What's it gonna take?

On Mon, 17 Sep 2007 10:20:19 -0500, "Gig 601XL Builder"
wrDOTgiaconaATsuddenlink.net wrote:

Name me one passenger airline that's main hub isn't co-located with a high
passenger target location.

Depending on your definition of 'high', Charlotte, NC (USAirways) is
probably the most disproportionate hub size to city size.

-aw

On Sep 12, 9:13 am, Gene Seibel wrote:
St Louis bought out 3000 homes and built a billion dollar runway. TWA
folded, American moved out, and it sits unused right here in the
middle of the country. Seems it could take some pressure off the
busier hubs. Went to Operation Rain Check and the controllers begged
us to use their services to justify their existance.

Problem is, they financed that boondoggle with revenue
bonds, meaning they had to increase gate rental rates
and other fees, so anybody who opens a new hub in
STL gets to pay for the new gold-plated runway.
Because they bought out so much densely populated
real estate and relocated roads, that one patch of
concrete, by itself, cost a fourth as much as the entire
new monster Denver airport, with all its runways,
terminals, highways, and overpriced baggage
mangling system. And the new STL runway is not a
particularly efficient layout, with extraordinarily
long taxi distances to the terminal.

TWA couldn't afford to pay the cost of the new
runway, and American decided they didn't want to.

STL is like a car that's being offered by
the local politicians as: "For sale -- take over
payments". If the guy who's selling it
overpaid for a lemon car, nobody's
going to want to take over those
payments.

Just to throw some fuel on the fi

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/20724859

"Jay Honeck" wrote:

...to fix the airlines?

High speed rail.

The fact is, airline travel is not the answer for _mass_ transportation.
That is why efficiency (hub and spokes) has collided fatally with practical
limits (airport capacity and weather).

The trouble is, we have been too short-sighted for too long to correct the
situation. The cost to create the infrastructure to support HSR would make
even a congressman blanche. So we are stuck with automobiles, which are
inneficient, and airlines, which are unreliable.

Fix the airlines? Not without building lots more hubs, perhaps connected by
rail. Who's going to pay for that, let alone get it past the NIMBYs?

--
Dan
T-182T at BFM

"Dan Luke" wrote in message
...

"Jay Honeck" wrote:

...to fix the airlines?

High speed rail.

If you think the unions helped crap out the airlines, you should dig into
how they absolutely trashed the railroads.


The fact is, airline travel is not the answer for _mass_ transportation.
That is why efficiency (hub and spokes) has collided fatally with
practical limits (airport capacity and weather).

The trouble is, we have been too short-sighted for too long to correct the
situation. The cost to create the infrastructure to support HSR would
make even a congressman blanche.

Congresscritters NEVER blanche when it comes to spedning other peoples
money.

So we are stuck with automobiles, which are inneficient, and airlines,
which are unreliable.

Really?

Matt Barrow writes:

If you think the unions helped crap out the airlines, you should dig into
how they absolutely trashed the railroads.

But high-speed rail is a reality in Europe.

When France put its first high-speed trains into service--more than a
quarter-century ago--air traffic between Paris and Lyons (the cities served by
the first line) almost instantly diminished by half. The air traffic never
recovered. Today, for trips of 1000 km or less, high-speed trains are faster
than air travel, and they are cheaper, more efficient, and more
environmentally friendly as well.

Mxsmanic wrote:
Matt Barrow writes:

If you think the unions helped crap out the airlines, you should dig
into how they absolutely trashed the railroads.

But high-speed rail is a reality in Europe.

When France put its first high-speed trains into service--more than a
quarter-century ago--air traffic between Paris and Lyons (the cities
served by the first line) almost instantly diminished by half. The
air traffic never recovered. Today, for trips of 1000 km or less,
high-speed trains are faster than air travel, and they are cheaper,
more efficient, and more environmentally friendly as well.

The USA isn't France. In 2005 the average airline passenger trip length was
866 miles. That's around 1393.7 km. So our average trip length is longer
than your faster cheaper target.

Gig 601XL Builder writes:

The USA isn't France. In 2005 the average airline passenger trip length was
866 miles. That's around 1393.7 km. So our average trip length is longer
than your faster cheaper target.

The principle revolves around the enormous extra time required to take the
plane. Trains go from city center to city center, and so about the only time
you spend on a train trip is time actually riding on the train. Airplanes, on
the other hand, have a built-in delay of two hours or so at both ends of the
trip, irrespective of time in the air. So a train trip that requires four
hours or less always wins over a plane trip, no matter what the distance
involved.

In general, I find that the threshold seems to be around 1000 km, which is a
bit under four hours at typical high-speed-rail speeds. If you run the trains
faster, this threshold rises; if you run them slower (for example at U.S.
speeds), it shrinks until it's no longer worth discussion.

A high-speed-train could connect Los Angeles and San Diego in about 40
minutes. This beats the 4 hours of plane travel by a handsome margin. It
doesn't matter whether it's the U.S. or Europe, the numbers work the same way.
The U.S. resists such ideas for reasons unconnected with the actual efficiency
and travel time.

Wolfgang Schwanke writes:

The breakeven point is probably closer to 500.

Not for high-speed trains. I'd say it's actually a bit more than 1000 km now.

"Wolfgang Schwanke" wrote in message
...
Mxsmanic wrote in
:

Wolfgang Schwanke writes:

The breakeven point is probably closer to 500.

Not for high-speed trains. I'd say it's actually a bit more than 1000
km now.

YMMV


I can assure you, his milage always varies.