Mini Weather Stations Are Protecting Companies From Heat Waves, Hurricanes

Businesses are tracking meteorological patterns to prepare for looming threats to their sites and infrastructure

By Clara Hudson of The WSJ. Excerpts:

"Companies are eager to keep track of everything from high winds to icing events, said Sarah Kapnick, global head of climate advisory at JPMorgan, who was previously chief scientist at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. There’s very specific information businesses want to gather, for example if there’s a microburst that creates a lot of rain in a short period of time in a small location, she said.

“If they want the best data possible, and if they want control over their data, they should make their own,” Kapnick said.

Specific industries have different needs. The agricultural space, for example, needs to know what’s happening at the soil and plant level. Utilities have to be aware of the potential for downed power lines. 

Duke Energy said it has recently been preparing for another hurricane season by expanding “self-healing” technology to automatically detect power outages and reroute power to other lines to restore service “often in less than a minute.” The technology uses sensors, switches, reclosers and other equipment to isolate a problem, whether that’s a tree on a power line or a broken pole."

America’s Air Traffic Fiasco

Here’s why you’re waiting hours to land at Newark airport

WSJ editorial. Excerpts:

"Congress in 2003 directed the FAA to modernize its systems. Yet the NextGen overhaul isn’t set to be complete until 2030."

"the FAA still uses floppy disks."

"76% of FAA systems are “unsustainable” or “potentially unsustainable,” which may have “critical operational impacts”"

"GAO says “completion dates for planned investments for systems” it deems “especially concerning were at least 6 to 10 years away.”"

"FAA labor agreements also require the government to “work collaboratively” with the air traffic controller union on modernization, which can delay upgrades and divert staff from their day jobs."

"The FAA aimed to ease the congestion by shifting control of Newark to its Philadelphia facility last summer, but the union opposed the move"

"Americans who want to become controllers must undergo three to five months of paid training at an FAA academy in Oklahoma City, followed by a three-year apprenticeship at a control facility."

"Half of the students who enter the academy don’t finish their training."

"the best reform would be if the U.S. followed Canada and other nations and turned air traffic over to a private nonprofit."

Advice for DOGE: Privatize Air Traffic Control

By Dan Mitchell.

"Based on economic trends, I don’t want the United States to copy Canada.

But there is one big exception. As explained by John Stossel, we should copy our northern neighbors and privatize air traffic control.

I harbor a special distaste for government bureaucracies that deliberately try to screw taxpayers by playing the “Washington Monument game.”

So that’s a strike against the Federal Aviation Administration.

But let’s focus on the more substantive issue of how to maximize safety and minimize costs.

If those are the two main criteria, the answer is privatization.

Indeed, this is a great opportunity for Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency if it wants to show how to save money and make things work better.

The above video has some of the details, but let’s also look at an article in City Journal by John Tierney.

Here are some excerpts.

America’s air-traffic control system, once the world’s most advanced, has become an international disgrace. …chronic mismanagement…has left the system with too few controllers using absurdly antiquated technology. The problems were obvious 20 years ago, when I visited control towers in both Canada and the United States. The Canadians sat in front of sleek computer screens that instantly handled tasks like transferring the oversight of a plane from one controller to another. The Americans were still using pieces of paper called flight strips. …It was bad enough to see such outdated technology in 2005. But they’re still using those paper flight strips in American towers… The basic problem, which reformers have been trying to remedy since the Clinton administration, is that the system is operated by a cumbersome federal bureaucracy. …after the Washington collision, could the second Trump administration and a new Republican Congress finally create a state-of-the-art system? …Experience in Canada and other countries shows that an independent corporation, able to issue its own revenue bonds because it’s funded directly by user fees instead of taxes, can modernize air-traffic control far more efficiently and cheaply than a government agency.

In an article for Discourse, Gary Leff adds his analysis.

…after 1978…the federal government no longer told airlines where they’re allowed to fly, and how much they can charge. …However, nearly every other element of the experience continues to be dictated—and even directly managed—by the government. …Elsewhere in the world you’ll find nonprofit organizations conducting air traffic control, with better technology to direct planes more effectively and efficiently. …The private nonprofit NavCanada (which rolled out electronic flight strips way back in 2002!) oversees not just Canadian airspace but also the North Atlantic. It operates much more cost efficiently than the FAA. And they’re way ahead technologically as well.

