We will talk public transportation to include simply the ability of a 99% of Americans to use ANY TRANSPORTATION OPTION---PUBLIC OR PRIVATE----MOVING FORWARD says NO----- the masses will not be free to move around as they wish----and global Wall Street pols are pushing these policies as hard as they can. Who uses public transportation the most? Women and children------who is privatizing all that is public including our public transit with a goal of the masses NOT BEING ABLE TO MOVE FREELY------CLINTON/BUSH/OBAMA. So, why are women engaged in marching against a TRUMP? Because the international NGOs planning these events are tied to global Wall Street 1% neo-liberalism----WAKE UP US WOMEN------we are falling fast and next decade will be the annus horribilis for women worldwide.
When we understand that global Wall Street always puts the faces of people they are setting up to fail in the spotlight----making them the 5% to the 1%---we will see how a UNITED NATIONS/WORLD BANK has placed its media propaganda tied to lifting women globally. There will only be that global 1% of women tied to the same men----with 99% of women pushed into this global labor pool at slave wages.
Bernie Sanders received the majority of Democratic votes from women because women have these few decades of CLINTON/BUSH/OBAMA fought to get rid of the Clinton global Wall Street neo-liberalism from our people's left Democratic Party---it was women most angry at the Hillary Democratic primary fraud-----and for those marching across the nation against DEMOCRATIC PRIMARY FRAUD-----it was women out in force.
THIS WAS THE AMERICAN WOMEN'S PROTEST MARCH----
Again, WE THE PEOPLE are allowing a global 1% NGO control when, where, how we do our protests for American rights and governance. It wasn't wrong to protest TRUMP----but if we are silent about the problems in the Democratic Party we will never reverse MOVING FORWARD ONE WORLD ONE GOVERNANCE.
A majority of Republican women voted for Trump----a majority of Democratic voters voted for Bernie-----so who are these women supposedly coming to Washington DC to support a Hillary over a Trump?
Well, indeed we would know a crowd of Washington DC citizens would----DC is now filling fast with that global 1% and their 2%----
'For a city that overwhelmingly voted for Hillary Clinton (90.9 percent of DC residents cast their ballot for the Democratic candidate in November), it’s not a particularly surprising outpouring of support'.
Washington, DC's metro is slammed with marchers trying to get to the National Mall
Updated by Tara Golshan Jan 21, 2017, 11:42am EST
On Inauguration Day, Washington, DC’s metro cars and buses were emptier than usual. Despite road closures, traffic was subdued. Outside of the roughly 250,000 people who attended President Donald Trump’s swearing-in ceremony, and the thousands of anti-Trump demonstrators staging protests in the surrounding streets, Washington, DC, had largely gone dark for a day.
Only a day later, just getting to the nation’s capital is proving much more difficult, as hundreds of thousands head to the National Mall for the Women’s March on Washington.
Los Angeles Times reporter Matt Pearce captured the difference on his ride into the city:
Although 220,000 people have committed to going to the march on Facebook, event organizers are expecting half a million people to participate, DC’s deputy mayor tweeted Saturday.
As of 11 am, 275,000 people had ridden DC’s metro, eight times a typical Saturday and busier than most weekday’s, WMATA tweeted. By comparison, 193,000 people had ridden the metro by 11 am yesterday.
Videos and photographs of packed metro stations in surrounding Virginia and Maryland continue to pour in, and by 10 am the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority has already announced that several metro parking lots are already close to capacity.
For a city that overwhelmingly voted for Hillary Clinton (90.9 percent of DC residents cast their ballot for the Democratic candidate in November), it’s not a particularly surprising outpouring of support.
But marchers are not only coming from DC and its surrounding suburbs. In the days leading up to march, there were multiple reports of planes filled with women flying to Washington to march.
Similar marches have also been planned in more than 600 cities around the country — and even internationally — to amplify the message on Trump’s first official day in office.
___________________________________________
As a baby boomer having marched on Washington several times during the 1960s-70 for civil rights, labor rights, women's rights----anti-war-----I was among massive numbers of people. We used to have a Congress and media that would do real estimates of march totals and we would read in our media of a million citizens making their way to Washington DC This is why these few decades marches are still calling themselves the MILLION MAN-----the MILLION WOMEN-----we used to bring out that many citizens. During CLINTON/BUSH/OBAMA----we were told the National Park Service would give media totals ----so counts done by those independent journalists and citizen groups no longer were reported in media----only that National Park Service number and indeed we saw 250,000 as a total for all marches since then. It's not that the people are not protesting----it is that they can no longer GET TO WASHINGTON whether they cannot afford to transport themselves or whether our transportation modes are scaling down no longer accommodating our rights to protest-----
It sounds much different when we read 250,000 people marched on Washington then does a million and more citizen march
“Everything that this march is about, I have been on a protest for,” Bailey said. “That was the ’60s, ’70s, ’80s, and ’90s
Below is one of the reasons why today our rights to protest are getting harder and harder to do. I have personally tried to find parking for protests in DC over these few decades and oddly the WASHINGTON AREA TRANSIT PARKING AUTHORITY has filled decks of cars everywhere---literally people from out of town cannot find places to park. DC's Parking Authority is privatized just as Baltimore's Parking Authority and yes, they are closing public garages------eliminating public open lots-----privatizing new garages to corporate development for work only purposes. When we are told through media that parking is filled to capacity at 10AM-----people are turning away from coming to that national event and staying locally. In the 1960s-70s we had public transit that would ADD RAIL CARS-----that would ADD BUSES AND SHUTTLES------
'Videos and photographs of packed metro stations in surrounding Virginia and Maryland continue to pour in, and by 10 am the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority has already announced that several metro parking lots are already close to capacity'.
Before CLINTON/BUSH/OBAMA created a Washington DC surrounded by global corporations with the city itself owned by global corporations Washington DC used to be COMPLETELY PUBLIC. There were tons of places to park-----streets were open to public parking and not permitted and given to ZIP CAR AND UBER.
THE AMERICAN PEOPLE LISTEN TO NATIONAL MEDIA TELLING THEM-----PARKING AUTHORITY SAYS NO MORE PARKING----THE PUBLIC TRAINS TELLING PEOPLE A MONTH BEFORE THE EVENT 'SOLD OUT'---AND THAT IS WHY ARE ABILITY TO PROTEST BRINGS SMALLER CROWDS.
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Platinum Parking is a subsidiary company of Robbins Parking Service Ltd. based in Victoria, British Columbia, Canada (Robbins). Robbins started business in 1967 and has grown to manage over 250 surface parking facilities, garages, and on street parking operations with gross revenues in excess of $30 mil per year. In 2004, Robbins acquired Platinum Parking and has found success in implementing tried and true systems and methodologies to improve and grow our company. In 2009, Platinum Parking acquired a Dallas based valet company, Advantage Valet, in order to expand our available services for our clients. In 2011, Platinum Parking acquired a Houston based parking company, Merit Parking, in order to expand our current client base in several cities and expand our operations to new markets.
