Where's my rocket pack?
I just finished reading a blog post by Hamish in which he details his trip home from PEI to Edinburg a distance of 3364 km. Hamish, however, traveled 6160 km. That's because he had to go Charlottetown to Halifax to London to Edinburgh. Apart from the connections etc., I wonder how many hours, from the moment he left his parent's house to walking into his own, he spend travelling.
Recently we flew from Toronto to Chicago (and back obviously). We drove to New York City about a month before that.
Let's compare those trips:
YYZ-ORD 702km (driving would have been 844km)
Left the hotel at 3pm CDT
Arrived home at 11pm
8hrs
YYZ-JFK (actually downtown Manhattan) 589km (flight) 792km (drive)
Left home
arrived hotel
8hrs 45 mins
Now considering that we dodged Manhattan rush-hour, I think we did alright with that drive, but we could have gone harder and made it there quicker.
These are not exact comparisons of trips.I should drive both and see, then fly both and see. But two ROUGHLY similar trips that took the same amount of time.
I don't think this is the future we were promised. There's a great quote in an episode of the West Wing.
Leo: My generation never got the future it was promised... Thirty-five years later, cars, air travel is exactly the same. We don't even have the Concorde anymore. Technology stopped.
Josh: The personal computer...
Leo: A more efficient delivery system for gossip and pornography? Where's my jet pack, my colonies on the Moon?
My experience and Hamish's makes me wonder (hope) if airtravel is merely a place-holder until we get to some really efficient or better mode of transportation. You can't blame the current state of things entirely on post-911 security. Sure that's fucked things up some. Or rather delayed you when you're traveling. But not entirely. I remember traveling pre-911 and we still had to be at the airport 2-3 hours before our flight for transatlantic.
So what would the new thing be? I referred to it as more efficient OR better. Not necessarily both. I mean of course some sort of teleportation/beaming thing would rock, step onto a platform here, and be zapped to Sidney in 5 minutes. Of course the concern then wouldn't be about your luggage getting lost, merely your molecules. (Anyone really wanna trust a discount airline with THAT). But even then you'd probably end up in line for 20 hours and so you might just as well have driven there anyway.
The other option is to just make travel better. How about we get back to airships? I mean except for one, notable and regrettable exception, they've been fairly safe. they're not fast, but hell neither is jet flight these days. We could reinstate old fashioned luxury in the air. Like the old Pan Am clipper days. With doilies on the seats and china and cutlery. Not plastic forks, and expensive stale muffins.
