JFK Airtrain: Good News, Bad News, Good News and Bad News

James Robinson wrote:

Alex Rodriguez wrote:

says...

braking,

I'm pretty sure only Mercedes has this on limited models. Not something
that is common.


Electronic control of the hydraulic braking system is fairly common. A
number of European manufacturers use it as part of traction control,
where the brakes are applied to slipping wheels, and of course for ABS.
These include companies like VW/Audi, Volvo, BMW, and others.

And then there is blended regenerative braking in the likes of
Toyota Prius and other hybrids.

And how many people will that be? It won't likely be retrofitable to
older cars, so the basic system will have to be supported by new car
buyers. If someone drives an F-150 pickup in Leadville, Colorado, and
no ITS equipped roads are within 1,000 miles, they won't see any need to
opt for the system on their vehicle. That leaves only a few people that
both have the money to buy new, live in an area with a network of
equipped roads, and need the vehicle to regularly drive on the roads
while they are congested. The mass-production is getting pretty small.

People then at least have the choice of what they are willing
to spend unlike taxes that they are forced to pay.

You are advocating installing it in vehicles to lower the unit cost,
whether a purchaser wants it or not. How is that choice? I also have
little choice on spending my transpiration dollar on anything but cars
these days. I certainly don't recall voting for the Big Dig, yet I am
paying for it. There isn't a public transportation system available
that could be called competition. There simply is no choice now, nor
would there be with ITS.

We don't even have an effective way to warn drivers of severe
traffic delays or road closures due to accidents. Drivers don't find out
until they approach the end of a traffic jam. Forget the "magnets" in
cars you're talking about here. Even a rubber tube in the road to
count cars every few miles combined with live data feeds (i.e. cars/minute)
would give a better indication of whether traffic is moving and how fast,
and we're not even close, and that's just 1980's technology. A
$100 palm pilot in a sealed case every couple of miles would be
computational overkill for this kind of work.

Instead of telemetry, cars are more likely to have toll payment
ransponders, and that would be good enough to count cars,
and voluntary. You don't have to count all the cars, just be able
to estimate how fast the cars that you *can* count are going.

Forget these pie-in-the-sky technologies as cures to traffic jams when
we don't even implement data collection and forcasting systems we've
had the technology for more than 20 years. Some of this "advanced"
ITS is high school science fair stuff.

"James Robinson" wrote in message
...
Jack May wrote:

Since transit use is declining typically about 10% to 15% per decade
all over the world (as expected for a technology at the end of its
life), the space inefficiency will just get worse.

Did you make that factoid up?

Transit ridership in the US is the highest it's been for the last 40
years. I also checked the statistics in France and the UK to see what
has been going on there, and the long term trends are up in both
countries.
Rail transit ridership in Europe, in particular, has significantly
increased, and prompted the construction of about a dozen light rail or
VAL lines in France, plus a number in the UK, with an additional 25 or
so planned.


note the use of "per decade", when the trends you're talking about are
over the past few years. We'll have to wait another generation before we
revisit these trends over decades. If you talk about the 1950's vs. the
1980's, it's a whole different conversation.

Are we at a turning point since, say, 1998, or 2001? It's a very hard
argument to make statistically without looking at other trends, like
long term changes in suburbanization, urban renewal, etc.

Steve Lackey wrote:

"James Robinson" wrote in message
...
Jack May wrote:

Since transit use is declining typically about 10% to 15% per decade
all over the world (as expected for a technology at the end of its
life), the space inefficiency will just get worse.

Did you make that factoid up?

Transit ridership in the US is the highest it's been for the last 40
years. I also checked the statistics in France and the UK to see what
has been going on there, and the long term trends are up in both
countries.
Rail transit ridership in Europe, in particular, has significantly
increased, and prompted the construction of about a dozen light rail or
VAL lines in France, plus a number in the UK, with an additional 25 or
so planned.


note the use of "per decade", when the trends you're talking about are
over the past few years. We'll have to wait another generation before we
revisit these trends over decades. If you talk about the 1950's vs. the
1980's, it's a whole different conversation.

Actually it isn't. The trend has been up since about 1970.

Are we at a turning point since, say, 1998, or 2001? It's a very hard
argument to make statistically without looking at other trends, like
long term changes in suburbanization, urban renewal, etc.

See above.

James Robinson wrote:

That doesn't support what you said. The link is to market share, not
absolute ridership. In fact, ridership is increasing, just not at the
same rate as the overall market, hence a drop in market share. In
increase in overall ridership does not indicate a "technology at the end
of its life." Instead it indicates a technology that has a strong role
to play in the specific applications where it works well.

