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The FAA can take some small steps to make runways safer. Garvey says a regional airport manager told her to make sure the lights in airports were washed more frequently, and she intends to do that. The FAA has also installed bigger and brighter signs, embedded lights in the tarmac pavement and painted more lines on taxiways. And last week, as part of Garvey's new commitment to the issue, the FAA announced programs to provide refresher training for controllers and to encourage pilots to come forward to report runway incursions.
But the best solutions may be the big-ticket improvements that have proved most elusive. The FAA continues to support a sophisticated ground-radar system that is $30 million over budget and years late. Closing poorly designed airports and restricting the number of flights per hour would probably prove effective--and expensive. It comes down, says Air Safety Week editor David Evans, to "the classic tension between economics and safety." In this trade-off, there's a lot to be said for safety. Just ask Bob and Elizabeth Dole.