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As the American people become more impoverished---as they lose their cars we see the uptick of what is an IMPOSSIBLE BUSINESS MODEL-----the Megabus----and BOLT. I have ridden these buses for very cheap prices and it is clearly not a sustainable business. They are taking the place of what used to be our STATEWIDE MTA-----STATE PUBLIC COMMUTER ROUTES that would have been filled with citizens---that would have placed more buses on routes as needed for marches like this---but Maryland if it had statewide public commuter busing has eliminated it these few decades. It is now coming back as LARRY HOGAN'S AND MARTIN O'MALLEY'S PRIVATIZATION PLAN----handing those statewide commuter routes to global corporations that WILL MAKE PROFITS by not worrying about public interest needs.
People pushed off cheap airplane routes----moved to trains---AMTRAK AND CSX controlling all trains as MARYLAND'S MARC TRAIN-----raising rates moving people off trains to these MEGABUSES-----these cheap busing services were never expected to stay in business----they were used to FURTHER DEREGULATE OUR STATE PUBLIC TRANSIT SYSTEM.
So, did MEGABUS increase its services to Washington DC for this march on Washington?
NO BECAUSE IT IS NOT PROFITABLE EVEN WITH FULL LOADS.
So, inside these transportation sources is yet more tiering----pay more for this pay more for that and we are not really getting anything more----they are simply creating MARKETS.
'If our parking sounds like our health care plans----it is global Wall Street creating TIERING BY CLASS------we have been egalitarian----they are creating the mindset of CLASS. Know what a ONE WORLD ONE GOVERNANCE has as CLASS-----the extreme global 1% and 99% as extreme poverty serfs and slaves. Don't fight to be in a CLASS'.
What used to be berths for our state commuter transit buses are now held for these private global bus services that will disappear.
Paris for a pound: Megabus expands routes to four European destinations (but how many tickets will REALLY cost £1?)
By Amy Oliver for The Mail on Sunday
Published: 08:00 EST, 16 April 2012 | Updated: 11:10 EST, 16 April 2012
But, like a knight on a blue and yellow charger, budget coach operator megabus.com has zoomed in to the rescue.
Or so it claims.
The company, owned by Stagecoach has launched a UK to Europe coach service with seats starting at £1.
L'autobus Méga: Budget coach operator megabus.com has launched a UK to Europe service with low-cost trips to Paris, Boulogne, Brussels and Amsterdam
If you're prepared to spend up to 12 hours on a bus, listening to the duff, duff, duff of your fellow traveller's iPod while taking in the delicate aroma of the on-board toilet, then congratulations! Paris, Boulogne, Brussels and Amsterdam could be your oyster.
But a quick search for bargain £1 tickets to all four destinations on megabus.com proved tricky today - mainly because there weren't any.
A Stagecoach spokesman told MailOnline that tickets range from £1 to £40 and include the ferry crossing and free on-board wi-fi.
He added the company started selling UK to Europe tickets last month and had already sold out of more than 80 trips.
Cheap: If you're prepared to spend up to 12 hours on a bus then Paris, left, Boulogne, Brussels and Amsterdam, right, is your oyster
LONDON TO PARIS: MEGABUS VS EUROSTAR
We Brits like a bit of comfort but we also can't resist a bargain. No crick in the neck or 'numb bum' caused by hours of coach travel is going to come between us and a ticket to Paris that only costs £4 thank you very much. But say we did want to fork out for a business premiere ticket on the Eurostar, how would it compare to the Megabus?
MEGABUS (London to Paris)
The cheapest available ticket from London to Paris on megabus.com today was £4, while the most expensive to Brussels was £15.
Stagecoach chief executive Sir Brian Souter said: 'With the rising cost of living, rocketing fuel prices and running a car becoming more and more expensive, everyone is looking to make their money go further.
'For too long, people in many parts of Europe have been paying too much for their coach travel.
'Our new network offers families, students and tourists great value fares and high-quality coaches. These services will deliver a long-overdue shake-up to the over-priced European coach travel market.'
He added: 'We launched megabus.com in Scotland nine years ago and it has already transformed intercity travel in the UK and North America.'
Stagecoach also revealed today that it is investigating the potential for a sleeper coach service between the UK and Europe.
The company is working in partnership with Belgian manufacturer Van Hool on a sleepercoach fitted with 48 seats and tables for use during the daytime, which could be converted into 43 bunks on overnight services.
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If you Google this article you will see a sign saying MICHIGAN MULTIMODAL GATEWAY-------this is the same thing our Maryland Governor Larry Hogan is calling MTA LINK SYSTEM upgrade-----they are making us believe there is intent to build all these different kinds of private public transportation structures when their is absolutely no intent to do so----global transit corporations service global corporate campuses moving people around in the course of doing a job.
We all know a MEGABUS and a BOLT will not last. Michigan with Detroit leads in bankruptcies to austerity----as with Maryland there is no intent in US cities deemed Foreign Economic Zones to have people moving around freely that are not the global 1% and their 2%.
These several years of Obama and Clinton neo-liberal Congress broke down our public transit by defunding, dismantling oversight and accountability making these services horrible-----and by sending Federal support for public transit TO THESE GLOBAL TRANSIT CORPORATIONS.
CLINTON/OBAMA BUILT THIS DEREGULATED, PRIVATIZED MESS.
Who uses public transit the most? Women, children, seniors, poor. Who is killing all of the above? CLINTON/OBAMA GLOBAL WALL STREET PLAYERS.
'Taking Amtrak from East Lansing? Parking will cost you'
Megabus cuts service to East Lansing next month
Alexander Alusheff , Lansing State Journal Published 7:32 a.m. ET Dec. 23, 2016 | Updated 8:01 a.m. ET Dec. 23, 2016
Megabus to cut service in East Lansing Alex Alusheff/Lansing State Journal
Buy Photo(Photo: Julia Nagy/Lansing State Journal)
EAST LANSING – Rajasi Joshi departed on one of the last Megabus trips to Chicago from East Lansing on Thursday afternoon.
The company is stopping its service at the Capital Area Multimodal Gateway on Harrison Road on Jan. 9.
"It kind of sucks, because there's not much else," said Joshi, a graduate student at Michigan State University. "This is more convenient."
The decision was based on customer demand, said Megabus spokesman Sean Hughes, as well as low fuel prices and competition from other coach operators.
“It’s part of a corporate restructuring.” Hughes said.
The New Jersey-based company will make cuts in Chicago in January as well, he said.
From East Lansing, Megabus travels to Ann Arbor, Grand Rapids and Chicago. It's among four services that travel to Chicago from the hub in East Lansing. The others are Amtrak, Greyhound and Indian Trails.
Joshi was among a handful of people waiting to board the bus on Thursday afternoon. While there are other options, she said, she prefers Megabus because it makes fewer stops than the other bus lines and costs less than Amtrak, which departs early in the morning.
A ticket to Chicago on Megabus costs $39, though the company frequently offered deep discounts. That's compared to Amtrak tickets that start at $29, though the cheaper tickets often sell out quickly, and Indian Trial and Greyhound fares that run about $30.
