Letters to the Editor
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tomreedtoon
The apocalypse is right behind you. It is standing right behind the Y2K catastrophe.
If I were you, I would start running as fast as I could. I think Idaho might be safe.
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Congestion article
Mr. Smith: I always enjoy your articles and believe you raise very valid points in this one. But I take issue with your final paragraphs. Please don't criticize the passengers for embellishment or inaccuracies. I'm sure they happen all the time, but their cynicism is well-founded. Airlines DO lie to passengers all the time. They almost never tell the truth about delays, mishaps, etc. Every statement by cabin and crew members is always uttered in a bland, impersonal, saccharine tone and the content means absolutely nothing. Passengers have learned to automatically disbelieve anything that comes out of their mouths. Example: If the pilot comes on and says we're in line on the runway and will take off in 10 minutes, you automatically double that in your head to 20 minutes. It's become a reflex reaction. The industry should stop passengers like children and simply state the facts, whatever they are. If they don't know when we'll arrive at the gate, just say so. The industry needs to practice honest communication, not public relations.
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Re: Comments by 'Dianaw' (From the Author)
Dianan writes:
"Please don't criticize the passengers for embellishment or inaccuracies. I'm sure they happen all the time, but their cynicism is well-founded. Airlines DO lie to passengers all the time. They almost never tell the truth about delays, mishaps, etc. Every statement by cabin and crew members is always uttered in a bland, impersonal, saccharine tone and the content means absolutely nothing."
You criticize me for calling out passengers who embellish, and then you turn around and do exactly the same thing, creating your own silly caricature. I am sorry, but airlines do *not* "lie to passengers all the time" and "never tell the truth." And the statements of airline staff do not "mean absolutely nothing."
Now, having said that, you are correct that passenger cynicism is well-founded, and that airlines are terrible communicators. I've written whole columns on these topics. Try here...
Why are the airlines such lousy communicators?
http://www.salon.com/tech/col/smith/2006/01/27/askthepilot171/
- Patrick Smith
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airport delays
Quit flying. The airports have become a place where the Government practices domestic terrorism . The most obvious and blatant government terror tactic is the shoe removal exercise. The only purpose for this is to make passengers acquiesce to a needless procedure which is meant to intimidate people to an absurd meaningless process.I was first compelled to perform this when getting off of a plane. Just why would it be necessary to take shoes off when leaving a plane? There is none. Just like when I was in grade school we had hide under the desk exercises to protect us from nuclear weapon attack. I lived outside of San Francisco but this exercise was nationwide in rural, suburban and urban areas. Just why would their be a nuclear attack in a rural area? This was to condition children,'childrens' to government terrorism.
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Way late, but
Regional jets, in my experience, don't take up any gate space at a major airport. One of the joys of regional travel is waiting for the bus, being driven around in a cattle car with a driver who is either slamming on the gas or slamming on the brakes at all times, and waiting in an un-airconditioned plane while the bus comes to take you back to the terminal.
America not having passenger trains has nothing to do with the auto manufacturers, the oil companies, or any other evil entity commonly blamed for our misfortunes. If you are a railroad, transporting passengers is incredibly inefficient. People don't weigh enough and we are too high maintenance to make the economics work, since it takes the same amount of fuel and time and 5 times as many people to transport 200,000 of humans as it does to transport 2,000,000 pounds of coal, for example. High speed rail is great, it addresses most of the issues, but it would require a whole new infrastructure and tickets would cost about as much as airplane tickets if we leave them private. The market is largely speculative at this point. The government could do it, since the government actually gets more benefit from rail than anyone else could, but we don't like government owned transportation companies (Amtrak), or taxpayer subsidized transportation systems (high speed rail everywhere it's been on the ballot). Florida would be perfect for it - 250 miles from Miami to Tampa, 200 miles from Miami to Orlando, 350 miles from Miami to Jacksonville - but it's just too expensive.
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There is no solution
No one is going to build light rail. No one is going to fix airports. No one is going to make flights unafforable to thin traffic. No one is going to do anything about this. If passengers are willing to put up with it - and they are - then that's that.
Just yesterday the news announced (actually it was the airlines in a paid placement pretending to be news....) that you MUST ABSOLUTELY GET YOUR HOLIDAY TICKETS ASAP because the airlines are already jacking up prices and 'restricting seat availability' SO YOU BETTER GET YOUR FLIGHTS BOOKED RIGHT NOW!!!! DON'T BE LEFT OUT THIS HOLIDAY SEASON. !!!!!!!!!!!!
As long as you cattle volunteer to be treated like cattle the airlines will treat you like cattle. So sit down shut up and eat your goddamn peanuts, cattle, before we send some TSA agents to murder you.
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Nationalize the rails
There are no room for high-speed sub-500 mile trains. The nations railroads are jammed with freight traffic and high-speed rail lines need their own dedicated right of way. If you think NIMBY is bad, try constructing a 4 lane-wide high-speed railway through dense urban areas/quiet suburban areas and having residents enduring violent swishes every ten minutes as a train goes by.
Beats having more jet airplanes screaming by overhead, spewing noxious pollutants into your air. Besides, the government has no problem seizing land - witness the recent Supreme Court decision regarding eminent domain. And the existing rail corridors are in many instances wide enough to permit the addition of a separate passenger line. You could also utilize the existing highway right of ways in many areas (for example the I-5 corridor in California).
Solar airplanes will likely be feasable in the future
Maybe on Mercury. There isn't nearly enough energy in sunlight to keep a passenger plane aloft, let alone cruising at 500+ MPH. Might work for a blimp, if people are willing to travel cross-country at 15MPH. Would probably be more practical to bike . . .
And that doesn't cover the complexity of trying to keep rail infrastructure in good shape in the weather extremes that we get in the US...
Weather is a technical issue, and really a minor one. The French ran a tunnel under the English Channel to connect high-speed rail to London. The technical issues they've confronted in Europe dwarf any weather-related issues in the US. Much of the most densely-populated sections of America is flat as a board, which makes deploying rail lines dead simple. With the dollar plunging and oil prices rising, air travel grows increasingly impractical with each passing day. Electrified rail is the only practical solution going forward.
I have a friend in California who can't drive and who travels intercity by that state's "superior" rail systems. She describes it as "a bus on wheels."
California's rail system is practically non-existent - it's absolutely nothing like European train systems. The Bulgarians would be embarrassed by such a network. There's a bit of intercity rail in the Bay Area (Caltrain), running from San Francisco down to San Jose, and the lines which run thru the suburbs of Los Angeles. That's about it. Amtrak runs a few slow trains from San Diego north thru the state, and a few people commute that way (say, from Orange County to Burbank or something), but it's not really practical. The lines are owned by private companies, who only maintain them well enough to support slow freight traffic. The government owns the commuter trains. It's a completely bass-ackward setup, and results in a train trip from Los Angeles to San Francisco taking more than 12 hours to complete.
What the government ought to do is nationalize the rail network and privatize the trains themselves.