Megan Smirti

NextGen and Airports Podcast

Megan — Fri, 29 May 2009 01:08:00 +0000

The Airfield and Airspace Capacity and Delay Committee of the Transportation Research Board just released their first Podcast today. The podcast is an interview of Chris Oswald, the Vice President
of Safety and Technical Operations at Airports Council International-North America. Chris discusses NextGen and airports – what do airports want, and what are the critical issues that remain. Chris as always is an excellent, informed speaker and the discussion is interesting and timely.

Listen to it here: http://trbav060.com/podcasts/ and let me know what you think!

Peak Riders "Free Ride" About to End, and Boy Are They Mad

Megan — Thu, 18 Sep 2008 16:52:03 +0000

Bay Area BART riders are up in arms about the potential of paying higher fares for riding at the peak. In this article in the Oakland Tribune, riders claim it’s “not fair” for them to have to pay more to ride BART during the peak, because they have to be at work at a certain time, and other similar arguments. What they fail to notice that in the absence of peak-hour price, there is another injustice going on at BART right now: riders in the off-peak are subsidizing their peak commute! It costs BART more to serve a customer in the peak than it does in the off-peak — more trains, more train operators — yet BART does not currently vary the fares based on time. This results in peak riders paying less than the burden they impose on the BART system, and non-peak riders paying more. Interesting how peak riders only speak up about this injustice when the possibility of them paying their fair share is floated by BART. BART should put out a transit economics 101 sheet and borrow heavily from many of Marty Wachs’ publications.

The article also mentions that incentives are better than penalties when it comes to congestion pricing. I have a paper published on this topic as it relates to road pricing in California,which you can access here.

Run ORD: 5K on 9L/27R

Megan — Mon, 15 Sep 2008 04:52:23 +0000

Attention all aviation enthusiast runners in the Chicago Area: You can run a 5K on the new ORD runway this weekend! What a neat opportunity! If any blog readers head out for the race, I’d really like to hear comments about it.

Details:

Athens Sister City Shuffle 5K on the Runway

Date:
Sunday, September 21, 2008

Time:
10:00 am Start

Location:
NEW Runway 9L/27R (Chicago O’Hare International Airport Parking Lot G)

Beneficiary:
“The Runners” Sculpture Project

Be a part of history! Race on O’Hare’s first new runway since 1971! The Athens Sister City Shuffle 5K on the Runway is being held Sunday, September 21st at O’Hare’s newest runway –9L/27R. Space is limited to the first 5,000 participants, so register early!

http://www.chicagoevents.com/event.cfm?eid=178

Thanks Anders for the news!

Turboprops in the Movies

Megan — Wed, 10 Sep 2008 00:39:51 +0000

A C130 Turboprop was used as the getaway aircraft in the movie The Dark Knight. See info and a picture here.

Maybe they were looking to save fuel while filming.

The Bright Spot of the Aviation Industry — Southwest Airlines

Megan — Thu, 24 Jul 2008 17:39:21 +0000

The ATA Smart Brief for the past couple of weeks has been nothing but doom and gloom. Losses, capacity cuts, aircraft decommissioning. What a pleasure to get today’s headline: Southwest Airlines reports 15% increase in second quarter profits. Southwest, their incredible hedging, their on-time performance, their amazing sometimes sub 20 minute turns, and flying only the 737, a low fuel consumption per passenger aircraft, truly serve them well.

Flying by BART

Megan — Wed, 23 Jul 2008 23:33:03 +0000

BART’s service tweaks coupled with gas prices and tourism seem to have paid off: BART to SFO ridership jumps 65%

As a loyal BART rider, I’m glad to see this sort of positive feedback to increased service. Hopefully they’ll consider extending rush hour service past 6pm for the late-night grad student crowd…

Stephen Colbert on GHG Emissions from Aircraft (and Carl Pope)

Megan — Wed, 23 Jul 2008 04:33:16 +0000

Carl Pope, the Sierra Club president, was on the Colbert Report on Monday July 21. Highlights include Stephen asking Carl if he flew from San Francisco, his home, to DC for the interview on a spotted owl, as well as Stephen thanking him at the end for emitting 2 tons of carbon just to visit.

