Airlift vs. Ground Transportation
by George Block, Editor
(Oct. 30, 2022, Harlingen, TX Airport) We arrived on the last Southwest flight Sunday night and walked through the terminal a little past 11:00 p.m. I had checked a bag. My elbow was hurting, and I didn’t want to carry it through the Houston airport.
As soon as my small suitcase appeared, I grabbed it and opened my Uber app. I waited. It found a driver, gave me a pick-up point and time, then canceled. It also charged my credit card.
The same thing happened with Lyft. A driver took my ride, canceled it, and charged my credit card. Charges without a ride seemed odd, so I tried both two more times. The result was the same.
I saw a cab sitting at the taxi stand. The taxi was empty, so I asked the driver for a ride to the island. He told me a woman had made a reservation to go to the island. “Ironic,” I thought.
I saw the phone number on the back of the cab, so I dialed 956-507-4900. The phone rang in the cab next to me. The driver reached for his phone. I told him, “Never mind.”
I asked him if there were any other taxis in his company that he could radio to come to the airport. He told me that his is the only cab in his company. “The other company in Harlingen is the same way,” he told me.
“One cab? Only one vehicle?” My question was half question, half plea.
“Yes,” he replied, “We only have two cabs in Harlingen.”
“Two cab companies or two cabs,” I asked.
“Both,” he replied. He explained to me that “local ordinances regulate all cabs. Cabs can drop off anywhere, but they can only pick up in the city that licenses them. A cab from SPI can drop off at the airport, but it can’t pick up there.”
“So only two cabs are licensed to pick up at the Harlingen airport?” It didn’t seem possible.
A young couple walked up to the same cab and asked for a ride to the island. The driver told them he was waiting for a young woman who had reserved the taxi, but when she got there, he would ask her if she would be willing to split the fare.
Soon a policewoman approached with the same question. She had a group of stranded tourists trailing her. The driver told her that five passengers filled his taxi overflowing, so she began working her phone.
When the woman who reserved the cab arrived, she was intimidated by the crowd around her ride. I don’t think she had the nerve to tell us all No.
Of the five riders, I was the only island resident. The other four were all tourists experiencing the island for the first time. One couple was on their honeymoon. It was close to midnight.
Marv Esterly is the Director of Aviation for the Harlingen Airport. He is also the Board Chair for the Birding and Nature Center and a frequent attendee at the CVAB meetings.
“We used to have great partnerships with the island, but they have fallen by the wayside. 75% of the airlift to the island comes through this airport, and we have sub-standard ground transportation,” explained Esterly.
“In the past, we had a couple of different ways of solving it. The CVB subsidized shuttle companies for being here. It cost about $95,000, but it made shuttles available all day.
“They also tried a contract with one company to require them to be here. Ed Caum (the previous CVB Director) submitted an RFP, but it was so onerous that nobody responded. All we need to do is tweak it so that it makes economic sense for the shuttle companies,” he added.
“We have opened the airport for cabs from the island to pick up here, but we can’t require private companies to be here unless we contract with them. We have opened it up, but most cabs, Ubers, and Lyfts seem to shut down at night. They are good rides to the island, but nobody seems to want them,” continued Esterly.
Blake Henry, the CVB Executive Director, closed the loop for me. “We are finishing the new RFP that Marv mentioned. I have to work out a few details with him. We can finish the entire process by the end of the first quarter of 2023. “The percentages Marv told you are correct. It is still 75% through the Harlingen airport, so we must solve that problem first.”
The good news is that both the directors of the Harlingen airport and the CVB recognize the problem and are actively working on it. The bad news is that it will take another five months to solve, leaving the Brownsville airport unserved.
Henry described his own experience. “I flew in from Austin Sunday night. I was on the last flight. I had to check bags. They took forever to get on the carousel. The line for Enterprise kept getting longer. It was horrible. I kept thinking about the visitor experience.”
Henry has experienced the problem firsthand. He and Esterly are beginning to solve the Harlingen problem, but Brownsville doesn’t have the airlift capacity to make solving this simple.
SPI needs both airlift and ground transportation. When the numbers don’t add up for the private sector, the government has a role to play. The CVB needs to subsidize solutions in both “our” airports. Otherwise, island visitors will be left standing on the curb.
That is not a good first impression.
