For General Mitchell International Airport and the citizens of the Milwaukee-area, 2009 will certainly be a year to remember. Discussions came and went on the privatization of the airport as a means to bailout the poor fiscal position of Milwaukee County. Hometown airline Midwest Airlines changed hands for a second time, this time to Republic Airways, a company that will certainly operate the business in a much different fashion than Midwest traditionally has run. And finally, Southwest Airlines started service at the airport, triggering a pricing war with low-cost rival AirTran.

It has been fun, it has been a great flight, but this is the end of Midwest Airlines as we know it. The Republic Airways’ buyout of Midwest Airlines certainly will accelerate their slow transition from a luxury first class airline, to an inexpensive low cost carrier. Sure, the name might stick around for awhile, but for starters our hometown, local airline, isn’t local anymore.

A regional transit authority with a dedicated funding source is the solution to the Milwaukee regional transit woes. The use of an authority represents the most efficient and reliable way to deliver a service to a region. A dedicated and reliable funding source is essential to empowering an authority to deliver the services for which it is tasked. While Milwaukee’s freeway system was designed and built to serve the region, the Milwaukee region’s multiple transit systems stop and start at invisible lines. The various transit systems have different fares, operating hours, vehicles, and branding. As they are now, the systems simply aren’t designed to work together to ensure a high quality of service to the region.

So how did the airline industry end up stuck with a massive number of old, less efficient planes flying regular service? According to an anonymous insider, it all goes back to the dot com boom (and bust).

In one of the worst kept secrets surrounding the future of downtown Milwaukee, an announcement finally arrived today that the out-of-place and severely dated United States Post Office located on St. Paul Ave, next to the brand spanking new, gorgeous Milwaukee Intermodal Station, is moving south to be closer to the airport in a new, [...]

The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel has a good article on how the economics of Skybus play out.  If you were intrigued by my previous report, I suggest you give the JS article a read.

Discount airline Skybus entered the Milwaukee market on Wednesday.  The airline offers $10 flights to Columbus, Ohio once a day and from there to a lot of other destinations (again starting at $10).
The ticket prices work on a sliding scale where the first few tickets are sold for $10 and eventually sliding up to higher [...]

Hiawatha Originally uploaded by nsuydam1
Small Business Times executive editor Steve Jagler has a special to OnMilwaukee.com entitled "Don’t Let Skeptics Derail Mass Transit Options", and it’s nothing short of excellent. Jagler takes typical conservative mindsets to [...]

Milwaukee Intermodal Station Originally uploaded by compujeramey
OnMilwaukee.com has published a guide to eating at General Mitchell International Airport, the newly redesigned Milwaukee Intermodal Station, or at the Badger Bus Depot.
It apparently must have been a slow [...]