This week’s episode of NOW on PBS provided some great insights onto the reasons why the stimulus package won’t go the right way for transit. The show focused mostly on the politics of transportation in North Carolina, including the successful push of Charlotte’s Republican mayor to build their new Lynx light rail line. One of my favorite parts was the commentary that David King, head of the Research Triangle’s Regional Transit Service, offered on the frustrations of the last eight years:
“I do not believe the Bush Administration believed in the growth-shaping characteristics of transit. So they were not looking forward; they were looking back.”
Watch the full episode below:
This episode was part of PBS’ series on infrastructure problems in the United States, Blueprint America. One of the first shows in the series, Driven to Despair, did an excellent job showing the problems of and possible solutions to auto-dependency (something we’ve discussed at length in my Cities and Transporation Systems class at UPenn) in the Southern California communities of Hemet, San Diego, Los Angeles, and Pasadena.
Heavy machinery was blocking the path between Trotter and Beardsley this morning, presumably working on Trotter’s clogged main drain. I spent only enough time near the worksite to see a deep trench and hear a worker ask “wait, is this a storm drain or a sewer?”
Swarthmore Scriptural Reasoning Group (Courtesy of Stuart Watson, Swarthmore College)
The Scriptural Reasoning group I participated in last semester was featured in the Swarthmore College Bulletin. Scriptural Reasoning, text studies and dialogues with Christians, Jews, and Muslims, has been a great opportunity for me. In contrast to the living room dialogues I did in high school (which were also great), it seeks to engage the differences in interpretations between the three faiths. Learning about how the other Abrahamic faiths view figures such as Jonah and Noah is really illuminating. I’m looking forward to our first session of this semester, for which the Christian text is the Sermon on the Mount, this Sunday.
Virgin America will begin flights to and from John Wayne on April 30th, occupying the slots that Aloha Airlines opened up when they ceased operations last year. I would have preferred an airline that flies to Philly; the Register reports that AirTran had a spot on the waiting list ahead of Virgin America, but was noncommital. Oh well. It will still be nice to be able to try Virgin America without driving to LAX.
My departure out of of John Wayne in the predawn hours of Saturday made me even angrier at the TSA than I’m used to getting. The couple in front of accidentally messed up their boarding passes, but the TSA personnel needlessly made a huge fiasco out of it at two different stages of the checkpoint.
An agent (I use agent instead of the TSA’s preferred Transportation Security Officer because these agents are not actually sworn peace officers) at the entrance to the screening area told the woman that she had to go back to the ticket counters to get a boarding pass for her flight from Orange County to Atlanta. She only had a boarding pass from Atlanta to Washington, D.C., while the man carried one for the Orange County to Atlanta leg. I’m sure it happens everyday that people leave one or more of their set of boarding passes at the ticket counters. In this case, it was a waste of time for the woman to have to go back and retrieve the additional boarding passes when it was abundantly clear that the couple were traveling on a legitimate itinerary. It makes air travel no safer to waste peoples’ time in making them obtain duplicate information.
The man continued through the lines to the metal detector. Upon passing through, the agent inspecting boarding passes said “This isn’t your name, is it? Danielle?” It turned out that he had been carrying his wife’s boarding pass for the first segment of their trip. The fact that he had been allowed to proceed to the metal detector of course triggered a security breach. One of the agents announced “Seven-November-One, wait no, Seven-November-Two !”, which presumably was a top-secret Homeland Security code for “one of our agents screwed up and read ‘Daniel’ instead of ‘Danielle’ on a boarding pass, and now it’s time for us to hold all these other passengers up and fire the agent at the front of the line.” Whatever purpose the top-secret code had was eliminated as the agent sitting at the X-Ray, whom I will call Agent Crassa, fully explained the details and consequences of the security breach. Two of the three TSA agents working the X-Ray machine I was at then had to escort the man back out of security. Various passengers commented on how asinine it was for him to be escorted out of security, but we were reprimanded and informed that “It was for our own safety.” It makes air travel no safer to use needless “codes” or to require multiple agents to their stations and escort someone who is clearly not a threat back to the end of the line.
