• Just how is the U.S. “No-Fly” list (which has nearly doubled in size since Christmas) created? The AP investigates. (AP)
• In other airline news, the TSA’s new fines for keeping passengers on the runway for more than three hours have brought about a classic unintended consequence: Continental is saying it will cancel flights rather than risk the fines, meaning even more problems for travelers. (AP)
• Israel and Syria finally agree on something: Both countries decidedly want their own nuclear power. (JTA)
• Slate wants you! Show off your brilliant ideas for creating a cheaper, more energy-efficient human existence by participating in “The Efficient Life” contest. (Slate)
• Seattle’s Community Transit, which serves most of the city’s northern suburbs, is shutting down completely on Sundays, after a vote by the Community Transit Board. So what will happen to people who need to get to work that day? (Seattle Transit Blog)
• High speed rail promotes social cohesion? A European study on locations with accessibility may offer key insights into the American HSR network’s likelihood of success. (Brookings Institute)
• Nord Stream engineers hit a treasure trove of European History: A 1,000 year old Viking vessel is found, but there are no plans to raise it, as well as a number of other ships. (Der Spiegel)
• The growing pains of Spain’s solar industry are exemplified in the town of Puertollano. (New York Times)
• Communities around the country are pulling out all the stops to land Google’s fiber optic network. In particular, Greenville, South Carolina is feeling lucky. (LA Times)
March 10th, 2010 at 11:34 am
While social cohesion is likely to become strengthened by HSR in Europe, I doubt the potential of the US to strengthen social cohesion with HSR. We as a nation are too spread out, both geographically but also in our interests. It is much more likely that a person living in Paris has social connections to places that are connected by HSR.
Just for example, I am from California, but live in Idaho, and do business in Salt Lake City, Boston, and Miami. Having a HSR connection to San Francisco or LA or San Diego is just as useless to me as having a local airport with direct connections to Somalia.
I know there are people in California with social connections within California…but the likelihood of having most of your important social connections in California has to be much lower than a Frenchman living in Paris having most of his social connections within France. There are ethnic barriers within European geography that make it this way…we don’t have much in terms of geographic ethnic barriers.
March 10th, 2010 at 12:31 pm
Community Transit is in Everett WA, about 30 miles north of Seattle. Seattle is home to Metro Transit.
March 10th, 2010 at 2:50 pm
I’m not sure why having airlines cancel flights is an unintended consequence. The idea is to prevent passengers from being stranded out on the runway for hours. The law says if you do this, we will fine you. So the airlines don’t want to do it anymore. What are their options, then? Not to schedule flights during thunderstorms? Launch planes into unsafe conditions? (Not that they could do that unilaterally anyway…) It’s not like they can even implement a policy to automatically return to the gate after a certain period of time, since the gate may have since become occupied by another plane and they can’t drive around the tarmac unilaterally either. Maybe they could band together with the FAA and create some rules about automatically returning planes to gates after too long on the runway, but I can’t imagine what the complications would be.
As a traveler, I’d MUCH rather hear ahead of time that the plane has been canceled than board and then sit in uncomfortable anxiety for hours on some remote corner of the runway. That way I can either 1) seek alternate transportation, 2) relax inside the terminal with plenty of clean bathrooms, food, water, room, etc., 3) other. If I’m in the plane, I have no options other than suffering.
March 10th, 2010 at 7:14 pm
France has remarkably little social cohesion. Paris is insular, the provinces are poor, and your social status in adulthood is determined largely by your parents’ social status when you were born.
March 13th, 2010 at 11:11 pm
Exactly as Josh says. I’ve been stranded on flights twice (once for a ridiculous 3 hours in Colorado Springs, and once for an hour in Boston). In both cases, the plane sat on the runway while the people in charge of the flight went back and forth about whether to take off, or whether to let us back into the terminal.
The Boston flight ended up being canceled anyways. In both cases, I would’ve been much happier waiting in the terminal with food, water, a bathroom (and in the case of Colorado, free wifi).