Leff’s article cites other policies that would improve air travel, so privatizing air traffic control is just one piece of the puzzle.

But it’s an important piece, so let’s wrap up our discussion with some passages from Dominic Pino’s column in National Review.

Get the federal government out of air traffic control. I’d call it “privatizing,” but if you want to call it “depoliticizing” air traffic control, that’s fine by me. The air traffic control system should not be affected in the slightest by which politicians are in power… Air traffic control is not a public good in economic theory. It’s a club good, which means it can be provided privately through a system of user fees. …Canada illustrates that the private alternative works: Canadian air traffic control has been provided by a nonprofit since 1996, at zero cost to Canadian taxpayers. …Privatization has been proposed for the U.S. on and off since the 1980s, so DOT doesn’t need to come up with any groundbreaking ideas or ask for more money from Congress.

Amen.

By the way, if you’re not familiar with the concept of “public goods,” click here. Pino is right. Air traffic control does not qualify.

There is no logical reason why we don’t learn from other countries and get politicians and bureaucrats out of this line of business.

P.S. Where we’re on the topic of airlines, click here and here to learn why we should blame government when passengers get hit with so-called junk fees. Leads me to wonder whether the annoying “resort fees” at hotels also are consequence of government interference.

P.P.S. Eight years ago, I shared a very amusing British video that mocked the notion of privatizing the air traffic control system. Since the video is very clever, folks on the left doubtlessly were amused. But folks on the right got the last laugh since the British system is now privatized and working very well."

Privatize the Postal Service, Amtrak, Airports, and More

Privatization isn't about cutting corners; it's about unleashing and leveraging the ingenuity and competitiveness of the private sector to deliver better services at lower costs.

By Veronique de Rugy. Excerpt:

"The U.S. Postal Service, on the other hand, is more like a lopsided toboggan pulled by one reindeer threatening to go on strike. Despite its monopoly on letters and mailboxes, it's running a tab bigger than a Black Friday shopping spree. In 2024 alone, the Postal Service lost $9.5 billion. Without changes, it's on track to lose another $80 billion in the coming decade. Even the Grinch would be shocked by that.

How did we get here? The government post office has some advantages—like sweetheart loans from the Department of Treasury—but this one still can't turn a profit. It's bogged down by inefficiencies and prohibitive union contracts that have eaten up around 75 percent of past budgets. That leaves little room for modernization or improvements. But it still had room for a multibillion-dollar taxpayer-funded program that was supposed to deliver 3,000 electric mail vehicles by now. Only 93 have rolled out.

Privatization could be the gift that saves the Postal Service. Under private ownership, we'd see competition drive down costs and spur innovation. Just look at Germany's Deutsche Post (aka DHL), a largely private entity delivering top-notch service. Or consider the United Kingdom's Royal Mail, privatized a decade ago and now operating with greater efficiency and customer satisfaction. Imagine a Postal Service that works as efficiently as Santa's elves on Christmas Eve. That's the magic of privatization.

Let's privatize Amtrak too. Despite being structured like a corporation, it's owned by the federal government and operates with chronic deficits. Taxpayers fork over more than $3 billion annually to keep it on the tracks, and in 2023 the company lost $150 per passenger on long-distance routes.

And what do we get for our money? If Santa's sleigh ran like Amtrak, Christmas would be delayed until sometime in March. Trains are late, service is underwhelming, and there's little hope for improvement. Much like the Postal Service, Amtrak's inefficiency is tied to union agreements that make it hard to reward high performers or hold poor performers accountable.

Japan offers a shining example of what privatization can do. In 1987, it split its national railways into six regional companies and one freight company, all privately owned. The result? Trains that run on time, efficient service, and satisfied passengers. Privatizing Amtrak could deliver the kind of rail service Americans dream of—without breaking the bank.

Ever felt like navigating an airport is the travel equivalent of untangling strings of Christmas lights? That's because most U.S. airports are government-owned. They're monopolies that don't entertain real competition or innovate in a responsive way. From runway expansions to terminal upgrades, decisions are often driven by politics rather than market demand.

