HOT & BOTHERED – Summer’s Transportation Meltdown

Last week’s heat wave was neither the worst nor the last we’ll see this summer. But its effects on our trains, planes and automobiles are worth remembering, and planning for, because this kind of weather will return.  Heat can take a serious toll on our travels.  Just consider…

WILDFIRE SMOKE:          Fueled by hot and tinder-dry conditions in Canada, last week’s smoky skies contributed to flight delays and travel disruptions.  Drivers were warned to keep their windows closed, switch the ventilation system to recirculate, and make sure the cabin air filter was clean.

TRAINS:       Heat can make railroad tracks lengthen by an inch (in an 1800-foot piece of track) for every ten degrees of temperature.  Because much of the track in the Northeast is welded rail (without many expansion joints) that can lead to buckling, known in the biz as “sun kinks”, where tracks get seriously out of alignment.  That can force the railroads to slow their trains down, in Amtrak’s case to just 80 mph in extreme cases, to avoid derailments. 

Sun Kinks caused by heat

Heat can also cause older fixed-tension catenary wires to expand and sag.  Much of Metro-North’s original overhead power system was more than 100 years old before Connecticut replaced it with modern constant-tension equipment.  But when the old wires sagged, a passing train’s pantograph could snag them, bringing down the power system and halting service.

You may remember just such an incident in 2011 on the then-hottest day of the summer with Manhattan pavement heating to 147 degrees.  A train near Westport got its pantograph tangled in the sagging power lines, stranding over 200 passengers onboard with no AC and no windows that could open.  The passengers, understandably,  panicked and called 911 seeking rescue by local first responders.  One positive outcome was improved emergency planning, including provisions for supplying water to passengers on stranded trains.

PLANES:      Aviation also has trouble with the heat, in some cases because it’s just too hot to fly.

Hot air is lighter than cold air, right?  Add higher elevation to the mix (think Denver, where the air is already thinner) and the physics of flying just doesn’t work.

In 2017 Phoenix’s Sky Harbor Airport had to cancel dozens of flights when the air temps hit 120 degrees.  Where runways are shorter some aircraft, particularly smaller regional jets, may not be able to operate safely without reducing their weight or waiting for cooler conditions.

AUTOMOBILES:    Your car is not immune to heat, either, especially its tires. Sustained high temperatures can accelerate tire deterioration, while an underinflated tire flexes and builds up even more heat as it rolls, increasing the risk of tread separation or a blowout.  Check tire pressures when they are cold and use the recommended pressure printed on the driver’s-door.

But it’s your car’s cooling system that’s strained the most, working overtime to keep the engine temperature stable.  If the temperature gauge starts climbing, turning off the AC can reduce the load on the engine.  But if the car is actually overheating, pull over safely and shut it down.

And the road itself is also under attack:  concrete can buckle (from expansion) and asphalt can soften and start rutting.  As with the trains, the safest solution is to slow down and watch for trouble ahead.

We like to think of Connecticut summers as reliably hot.  What we’re not prepared for is heat this intense… or wildfire smoke this frequent.  Our trains, planes and roads weren’t designed for heat this extreme and this persistent.  Neither were we. The heat is coming again. The only question is whether we’ll be ready.

AIRLINES’ WINDOWLESS WINDOW SEATS

 

Let’s be honest.  Flying is no fun anymore.  Traveling, yes.  Flying, no.  Again this summer the airports are crowded, the TSA lines are long, the flights delayed (and sometimes cancelled) due to weather and the fares have soared because of the Iran War.

But the airlines seem finally to be raking it in.  Estimates are this summer may be one of their best in many years as demand far exceeds supply.  People want that long-wished-for summer vacation, the price be damned.

One of the ways the airlines are draining our pocketbooks is through “unbundling”… charging for a basic seat and them upselling us for perks like checking our luggage, those sumptuous in-flight meals, a tiny bit more legroom and, yes, the choice of our favorite seat.

Mine has always been the window seat.

I’m somewhat of a white knuckles flyer and looking out the window gives me some peace of mind.  So I’ll pay that (2023 industry average) of $31 extra charge to get my ‘view’.  But imagine paying that surcharge for a window seat, boarding the plane and finding there’s no window at my seat, just a blank wall.

A "window" seat with no window

Depending on the type of aircraft, as many as five window seats per plane can lack windows.  It’s just the way the plane is built and the seats placed.  But why would the airlines sell you a “window” seat with no window?  Because they could.  Until now.

