Stuck in the Land of Missed Opportunity

[marmar]

from the Transport Politic blog:



Stuck in the Land of Missed Opportunity


Being bumped from a flight has its benefits: A few hundred dollars’ worth of free travel, a restaurant certificate, a little more time to avoid getting back to work.

Getting stuck in an airport hotel, on the other hand, is less exciting, especially when it is off-site. Take the fate of those staying in the accommodations of Rosemont, Illinois, a suburb of Chicago just adjacent to O’Hare Airport. I bunked there a few nights ago.



While in theory the town’s cornucopia of hotels are close to the CTA’s Blue Line rapid transit corridor, they are isolated from it perceptually. So is a major convention center, a movie theater, and a performance hall. Walking from the station situated in the median of the Kennedy Expressway (I-190) to the main strip of hotels requires passing under highway and rail viaducts and then along the thin pedestrian way that borders the featureless, six-lane arterial known as River Road. Normal people, apparently, are supposed to drive, park their cars, and then use the area’s skybridge system to get around. Forget the sidewalks.

What the transit user — usually a pedestrian — experiences is an automobile-dominated landscape that is far from the ideal transit-oriented development planners often argue is necessary to take full advantage of the millions spent on public transportation investments. Too many other Chicago neighborhoods, and many others around the country, suffer similar fates. It doesn’t have to be so. ............(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.thetransportpolitic.com/2011/03/02/stuck-in-the-land-of-missed-opportunity/

[nxylas]

1. What the airport needs is magic unicorns

Magic unicorns could transport people from the hotel to the heart of the city seamlessly on their backs. They never break down, never have accidents and never need refueling because they feed on pixie dust that floats in the air in front of them. However, knowing your reactionary, backward-looking opinions, you'd probably want to lumber them with one of those wasteful, inefficient modes of transportation that actually exists.

[marmar]

2. And I hear they cure cancer too.

:)

[txlibdem]

3. Unhelpful previous responses... sorry there are pro-light rail and pro-bus factions here

You brought up a topic that is a sore subject for the pro-light rail and pro-bus line zombies: those modes of public transportation never go where you need them to go, never offer convenience or even logic in their routes (from my experience). One would think that a bus leaving the airport would take a moment to drive past the nearby hotels and shopping centers, no? We have the same problem here in the Dallas-Fort Worth area, the buses do not go where you need to go. Case in point, my commute (before I became disabled that is) consisted of 1. A shuttle to the park and ride, 2. A bus to the train station, 3. A train for about 10 minutes of travel, and finally, 4. A bus to my work location. The whole thing, including waiting, took 2 1/2 hours in the morning and 2 hours for the return trip home. Did I fail to mention that the shuttle will not enter my subdivision, forcing me to walk 1 mile before I can get to that shuttle? Yup. And then walk that mile at the end of the day. And when the roads were icy the train also had problems sticking to the schedule (ice on the tracks as well).

Recently, Chicago plans on spending between 2.8 billion dollars and 4 billion dollars to get a 9.5 mile stretch of rail with less than 30 stations (294 to 421 million dollars per mile). Within this past year, Dallas completed the Green Line light rail line which was 28 miles long with 20 stations -- at a cost of $1.8 billion (64 million dollars per mile, $64,285,714), and it isn't done yet; there's another few miles to go and more expense to come.


Please look up the topic of PRT (Public Rapid Transit, aka Public Rapid Transport), which uses small auto-taxis that run on lightweight tracks and are propelled along by magnetic forces --so PRT is unaffected by the weather: ice, snow, sleet, hail, nothing slows down the PRT; try that with a bus or a train (hint: not gonna happen). All stations are off-line, meaning that a side track leads to the station, so passengers stopping at a station never cause a slow-down or stopping for passengers whose destination is farther along the track. Light rail can't do that.

PRT picks you up very close to where you live (some systems could even be modified to pick you up right at your house). And PRT takes you right to your destination. Stations are so light weight that they could be built right inside buildings like office towers, shopping malls, hotels, convention centers, etc.

The best part: PRT is cheaper to build than light rail, cheaper to build and maintain than roads even.