Private ownership of more airports would introduce much-needed holiday spirit. With market competition, airports would have every incentive to improve amenities, reduce wait times, and optimize space. Look at London's Heathrow or airports in Frankfurt and Sydney. All have shown how private operations deliver superior service and financial performance.

Even partial privatization through public-private partnerships has worked wonders, boosting efficiency and capital investment. It might even make holiday travel—dare we say it—enjoyable. Imagine shorter Transportation Security Administration (TSA) lines, cozier waiting areas, and restaurants with food you want to eat and respectable cocktail and wine lists. Santa would surely approve."

Privatizing Infrastructure: Evidence from Airports

From The NBER Digest. By Laurent Belsie.

"Privately owned and operated airports are prominent examples of companies running traditionally public infrastructure. As of 2020, nearly 20 percent of the world’s airports had been privatized. Private equity (PE), usually through dedicated infrastructure funds, is playing an increasing role in privatization, purchasing 102 airports out of a total of 437 that have ever been privatized.

In All Clear for Takeoff: Evidence from Airports on the Effects of Infrastructure Privatization (NBER Working Paper 30544), Sabrina T. Howell, Yeejin Jang, Hyeik Kim, and Michael S. Weisbach compare the performance of 2,444 airports in 217 countries under three types of ownership: public, PE, and non-PE private. They find that between 1996 and 2019, airports owned by PE funds improved their performance across many dimensions.

A key metric of airport efficiency is passengers per flight. The more customers an airport can serve with existing runways and gates, the more services it can deliver and the more earnings it can generate. When PE funds buy government-owned airports, the number of passengers per flight rises an average 20 percent. There’s no such increase when non-PE private firms acquire an airport. Overall passenger traffic rises under both types of private ownership, but the rise at PE-owned airports, 84 percent, is four times greater than that at non-PE-owned private airports. Freight volumes and the number of flights, other measures of efficiency, show a similar pattern. Evidence from satellite image data indicates that PE owners increase terminal size and the number of gates. This capacity expansion helps enable the volume increases and points to the airport having been financially constrained under previous ownership.

After privatization, the number of airlines and routes served by airports increases. At airports acquired by non-PE private firms, there are pre-trends in these outcomes before privatization, suggesting that those airports were on track to experience improvement regardless of privatization. With regard to airlines, PE firms tend to attract new low-cost carriers to their airports, which in turn may lead to greater competition and offer consumers better service and lower prices. With regard to routes, PE acquirers increase the number of new routes, especially international routes, more than other buyers. International passengers are often the most profitable airport users, especially in developing countries.

A PE acquisition is also associated with a decline in flight cancellations and an increase in the likelihood of receiving a quality award. When an airport shifts from non-PE private to PE ownership, its odds of winning an award rise by 6 percentage points. The average chance of winning such an award is just 2 percent.

The fees that airports charge to airlines rise after airport privatizations. When the buyer is a PE firm, there is also a push to deregulate government limits on those fees. For example, after three Australian airports were privatized in the mid-1990s, the price caps governing airport revenues were replaced with a system of price monitoring that allows the government to step in if fees or revenues become excessive. 

The net effect of a PE acquisition is a rough doubling of an airport’s operating income, due mostly to higher revenues from airlines and retailers in the terminal rather than cost-cutting. The driving forces behind these improvements appear to be new management strategies, which likely includes greater compensation for managers, alongside investments in new capacity as well as better passenger services and technology."

Sixty years after John Glenn orbited Earth, the private sector leads in space travel

See Who Built That Spaceship? by Andy Kessler. 

"The Mercury program cost $2.2 billion in current dollars, more than $300 million a launch. Elon Musk’s SpaceX announced last week that launches into orbit will cost $10 million within two or three years." 

"Let’s look at the numbers. In 2019 U.S. research and development spending was $656 billion—three quarters by business, the remaining $170 billion divided among the federal government, universities and nonprofits. Google spent $26 billion on R&D in 2019, Microsoft about $17 billion, Apple $16 billion, Intel $13 billion. I guess they did build that. For the record, federal money for research goes, in order, to the departments of Health and Human Services, Energy, and Defense, and then NASA.

