The Case to Build End-Around Taxiways at George Bush Intercontinental Airport for Air Quality Benefit

The traditional approach of reducing green house gas and air pollutant emissions is to reduce fuel consumption. However, the criteria for getting a taxiway or runway approved for FAA funding does not involve consideration of air emissions but only a reduction in delay. When the cost of reduced delay exceeds the cost of construction the project can meet a minimum threshold of benefit/cost ratio of 1.0 and, therefore, can be considered for FAA funding. The paper examines the case of the 2006 Houston George Bush Intercontinental Airport (IAH) master plan which recommended capacity enhancements to reduce delays by constructing two runways and end around taxiways. 1 However, the end around taxiway alone has been shown to substantially reduce delays and reduce fuel consumption. The FAA's Emission and Dispersion Modeling System (EDMS) was applied to characterize pollutant emissions with and without the improvements and the reduction of annual fuel consumption was used to estimate green house gases (GHG) reductions. The paper concludes that the reductions in pollutant emissions and GHG were significant and should be quantified to add to the benefit for prioritizing airport improvement projects competing for funding. The paper also suggests that in this particular case the reduction in criteria pollutants alone could be justification to begin construction of the end-around taxiway.