Originally Posted by
Often1
Somebody pays for those airport access roads. Depending on the exact nature of the locality, it's part of local property taxes, bonds, per ticket fees and so on. DFW chooses to collect those fees from the people who use those roads. That's good government, not anti-consumer.
The reverse of this is the SFO-BART vs. IAD-Metro example. BART charges an extra fee for the use of the SFO stop to defray the extra costs associated with the airport stop, so that San Francisco area commuters don't get socked with those extra costs. BART is conveniently located and nobody minds the extra fee. IAD, on the other hand, refused to implement the extra fee when it designed the Silver line, so rather than increasing the costs of construction and imposing a surcharge for the IAD stop to have the Metro run into the terminal, the IAD stop will now be across a parking lot. When the line opens, we'll see how many people getting off an international flight lug their stuff across that lot (even if there's a handy automated walkway).
No free lunch.
Well, except that the airport in general does not even make an attempt to allocate costs directly to those who use the specific service provided.
Have a look at the airport's 2016 budget. There's actually lots of interesting stuff there.
www.dfwairport.com/investors/P2_393174.pdf
The Parking Business Unit (PBU) is DFW’s most significant source of non-airline revenue.
...
The Airport is unique from an airport parking perspective because the Airport has parking plazas on the north and south ends of International Parkway (i.e., the entrances to the Airport), so that all customers and visitors must go through the plazas to access the Airport.
The parking unit alone brings in $142M, and along with other "cost centers" (profit centers?) of concessions, rental car, and commercial development, brings in $290M. There's no breakdown, but all of these services have a combined operating expense of $122M, so clearly, parking is bringing in a lot more than it costs to provide. Parkers, along with folks just dropping off or picking up, are subsidizing other uses of the airport.