While I was waiting in line for the metal detector, one of the agents announced that they would be scanning all electronics, so we would need to remove all of our electronics from carry-on baggage to pass it through… Read the rest
Despite their environmental harms, I tend to think airports are a pretty good idea. The Great Park is okay, but building a small airport at the former MCAS El Toro for general aviation traffic would have been preferable and would have reduced the number of runway incursions at John Wayne. Administrators at John Wayne tend to blame the small planes but ignore the larger structural problem of combining heavy commercial and general aviation traffic at a tiny airport. Instead of building a bunch of soccer fields and a giant balloon, it would have made sense to move general aviation traffic to El Toro, safely out of the way of the commercial flights at John Wayne. Small recreational aircraft and charter planes wouldn’t have to deal with the constant “Caution wake turbulence” advisories from John Wayne Tower, and they would be able to clear the foothills that El Toro airport opponents claimed would doom any takeoffs. The larger planes at John Wayne would have been safer without all the runway incursions.
While I tend to argue in favor of additional runway capacity, I do have to appreciate some of the tactics being used against Heathrow’s proposed third runway. One of the more creative ones:
Greenpeace has quietly bought a field close to the site of the third runway, right in the middle of what would be the expanded airport.
The plan is to parcel it up into tiny squares, and sell them online to people across the world.
“The airport will have to buy the land back from Eskimos and people living on remote islands,” said one Greenpeace activist. [BBC]
Earlier this week, two suspects robbed a bank in Media and tried to escape on public transportation. They boarded Route 101, the trolley I often take from the Springfield Mall near Swarthmore to either Media or 69th Street. From The Philadelphia Inquirer:
Yesterday, after the Sovereign Bank branch at Providence Road and Baltimore Pike in Media was robbed, the two suspects were spotted climbing on board the Route 101 trolley…
News of the robbery went out on the police radio and officers were stationed at every stop along the trolley route, said SEPTA spokeswoman Jerri Williams.
The Santa Ana Freeway – Will LaHood work for mass transit alternatives or expansion and induced demand?
I was well aware that President-elect Obama wouldn’t be able to live up to the high expectations that many people, including myself, had of him. This week, however, has been a particularly rough one. Monday’s announcement of his “Green Team” was lacking a Transportation Secretary. As Streetsblog reports,
“Obama still hasn’t made the transportation – land use – climate connection,” Petra Todorovich, director of Regional Plan Association’s America 2050 program said. “It’s clear he’s thinking about these things in separate categories.”
When he did fill the spot, public transportation and livable streets advocates were not particularly pleased. Most sources report LaHood to be pretty cozy with the highway lobby. It’s disappointing to have such a valuable spot in the cabinet go to a politician who is not very progressive. Again, from the Streetsblog report:
“This sends the message that the transportation secretary is a throw-away political appointment who doesn’t matter,’ said a city transportation official who, like others, asked to remain anonymous to preserve their relationship with the U.S. DOT. “This is the slot for the token Republican. It’s the bottom of the barrel. A bone you can throw.”
And to top it all off, it comes out that Rick Warren will be given the honor of giving the inauguration’s invocation. I apologize on behalf of Orange County, but at least the conversations behind the decision have been made public.
I’m unhappy that my tax dollars are going to fund this vomit-inducing video. I’m even more unhappy that Barney Laura decided not to include my favorite ornament in the decorations. Apparently the sentiment that “America cannot regain its moral leadership in the world if America cannot hold its leaders accountable for their actions at home” is not patriotic enough for “A Red, White, and Blue Christmas.”
The American Commerce Center Tower, which will soar above the recently completed Comcast Center in Center City, Philadelphia, passed its last zoning test last week. When completed, the skyscraper will be the third tallest building in the United States. It’s great that the developer is stressing SEPTA and AMTRAK accessibility and seeking LEED Gold Certification. If construction goes as scheduled, the tower should be completed in 2012, the same year as the Cira Center South project. It’s exciting that Philadelphia is becoming quite a hub of architecture.
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