Keeping the Towers Open When Government Closes
On most days, America’s air traffic control system is invisible. The radar screens flicker, the controllers thread needles as planes approach and depart, and millions of passengers move through the sky supported by a grid they never see. We are reminded of its fragility only when something breaks.
The most recent federal government shutdown provided just such a reminder. The system strained not because of storms or technological failure, but because Washington stopped paying its bills. Controllers continued working without pay, modernization projects halted, safety inspectors were furloughed, and as a result, flights were canceled. This was an institutional failure. If the skies darken whenever Congress deadlocks, the problem is not aviation, but governance.
The United States funds air traffic control (ATC) through the Airport and Airway Trust Fund, fed by ticket and fuel taxes that are, in principle, user fees. That mechanism should supply financial stability. But before they can be spent, those revenues must be appropriated by Congress. When Congress fails to act, the Trust Fund’s faucet dries up, and the system grinds to a halt. A national utility that controls a $6 trillion economy’s daily commerce becomes hostage to whatever unrelated issues are holding up the budget process.
The shutdown revealed something deeper than the usual political dysfunction: it suggests we’ve been using the wrong model entirely. Air traffic control is a safety-critical operation that should be financed continuously and governed predictably. Instead, America has fused operations, safety oversight, labor policies, and salaries into a single agency whose revenues can be cut off at the very moment they are most needed.
The remedy begins with a principle the country once understood instinctively: transportation infrastructure works best when those who use it fund it. The “user pays” principle is simple and elegant. Those who benefit directly from a service finance its operation and upkeep, ensuring that costs and benefits are internalized, that funding remains reliable, and that investment aligns with need rather than politics. This is not some neoliberal scheme to extract money from users, nor is it a novel idea—it’s how British turnpike trusts operated in Adam Smith’s era.
The local parishes, which had been charged with maintaining the King’s highways, could not or would not do so effectively. Parliament, therefore, authorized trusts to levy tolls and dedicate proceeds entirely to road repair. Smith defended this arrangement against those who preferred outright nationalization, pointing out how directly appropriate “tonnage” tolls were to the maintenance of wear and tear caused by the ton weights of wagons.
The same principle underpinned the early canal and port companies of the nineteenth century. Barges, shipowners, and traders paid for access, and revenues financed dredging, lock gates, and quay improvements. For decades, this was considered utterly normal. Infrastructure was an investment supported by the commerce that depended upon it. Nobel Laureate Ronald Coase pointed out how even the lighthouse system, an early precursor of ATC, often regarded as a classic example of a public good, was funded by user fees in England.
F.A. Hayek would have recognized this as part of a broader constitutional logic. The state need not build or operate infrastructure directly; its role is to define predictable and impartial rules for access and pricing. A network governed by clear rules and direct payment is far more stable than one funded at the whim of legislators. Rules, not appropriations, preserve steady service.
The same logic applies today to roads and highways. For most of the twentieth century, the gas tax approximated a user fee: heavier or more frequent drivers paid more into the system than lighter or occasional ones. The problem is that this mechanism is eroding. Vehicles are more fuel-efficient, and increasing numbers of electric vehicles contribute little or nothing. Highways’ needs remain while revenues atrophy. A direct user-based charge—such as a vehicle-miles-traveled or weight-distance formula—restores cost precision and allows infrastructure finance to track actual use.
It is therefore unsurprising that modern aviation already embodies user-pays. Airlines and passengers finance ATC through direct charges in nearly every advanced jurisdiction, because airspace management resembles a network utility: it requires constant capital renewal, highly trained operators, and continuous technological upgrades. The economic logic is the same as the turnpike: the party that benefits should fund the service.
In the United States, however, this sensible principle has been attached to a brittle institutional structure. User revenue flows into a trust fund, but it is filtered through political appropriation, undermining insulation, predictability, and financial continuity. The shutdown did not merely suspend paychecks; it suspended America’s ability to modernize its own airspace. Complex systems cannot survive on short-term appropriations—they must plan continuously and invest regularly, or stagnate.
International experience is instructive. Britain and Canada both restructured their ATC systems during the 1990s. Both embraced user funding and recognized the need for capital modernization outside annual appropriations. Yet their structural choices diverged sharply.
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