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As commutes begin earlier, new daily routines emerge
Larry Copeland, Haya El Nasser and Paul Overberg; USA Today
…Americans are leaving home earlier and earlier to beat the rush and get to work on time. Census data released today document the ever-lengthening commutes: In 2000, 1 worker in 9 was out the door by 6 a.m., the new data says; by 2006, it was 1 in 8. That might not seem like a big change, but it has put more than 2.7 million additional drivers – for a total of 15 million – on pre-dawn patrol.
This “commuting creep” is changing the lives of tens of millions of Americans. It affects everything from the breakfast-food industry to television viewership trends, from traffic-signal timing to newspaper delivery times, from carpooling patterns to personal fitness routines. Increasingly early commutes also are altering workers’ relationships with their families.
“What we’re seeing now is this tremendous amount of traffic even before 5 a.m. It seems there’s a big lifestyle change here,” says Alan Pisarski, author of a wide-ranging study on commuting in the USA.
(12 September 2007)
Fear and loathing at the airport
Chris Palmeri and Keith Epstein, MSNBC
Everyone is unhappy with air travel, but no one can do anything about it
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When Marion C. Blakey took over at the Federal Aviation Administration in 2002, she was determined to fix an air travel system battered by terrorism, antiquated technology, and the ever-turbulent finances of the airline industry. Five years later, as she prepares to step down on Sept. 13, it’s clear she failed. Almost everything about flying is worse than when she arrived. Greater are the risks, the passenger headaches, and the costs in lost productivity. Almost everyone has a horror story about missed connections, lost baggage, and wasted hours on the tarmac. More than 909,000 flights were late through June of this year, twice the level of 2002.
And if you think the Summer from Hell is over, fasten your seat belt. The FAA predicts 1 billion passengers a year will take to the skies by 2015, a 36 percent increase from the current level.
…There was a time not long ago when the head of the FAA would be the last person you’d expect to express public doubts about potential catastrophe. Today, Blakey is unabashed about the rising risk of flying. There have been 339 incidents so far this year where planes got too close to each other or to objects on the ground, up from 297 in the same period last year.
…So why is it that we can put a man on the moon but can’t fly him from Atlanta to Charlotte, N.C., without at least a two-hour delay? While Blakey bears some responsibility for the abysmal state of air travel, she follows a long line of FAA chiefs who failed to put much of a dent in the agency’s to-do list. It’s not a lack of money. Last year the FAA did not spend all of the money it was allocated. Nor is it a lack of knowhow. Existing technology could easily meet the demands created by the exploding number of fliers. Nor, for that matter, is it security concerns. Instead, it’s a fundamental organizational failure: Nobody is in charge. The various players in the system, including big airlines, small aircraft owners, labor unions, politicians, airplane manufacturers, and executives with their corporate jets, are locked in permanent warfare as they fight to protect their own interests. And the FAA, a weak agency that needs congressional approval for how it raises and spends money, seems incapable of breaking the gridlock.
(12 September 2007)
Brings to mind Joseph Tainter’s ideas about the diminishing marginal returns of complexity. -BA
Gas Costs Spark High-Speed Rail Interest
Jan Dennis, Associated Press via Common Dreams
Seven hours after boarding a train in Kansas City, Douglas Lewandowski finally arrived at Chicago’s Union Station – rested after the 500-mile trip but anxious to get home to Elkhart, Ind.
“How long it takes on these trains is so frustrating,” said Lewandowski, 55. “I’d be more likely to take more trains if they were faster, but I’m afraid I’ll be six feet under before that ever happens.”0910 03
While sleek new passenger trains streak through Europe, Japan and other corners of the world at speeds nearing 200 mph, most U.S. passenger trains chug along at little more than highway speeds – slowed by a half-century of federal preference for spending on roads and airports.
But advocates say millions of Americans may be ready to embrace high-speed rail for everything from business travel to vacations because of soaring gas prices, airport delays and congested freeways that slow travel and contribute to air pollution.
“We have to change these things really fast. The era of cheap oil is over,” said Rick Harnish, executive director of the nonprofit Midwest High Speed Rail Association.
(10 September 2007)
