Connecting People and Places

Quietly humming in the background, this industry powers your life

BY ANDREW SHARP

WHEN AN ENORMOUS CONTAINER SHIP ran aground into the banks of the Suez Canal in 2021, blocking a crucial trade artery for days, everyone was suddenly talking about transportation.

Hauling goods and passengers is one of those things that’s so much a part of life, you rarely think much about it until something goes wrong. In this case, the blockage came around the same time as excruciating supply chain issues during the COVID-19 pandemic that drove up the price of what seemed like everything.

In Delaware, we may think of transportation as mainly the traffic that clogs Route 1 and I-95 every day, but it’s far more than that. The state plugs into the national and global supply chain through its shipping and aviation channels, which supply not just goods from other countries, but a big boost to the local economy.

One of Delaware’s attractions is its logistically key location, near the financial hub of New York and the regulatory center in D.C., says Kurt Foreman, president and CEO of the Delaware Prosperity Partnership. His organization touts those assets as it recruits businesses to come to the First State. You might not be thinking about transportation, but businesses certainly are, he says.

“We promote the idea that we are accessible and that you can get where you need to and be connected to what you need to from Delaware,” Foreman says.

At the heart of that connective system is the Delaware River and Bay Authority, a bistate organization run in cooperation with Delaware and New Jersey. Here, it oversees three Delaware airports, the heavily traveled Delaware Memorial Bridge, and two ferries, including the major Cape May-Lewes Ferry connection at the beaches.

“We are a major provider of transportation in the region,” says Stephen Williams, deputy executive director and airports director of the DRBA. It’s a self-contained agency, he adds: The DRBA handles its own maintenance and snow removal, has its own environmental team, and even runs its own police force. All this is paid for, not by taxes, but by fees like ferry tickets and bridge tolls, so the people who use the services are the ones who pay for them.

The DRBA is one of the modern examples of a reliance on transportation that has been a hallmark of the state since its very beginnings.

“The shipping industry has been a huge economic driver for the state of Delaware,” state Sen. Russ Huxtable says. Huxtable, who represents the ferry area in District 6, is vice-chair of the Senate transportation committee. “A lot of our towns, Milton, Milford, Lewes, they were shipbuilding towns … it is definitely a part of who we are,” he says.

You won’t find crews building tall-masted ships in Milton these days, but that doesn’t mean transportation isn’t making a major economic impact. Shipping and aviation, for example, quietly inject hundreds of millions of dollars into the local economy.

To measure that effect, analysts not only look at direct spending, like airports paying staff, but at ripple effects like the money employees spend on housing and food, and the taxes they pay back into the state.

The Cape May-Lewes Ferry alone brings in $152 million a year in annual wages, according to a study commissioned in 2019. Including ripple effects, it adds $236 million in value to the economy, meaning every dollar spent generates 20 times as much economic activity, the report notes.

The state plugs into the national and global supply chain through its shipping and aviation channels, which supply not just goods from other countries, but a big boost to the local economy.

Tourists make up the vast majority of the ferry’s passengers, says Heath Gehrke, director of ferry operations for DRBA. Unlike drivers on the interstate, who are often just passing through an area, these passengers are arriving where they want to be.

The ferry regularly surveys passengers about their travel plans. Based on their responses, the DRBA estimates they spend an estimated $125 million a year just on the Delaware side of the bay.

That’s helped make the beaches what they are today. “Back when it was first created, (the ferry) was a real impetus to growth in the region, on either side of the bay,” Gehrke says. “In a lot of cases, there wasn’t a lot in either of these resort towns, particularly in the offseason.”

The ferry is still seeing plenty of demand, Gehrke says. It had its heyday of hauling passengers in the late ‘90s, then saw traffic drop after the construction of Route 1. But recent years have seen steady usage. Since 2016, traffic has generally been growing, with the exception of impacts from the pandemic.

The population has grown to the point where people are looking for an alternate route to the highway, Gehrke says, and the DRBA is looking at options for building new ferries and continuing to develop the terminals. “I think the future is bright.”

On the aviation side, the industry has an economic impact of over a billion dollars a year in Delaware, according to multiple studies commissioned by the Delaware Department of Transportation. It also has supported around 12,000 jobs.

Consider just one facility. The Wilmington Airport, located in New Castle and run by the DRBA, is Delaware’s largest airport and the only commercial one. In 2017, one of the DelDOT studies found, it had an economic impact of almost $326 million and supported more than 2,500 jobs.

Many headlines about the airport focus on its on-again, off-again commercial air service, with different airlines coming in and then leaving.

But Douglas Bañez, a consultant for DRBA, notes that even major airports frequently see airlines come and go. Wilmington, though, has only featured one commercial airline at a time, so people notice more when operators revolve.

He and Williams are excited about prospects for the long term with newly established air carrier Avelo Airlines, which started flying out of Wilmington Airport in February with nonstop service to five cities in Florida. Given that the number of passengers moving through the airport shot up dramatically in Avelo’s first three months of operation, the carrier announced a second aircraft in Delaware for expanded service to more cities. Those include destinations in Tennessee, Georgia, and the Carolinas in addition to more Florida cities. It’s the largest number of nonstop routes ever offered at Wilmington Airport.

“Commercial air service is an enabler of economic development. It literally puts communities on the maps of airlines and, by extension, in the minds of travelers—including people traveling for both business and leisure purposes,” Bañez says.

Regardless of commercial flights, the airport also sees steady use from other clients. Those range from planes hauling cargo to corporate jets to the National Guard, Williams notes. Even with all of this, the airport continues to regularly accommodate its most famous client, the president of the United States.

The airport is well positioned, Williams says. “The income is there, the population density is there, the drivability is there. The (Wilmington) airport sits in the middle of two major north-south routes” (Route 13 and I-95).

“I am very much bullish on Delaware, and on our region, and our region capturing its fair share of what is there in terms of passenger demand,” Williams says.

The transportation sectors in general, Foreman thinks, are headed in great directions. “It’s an exciting time in Delaware.”

DRBA By the Numbers

17.9 million: Vehicles that crossed the Delaware Memorial Bridge in 2022

722,000: Cape May-Lewes Ferry passengers in 2022

4,130: Jobs supported by the Cape May-Lewes Ferry

43,827: Passengers through Wilmington Airport this year, as of May 15, 2023

8,436: Passengers through Wilmington Airport by May 15 last year

20: Dollars of economic activity per dollar spent by the DRBA on the Cape May-Lewes Ferry

$1.1 billion: Economic impact of the aviation industry in Delaware in 2017

2,619: Jobs supported by Wilmington Airport in 2017

Sources: Delaware Department of Transportation and Delaware River and Bay Authority