The company’s decision to leave is a disappointment to the Capital Area Transportation Authority, which manages the multimodal gateway, said Laurie Robison, director of marketing for CATA.
“The ridership based on their standards was not sufficient,” she said.
Megabus has run routes from East Lansing since May 2012, Robison said in an email, and was supposed to remain through November 2020.
Pam Erickson, of Okemos, was taking the bus to Chicago Thursday to meet her daughter before they flew to California for the holidays. It was her first time taking Megabus, but her children have used it many times.
"I'm sad to see it go," she said. "It's easier to take a bus than to drive."
________________________________________
Here we see yet another transportation expanded under the guise of building public participation in that transit vehicle......our Amtrak. Nixon sold this to great fanfare as key to helping those same POOR, DISABLED, SENIORS----so Federal funding was sent to expand and strengthen AMTRAK----a private rail corporation that has these few decade now been called UNABLE TO SUPPORT ITSELF. It was never meant to support itself----the subsidy was for PUBLIC INTEREST ---USING FEDERAL TAXES PAID BY WE THE PEOPLE for public transportation options.
During those 1970s rallies to Washington AMTRAK was key in transportation of 99% of citizens-----today AMTRAK has been crippled with cuts to funding because of CLINTON/BUSH/OBAMA few decades of massive and systemic frauds against all our public agencies including our Federal and state public transit agencies----
LOTS OF FRAUD AND CORRUPTION MOVING BILLIONS AWAY FROM SUSTAINING AND MAINTENANCE OF AMTRAK AND MARC TRAINS.
'Amtrak, which was created in the Nixon Administration, should stop competing with ''the poor, the handicapped, and the helpless'' for Federal help, he said. ''We believe the Amtrak experiment has gone on long enough,'' he said. ''It should now be forced to pay its way or get out of business.'' '
So yes, there were citizens able to buy an AMTRAK or MARC TRAIN ticket but they were sold out fast because the number of cars and runs have been reduced.
Who Owns Amtrak?
By Maya Black
Amtrak is a corporation that the U.S. federal government has chartered. In other words, the government created the corporation, but Amtrak has its own board of directors whom the president of the United States appoints. The federal government owns most of Amtrak's shares, making the government the corporation's largest stakeholder. Amtrak reported that it carried more than 30 million passengers in fiscal year 2013.
AMTRAK will be bankrupted with the advent of HIGH-SPEED RAIL OWNED BY GLOBAL CORPORATIONS........
CUT SUBSIDY REQUEST, AMTRAK IS URGED
By ERNEST HOLSENDOLPH, Special to the New York Times
Published: March 14, 1981
WASHINGTON, March 13— Senator Howard W. Cannon, who has declared his support for subsidized passenger train service, offered some friendly advice to Amtrak today: Compromise on your request for Federal assistance for next year or risk reductions that could eliminate all service except for the Northeast Corridor.
Senator Cannon, a Nevada Democrat, offered his advice to Alan S. Boyd, the president of Amtrak, in one of a series of Congressional hearings on the Reagan Administration's proposal to reduce the Federal subsidy for the railroad in the fiscal year 1982 by more than 30 percent.
Amtrak has proposed a budget that includes $970 million in Federal subsidies to support its operations next year, but the Administration wants to cut the assistance to $613 million. Mr. Boyd said a reduction of that amount would force Amtrak to drop all service except that linking Boston, New York, Philadelphia and Washington.
Senator Bob Packwood, the Oregon Republican whose home base would lose its passenger rail link to Chicago under such a service reduction, told Mr. Boyd: ''I've been told by Amtrak officials that if trains between Chicago and California were run full every day, with everybody paying the full fare and eating all they could hold, we would still have to subsidize the train.''
Alternative Cut Proposed
Mr. Packwood appeared to agree with Robert Blanchette, the head of the Federal Railroad Administration, who said that Amtrak should first cut all trains that operate deeply in the red and then work to preserve only those trains that can be operated with passengers paying at least half of the cost of each trip.
''I understand that long-distance trains have 27 percent of the riders but receive 63 percent of the subsidies,'' Mr. Packwood said. Mr. Blanchette, also testifying before the Senate Commerce Committee's Subcommittee on Transportation, refused to identify the trains he thought should be sacrificed, saying such decisions should be made by the Amtrak management. ''The Government is like the board of directors of Amtrak, setting policy, but the details should always be left to the professional management,'' he said.
Mr. Boyd said that, besides restricting service to the Northeast Corridor, the $613 million subsidy proposed by Secretary of Transportation Drew Lewis would pay off protected employees, about 23,000 of whom would lose their jobs. Time Running Out
Meanwhile, Senator James J. Exon, Democrat of Nebraska, a member of both the Transportation Subcommittee and the Budget Committee, said that time was running out on the effort to find a workable plan to keep Amtrak in operation. The Budget Committee of the Senate will set spending levels in the next week to 10 days, he said, and the House will act later.
Mr. Boyd said that the proposed reduction would end the prospect for a national rail system. He proposed instead that high subsidies be continued so as to give the railroad time to negotiate new labor contracts this year and possibly reduce the operating cost sharply.
Nearly 60 percent of the operating cost is for labor, which is considered high by railroad experts. Much of that cost stems from low productivity, Mr. Boyd said, Some personnel, such as engineers, may draw four-and-a-half days' pay for working as little as eight hours in a week, he said.
Senators who appeared willing to cut Amtrak's assistance sharply found a friend in Arthur D. Lewis, president of the American Bus Association, who testified that the intercity bus industry stands ready to take aboard everyone who now uses passenger trains.
Amtrak, which was created in the Nixon Administration, should stop competing with ''the poor, the handicapped, and the helpless'' for Federal help, he said. ''We believe the Amtrak experiment has gone on long enough,'' he said. ''It should now be forced to pay its way or get out of business.''
____________________________________________
Here we see yet another transportation expanded under the guise of building public participation in that transit vehicle......our Amtrak. Nixon sold this to great fanfare as key to helping those same POOR, DISABLED, SENIORS----so Federal funding was sent to expand and strengthen AMTRAK----a private rail corporation that has these few decade now been called UNABLE TO SUPPORT ITSELF. It was never meant to support itself----the subsidy was for PUBLIC INTEREST ---USING FEDERAL TAXES PAID BY WE THE PEOPLE for public transportation options.
During those 1970s rallies to Washington AMTRAK was key in transportation of 99% of citizens-----today AMTRAK has been crippled with cuts to funding because of CLINTON/BUSH/OBAMA few decades of massive and systemic frauds against all our public agencies including our Federal and state public transit agencies----
LOTS OF FRAUD AND CORRUPTION MOVING BILLIONS AWAY FROM SUSTAINING AND MAINTENANCE OF AMTRAK AND MARC TRAINS.
'Amtrak, which was created in the Nixon Administration, should stop competing with ''the poor, the handicapped, and the helpless'' for Federal help, he said. ''We believe the Amtrak experiment has gone on long enough,'' he said. ''It should now be forced to pay its way or get out of business.'' '
So yes, there were citizens able to buy an AMTRAK or MARC TRAIN ticket but they were sold out fast because the number of cars and runs have been reduced.
