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Air Transportation |
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| Air
Transportation and High Tech Business |
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While
proximity to an airport has been cited as important to business
in general, it has been suggested that the information age and technology
has supplanted the need for air transportation, with Internet access,
video conferencing and other communications technologies. In many
cases, the exact opposite is true. High tech industry is heavily
dependent on easy access to air transportation and shipping.
With short product cycles, quick obsolesce, smaller manufacturing
lots, and a reliance on component sourcing and just-in-time manufacturing,
moving both parts and products quickly is key to high-tech success.
(Goldstein and Luger, 1993; Blakely, 1994; Kasarda 1999)
Consider
the locations of commonly cited U.S. "high-tech" centers:
Silicon Valley, Boston, Denver, Austin, TX, Raleigh, NC, Fairfax
County, VA, and New York's Silicon Alley. One common denominator
in each instance is proximity to a major hub airport. In Silicon
Valley, where San Francisco International Airport is becoming increasingly
inaccessible because of increasing traffic congestion, support from
high-tech industries has led to large-scale expansion plans of passenger
terminal square footage and in all-cargo and belly cargo handling
capacities at San Jose International Airport . A similar story can
be told about Raleigh Durham International Airport, whose growth
has been driven by the travel and cargo demands of its very close
neighbor, Research Triangle Park, North Carolina. (Appendix C in
Erie, et al 1998; San Jose International Airport Comprehensive Annual
Financial Report, 1997)
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| Air
Transportation and High-Tech Executives and Employees |
When
the focus changes from business location decisions to the factors
most important to business employees, quality of life becomes of paramount
importance. In an article entitled "The Q Factor", David
Birch suggests that businesses are willing to locate to areas which
might cost a little more, but which have distinct quality of life
advantages to attract and retain a high quality workforce. Birch cites
five factors as crucial to attracting small, entrepreneurial companies
- the engines of economic growth in the high technology sector. These
factors are:
- High
quality research universities
- A
good quality labor force
- Air
transportation
- Telecommunications
- Local
government willing to invest in infrastructure
Air
transportation is key because "whereas Fortune 500 executives
can fly in and out of just about any town in the company jet, busy
entrepreneurs and their salespeople need major airports for their
transportation." Another study of business executives looked
at the relocation decisions of 40 information age companies with
"high quality" jobs. For executives and employees of these
companies, quality of life issues were found to be very important
to their location decisions, but the concept of quality of life
itself was poorly conceptualized. The study concludes that "housing
quality, transportation (commuting ease and access to an airport
hub [emphasis added]), recreation (especially golf), and local educational
funding" are among the factors underemphasized by previous
analyses of quality of life. (Omara 1999)
One
final examination based on survey data and the migration patterns
of high-technology firms throughout the United States found that
workers in high tech occupations were more mobile than were employees
in other occupations. High tech workers preferred metropolitan
over more remote work locations, suburban residences to central
city ones, metro areas with lower levels of property taxation, better
schools, and greater transportation linkages. (Herzog, Schlottman,
and Johnson, 1986; Herzog and Schlottman, 1991)
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