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Could Zeppelin’s airships soon be gracing our skies again?
Sean Dodson, Guardian
Germany is producing zeppelins again. More than 70 years after the infamous Hindenburg disaster, its latest airship was gently guided out of the hangar doors last month to make its maiden test flight.
The Zeppelin NT, built from endowment money left behind by German airship pioneer Count Ferdinand von Zeppelin, will make further test flights around Friedrichshafen over the coming months, before flying to London – where a former contestant from The Apprentice, Rory Laing, plans to offer tourist joyrides over the capital for £150 a throw.
What is it about airships that continues to capture the imagination? By rights, the lumbering airborne relics of a century past should be no more than museum curiosities, consigned like gas lamps to the sentimental roll-call of redundant technology. But like sacked television contestants, it’s hard to keep an idea as audacious as the airship down. With the cost of oil at record highs, and airline chiefs warning of the end of cheap flights, the idea of the airship is being seriously floated once more.
The appeal is of the airship is easy to grasp. Environmentalists like George Monbiot cite their frugal use of fuel when compared to other forms of flight. They are also quiet and fly at low altitude, at around 4,000ft compared with 35,000ft, further lessening their environmental impact. Although they are relatively slow, typically travelling at 125 mph – as quick as a high-speed train, but still needing about 43 hours to cross the Atlantic – most need no runway and could be deployed without need for further airport expansion
(5 June 2008)
Photo and more at original. Monbiot on airships.
Summer airfares double, triple, quadruple
Dan Reed, USA TODAY
The law of supply and demand is kicking in for airline passengers this summer – and not in their favor.
Despite a string of price increases this year, demand for summer flights remains strong and the USA’s big airlines are continuing to fill more than 80% of their seats.
This week, six (American, (AMR) United, (UAUA) Delta, (DAL) Northwest, (NWA) Continental, (CAL)US Airways (LCC)) raised prices again for flights on many domestic routes where there’s no non-stop competition from low-fare carriers. The result, says travel price guru Tom Parsons of BestFares.com, is that the cheapest tickets available on many routes in July are 100% to 300% higher than a year ago.
(5 June 2008)
As Gas Prices Rise, Scooters Grow in Popularity
Jennifer Lee , New York Times
Bicyclists in New York are known to possess an evangelical fervor. (What other mode of transportation has its own self-declared celebratory month? Imagine “city bus month.”) Now another fervor-driven environmentally friendly transportation group is growing up behind them: the scooter obsessives.
The surge in gas prices has turned people toward gas-sipping scooters across the country – even in New York City. The riders were out in force this past weekend for a New York Scooter Club block party at Brass Monkey, with scooters daintily lined up side by side on the street.
In the first three months of 2008, scooter sales were up nationwide by 24 percent compared with the same period a year earlier, according to the Motorcycle Industry Council.
… Scooterists argue the scooter has many of the conveniences of a bicycle, but it doesn’t get you sweaty and you can wear normal clothes. Of course, the bike still wins in some ways – parking is more convenient and it’s carbon-neutral. But at 70 to 100 or more miles per gallon, scooters are less environmentally damaging than cars.
(2 June 2008)
Holmes Transportation System dissolved
Beverly Keller, The Budget
As of July 1, 2008, those who utilize the Holmes Transportation System will need to find a new way to work and appointments as the rising cost of fuel and Workers’ Compensation has left the needle on empty in regards to cash flow.
Hundreds of those who rely on the system as their lifeline to work were given just 30 days last week to find a new way to work as Holmes County Commissioners officially dissolved the entity. In the past 45 days alone, the system has taken on nearly $60,000 in debt as the cost of fuel continues to skyrocket. “Prices to the system have gone up and have ballooned out of control,” Holmes County Commissioner Dave Hall explained. “These are costs we have to pay in order to do business and the money just isn’t in the budget to handle it at this time.”
(5 June 2008)
Contributor Bryan Swansburg writes:
At a time when improvement of public transport seems to be necessary, is this an example of receding horizons?
“The Budget” serves ‘the the Swancreek and Amish Mennonite Communities throughout the Americas’.
I love the concept that a society with ‘no’ electricity has a local newspaper available on the internet. I strongly suspect we may have to learn something from them…
About The Budget:
Who We Are
Over the years, The Budget has earned a faithful following by providing its readers with a unique newspaper; a newspaper in which the good news reported in its pages routinely outweighs the bad.
The Budget is the most popular and widely read local weekly newspaper in Holmes, western Tuscarawas, southeast Wayne and northern Coshocton counties, in the Heart of Ohio’s Amish Country. The newspaper is a community paper in the purest sense giving its readers content that mirrors their lifestyles. The Budget successfully brings together in its pages the work place, market place and the church, the English [non-Amish] and the Plain People [Amish and Mennonites’.
… The Budget is known locally, nationally and internationally as the Amish Newspaper, as well
