Saturday, July 28, 2018

Travel Trainers


Imagine being afraid to ride the bus, or being unable to read a timetable.  Can you think of what your life would be like without access to a car or mass transit?

There are hundreds of our neighbors who live lives of isolation because they are physically, emotionally or mentally unable to ride the bus or train.  Some have physical handicaps while others are autistic or have learning disabilities.  Shouldn’t they be able to travel like the rest of us?

That’s the question the non-profit Kennedy Center asked when it was founded in 1951 to assist kids with disabilities.  And in 1991 they added a new service to their roster… a Travel Training Program, to teach children and adults how to be independent by using mass transit.

Qualified instructors work one-on-one with clients for days or weeks, teaching them how to get from their homes to doctors’ offices, school or jobs.  They show them how to read timetables and escort them onto the trains and buses for dry runs until they’re ready to “fly solo”.

Bus drivers seem anxious to help those in need of a little help, whether it’s by getting their bus to “kneel” for the elderly and infirmed, lowering a ramp for those in wheelchairs or just reassuring an autistic teen en route to school.

The Kennedy Center’s Travel Trainers work with 200 clients a year while another team of Mobility Ombudsmen do community outreach, speaking at Senior Centers and Veterans Homes, educating folks on how to get around.

There are ParaTransit services available but they require reservations as much as weeks in advance and cost the rider double the transit fare.  They are also subsidized by taxpayers to the tune of $55 per ride.  So getting those riders onto regular trains and buses saves us all money.

And for these disabled residents, money is always a problem, especially if they’re unemployed or living on government assistance.  Which is why the Kennedy Center also does outreach to help the disabled and seniors to qualify for half-price fares.

Mobility Manager John Wardzala goes to food banks and helps people fill out state Reduced Fare ID Card applications.  He even helps them by taking an ID photo and printing it on a small ink-jet printer plugged into his car before handing them a self-addressed stamped envelope to mail in their application.

Bus fares are only $1.75, but if you’re living on a fixed income traveling to and from work five days a week, that can add up.  And if fear of those travel costs as well as apprehension about taking mass transit have kept you from school or a job-search, this program can change your life.

Lisa Rivers, CDOT’s Transit Manager and liaison to the Kennedy Center, says her agency’s job is to “get more people to use the system” by identifying gaps in service and information.  For example, some patients may not know that the American Cancer Society offers free rides to the hospital for those undergoing chemo or radiation treatments.

After travel training, the Center checks back with its graduates to see how things are going.  One success story stands out:  an elderly woman who was able to take the train into the city at Christmas, transfer to a subway and arrive at her son’s apartment who didn’t even know she was coming.  Now that is a gift.

Posted with permission of Hearst CT Media


Sunday, July 22, 2018

It's Too Hot To Fly



Is it hot enough for ya?

Even if you don’t believe it’s caused by humans, there is no doubt our planet is heating up.  And as global warming increases, so will our travel problems.

Meteorologists agree that thunderstorms, tornados and hurricanes are all getting stronger and causing greater damage.  Hardly a summer passes without extensive flight delays caused by storm-fronts, let alone hurricanes like Harvey and Maria.

A stronger jet-stream also means slower going when flying west and bumpier flights at many altitudes.  Clearly, our weather patterns are changing.  But increasing temperatures are also affecting the airlines in other ways.

Last summer there were days when it was literally too hot in Phoenix for planes to fly.  It was just a matter of physics:  the 120 degree air was too thin to allow some planes to get enough lift to go airborne.

American Airlines’ CRJ jets’ performance charts say the regional jets cannot fly in temperatures over 118 degrees.  Of course, those planes Canadian manufacturer (Canadair) may not have considered this a possibility during design, let alone an issue.  In cold weather the air is heavier and thicker and planes can easily take off, eh?

Larger planes like Boeing’s 737 and Airbus’ A320 could still get airborne in Phoenix as their maximum operating temperature was 126 degrees.

One Columbia University professor says this problem is not unique to the scorching desert southwest.  Even at New York’s LaGuardia and DC’s Ronald Reagan airports, the shorter runways mean planes must often be “weight restricted” on hot summer days.  Professor Radley Horton says since 1980 there has been a 20-30% increase in planes being forced to bump passengers, fuel or cargo to get airborne.

A few years ago I was on a supposedly non-stop flight from LGA to Kansas City, an easy enough 3-hour flight.  But on that hot summer day the old Midwest Express DC-9 we were on was forced to make a stop in Milwaukee to refuel before continuing to KC, turning the trip into almost 6 hours.

Internationally, torrid cities like Dubai, Singapore and Hong Kong are all expected to see flight delays or weight restrictions.  And high altitude destinations like Denver, where the air is already thinner, will also suffer.

The industry trade journal Travel Weekly says Boeing’s 787 Dreamliner will be most likely to face restrictions because it flies farther and needs more fuel.  But Airbus’ double-deck A380 will be less affected as it usually flies only to major airports with long runways.

And, by the way, I should also note that aviation is suffering this problem partly out of its own creation:  airplanes contribute 2% of all the carbon dioxide produced each year.

What’s the answer to this hot issue?

Well, keeping flights on-time may mean avoiding take-offs in the 3 – 6 pm part of the day when the temps are the highest. But tell that to the busy executive who doesn’t want to wait for sundown to get home!

Alternatively, aircraft makers like Boeing and Airbus could design planes with better lift equipped with stronger engines, to overcome the hottest conditions.  But those planes won’t be ready for decades.

Or, of course, we could just try solving the problem of global warming.  But that’s probably too late.

