What Government's Good At: Spending Taxpayer Money And Getting As Little Value As Possible
Robert W. Poole, Jr., Reason's Searle Freedom Trust Transportation Fellow and Director of Transportation Policy sent this out in his regular Airport Policy News newsletter:
Why Australia's Airport Screening Costs Are Half TSA'sDid you know that airport security screening's average cost in Australia is $3.50 per passenger compared with TSA screening that costs $6.70 per passenger? I didn't either, until I read Chapter 5 of an important new book by Mark G. Stewart and John Mueller, Are We Safe Enough? Measuring and Assessing Aviation Security (Elsevier, 2018).
Over the past decade Stewart and Mueller have been doing rigorous quantitative assessments of various aviation security measures, and I've cited their findings--on Federal Air Marshals, on PreCheck, and on other matters--in previous issues of this newsletter. Their methodologies look very credible, and they know where to go to get the numbers needed for their analyses.
Their work on screening costs is new to me, and this book's chapter (backed up by Appendix A) may be their first publication of these findings. The question I hope you are asking at this point is: How does Australia accomplish less-costly checkpoint screening? To begin with, in Australia (as is also true of many countries in Europe), screening is the responsibility of the airport, operating under regulations promulgated and enforced by the national government. Most Australian airports rely on government-certified private contractors to do the actual screening, as in Europe and Canada. And all major Australian airports recover the direct cost of screening via security charges to airlines for passenger and baggage screening. But there is an exception, detailed in a footnote. Australia's largest airline--Qantas--provides its own screening where it operates in dedicated terminals. In those terminals, Qantas is the designated Screening Authority.
I'm sure that opponents of contract screening, after reading this, will try to find flaws suggesting that Stewart and Mueller are making an apples-vs.-oranges comparison. But they have anticipated this, and discuss factors in Australia that lead to reduced costs as well as factors that increase costs, as compared with TSA's screening. First, domestic passengers in Australia do not have to remove liquids from bags or remove their shoes, so checkpoint throughput should be faster. On the other hand, in Australia non-passengers (friends and family) can accompany passengers through the checkpoint, meaning the total number of people to be screened is much higher. If these policies applied here, I strongly suspect that TSA's screening costs would be even higher.
Besides discussing several U.S. studies showing that contract screening (where permitted) is less costly than TSA screening, the authors (in Appendix A) also present the case of (privatized) Copenhagen Airport (CPH) in Denmark. Unusually for Europe, CPH does not use contract screening. Instead, all screening personnel are airport employees, operating in accordance with national government policies. The cost of checkpoint screening at CPH averages $3.20 per passenger, a bit lower than Australia's $3.50. Citing 2016 figures from Statistics Denmark, they report that 97.6% of CPH passengers waited 5 minutes or less at the checkpoint.
Two cases--one using contract screening and the other using airport employees--do not fully settle the question. But they do suggest that screening is likely to be more efficient if devolved to the airport level, under national government supervision. In other words, with separation between regulation and service provision--unlike the model built into TSA by Congress in 2001.
Also, no one seems care about what we're getting for our money.
You've seen the dead-eyed repurposed mall food court workers manning the TSA. As I like to joke, they couldn't find a terrorist if he crawled up their ass and yodeled.
Furthermore, anybody smart enough (and strong enough) to make it in this blog comments section without bursting into tears can probably smuggle whatever the fuck they want onto a plane -- probably by bribing a baggage handler or somebody delivering food or other supplies to the tarmac.
It remains astonishing to me that the population simply accepts this pretense of security.
I find TSA gangstaz unacceptable enough that when I go donate my kidney to your author friend, hopefully I can roadtrip up to the hospital, rather than fly.
mpetrie98 at July 4, 2018 1:56 PM
About the topic: see the MOX plant at Savannah River Site, repeatedly delayed and rife with cost overruns, apparently a standard feature in Federal programs.
Hey. I work out here, and I have to say it - if you don't know what your plant will cost, how the hell can you tell me you know it's set up correctly to run the process you claim?
Somebody's going to have to go to jail for stuff like this to stop it. Meanwhile, field operators at the Site, who turn valves, run equipment and monitor tens of thousands of tons of Rx waste are told they will PERSONALLY go to jail for not filling paperwork out right, and we've had managers disqualified for not meeting administrative requirements.
Radwaste at July 4, 2018 1:57 PM
Don't hold your breath. The EPA dumped millions of gallons of mine waste into a river, polluting the water supply of several towns and tribes, and no one was fired or even censured over it.