It's all TRUMP's FAULT-----we will hear from all the 5% to the 1% Clinton/Obama Wall Street pols and players who pushed and forced high-speed rail on WE THE PEOPLE knowing this will kill our AMTRAK.
Cuts to AMTRAK through CLINTON/BUSH/OBAMA is why women from across the nation in large numbers could not reach Washington DC to protest----SOLD OUT FAST!
Privatizing Amtrak
October 17, 2016Private passenger rail service thrived in the United States between the mid–19th century and the early–20th century. By the late 1950s, however, passenger rail was struggling because of the rise of automobiles, buses, and airlines. Railroads faced large tax, regulatory, and union burdens not faced by other modes of transportation.1 Federal micromanagement stifled railroad innovation and prevented railroad companies from cutting costs.2 Railroads paid heavy property taxes and were burdened by a special excise tax on rail tickets from the 1940s until 1962.
After a number of major railroads went bankrupt, Congress took over passenger rail in 1970 with the creation Amtrak. Amtrak is structured like a corporation, but the government owns virtually all the stock. The government's rail company was supposed to become self-supporting, but it has never earned profits, and it has consumed more than $40 billion in federal subsidies over the decades. In 2014 it had revenues of $3.2 billion and expenses of $4.3 billion, and it received direct federal subsidies of $1.5 billion.3
It seems unlikely that passenger rail will play a large role in America's transportation future. Rail carries few people compared with automobiles and airplanes, and it makes little economic sense for most intercity trips. However, privatizing Amtrak would allow entrepreneurs to innovate and make rail more competitive and financially viable. Congress should get out of the passenger rail business and give rail the private-sector flexibility it needs to better compete against other modes of transportation.
Amtrak's Failures
Amtrak has many woes. Its quality of service is mediocre and its trains are often late. For the overall system, only about three-quarters of Amtrak's trains are on time, with its long-distance routes having a particularly bad record.4 Amtrak loses more than a billion dollars a year, with its operations are so inefficient that it even loses money on its food service.5
Amtrak has an expensive and inflexible workforce. It has 20,000 employees earning an average $105,000 a year in wages and benefits.6 The company pays a huge amount of overtime, a substantial amount of which appears to be unnecessary and improper.7 More than a dozen collective bargaining agreements cover 86 percent of the workforce.8 Unions undermine efficiency by protecting poorly performing workers and pushing for larger staffing levels. They resist innovation and create a bureaucratic workplace. Former Amtrak head David Gunn complained that at Amtrak's maintenance facilities, workers from different unions were not allowed to share work on projects outside their narrowly designated specialties.9
With late trains and endless losses, Amtrak's management has been subject to much criticism. Over the years, federal auditors have charged Amtrak with a lack of strategic planning, inefficient procurement policies, weak financial management, and insufficient accountability.10 Auditors found that the company manipulated its financial statements to obscure unfavorable data.11 And the company has a history of hiding information from investigators and presenting unrealistic projections to Congress.12
However, most of Amtrak's problems are created by Congress, which prevents the company from making rational business decisions. In particular, Congress insists on supporting an excessively large nationwide system of passenger rail that does not make economic sense. Nor does it make environmental sense for Amtrak to run routes with low ridership.
In his 2004 book, End of the Line, rail expert and former Amtrak spokesman Joseph Vranich argued, "congressional requirements that Amtrak spend money on capital improvements to lightly used routes are outrageous. ... Throughout Amtrak's history, it has devoted too much of its budget to where it is not needed, and not enough to where it is."13
Amtrak operates 44 routes on 21,000 miles of track in 46 states. Amtrak owns the trains, but freight rail companies own about 95 percent of the track. A Pew Research Center analysis found that the system loses money on 41 of its 44 routes, with an average loss-per-passenger of $32.14 An analysis by Randal O'Toole found similar results—only four Amtrak routes earn an operational profit.15 Some Amtrak routes lose hundreds of dollars per passenger and fill less than 40 percent of the seats.
The few routes that earn a positive return are in the Northeast, whereas the biggest money losers are the long-distance routes, such as New Orleans to Los Angeles. The Government Accountability Office found that the long-distance routes account for 15 percent of Amtrak riders but 80 percent of its financial losses.16 In sum, Amtrak spends a lot of money maintaining high-loss routes at the expense of routes with heavier traffic.
Advantages of Privatization
Privatization would increase rail efficiency and reduce costs. A private rail company could prune excess workers, base worker pay on performance, and end harmful union rules. It would be able to close the routes that are losing the most money. Passenger rail makes sense in the Northeast corridor between Boston and Washington, D.C., but that corridor accounts for less than 500 miles within a 21,000-mile system. Other routes may also make sense within a lower-cost privatized system. A privatized Amtrak could close the most uneconomic routes and shift investment and maintenance dollars to the core routes to improve service quality.
Reforms abroad show that privatizing passenger rail works. In his book, Vranich counted dozens of nations that had either partly or fully privatized their passenger rail systems.17 He found that privatized rail systems generally provide better service, increased ridership, and more efficient operations.
In Britain, state-owned British Rail was consuming large subsidies and experiencing a declining market share in transportation. In 1994 the government split up the company and privatized the track infrastructure separately from passenger service operating companies. But ending vertical integration has created some problems, and track infrastructure has since been renationalized.
However, British passenger services have thrived since privatization. Rail ridership has more than doubled in the past two decades, from 740 million passenger trips to 1.5 billion.18 Ridership is hitting levels not seen since the early 1920s, and ridership growth has surpassed the growth elsewhere in Europe. Despite the increase in passengers, the on-time performance of British passenger rail is quite high and surveys find solid levels of customer satisfaction.19
Rail privatization in Britain brought entrepreneurial innovation to the industry. Vranich noted that "private operators have demonstrated more initiative, imagination, and visionary planning than state-run British Rail did in its prime or Amtrak does today."20 In a 2013 study, the European Commission found that UK's railways were the "most improved" in Europe since the 1990s.21
Japanese rail privatization was also a success. In the 1980s, Japanese National Railways (JNR) was stagnating as a result of bloated labor costs, labor strife, and political manipulation. The government-owned JNR was "conservative, indolent, and fearful of change."22 The government broke up JNR into six regional and vertically integrated passenger rail companies in 1987, and then it started privatizing them in the 1990s.
The JNR companies reformed rigid union rules and slashed workforces by roughly one-third following the reforms.23 A National Bureau of Economic Research study found that labor productivity in the Japanese passenger rail companies increased, on average, about 50 percent with the restructuring and privatization of the 1990s.24 It also found that accident rates were cut in half. The study concluded, "The Japanese approach to rail restructuring has succeeded in many ways, by improving productivity, cutting operating deficits, decreasing fares, and providing better services."25
The privatized Japanese rail companies still receive subsidies, but they are more efficient than before and provide better service. Vranich called the results of JNR's privatization "stunning."26 As in Japan, Britain continued to subsidize rail infrastructure after privatization, but the subsidies are now less than elsewhere in Europe.27 The important thing is that the system is more efficient, and ridership has soared. So while subsidies should be ultimately eliminated, the first job in the United States is to fix the rail system's institutional structure by privatization.