Posted with permission of Hearst CT Media

Sunday, July 15, 2018

Metro-North's Quiet Car Debacle


Train time is your own time” was the old marketing slogan of Metro-North, encouraging commuters to kick back and enjoy the ride while reading, working or taking a snooze.

But in reality, train time is shared time.  They don’t call it “mass transit” for nothing as passengers much share their space with a hundred other commuters on each railcar.  

Assuming you get a seat, this means you’re squeezed in next to one or two fellow riders.
Usually commuters are respectful of each other and don’t blare their radios or carry on loud conversations, with each other or on cell-phones.  Or so we’d hope.

It was almost 20 years ago that Amtrak first introduced the concept of The Quiet Car, following suggestions of daily commuters riding to DC.  It was such a success that quiet cars were soon added to other Northeast Corridor trains and Acela.

The concept was simple, as conductors reminded passengers on every trip:  maintain a “library like atmosphere”.  That meant no cell phone calls and only quiet, subdued conversation.  You want to yuck it up over a beer, go to the CafĂ© Car.  Got an important phone call… sit in any other coach.

Other commuter railroads picked up Amtrak’s cue… but not Metro-North. While serving on the CT Metro-North Commuter Council I regularly beseeched the railroad to give us a break and dedicate just one car to peace and quiet, convinced it would attract riders.  Finally in 2011, the railroad took the hint and launched such a car, branded as a “Quiet CALMmute”.
Victory for the sonically overloaded?  Not by a long shot.  This is Metro-North and if anyone can screw up a good idea, they can.

First, they offered the worst car location on the train to their CALMmute:  the last car in-bound and the first car out-bound from GCT.  And there were no signs indicating which car was “quiet”.  Worst of all, conductors all but refused to enforce the quiet rules, leading to altercations between passengers.

Conductors have no trouble enforcing other rules:  luggage on the overhead racks, no feet on the seats, no smoking etc.  But asking people to keep down the chatter was apparently too much.  All they would do, at first, was hand “Shhh cards” to offenders.

In 2016 the quiet car program was expanded to two cars per train, peak and off-peak.  But, still no signage (until just recently) and no enforcement.

Now, a major change.  The railroad announced that effective immediately there would be only one quiet car per off-peak train.  And the PR team at MNRR spun the story so well that some local media made it sound like the program was being expanded, not cut in half.  Brilliant.

There was no explanation for the cut in quiet cars though one official told me “we have had no reports of quiet car demand exceeding availability in the off-peak”.  In other words, people who ride off-peak just prefer to yap.

That’s an amazing PR “spin” on what is really an admission of failure.  Metro-North never wanted quiet cars and clearly didn’t want to enforce the rules.  The people have literally “spoken” and the Quiet CALMmute won’t be as accessible anymore.

This is what happens when you have a monopoly, answerable to nobody, especially its customers.  I’d raise my voice in protest but… I’m in the quiet car.

Posted with permission of Hearst CT Media


Monday, July 9, 2018

The Automobile - Construction Complex


How did Americans develop their love affair with driving?

Visit the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History in Washington and the transportation exhibit “America on the Move” will sell you on the commonly held theory that when Henry Ford made cars affordable, Americans loved them and demanded more and more highways.

Of course, that exhibit is sponsored by General Motors, which donated millions to put its name on the collection.

But University of Virginia history Professor Peter Norton, author of “Fighting Traffic:  The Dawn of the Motor Age in American cities” says that’s a myth.  Just as outgoing President Eisenhower warned us of the military industrial complex, Norton says an automotive – construction complex took over our country, paving from coast to coast. 

Sure, Americans like their cars.  But it was a conspiracy of economic interests that turned us into a car culture.  Where cities once enjoyed a network of cheap, fast streetcars, GM, Firestone and the oil companies bought and wiped them out, replacing them with buses and cars.

“This country destroyed and rebuilt its cities in the 20th century to serve automobiles,” says Norton.  And those same interest groups are alive and well today in Connecticut.

Groups like “Move CT Forward” aren’t pro-transportation as much as they are pro jobs… their jobs, in construction.  And they’ve spent a lot of money lobbying in Hartford to keep their members, the unions and contractors, busy.   While I’m happy they’re promoting transportation, their motives are hardly altruistic.

This is nothing new, says Norton.  The original interstate highways built in the 1950’s used Portland Cement because that company lobbied so hard for its product over cheaper asphalt.  And now that rusting rebar and crumbling cement is costing us a fortune.

Another myth from that era was that President Eisenhower built the interstates to move troops quickly for national defense.  That may have been the pitch to Congress, but the real reason for the highways was to evacuate civilians from the big cities in the event of nuclear war.  Lucky we never had to test that idea.

Last August when hurricane Harvey hit Houston… the most urbanized highway city in the country… authorities didn’t even try to evacuate people because they knew more would die on congested roads than in the storm.

Who pays for all this road building?  You do, in the form of income taxes and, yes, gasoline taxes.  But Norton says gas taxes are hardly a fair way to pay for all this.

Why does the motorist driving on a dirt road pay the same gas tax as one driving I-95?  The costs they place on road maintenance, the environment and our stress levels are grossly different, so why isn’t the cost?

“It would be like having Best Buy selling everything by the pound.  People would flock to the electronics (our crowded interstates) instead of the towels,” he notes (though I’m not sure Best Buy even sells towels, but I take his point).

He reminds us that before the interstates, the nation’s first “super highways” like the Pennsylvania Turnpike and the New Jersey Turnpike were built not as freeways but toll roads, and they still are today.

Driving may seem to be free, but it isn’t.  And until we ask drivers to pay for its real cost there is no incentive to do anything but drive (and pave) more.

Posted with permission of Hearst CT Media.