Holding pattern

Yes, this site isn't updated all that much. No, it is not shutting down. A.G., who contributed to this site in its salad days, will be coming back from Europe in about two weeks. Posting will resume its normal level at that point.

Thank you and happy trails.

Happy Birthday, NYC Subway!

1904-2004, and many more!

Also, check out this NPR audio series on the history of the subway.

Rochester-Toronto Ferry Bids Adieu

The Rochester-Toronto seems to have made another new speed record - this time for shorted operating time for a new ferry.

Courtesy of one of our readers, I recently found out that the Rochester-Toronto Ferry, which accounts for at least 50% of our google search hits, shut down in September due to serious financial troubles. It was not the most loved of projects, as evidenced by a recent article in the Syracuse Post-Standard, which begins:

There's a five-story-high floating monument to borrowed pork-barrel spending, and it sits on Rochester's shoreline of Lake Ontario.

Evidently, the ferry was paid for with major grants from and bonds covered by the state of New York. The ferry stopped running on September 8 with a debt of almost $1.7 million dollars. A judge then impounded the boat in late September due to unpaid fuel bills. However, a plan is in the works to get the boat back operational, as CATS, the organization that runs the ferry, has found new investors and is putting together a new operating plan.

Anyone want to make bets on how long before they abandon the whole project and move the $42.5 million ferry to a route that actually has passengers?

Public service announcements we didn't think we'd have to make, part XVIII

If your hearing aid drops on to the tracks in the subway, don't jump on the tracks to recover it, since you won't be able to hear an oncoming train as it flattens you.

Tunnel reclamation

I think turning an old subway tunnel into a go-kart track is just about as brilliant as you can get. Assuming it isn't leaky or otherwise dangerous, all you need to do is pave over the tracks, and you have one heck of a course.

Atlantic Avenue Tunnel anyone?

Thinking about sprawl

It may seem like a basic observation, but sometimes we need to be reminded that your transportation needs are shaped by where you start and end your journey. If you live above the store in which you work, there is no need to build an heavy rail subway to get you to work. Conversely, if you live on an acre of land in a housing development surrounding by other housing developments and you work in an office park surrounded by other office parks, some highways may be in order.

But do we really understand how our fellow citizens live? I ask because of two conversations I had in the past week that led me to question whether it's even possible to get one segment of the population to understand another.

The first conversation took place with a co-worker, who, upon finding out that I grew up near the middle of a very large city, asked me how kids can grow up in such an environment. "You have backyards, we have parks," I said. I rode a bike, played sports (albiet badly) and did what any other American kid raised in the last 50 years did growing up, minus spending an hour or more per day in the back of the family car. I would have been more amazed that the possibility of growing up in an apartment building needed an explination, but I get asked similar questions fairly often.

The second conversation took place a few days later, with friends from back home. Two of them had never learned to drive since driving is such a useless skill in New York and they went to NYU. One of them asked the rhetorical question, "How do people live in the suburbs? It's all driving, driving and more driving, to get even the simplest thing. And what about kids? Could you imagine having to beg for a ride every time you wanted to see your friends?"

This is what we've become.

Stupidtastic!

Yet another dumb PRT demonstration system, this time in New Jersey.

LFTTR on PRT:

Why PRT Will Ultimately Fail

$4 Million for PRT

State-funded Personal Rapid Transit

Playing the Field

The Roosevelt Island tram

It came as quite a surprise to me that people around the world call trolleys or light rail "trams." To me, a tram cabin that runs on overhead cables. In New York, we have the only commuter tram in North America, which runs from Roosevelt Island in the East River to Manhattan.

Some info from a great website on the tram:

"The Roosevelt Island Tramway was born in 1976 as a means to shuttle residents to and from Manhattan. It was born due to resident frustration with the New York City Transit Authority, who had made unsuccessful plans to provide subway service from Roosevelt Island to Manhattan and Queens. Over twenty years later, the Tram has serviced over 20 million passengers and provided passengers with a breathtaking view of New York as they are quickly shuttled between Roosevelt Island and Manhattan."

Even more amazing is the fact that people used to access the island via an elevator in the middle of the Queensboro Bridge, which goes above the island from Manhattan to Queens. Wouldn't that jam up traffic?

If you click on the photo, you'll get a much larger verson of the above picture, with a wider frame that includes the bridge. It's now the background image for my computer's desktop.

The best, but with a jab

My local bus from back home has won a spot the Village Voice Best of New York guide for "Best bus line from Loserville":

The M15 coasts along First Avenue from lower Manhattan to East Harlem, picking up all sorts of degenerates, crackheads, drunks, and freaks. They never make it uptown; most of them get off at Bellevue over on 27th Street, or some other meeting spot for crazies. Don't be surprised if you witness a girl fight and an itchy dude without underwear who's changing his pants en route—that's part of the trek. At $2 a ride, it beats those red double-decker tourist buses any day.

For you out-of-towners, Bellevue is an insane asylum along the route.

Sheik transport

Light rail in Dubai

Welcome to Warsaw

I wonder why all those Eastern European subways have nearly-identical rolling stock...

De-tox

When I visited London earlier this year, I marvelled at the prolific tagger "Tox" whose mark appeared multiple times at nearly every station in the Underground system. I had never seen anything like it before - the New York subway still has some graffiti in tunnels, but nobody had the scope of Tox.

Well, they caught him, and he appears to be in big, big trouble.

Although the press release calls him a disturbed sociopath, I bet he has a lot of useful information about security vulnerabilities in the tube system. Given that he spent so much time in so many off-limits ares of the system, Tox may be of use in preventing terrorists from having the access he had.

Upside-down logic

Despite evidence to the contrary (half the "good service" designations on any given day being a prime example), Transport for London has shown that it has no sense of humor. Apparently, there's some sort of rule against making Underground map parodies without asking for permission beforehand. Despite a long list of funny maps going back for years, TfL hasn't decided to use this strange copyright power until now, when it threatened the creator of the South London tube map parody.

What they get out of this, I don't know, but I think it will backfire, with TfL apologizing and getting on with the business of running an extensive but creaky transportation network.

Side note: The best station on the South London tube map has to be "Leg of Mutton" on the bizarro DLR, just west of Putney. Just imagine the ads for new luxury apartments advertising easy access to the Leg of Mutton station...

The Man in Seat 61

I've been meaning to provide a "shout out" to Mark Smith, better known as The Man in Seat 61. His site, at www.seat61.com, provides information on traveling by train to just about every corner of the earth. I can't tell you the number of times he has unknowingly planned entire trips for me, simply by having already laid out everything you need to do on his site. So next time you're looking to travel Europe by train (or want to learn more about the real Orient Express), check out the site.