A Canadian example also illustrates the power of privatization. In 1990, the government-run passenger rail company, Via Rail, was losing money and canceling services. Fortunately, an entrepreneur stepped in to run the routes through the Rocky Mountains. Today, the Rocky Mountaineer company operates four hugely successful routes in western Canada. Travel writers and international tourist organizations laud the services.28
The United States has its own positive experience with rail privatization—freight rail privatization. When the Penn Central Railroad collapsed in 1970, it was the largest business failure in American history to that date. Other railroads followed it into bankruptcy. Congress created Conrail in the mid-1970s to replace the failed private railroads. The government-owned company consumed $8 billion of subsidies and floundered until Congress deregulated freight rail under the Staggers Rail Act of 1980. Deregulation allowed Conrail to become profitable, and it was privatized in 1987. Since then, U.S. freight railroads have been a dramatic success. Rail's share of total U.S. freight has increased substantially in recent decades.29
TODAY FREIGHT TRAINS ARE OWNED BY JUST A FEW BILLIONAIRES LIKE BUFFET ---THIS IS NOT FREE MARKET.
Leading rail experts, including two former champions of Amtrak, support privatizing the company. Anthony Haswell founded the National Association of Railroad Passengers in 1967 and is referred to as the "father" of Amtrak. He lamented, "I feel personally embarrassed over what I helped to create."30And Joseph Vranich, the former Amtrak spokesman, came to recognize that the government-run system was a mistake:
Amtrak is a massive failure because it's wedded to a failed paradigm. It runs trains that serve political purposes as opposed to being responsive to the marketplace. America needs passenger trains in selected areas, but it doesn't need Amtrak's antiquated route system, poor service and unreasonable operating deficits.31
Amtrak supporters argue that since other modes of transportation receive subsidies, so should passenger rail. But Amtrak currently receives vastly more subsidies—measured by subsidies per passenger mile—than other modes of transportation, including automobiles, buses, and aviation.32 Automobiles receive relatively little in net subsidies because government highway spending is mainly covered by fuel taxes. That said, subsidies to all modes of transportation should be cut.
The problem for passenger rail is not that it needs more subsidies, but that competitors to rail have become more efficient over time. Real rail prices have risen in recent decades, while real airline prices have plunged because of the deregulated and competitive airline environment.33 Intercity bus prices have also fallen with the rise of low-cost firms such as Megabus. To tackle air and bus competition, rail needs to be moved to a private and deregulated environment.
Amtrak supporters say that we should subsidize passenger rail to reduce energy consumption and help the environment. But intercity buses are more energy efficient than trains, and thus better for the environment.34 Also, running half-empty trains over Amtrak's long-distance routes is a waste of energy.
Passenger rail will probably not play a big role in our transportation future. Today, rail carries very few people compared to automobiles and airplanes. Even a high-speed rail system in the Northeast would reduce automobile use in that region by less than 1 percent, according to a Department of Transportation study.35
But who knows? Maybe that assessment is wrong. Perhaps entrepreneurs could bring enough cost cutting, flexibility, and innovation to passenger rail that it could become financially viable in numerous U.S. corridors. We will never know unless we free passenger rail from the federal government.
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ZIPCAR is of course called INNOVATIVE, deregulating street parking and downtown parking garages and lots to evermore private transit corporations. We now have spaces for SMART CAR----FOR UBER----and less and less space for WE THE PEOPLE PARKING.
UBER WITH SMART CAR is killing what used to be affordable PUBLIC TAXI SERVICE. Yes, all those cabs used to be public and ZIP CAR when it started was sold by global Wall Street pols in US cities deemed Foreign Economic Zones as that STARTUP democratizing transportation. Of course the owner was a global 2% selling to a global corporation but not before deregulating all our US city street zoning----killing public and private competition-----and ZIP CAR price rates are now growing and growing.
It will no doubt be ended as once enfolded into the GLOBAL RENT-A-CAR which of course saw ZIP CAR as a competitor taking market share with CHEAPER RATES. AVIS OR ENTERPRISE GLOBAL CAR RENTALS do not want a ZIP CAR because they are two expensive a business model to create profit margins wanted-----ZIP CAR will disappear as UBER takes that market. UBER of course has that goal of being SELF-DRIVEN tied to global corporate campuses moving their human capital from here to there.
When I asked the women having come to Baltimore to try to get to the march on Washington -----what other options they had------they said we rented a VAN to get to Baltimore but there will be no PARKING FOR THAT VAN in DC----I said ZIP CAR would have the same problem. How much does a one-way UBER RIDE TO MASS MARCHES IN WASHINGTON DC COST?
These global rich being called INNOVATIVE-----creating the successful STARTUPS are simply using these business structure to MOVE FORWARD ONE WORLD FOREIGN ECONOMIC ZONE policies----they are not being INNOVATIVE they are marching to global Wall STreet saying use this to dismantle all public transportation.
Steve Case Grosses $96 Million in Zipcar Sale to Avis
Jeff Green
January 2, 2013, 1:56 PM EST Steve Case and his Revolution LLC fund for startups will gross about $96 million in the sale of car-sharing service Zipcar Inc. to Avis Budget Group Inc., a deal that validated his early backing in the industry.
Case, the co-founder of America Online Inc., invested in car sharing in the mid-2000s, when the business model was still untested. By August 2012, his fund was the largest shareholder in Cambridge, Massachusetts-based Zipcar, which rents cars by the hour or the day in cities and on college campuses.
The success with Zipcar reinforces Revolution’s stated goal of investing in startups designed to disrupt established business. The Zipcar exit will be among the largest for the fund, created in 2005, said a person familiar with Revolution’s finances who wasn’t authorized to talk publicly about them.
Zipcar’s board agreed to a bid of $12.25 a share, or about $491 million, Parsippany, New Jersey-based Avis Budget said today in a statement. The offer, which has been accepted by holders of 32 percent of Zipcar’s shares, is 49 percent higher than Zipcar’s Dec. 31 closing price.
Case’s Revolution Living LLC had a 16 percent stake as of Aug. 28, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. Case, a board member, also personally owns 1 million shares, the data show.
Early Investment
After leading AOL’s acquisition of Time Warner Inc. for $124 billion in 2001, Case stepped down as chairman of the combined company in 2003. The board voted to drop AOL from the company’s name in September that year, reflecting investors’ disappointment in the slumping shares.
Case, 54, formed Revolution in 2005 as a $500 million fund to invest in health care, wellness and other companies. Flexcar, a car-sharing startup, was one of his first forays in August 2005. Case said at the time he got interested in Flexcar while walking past one of its parking spots at 17th and O streets, near Revolution’s offices in Washington. He used the service several times to reach meetings around the city. Zipcar bought Flexcar in 2007.
