed with a $25 million loan from North Carolina, 13 counties around Kinston have organized their own economic zone to levy taxes for the Global TransPark.
TransPark plans call for a pair of 11,000-foot runways, capable of handling the largest air freighters, surrounded by thousands of empty acres earmarked for factories and warehouses on the edge of Kinston.
``You'll be able to fly your components in, do the manufacturing right there, and then put everything on an airplane and fly it back out,'' said Kurt Foreman of Moran Stahl & Boyer of Atlanta, a consulting firm hired to look at the labor market in the 13 counties.
``There are a lot of heavy things being sent around the world,'' Foreman said. ``One of the things they want to do is have a new competition for the items that are going out in containers on ships.''
They would hope that it would (shift cargo away from Tidewater), but I would doubt it,'' said Arnold B. McKinnon, executive committee chairman of Norfolk Southern Corp., the Norfolk-based railroad.
McKinnon, a native of Lumberton, part of the TransPark economic zone, serves on the board of Global TransPark Foundation Inc., a money-raising arm of TransPark itself.
``If I thought it were (going to draw cargo from Tidewater), then I would not be on the board,'' McKinnon said. ``But I have never conceived of it having much impact on ocean shipping.''
Of course, it's too early to tell if the TransPark will shift seaborne cargo into the air and away from vessels bound for Hampton Roads, port of call for 2,586 ships last year.
And it's too early to tell if the TransPark concept, the V22-derived passenger plane or FastShip will even succeed.
All that said, it bears repeating - in the air age, the shape of the future is no more certain than when New York rolled the dice in the days of the Erie Canal. by CNB