Economic Regulation and Public Investment in Transportation Facilities

AIR TRANSPORTATION now serves as a primary method of intrastate, interstate, and international carrier movement, offering speed and efficiency to both the individual consumer and the commercial shipper. While the particular subject to be pursued concerns the impact of governmental regulation upon air transportation, it is quite clear that air transportation does not exist in a vacuum, but rather is only one of the many methods of transportation currently available. As such, it occupies a position on the spectrum of the national transportation system together with each of the other transportation sectors. Governmental regulation of any one of these particular sectors, thus, necessarily has an effect upon all segments, including the profitability of routes, quantity of traffic, per capita cost, and competitive use characteristics. When one considers the impact of governmental regulation on air transportation, one must also consider the impact of governmental regulation of all modes of transportation, because the orderly development of inter-modal freight and passenger movement and containerization is important to an efficient, total transportation system concept. The key to balanced economic regulation of transportation in such an environment lies within the development of a national policy on all levels from which regulation may come and a rational balance of public investment in transportation facilities