Revolution now has investments in about 30 companies. They include daily deal website LivingSocial Inc.; exercise tracking venture RunKeeper; HelloWallet, an online service helping employees manage their expenses; and SparkPeople, a website helping people reach their fitness goals.
Last year, Revolution cleared about $100 million in the sale of Medicare exchange company Extend Health Inc. to Towers Watson & Co, the person familiar said. In the largest exit, American Express Co. bought money-card company Revolution Money in 2010 for about $300 million. The fund owned just under 50 percent of Revolution Money, according to the person. Another Revolution startup, Lime Media, was merged with health lifestyle company Gaiam Inc. in 2007. Financial terms for weren’t disclosed.
Zipcar IPO
Zipcar sold shares in an initial public offering at $18 each in April 2011. After initial gains, the stock had been trading under its IPO price for the past year. Demand for car-sharing, however, continued to surge, prompting Enterprise Holdings Inc. and Hertz Global Holdings Inc., the two largest U.S. car-rental companies, to offer such services to customers. Zipcar’s acquisition by Avis Budget, the No. 3, signals a shift in the industry to embrace drivers who don’t want to own cars.
Case, who co-founded AOL in 1985, also chairs efforts on entrepreneurship for President Barack Obama’s Council on Jobs and Competitiveness. Case didn’t respond to an e-mail and phone call seeking comment.
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If women were lucky enough to get close to Washington DC thinking they would then use an alternative source of transport to get to the march location-----perhaps THE PUBLIC BIKING that CLINTON/OBAMA pretends has anything to do with growing public transportation. Now, any REAL intent to grow biking into a US city deemed Foreign Economic Zone would start by making these bicycles FREE ------people need the ability to simply get on a bike downtown go where they want------and drop it anywhere that is convenient. That is the opposite of what is being installed in all our US cities deemed Foreign Economic Zones and guess what?
THEY ARE TAKING MORE AND MORE STREET SPACE where public parking has been----again assigned to a global corporation which is charging LOTS OF MONEY TO RENT A BIKE that then needs to be brought back to the same location. How many tourists or citizens go back to places they are traveling downtown? You cannot use these to move to and from work because they cost too much to rent------tourist will not use them for to much because they are again too limiting====what this does is further capture PUBLIC SPACES AROUND PARKING.
Know how easy it is for a city to create a bike repair and place structure involving only local citizens building that local economy---the costs would be lower than this contract.
'following the city's approval Wednesday of a $2.36 million Charm City Bikeshare contract with Canadian company Bewegen Technologies'.
You won't see women trying to get to a March on Washington looking at this transportation option if they make it to DC area-----
Baltimore approves bike rental program to launch in fall with 500 bicycles
Baltimore will roll out its $2.36 million Charm City Bikeshare program in the fall, with 500 bicycles at 50 stations around downtown and surrounding neighborhoods. Two of the bikes are displayed at a news conference announcing the program outside City Hall.
(Colin Campbell / Baltimore Sun)
Colin CampbellContact ReporterThe Baltimore Sun
Beginning in fall, 500 bicycles will be available around Baltimore for short-term rent.Beginning this fall, 500 bicycles will be available for short-term rent around Baltimore, following the city's approval Wednesday of a $2.36 million Charm City Bikeshare contract with Canadian company Bewegen Technologies.
The bicycles, 200 of them featuring electric-assisted pedaling, will be placed at 50 stations around Baltimore in an area spanning from the Inner Harbor west to Union Square, north to Charles North, east to Canton and south to Locust Point.
It hasn't been determined how much the bikes will cost to rent, but it is expected to be about $4 per hour, with the first half-hour free, similar to programs in other programs, officials said.
D.C.'s Capital Bikeshare offers more than 3,000 bikes at 350 stations across the Washington area. It charges a fee for membership ranging from $8 per day to $85 per year, plus the rental rate.
Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake, who controls the city's spending board that approved the contract, said Baltimore will join more than 700 cities in 50 countries in launching a bike-share program.
The number of pedal-assisted bicycles in the city's program will be the largest of any program in North and South America, Bewegen CEO Alain Ayotte said.
"For Baltimore, expanding our network of sustainable transportation options is critical both to retaining our residents and attracting new families into our city," Rawlings-Blake said. "Being a bikeable city means being a better, more livable city, and it also means making Baltimore greener, cleaner and healthier."
Bewegen has selected Corps Logistics to manage the contract, handling installation, operations, maintenance, support and customer service. The New Jersey-based company will move its headquarters to Baltimore this summer before the launch, said Jim Duffney, Corps Logistics founder and CEO.
The company plans to hire about 80 local employees, Duffney said, including veterans at the Baltimore Station, a transitional residential treatment program for men recovering from homelessness and drug addiction.
Each bicycle will be equipped with GPS technology to track its whereabouts, officials said. The city expects to reach out to neighborhood residents to determine where the stations would be the most effective.
Opting to ride a bike instead of driving a car not only saves money but contributes to better cardiovascular health and fitness, Rawlings-Blake said.
"We may see a positive ripple effect in the overall health of our city with the implementation of the bike-share program," the mayor said. "That is a great bonus."
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BWI was transferred to the designation INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT back in REAGAN/CLINTON empire-building global market days and for these few decades the space and hubs designated to these international airlines were EMPTY-----I often came to BWI and would simply look at transit traffic-----at the same time in order to make room for these international hubs the state reduced cheap air fair plane routes-----this occurred all around the nation. Today there are a few still in business with reduced hubs-----almost always taking people to tourist destinations and not simply cities to where citizens may want to visit family or vacation.
As Maryland and Baltimore MOVE FORWARD to making the East Coast mirror the West Coast in Foreign Economic Zone installation the airports around Washington DC long ago cut its cheap rate routes and hubs----so don't think women were able to FLY INTO WASHINGTON or nearby on low-rate air flights----the flights available would have been very LIMITED.
Most of our low-cost air corporations were pushed out of business during the GAS PROFITEERING of CLINTON/BUSH. Remember all those high gas prices and airlines pushed into bankruptcy------that was the goal----today they are bring a few low-rate airlines back with very limited HUB SPACE. Huge drop in American citizens ability to fly wherever they want.
BBJ: BWI is spending millions to increase the number of international passengers
Posted on March 7, 2016 by Elizabeth LoweEditor’s note: The following article appeared on BizJournals.com on March 4, 2016.
By Rick Seltzer
Amanda Gutierrez stood next to a large suitcase on a Friday evening at Baltimore/Washington International Thurgood Marshall Airport’s international terminal, preparing to check in for her WOW Air flight to London.
“It worked out, and we got less than $700 for our round trip to and from Europe,” said Gutierrez, 25, a medical school researcher preparing to spend two weeks visiting a friend and touring Europe. “Our friend had told me WOW had really cheap flights, and we were looking to go.”
Gutierrez isn’t alone in wanting to travel outside the U.S. International traffic has been on the rise at U.S. airports for years, with domestic carriers’ passenger boarding alone rising from 62.6 million in 1996 to 102.6 million in 2014, according to federal data.