A lot of that nonbusiness R&D spending is for basic research, as it should be. Where does basic research end and development begin? Alphabet, Google’s parent company, funds an experimental R&D group named X, which it describes as a “moonshot factory,” funding projects like self-driving cars, robots, internet-access balloons, geothermal energy, and advanced artificial intelligence. That’s a lot of basic research before product development. Unlike government projects, Google management can decide when to expand or kill projects based on their economic merit, not on how it affects a senator’s state. Universities can provide valuable basic research, as can government labs. But turning them into commercial products that scale to millions or billions isn’t a government trick."

"Stop with the “you didn’t build that.” Every entrepreneur knows he stands on the shoulders of giants. Even though government-run GPS satellites orbit the earth, do you think Chuck Schumer could write code to direct an Uber to your location?

Government might still be good at basic research, but certainly not at execution. Remember when the Food and Drug Administration required CD-ROMs sent by paper mail for the early Covid-test applications? Or how in 2020 New Jersey put out a call for Cobol programmers to upgrade ancient unemployment-benefits software? The private market’s accountability would never have permitted these errors."

Are Private Companies More Efficient Than NASA?

See Stargazers See a Business Plan by Randall Stross, a professor of business at San Jose State University. He reviewed two books for The WSJ. Excerpts:

"Both books show how SpaceX and Blue Origin have been impressively creative in reducing design and production costs far below what NASA and defense contractors are accustomed to. SpaceX builds its rockets horizontally, for example, so that it can use ordinary warehouse space instead of building expensive “high bay” space. SpaceX and Blue Origin are similar in their approach to reusability as well, constructing rockets, not planes, that rely on retropropulsion for landing. By flipping the descending rocket so that the nose points upward, and by switching on the rocket engine in the final stage, a cushion of hot gas provides a gentle landing.

Practical reusability also entails reducing the need for extensive refurbishing after each flight, something that SpaceX seems to have achieved. The space shuttle did not. After each flight, it required 1.2 million procedures and many months before it was ready to fly again."

"Virgin Galactic and Blue Origin have trained their sights on space tourism, preparing to offer wealthy passengers the chance to experience microgravity. “Entertainment turns out to be the driver of technologies,” Mr. Bezos says, noting the barnstormers in the early days of aviation who would land in farmers’ fields and sell tickets for short rides. SpaceX need not tarry with such trifles. It seems tantalizingly close to being the first startup to supply reliable, reusable rocket technology to take U.S. astronauts up to their orbiting workplace. Most gratifying, it will mean an end to NASA’s generous payouts to hitch rides with the Russians."

We should do more to privatize bus systems

From Marginal Revolution.

"Local governments spend roughly $1.6 trillion per year to provide a variety of public services ranging from police and fire protection to public schools and public transit. However, we know little about public sector’s productivity in delivering key services. Public bus service represents a standardized output for benchmarking the cost of local government service provision. Among the top twenty largest cities, there exists significant dispersion in the operating cost per bus mile with the highest being more than three times as high as the lowest. Using a regression discontinuity design, we estimate the cost savings from privatization and explore the political economy of why privatization rates are lower in high cost unionized areas. Our analysis suggests that fully privatizing all bus transit would generate cost savings of approximately $5.7 billion, or 30% of total U.S. bus transit operating expenses. The corresponding increased use of public transit from this cost reduction would lead to a gain in social welfare of $524 million, at minimum, and at least 26,000 additional transit jobs.

That is from Rhiannon Jerch, Matthew E. Kahn, and Shanjun Li, forthcoming in the Journal of Public Economics."

American aviation is suffering from a bureaucratic government-run ATC, while Canada’s privatized system is moving ahead with new technologies that reduce delays and congestion

See WSJ Reports on Canadian Air Traffic Control by Chris Edwards of Cato.

"In today’s Wall Street Journal, Scott McCartney reports on the superior air traffic control (ATC) system north of the border. American aviation is suffering from a bureaucratic government-run ATC, while Canada’s privatized system is moving ahead with new technologies that reduce delays and congestion. 

Showing leadership and boldness, House Transportation Committee chairman Bill Shuster managed to get reforms along Canadian lines passed out of his committee. Unfortunately, Senate Republicans have thus far been too timid to move ahead with restructuring. The flying public may have to wait until a reform-minded president can push an overhaul through Congress.
Here’s some of McCartney’s reporting:

Flying over the U.S.-Canadian border is like time travel for pilots. Going north to south, you leave a modern air-traffic control system run by a company and enter one run by the government struggling to catch up.

