MODERN… Well the Interstate Highways are 1950’s style transportation as well, are they MODERN? A group called Americans for Modern Transportation wants to be you know, MODERN, by advocating for longer pup truck trailers, destroying the usefulness of the existing intermodal car fleet and of course contributing nothing extra in taxes. Perhaps modern is overused, instead think about this reality of our transportation system.
Typically, I make a 400 mile trip between sites, which sometimes can be on corporate plane downtime, which otherwise costs about $8000 per block hour for an 8 seater, making this trip to be $1000 each way if it wasn’t downtime. I am afraid a lot of the legislature lives this reality as the context to transportation. A large group of the US lives near the few remaining hub airports and can book single stage travel on large jets to the other remaining hubs that “matter”, but the remaining network of regional jets is thinning out rapidly as fuel pushes higher and their access to slots at the large hubs will be a question once again as volume picks up.
However, recently the corporate plane was not available, so as a group of engineers we drove, as the going connecting airfare was $400 each way and it took about 5 hours for commercial aviation option versus 8 hours to drive with meal breaks. Even if we had woken at 3:30 AM to get on a 6 AM flight, we would not get to the site till 11 AM, meaning at least one night in a hotel would have been required.
By driving, the trip did in fact take all of the first productive day and was honestly exhausting as we dodged traffic in a large SUV. To get just one productive day of m
Great post, V. Payne, too bad so many of the ROW in/out of cities have been torn out and others now so narrowed and boxed as to make expansion near impossible. Also unfortunate is the attitude of freight railroad ownership/management toward innovative co existense with passenger operations. The heavy, long super freights running on “pipeline” systems of rail may not have a future as 3 D printing cuts into the massive shipments of goods worldwide. Granted, that is in the future but most other leading nations tend to think and plan for truly long term situations.
Unfortunately or not, the “hole in the market” you describe is beginning to be filled with “new” flights; I suppose with less capital required than by rail.
Good luck to this operator trying 8-seat business jets (also likely with $8000/hour block time costs) in an airline model, but I have seen several EAS operators in the last five years of cheaper fuel beg to get out of federal subsidy contracts early even when flying older RJs that seat 50 passengers. Once the RJ airframes hit the next cycle they will not be renewed in large number, making the connection timings worse through hubs.
Without a doubt a renewed single night out rail network is a complement to a daytime service, but it is certainly justifiable as true transportation, and would seem to serve the needs of travelers on intermediate distance intercity trips.
Don’t know the in’s and out’s of it. Just familiar with Hoeksema. A friend of my wife was his admin asst. for many years. Midwest started as Kimberly Clark’s airline based in Appleton. Used to ferry KC people to their locations in Atlanta and elsewhere. Gradually expanded, was split from KC, moved most operations to MKE. I figure he knows the arena very well.
Your idea of drop-off and on passenger pods is intriguing.
The drop-off portion is just the setout of a complete occupied car on a station track, where 15-30 passengers could have customized, comfortable route plan, which used to be common until the mid-60’s. This would be a way to get the most high-dollar revenue possible as actual intercity travel is pretty thin between most origin-destination city pairs.