Nor is Gutierrez alone in trying to travel on the cheap. Experts are projecting continued overseas travel growth driven by foreign carriers and low-cost airlines new to American shores.
That has BWI’s leadership hoping to ride international service to new heights. The skies aren’t entirely clear — the established U.S.-based carriers likely aren’t coming in greater numbers to the Linthicum airport, and its major operator, Southwest Airlines, seems happy to take its international expansion slowly. Worse, BWI has to contend with other regional hubs long-positioned for international service like Dulles International Airport in Virginia and even Philadelphia International Airport.
But at the end of the day, airport leadership and industry experts agree BWI has the chance to cruise to new international altitudes. The airport is spending millions on incentives and capital costs toward that goal, it’s positioned itself to attract the hot low-cost airlines, and it has a large surrounding market to tap.
“BWI is doing the right things,” said Michael Boyd, a Colorado-based aviation consultant. “It’s a major population center. It certainly can support some additional international traffic. I’m not talking about just going down to San Juan to get a sunburn. I’m talking about gateways to major international centers.”
Boyd and other experts see BWI as being in the perfect spot to tap into major changes in travel favoring nontraditional air carriers. Thanks to the aggressive, government-subsidized carriers based around the Persian Gulf and those in huge opening-up markets like China, there are many destinations and more travelers set to be served by airlines offering cheap tickets, they said.
Several even mentioned China’s Hainan Airlines as a good fit for BWI. The Chinese airline commenced service between Los Angeles and Changsha in January, its eighth North American route. In 2015, it started a Shanghai-to-Boston route and is widely considered to be looking for more destinations.
Speculation aside, some upstarts have signed on at BWI in the last year. The low-cost WOW and Norwegian Air Shuttle started flights out of the airport. BWI CEO Ricky Smith called Norwegian an airline to watch and said his business development team is engaged in discussions to bring new low-fare carriers onboard.
Smith didn’t name those carriers. But he predicted future increases in international traffic at his airport.
“We think we have some very good days ahead of us,” Smith said. “We spend a lot of time looking at unserved and under-served markets. Our search-and-development team spends time around the clock talking to new carriers and existing carriers.”
Future increases in international service would be keeping with a trend at BWI. International passenger traffic jumped 31.9 percent last year to a record 1.1 million. It far outpaced domestic growth of 5.8 percent. International growth has been faster than domestic growth at BWI in each of the last six years, although domestic traffic still accounted for the vast majority of BWI’s 23.8 million passengers in 2015.
Smith has a plan for convincing new overseas carriers to come to BWI, and for encouraging its existing airlines to expand international service. It starts with airport enhancements.
To that end, BWI is nearing completion of a $100 million connector between its D and E concourses. The connector, slated to open this summer, will add gates and capacity.
It will help Southwest in particular, Smith said.
Southwest is only a recent entrant into the international market, flying its first international flights out of BWI in 2014 after it acquired AirTran Holdings Inc. But the airline has signaled intent to grow service to Latin American locations from BWI.
Beyond serving Southwest, Smith has a simple plan for boosting BWI’s international service: Focus on cost.
“There’s a strong base here for low-fare international service,” he said. “Our strategy is to build on our low-fare domestic position and position ourselves as the low-fare international airport for this region.”
BWI can make the case that it’s the lowest-cost airport in the region. Its cost per enplanement, a measure of how much airlines pay on average per passenger at an airport, is far below competing airports at $9.85, according to data from DWU Consulting LLC. Reagan National came in at $11.26, Philadelphia stood at $12.81 and Dulles was $26.55.
Other strategies in play include marketing BWI in overseas locations and maintaining long-term relationships with airlines, Smith said. Even though he’s been CEO at BWI for less than a year, he pointed out that he previously spent 17 years at the airport as chief operating officer. He also kept up to date on BWI and kept up his relationship with airlines in his previous position as director of Cleveland Hopkins International Airport. Beyond that, the airport’s business development team does much of the heavy lifting on wooing airlines, he said.
BWI has also moved recently to boost its service with a more traditional long-haul carrier, British Airways.
The airline will be bringing a 787 Dreamliner to BWI later this year in what Smith cast as a major win. The new aircraft will be configured with 214 passengers in three classes. British Airways had previously used an older plane design, the 767, to fly between BWI and London’s Heathrow Airport. The airline flies 767s with 189 seats for long-haul flights.
BWI and the State of Maryland lured the new plane to BWI using an incentive deal that could total as much as $6 million in 2016 if the BWI-Heathrow route does not meet certain metrics. But it was necessary to keep a keystone service that proves BWI works for international flights, Smith said.
The British Airways incentive was a special grant approved through the state, but BWI can use an incentive program to lure airlines that can provide certain levels of service, Smith said.
It would be harder to convince other traditional carriers to fly out of BWI, Smith said. They’re already entrenched at other airports.
“If we go after the traditional international carriers, we would have to, in essence, convince them to leave Dulles for here,” Smith said. “What has worked for us is to go after those nontraditional international carriers.”
Fortunately for BWI, that’s the part of the international market expected to grow fastest.
“The traditional carriers, they’re adding incremental service, so they’re not going to be announcing 40 new routes,” said Matthew Cornelius, vice president, air policy at Airports Council International North America. “But, particularly in Europe, the explosion of ultra-low-cost carriers like Ryanair and EasyJet, that’s a much more mature situation. As they max out their European options, I think a lot of them are going to look at where we go next. Even Frontier or Spirit or WOW, they’re going to be the ones growing faster with more route options.”
Airports Council International runs an annual program Cornelius likened to “speed dating” for airlines and airports. The two parties feel each other out during short meetings. Airlines tend to be interested in a local market’s business base, economic trends and recreational travel base.
At the end of the day, the major driver is economic conditions, Cornelius said. Markets need enough travelers to make the financial figures work.
And while the Baltimore-Washington market has plenty of inbound and outbound travelers, it also has other airports with which to contend. Dulles is a major impediment to winning passengers and planes.
BWI has long had an advantage over Dulles from the traveler’s perspective — it has a direct rail link. The MARC train pulls up to a station at BWI’s doorstop. Passengers without a car have had to take the D.C. Metro’s Silver Line and connecting bus to get to Dulles.
That’s set to change in a few years when the Silver Line is extended all the way to Dulles. Meanwhile, BWI has another challenge in international expansion — its greatest strength, Southwest, is also a weakness of sorts.
Southwest does not codeshare with other carriers, industry experts said. That means BWI’s biggest airline is a largely domestic carrier that doesn’t have ticket-selling deals linking to international carriers. It also means BWI tends to be an origin point and a destination point for international service, rather than a stop along the way for passengers flying elsewhere on longer itineraries.
Yes, Southwest is expected to grow internationally. But its expansion will be limited by its willingness to buy planes capable of long-haul flights over the Atlantic. Southwest CEO Gary Kelly said during a 2015 BWI Business Partnership appearance that his airline was focused on 737s flying to North America. And industry experts haven’t seen anything signaling changes in that strategy.