Look up more info at http://vectusprt.com/ (need high speed internet for that site, though)
... and http://www.cities21.org/cms/
... and http://greatergreaterwashington.org/tag/PRT/
... and http://www.cprt.org/CPRT/Home.html
... also right here in Texas, http://www.acprt.org/

With the PRT system at Heathrow Airport proving a great success and the PRT system in Masdar City, UAE, nearing completion of its testing phase it is high time that the US took a more serious look at PRT. While both these systems are conceptually easy to construct, they differ from the Vectus and Taxi2000/SkyWeb systems that I prefer in that their vehicles run on rubber tires and thus are going to be affected by inclement weather just as an automobile would be: (just a couple of examples...)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rhZCyQ3emQg and http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5KgMBYOywbc&feature=related

Check out my DU comments on the subject:
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=398&topic_id=782&mesg_id=807
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=398&topic_id=782&mesg_id=789
http://journals.democraticunderground.com/txlibdem/9
... just to name a few.

PRT is cheaper than roads, highways, freeways, buses, and light rail. High Speed Rail should be the technology of choice for city-to-city travel and PRT the choice for intra-city travel.

[nxylas]

4. Depends how you define "proving a great success"

The test phase seems to be going OK, but it was supposed to be fully operational six months ago. But then, the pod people have always been a little...hazy about the difference between the words "experimental" and "operational", talking about PRT as if there are working examples of it all over the world, whereas in reality it has yet to proceed beyond the test phase, apart from the one example in Morgantown. You yourself posted a link to news footage of a "working demonstration" that turned out to be a guy standing beside a static vehicle.

[txlibdem]

5. As usual, the light rail lobby loves to mince words, but never ever mentions profitability

That's because light rail is never profitable. Ever. It always needs tax payer subsidies to survive. That is a clear sign of a losing technology.

One more nasty little fact about light rail: the only people who make money on light rail are the land speculators who always seem to 'accidentally" manage to own commercial land very near to the proposed light rail stations. How convenient! If you have ever heard of light rail stations being moved from one locale to another... now you know why. Cha-Ching! Worthless land they purchased for $5 grand is now worth a million (or millions) with apartment buildings, shopping malls, office complexes, etc.

With that much ill-gotten kick-back money at stake you just can't trust light rail supporters to tell the truth or to even talk with sanity about PRT or light rail. You see, all those kick-backs go away as soon as PRT comes on the scene. Why? Because there are stations everywhere, not just a dozen places here and there. You can't bribe your way into a prime location with PRT. PRT is focused on equal access to all areas for every person at all times of the day and night.

PRT operated 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. You'll never get that with buses or light rail.

Poster said, "You yourself posted a link to news footage of a "working demonstration" that turned out to be a guy standing beside a static vehicle."
-- you're going to have to give a link for that.

Poster said, "talking about PRT as if there are working examples of it all over the world, whereas in reality it has yet to proceed beyond the test phase, apart from the one example in Morgantown."
-- false. False. False. Heathrow airport PRT is operational. Fly there and you can see for yourself.

Poster said, "hazy about the difference between the words "experimental" and "operational""
-- that statement is confused about the difference between a contracted and well defined set of testing goals that have to be met in order to get paid according to the contract with something else, it would seem. No new system gets put into operation at an airport without a testing phase. The PRT at Heathrow is taking public passengers but may still be in testing phase for a time.
-- Here's the lie to that statement: "On Sunday, November 28th, the Masdar PRT system opened to the public." from
http://www.prtconsulting.com/blog/index.php/tag/heathrow/

Why so much testing?"

Heathrow - often referred to as the world's busiest airport as it handles flights to over 180 destinations in more than 90 countries - suffered a PR disaster when its newest building, Terminal 5, opened in March 2008 and the new baggage-handling system malfunctioned in a big way, so you can be assured that this new personal rapid transport/PRT service will be tested to the max."

Here's the link.

Some would have you believe that their ancient technology is the only game in town. Guess what? They're not only wrong they're dangerously wrong, stupendously wrong, and willfully wrong. Light rail is 19th century. Buses are 20th century. PRT is for the 21st century and beyond.

[Lydia Leftcoast]

6. Cars are 19th century

Feet are thousands of centuries B.C.