As I wrote last November, United Airlines alone pulled in $1.3 billion last year for selling assigned seats.  But now a pair of class action suits is pursuing millions of United and Delta airlines passengers’ claims that, having paid for window seats and ending up with no window, they were duped.

Last week one of those lawsuits was allowed to proceed when the judge rejected United’s claim that they never promises a window at a window seat… that the description referred more to the location of the seat, not the amenity.  As United’s lawyers tried to argue… “the use of the word ‘window’ in reference to a particular seat cannot reasonably be interpreted as a promise that the seat will have an exterior window view.”   Don’t you just love lawyers?

Can you imagine an aisle seat that’s not on the aisle?  I can’t.  And they’re as pricey as the window seats.  Some people get nauseous when flying or claustrophobic and seeing out that window helps them chill.  I get that.

But whatever the reason, simple logic says if I pay for a window seat I should get a window.  Other airlines, like American and Alaskan, have added a warning to online bookers that some window seats don’t offer a real window.  That’s at least honest.

If you go to a Broadway show you’re warned when choosing seats that there may be “an obstructed view”.  Fair enough, and probably priced accordingly.  So why can’t airlines do the same sort of disclosure.

If they lose these suits it may cost them tens of millions in refunds and possible penalties.  And the cost to their reputation?  That’s already left the gate.

 

 

 

250 YEARS OF INDEPENDENCE. 350 YEARS OF CONNECTICUT TRAFFIC

 

People complain about Connecticut's roads. I get it. The potholes. The detours. The construction that begins in April and somehow ends in April of the following year.  But before you curse your GPS, consider this: getting anywhere in colonial Connecticut could be genuinely life-threatening.

We're talking about a time when "road conditions" meant snakes, waist-deep mud, fording unbridged rivers, and a footpath barely wide enough for a horse. And yet, Connecticut built America's first great transportation network.  It started with the King's Highway.

In 1672, New York Governor Francis Lovelace had a problem: getting a letter from New York to Boston took forever and often arrived mangled, late, or not at all.  Sound familiar?  His solution was a monthly postal route, and in January of 1673 the first rider began to blaze what would eventually become the Boston Post Road, US Route 1.

Here in Connecticut, that route followed an ancient Pequot trail, a path Native Americans had kept clear for centuries, it’s said, by burning back the brush each November.  So we didn't build the road.  We inherited it.  And then we paved over the history with good intentions and, for a while, added toll booths.

In 1792, Connecticut solved the pesky problem of "who pays for roads" the way it still does: user fees. The Mohegan Turnpike was the state's first, and the country’s second, turnpike: proof that Connecticut has always been eager to be an early adopter of charging people money to get somewhere. Over the next four decades, roughly 100 private turnpike companies laid some 1,400 miles of toll roads across the state.  Most of those concerns eventually went bankrupt.

By the early 1700s, Connecticut had three branches of the Post Road threading through the colony: the Upper route through Hartford and Springfield, the Lower route hugging the Sound through Stratford and Saybrook, and a Middle route cutting diagonally through Bolton and Woodstock. The road system was, for its time, impressive. Travel was still agonizing… a trip from Hartford to Boston could eat up several days.

In 1753, it’s said that Benjamin Franklin himself drove the Lower Post Road in a carriage fitted with an odometer, standardizing postal rates by distance and ordering stone mile markers placed along the route. Connecticut's General Assembly then required every town to erect them.  Imagine that: State Government mandating infrastructure improvements while arguing about who pays for it.  Some things never change.

But the real transportation superhighway of colonial Connecticut wasn't a road at all.  It was the water.

Long Island Sound was our I-95, only it actually worked.  New London, blessed with deep water and a protected harbor, was one of the colony's busiest ports.  In a single year, 1748 to 1749, 62 vessels departed for foreign ports.  Norwich and Middletown, reached by river, funneled the colony's farms and forests down to waiting ships.  New Haven moved goods both north and south.

And what were they shipping?  Horses, cattle, lumber, salted beef, and barrel staves, all headed to sugar plantations in the West Indies.  What came back in exchange?  Molasses, rum, coffee and, shamefully, enslaved human beings. The slave trade made Connecticut both prosperous and complicit in equal measure.

Much of this water commerce ended, suddenly and violently, in September 1781, when Benedict Arnold sailed into New London harbor and burned it to the ground.  The King's Highway survived.  The waterfront never fully recovered.

So, next time you're stuck on I-95 wondering why our state can't seem to get transportation right, remember: we've only been at this for 350 years.  And we've always moved but never moved quite fast enough.