Conan the Grammarian at July 4, 2018 2:24 PM
Don't look at the cost overruns at Nasa Rad. Being only 10x the estimated cost is considered a miracle. Having people sitting around doing nothing useful for the last three months of the year is normal. Smart people are great but if you don't have any money to buy materials they aren't really worth much.
I'm a big fan of space exploration and advancing science. Which is why I'm in favor of shutting NASA down and replacing it with something more useful.
This is also why the more a nation spends on research the slower their research based economy grows. The misallocation of funds and personnel is staggering.
Ben at July 4, 2018 3:42 PM
Ben, fan of space exploration- why not come to Australia? We have weird fauna and flora, and you could save $3.20 on security fees! Plus it's hygienic because eucalyptus oil is a cleanser, and Australia has gum trees all over the place!
Nicholas (Unlicensed Joker) Gray at July 4, 2018 6:02 PM
Ben, fan of space exploration- why not come to Australia? We have weird fauna and flora, and you could save $3.20 on security fees! Plus it's hygienic because eucalyptus oil is a cleanser, and Australia has gum trees all over the place!
Nicholas (Unlicensed Joker) Gray at July 4, 2018 6:03 PM
"Don't look at the cost overruns at Nasa Rad."
Roger Tetrault, of the Columbia Accident Investigation Board, gave a talk out here a few years ago. They discovered that depending on the fiscal year, NASA had between 3 and 5 billion dollars invested in stuff that they knew would never fly. That's why the Bush Administration issued a "vision" for manned space flight and other exploration.
Of course, that doesn't mean they're doing anything differently today, as such expense keeps technical people there working on something.
Radwaste at July 5, 2018 3:34 AM
Nothing has changed Rad. And it's been that way since the 80s. So I don't expect anything to change as well. I think it was IRA who posted a link on the cost overruns on the James Webb project. Given how NASA typically operates I can't even blame Grumman for what is happening there. It is just so typically NASA.
Ben at July 5, 2018 4:53 AM
I can't even blame Grumman
I can. It's a poor engineering/design/actual construction and supervision of said areas when a sizable portion of the fasteners used to keep things in place shook off in launch simulation. Still haven't found all the pieces, so there is a non-zero chance that launch and operation will cause them to be dislodged and foul the the telescope. Billions wasted due to wrong parts or improper installation?
NASA has come a long way from "failure is not an option" to "failure is mandatory". Apparently, Northrup-Grumman has followed along.
I R A Darth Aggie at July 5, 2018 7:05 AM
It is possible IRA. I just wonder how much of that failure was really NASA driven. This is a one off design. We aren't going to be launching ten of them. So the NASA guys are hip deep in this production (as they should be). I can easily see the NASA guys grabbing their prototype and heading to the simulator while forgetting they took half of the screws out yesterday.
Ben at July 5, 2018 9:47 AM
Not TSA but my friend worked for the parks department one summer. One of his jobs was to fix stuff like broken basketball hoops. When he got his job list, he would load up all the stuff he thought he might need and head out. He fixed stuff all day then went back to HQ. The other repair guys (full time) were steamed. They would go out to each site then go back to get what they needed then go fix it, one at a time. He had gotten more than twice as much done as they had and they were not happy. This is government at work. Warren Meyer documents how state parks depts keep taking money from the maint budget to hire HQ staff, which is more prestigious, so things fall apart. Probably what is wrong with DC subway.
As to Savannah River, I used to work there. There was a new facility on the drawing boards and one of the engineers kept telling them it wouldn't work, so they fired him (he told me this himself). They built it, and at the first trial run with just water it leaked everywhere. It was supposed to pipe uranium in highly acidic water all over in a sealed environment. They closed it down without ever operating. $600,000,000. Yes, 8 zeros.
cc at July 5, 2018 11:42 AM
Worked with someone a long time ago who used to work with DoD who related this one:
In the specs for a new plane, there was to be a coffee maker. But an off-the-shelf unit would not fit in the cabin or stay in place during maneuvers. So, one had to be custom-built. As such, it need specs.
The estimate was that the coffee-maker should be able to withstand withstand 0.9gs of force. However, when printed, someone had slipped a decimal place and the specs called for a coffeemaker that could withstand 9gs of force.
No one pointed out that this was more than the plane was specced to withstand. Nope, they went ahead and designed and built a custom-fitted 9g coffeemaker at however many thousands of dollars it cost.
Don't know how true that story is. She swore up and down it was true. And, since it's the government, it sounds true.
Conan the Grammarian at July 5, 2018 12:33 PM
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