That's a ridiculously weak argument for expansion. "They're useful in some
situations, it's a niche technology, it's OK that overall market share is
declining 10% per decade" is a loser argument, but transit advocates
(especially trolley fans, since LRT systems have absolutely the lowest
potential for market share growth outside of cities that were built
specifically for light rail) refuse to come up with a better one.
It makes me sad.

Absolute numbers are useful, in spite of your denials. If the absolute
numbers were dropping I would agree with your view. Instead, they are
rising, particularly in mature cities, where you would expect ridership
to have leveled off years ago.

IOW your support for transit expansion hangs by a thread. Ridership did
level off years ago and is only now returning to 1960s numbers (which were
not particularly stratosheric to begin with). And for whatever reason
transit use might begin dropping absolute terms again, perhaps with a
recession. Would you then agree with the view that it should be scrapped?
You seem to say so above. Still no sign of a coordinated effort by transit
users to get new lines built...

In Cyrus Afzali writes:

Uhhhh, wrong. Idlewild, which was the airport's first name, was
constructed in 1948, with just one terminal on 1,000 acres of land.
Today, it has nine and covers 5,000 acres.

Likewise, Newark Intl. was also constructed in 1948.

The latter, of course, explains why NYC's Mayor LaGuardia (1934-1945) got
really, really, ****ed when his plane landed in Newark.

--
__________________________________________________ ___
Knowledge may be power, but communications is the key

[to foil spammers, my address has been double rot-13 encoded]

"danny burstein" wrote in message
...
In Cyrus Afzali
writes:
Likewise, Newark Intl. was also constructed in 1948.

The latter, of course, explains why NYC's Mayor LaGuardia (1934-1945) got
really, really, ****ed when his plane landed in Newark.

Newark Airport was in existance prior to 1948. We have pictures in our
family album of some one of our relatives boarding a Ford Trimotor at
Newark. I remember going there in the late 30's/early 40's to pick up my
cousin.
I went to work for EAL in 1948 and Newark was well established at that time.
Bob

__________________________________________________ ___

Robert Browne wrote:

"danny burstein" wrote in message
...

In Cyrus Afzali

writes:

Likewise, Newark Intl. was also constructed in 1948.

The latter, of course, explains why NYC's Mayor LaGuardia (1934-1945) got
really, really, ****ed when his plane landed in Newark.


Newark Airport was in existance prior to 1948. We have pictures in our
family album of some one of our relatives boarding a Ford Trimotor at
Newark. I remember going there in the late 30's/early 40's to pick up my
cousin.
I went to work for EAL in 1948 and Newark was well established at that time.
Bob

Officially, 1928, according to
http://www.panynj.gov/aviation/ehisfram.htm

On Sat, 20 Mar 2004 17:57:12 GMT, Cyrus Afzali
wrote:

Uhhhh, wrong. Idlewild, which was the airport's first name, was
constructed in 1948, with just one terminal on 1,000 acres of land.
Today, it has nine and covers 5,000 acres.

Likewise, Newark Intl. was also constructed in 1948.

Not so.

Newark airport was opened in 1928. I live in Jersey City NJ and even
as a child in the 1930s I recall being taken there to watch the planes
land and take off. WAere it not raing at the moment, I could be
seeing, out my window, the late evening traffic holding pattern that
cicles up from the south

As for biggest and busiest, it's was Newark for a long while before
that statistic moved to Chicago, then Atlamta, etc.

Here's just one itrem I googled.

"Newark Airport was the first major airport in the New York area: it
opened on October 1, 1928, occupying an area of reclaimed marshland.
Newark was the busiest airport in the world until LaGuardia Airport
opened several years later, dividing New York's air traffic and
allowing Midway International Airport to take the lead"

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Newark_...tional_Airport

and here's the official web site for Newarl Airport

http://www.panynj.gov/aviation/ewrframe.HTM


CaribeJoe - Moderator
Non-commercial My Caribbean.Info Forums
Free Caribbean Destination Directories
Free advice from Travel Writers
Post your own trip reports and photos
Hotel and Air Deals and Rough Guide Reports
http://www,mycaribbean.info

Robert Browne wrote:

"danny burstein" wrote in message
...
In Cyrus Afzali
writes:
Likewise, Newark Intl. was also constructed in 1948.

The latter, of course, explains why NYC's Mayor LaGuardia (1934-1945)
got
really, really, ****ed when his plane landed in Newark.

Newark Airport was in existance prior to 1948. We have pictures in our
family album of some one of our relatives boarding a Ford Trimotor at
Newark. I remember going there in the late 30's/early 40's to pick up my
cousin.
I went to work for EAL in 1948 and Newark was well established at that
time.


I've got a 1932 _National Geographic_ with several air travel articles.
Newark is prominently featured - it was a large airport even back then....

--
Best
Greg