I am in Bangkok for the Better Air Quality Conference 2008 (www.baq2008.org). My trip started in typical fashion, mechanical delay at Knoxville’s McGee Tyson Airport, making me miss my Washington to Tokyo and later Tokyo to Bangkok connection. This is the third time in a row that this has happened to me flying out of Knoxville, all on different airlines. This time was United. The gate agent called me up and told me that I would miss my connection and the only thing they could do was try the same itinerary the next day. She said that all flights were full and it would be impossible to leave any sooner. I told her that I found it hard to believe that at 10 am, there are no other seats on any other airline that would get me closer to Bangkok that day. After some patient persistence and a return to the main ticket office, they got me on a flight crossing the Atlantic. They seemed determined to keep me on United, although they have an
obligation (I think) to put me on another flight.Twice in the same day did someone tell me that the airlines needed to be re-regulated. The live-and-let-die notion of capitalism in America seems to be fading with the economy. I’ve heard far more proponents of government regulation (in Knoxville no less) than ever before. Anyways, I flew to Frankfurt Germany and had a nice seven hour layover, which was really nice. European transportation systems are amazing. I asked a couple of American travelers that seemed to have taken that route before how to get around Frankfurt and where I might want to go on my layover. They explained to me that, by the time I picked up my rental car and dropped it off, I would have a hard time making good on my layover. I asked about trains and they had never considered it. Well, I knew the train served the Frankfurt airport (from Julie and my 2001 trip). After a little asking around, I ended up getting on the S8 train and into downtown Frankfurt in 15 minutes. From the airport you pass the train station with the high speed ICE trains coming and going.
Once downtown there were rental bikes everywhere that you could call in and have them unlock it for you. If I had a phone that worked, I would have done it--1 euro an hour. I was fortunate to be there before rush hour so I got to see everyone coming in and the streets getting busier and busier as time went on. They had buses, streetcars, the U-Bahn local trains, and great bike infrastructure; many options for the car-less. This is the fundamental problem with High-Speed Rail proposals in the US, what do you do when you get there? There are only a few cities and corridors in the country that could absorb the riders on their public transit systems, leading to the inevitable car rental system. This could work, but to compete with air travel you would have to have vast garages for rentals presumably in downtown areas. It seems it could serve a niche, but not reach the level of Europe or Japanese systems, without significant land use and local public transit investment in cities. After about 45 hours of travel, I will be in Bangkok, making it to my meeting with four hours to spare. Instead of flying half-way around the world and back again, I am truly flying around the world, West to East all the time, from Knoxville to DC to Frankfurt to Bangkok to Beijing to Chicago and back to Knoxville, all in seven days.
