Letters to the Editor
MacK..
Published Letters: 477 Editor's Choice: 49
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Learn from the French and Europe
[Read the article: Ask the Pilot]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Compare the busiest European City-Pairs with the US. In the US in the top busiest pairs are routes such as New York-Washington; New York/Boston; Austin, Dallas Houston; LA-San Francisco; LA-Las Vegas; Philadelphi-New York etc., etc. The distinguishing features of so many of the city pairs is that they could and should be services just as well by High-Speed Rail. The simplest TGV now cruises at 200 mph plus. If one allows for everything to be on time, that means that a rail journey of 3-4 hours beats a 1 hour in the air flight, and that is before delays (allow 40 minutes to one hour travel to airport at each end (2 total), 1+ hour to check in and board, 1/2 hour after touchdown to exit aircraft etc, 3/4 with checked-luggage) for a 2 1/2 to 4 hour add on to the flight time.) And remember, if you fly you have to queue a minimum of 6-times - (a) at check-in; (b) at security; (c) at the gate; (d) at the aircraft door; (e) as you go down the aisle; (f) as you go up the aisle at exit, and in Europe add immigration sometimes. Take the train and you queue perhaps once, have more space at your seat, don't have to keep getting up and down, etc. etc.
Now look at Europe:
Busiest international air routes in the European Union
Rank Inter-city pairs Passengers (000s)
1 London Heathrow Dublin 2,088
2 London Heathrow Paris CDG 2,011
3 London Heathrow Amsterdam 1,895
4 London Heathrow Frankfurt 1,527
5 Rome Paris CDG 1,241
6 Stockholm Copenhagen 1,214
7 London Stansted Dublin 1,123
8 Barcelona Amsterdam 1,111
9 London Heathrow Madrid 1,094
10 Amsterdam Paris CDG 1,039
Source: Eurostat, 2007 (based on the latest data from 2005)
So the -- busiest city pair, London-Dublin (w/ 5 airports at the London end, Heathrow, Gatwick, Stanstead, Luton, London City), minimum surface travel time -- 4-5 hours to Holyhead, High Speed Ferry, say 2+ hours, no tunnel -- flying makes sense -- Dublin London is apparently the world's busiest route by a big margin.
But Dublin London displaced Dublin Paris because rail (even with the incompetent booking and high prices of Eurostar) makes more sense than flying London-Orly or London-CDG or for that matter London-Charlroi/Zaventem. The same applies to a lot of European travel pairs, say Paris-Lyon, Paris-Geneva, Bonn-Berlin, Paris-Berlin (nearly), soon Paris-Barcelona. Apparently since security got tougher Heathrow Paris air traffic has dropped dramatically in favour of rail, except for connecting flights. Ditto Amsterdam GDG
If you want to reduce congestion, bring on high speed rail for key close-city pairs. Buy French trains.
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DurianJoe -- you think you adopted a feral
[Read the article: I hate my cat!]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]"We adopted a one year-old feral cat and her months-old son, and with enough love and attention, they are now great pets."
In reality you probably adopted a stray and its kitten.
It is probably shocking for most people to undertstand the nature of feral cat society and especially the feral Tom, but, and tender readers stop reading here, I'll give it a try. and don't get me wrong, I like cats, even if I am very allergic to some but not all (and which ones kick me off is hard to predict, which is tricky because I like having a cat on my lap.)
Cats to a much greater degree than dogs have their behaviour hard-wired. That is why you can only train a cat to do a limited number of things while dogs can be trained to do a lot. One of the basic errors that people commenting here are making is anthropormorphizing their pets in general and cats in particular. A lot of animal behaviour is hard-wired, which is why collies like to herd, etc.
The feral toms that breed successfully do so by implementing the following tactics: (1) rape any female that looks remotely fertile; (2) kill, attack or drive off any other tom that looks like a threat; (3) defend territory relentlessly; (4) kill any kittens being kept by a maternal cat that don't smell like yours; and (5) then rape her too as soon as she is in heat. I say rape because that is basically how feral cats breed, and if you had heard the yowling of a pack of cats hard at it you would know what I mean. Indeed feral cats also engage in gang-bangs -- no kidding, and feral females can produce litters by mixed fathers. Give this a few generations and the most successful feral Toms are natural and instinctive sociopaths, think of them as randy, clawed versions of Karl Rove. When you add to this a lack of instinctive fear of humans and a healthy diet as a kitten, you are going to get 25-40 pounds of feline fiend. Domestic cats are a different issue -- we intentionally breed the worst traits out of them, the vicious territoriality, the automatic clawing of anything vaguely threatening, and when domestic toms stray, well let's say they usually do not do well in feral cat society.
We go further, we also anthropormorphise animal societies, often inappropriately. Folks we are reasoning beings who form societies that have decided that wild-cat behavior is unacceptable for humans -- I admit that I have doubts about say the Bush White House -- but in general, we do not behave this way, nor have we for thousands of years, which is probably why we are the most successful animal on the planet.