The model is Nav Canada, the world’s second-largest air-traffic control agency, after the U.S. Canada handles a huge volume of traffic between the U.S. and both Asia and Europe. Airlines praise its advanced technology that results in shorter and smoother flights with less fuel burn.

In Canada, pilots and controllers send text messages back and forth, reducing errors from misunderstood radio transmissions. Requests for altitude changes are automatically checked for conflicts before they even pop up on controllers’ screens. Computers look 20 minutes ahead for any planes potentially getting too close to each other. Flights are monitored by a system more accurate than radar, allowing them to be safely spaced closer together to add capacity and reduce delays.

And when flights enter U.S. airspace, pilots switch back to the old way of doing things.
The key, Nav Canada says, is its nongovernmental structure. Technology, critical to efficient airspace use these days, gets developed faster than if a government agency were trying to do it, officials say. Critics say slow technology development has been the FAA’s Achilles’ heel.

… Another innovation adopted around the world is electronic flight strips—critical information about each flight that gets changed on touch screens and passed from one controller to another electronically. Nav Canada has used them for more than 13 years. Many U.S. air controllers still use paper printouts placed in plastic carriers about the size of a 6-inch ruler that controllers scribble on.

For more on ATC, see here."

Canada's private air-traffic system

See Nav Canada Draws Interest in U.S: Northern air-traffic system is attracting attention as model for U.S. privatization fans by Susan Carey of the WSJ. Excerpts:

"It is an appealing story: Nav Canada operates through user fees that Mr. Crichton says are 35% lower than the government formerly levied in ticket taxes, not adjusted for inflation. The operation is safer while handling more traffic with fewer people, he says. It can sell bonds to fund upgrades, unlike the FAA, and airlines save fuel through more efficient altitudes and routes, Nav Canada says."

"About two dozen nations in the past two decades have created state-backed corporations or public-private partnerships to take air-navigation control from government bureaucracies.

The foremost concern in such changes is maintaining flight safety. Auditors from the Transportation Department’s Office of the Inspector General recently visited four overseas air-navigation providers and concluded that “separating air navigation and safety/regulatory functions has not impacted safety” in Canada, France, Germany and the U.K.

Mr. Crichton says Nav Canada has cut the rate of loss of separation—a key risk indicator that measures how often planes get too close—to under 0.8 per 100,000 flights last year from more than 1.4 when the government was still running things."

"Nav Canada has brought in-house much of the engineering and software development previously done by contractors, which has helped cut costs while freeing it to launch new products and services. Sid Koslow, chief technology officer, said Nav Canada doesn’t favor expensive, “big bang” projects like the FAA’s NextGen. But it has widely rolled out some technology the U.S. doesn’t yet have, such as data communications between pilots and controllers, or isn’t finishing installing, such as automated air-traffic management systems at all of its facilities.

It also is trying to capture revenue for its know-how. Nav Canada has sold its tower automation system to eight Australian airports. It developed a Web-based viewer that monitors airport activity and helps airports and airlines avoid congestion. And it owns 51% of a company that plans to launch satellite-based air-traffic surveillance covering the planet. Nav Canada and its partners will sell those signals to other air-navigation service providers."

Thirty Years of Private Social Security in Chile

See this post by Ian Vasquez of Cato.

"The big international story that broke on Sunday understandably was the death of Osama Bin Laden. But another big story was that May 1 also marked the thirtieth anniversary of the introduction of Chile’s successful private pension system. Implemented by José Piñera (now a Distinguished Senior Fellow at Cato) to replace unsustainable public pensions, private retirement accounts have averaged real annual rates of return of more than 9 percent, contributed to economic growth and the rise in savings, and helped turn working Chileans into capitalists. They’ve been a key to Chile’s economic progress and political maturity. The reform has been copied in part or in full by some 30 countries around the world. And contrary to what American critics on the left claimed at the time, private pensions weathered the global financial storm admirably. It’s only a matter of time before the United States and other rich nations begin addressing the crisis in public pensions in the same way. But the sooner the better. See this piece from Investor’s Business Daily on Chile’s system at 30."