He also had some choice words (or maybe accurate observations) about Berkeley Grad Students.

"End Gridlock on the Runway"

Megan — Tue, 22 Jul 2008 17:33:28 +0000

Today’s NY Times has an opinion piece by Secretary of Transportation Mary E. Peters. In this piece, Peters advocates strongly for peak-period or demand-based pricing and notes the inefficiencies presented by the current weight-based fee. She explains economic principles using aviation examples. She notes the contradictory nature of the airlines — they are happy to peak-period price passenger tickets (which is why you’re thinking about booking that Christmas trip today), yet they airlines in turn refuse to pay peak-period prices for landing at congested LGA at 5PM.

In one paragraph she notes that weight-based prices discourage airlines using larger aircraft, a practice which could reduce congestion while providing the same passenger throughput. I believe she could have taken this point even further, but, not surprisingly, seems to have steered clear of any environmental statements. Regional Jets (think American Eagle between DC and NY, 44-50 seats) have a much lower fuel efficiency per seat, and therefore a much higher emission rate per seat than, say a 120-137 seat 737. That statement alone could strengthen the points made in this paper — use larger aircraft, alleviation some congestion, move more passengers with lower GHG per passenger! This study is related to research of mine in progress–watch for a paper coming out soon.

For more information about this topic, check out a press release and listen to a session that the TRB committee I’m on held regarding congestion at the NY airports: Sitting on the Tarmac: Reducing Delays at Kennedy, LaGuardia, and Newark Airports.

Green Continental

Megan — Tue, 17 Jun 2008 23:42:51 +0000

On a recent trip to Cleveland, I had the (surprising) pleasure of flying Continental. Ever since I caught Continental’s talk at the 2008 Transportation research Board annual meeting on their environmental practices, I’ve been wanting to see if it was PR or reality.

Well, after 1. being yelled at by a flight attendant for almost putting a plastic cup in the aluminum recycling bag, and 2. starting up the second engine after taxing out to the runway, I can at least confirm they are carrying out the practices they have reported doing, as noted on Continental’s environmental website and in their talks.

While they are still an airline, and still emitting lots of local pollutants and GHG emissions, they are taking steps to protect the environment.

Another note: While on my flight on last week, I read about how Continental is planning to cut capacity in September 2008. They are pulling their flights from Houston to Oakland — sad news for OAK which has seen Aloha, ATA, and Skybus either go bankrupt or pulled out of Oakland. But, potentially good news for the system — Cranky flyer has a great post here about what he sees happening with these capacity cuts.

Shuttle Buses and Power Outages

Megan — Thu, 05 Jun 2008 04:27:29 +0000

Today I had the misfortune of wanting to travel from Fairfax VA to Northwest DC during rush hour, a usually inconvenient but not impossible feat. Throw in a tree down between west falls church and east falls church metro stations and this becomes a sweaty, messy, fight your way through the entire suburban population of DC event. See article here.

There was a tree down between the 3rd to the last stop (west falls) and the 4th to the last stop (east falls) on the Orange line, a huge commuter line, and it went down circa 5pm. Bad timing. But what is baffling to me is that the replacement shuttle buses to serve those wanting to travel between these stations were ONLY running between east falls and west falls church! I mean, it doesn’t take a transportation engineering graduate student to realize that the crowds will grow to be uncontrollable if you are running full trains to the ‘burbs on 90 second headways. Why not have shuttles from multiple surrounding stations, so that the congestion is spread and the crowding does not impede travel that IS possible at those two stations? I have no idea why the DC plan for response to atypical event is so misinformed, slow, and poorly planned. Let this be a lesson if something much more serious than a soaking storm and power outage occurs.