“The thought of Southwest getting an aircraft capable of transatlantic service is interesting,” said Tom Reich, director of air service development at AFCO AvPorts Management, an aviation consulting firm in Dulles. “I’ll believe it when I see it.”
What Southwest could more easily do to boost transatlantic flights at BWI is start codesharing. The airline has been mentioning at industry conferences a move toward a new reservation system allowing it to do code-sharing, Reich said.
The move would allow passengers to book flights over the ocean on a European carrier, disembark at BWI, and then board a Southwest flight to another U.S. destination, all under the same itinerary.
It would turn Southwest’s Baltimore hub from a location that doesn’t feed other airlines’ traffic to one attracting more interest overseas, Reich said.
“Southwest suddenly becomes more attractive to a low-cost carrier in Europe,” he said.
Of course, there’s nothing keeping travelers from booking on separate airlines themselves. They’re showing willingness to do it at BWI.
It’s what Gutierrez did to get to BWI. She started with a Southwest flight from her home of Houston and spent a seven-hour layover at BWI in order to get her cheap WOW flight, which she booked separately.
“WOW usually only flies out of BWI or Boston, so we took a one-way flight here,” she said. “We thought we’d give it a try. It’s cheap. We can’t pass it up.”
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The deliberate profiteering from a few decades ago extremely high gas prices had a goal of pushing local and regional business as TRUCKING, TRANSIT, AND AIRLINES out of business to be enfolded into global corporations and that is what occurred. All those regional cheap airlines and routes went bankrupt-------even national airlines used gas prices to go to bankruptcy where they send all labor benefits, wages, and pensions just so they could reorganize into consolidated global airlines.
THAT WAS THE ATTACK ON YET MORE WAYS AMERICAN CITIZENS COULD TRAVEL-----
Here we see these now global airlines creating CHEAP FLIGHTS as was done in the US---now those cheap flights are from FOREIGN ECONOMIC ZONE CITIES TO OTHERS. The goal now with cheap flights is to get that foreign citizen to move to our US cities deemed Foreign Economic Zones-----these are the HUBS BEING OPENED IN BWI----and other airports around the US.......
More women from overseas had it easier to come to our Washington DC march then US WOMEN.
Young adults MOVING FORWARD into ONE WORLD FOREIGN ECONOMIC ZONES here in the US should be more concerned with moving around our region and nationally----as foreign travel will be soon only something a global 1% and their 2% do.....these global rates are short-lived.
Hmmmmm, if only 250,000 women really marched on Washington-----that could have been entirely a DC population.
'Washington, DC
Place in: District of Columbia, DC, Washington-Arlington-Alexandria, DC-VA-MD-WV Metro Area, District of Columbia, United States
672,228 Population'
WOW Air offers $99 fares to Europe; What's the catch?
Today in the Sky
Ben Mutzabaugh , USA TODAY Published 6:44 p.m. ET July 15, 2015 | Updated 9:16 a.m. ET July 16, 2015
Upstart Icelandic discount carrier WOW Air has created a stir by offering $99 one-way fares from the USA to Europe.
So, what's the catch? The fares are legit, but there are some major limitations. WOW Air's limited flight schedule and small U.S. footprint mean the deal won't be available to most U.S. travelers. And return fares are only available for higher (but still generally modest) prices.
WOW's sale covers flights from Boston and Baltimore – its only two U.S. destinations – to just two European cities: Paris and Amsterdam. And thanks to blackout dates and WOW's less-than-daily flight schedule on the routes, the $99 fares are offered only one day a week on each route.
And passengers traveling between from Boston and Baltimore also must connect via WOW's hub in Reykjavik when traveling to or from Amsterdam and Paris.
Another major limitation: the $99 fares aren't offered on the return flight. They're available for more-pedestrian rates that are as low as $210 (limited availability) to $300 and up. Still, bargain-hunters willing to comb the carrier's schedule could put together a round-trip itinerary for as little as $350.
For those unfamiliar with WOW, it operates with an "ultra low-cost" model. That means it charges for everything from checking a bag (starts at $48) to requesting an advance seat assignment ($3 to $38 per flight). Small carry-on bags are free, but bags weighing more than 11 pounds will cost at least $29 to bring on board.
But if all that sounds OK – and if you can get to Baltimore or Boston and navigate the limited calendar of availability – then the $99 fares are being offered through March 10. Availability on the narrow window of days remained decent as of Wednesday evening (July 15), though fares could sell out at any time.
And, in addition to the advertised fares to Paris and Amsterdam, WOW also was selling some flights to Dublin for $99. Those flights were available from Boston and Baltimore, but only during January and February. As with WOW's other flights to mainland Europe, a connection via Reykjavik is required.
As for the Paris and Amsterdam fares, scroll down for the complete list of restrictions for the $99 Europe-bound routes:
When we understand that global Wall Street always puts the faces of people they are setting up to fail in the spotlight----making them the 5% to the 1%---we will see how a UNITED NATIONS/WORLD BANK has placed its media propaganda tied to lifting women globally. There will only be that global 1% of women tied to the same men----with 99% of women pushed into this global labor pool at slave wages.
Bernie Sanders received the majority of Democratic votes from women because women have these few decades of CLINTON/BUSH/OBAMA fought to get rid of the Clinton global Wall Street neo-liberalism from our people's left Democratic Party---it was women most angry at the Hillary Democratic primary fraud-----and for those marching across the nation against DEMOCRATIC PRIMARY FRAUD-----it was women out in force.
THIS WAS THE AMERICAN WOMEN'S PROTEST MARCH----
Again, WE THE PEOPLE are allowing a global 1% NGO control when, where, how we do our protests for American rights and governance. It wasn't wrong to protest TRUMP----but if we are silent about the problems in the Democratic Party we will never reverse MOVING FORWARD ONE WORLD ONE GOVERNANCE.
A majority of Republican women voted for Trump----a majority of Democratic voters voted for Bernie-----so who are these women supposedly coming to Washington DC to support a Hillary over a Trump?
Well, indeed we would know a crowd of Washington DC citizens would----DC is now filling fast with that global 1% and their 2%----
'For a city that overwhelmingly voted for Hillary Clinton (90.9 percent of DC residents cast their ballot for the Democratic candidate in November), it’s not a particularly surprising outpouring of support'.
Washington, DC's metro is slammed with marchers trying to get to the National Mall
Updated by Tara Golshan Jan 21, 2017, 11:42am EST
On Inauguration Day, Washington, DC’s metro cars and buses were emptier than usual. Despite road closures, traffic was subdued. Outside of the roughly 250,000 people who attended President Donald Trump’s swearing-in ceremony, and the thousands of anti-Trump demonstrators staging protests in the surrounding streets, Washington, DC, had largely gone dark for a day.
Only a day later, just getting to the nation’s capital is proving much more difficult, as hundreds of thousands head to the National Mall for the Women’s March on Washington.
Los Angeles Times reporter Matt Pearce captured the difference on his ride into the city:
Although 220,000 people have committed to going to the march on Facebook, event organizers are expecting half a million people to participate, DC’s deputy mayor tweeted Saturday.
As of 11 am, 275,000 people had ridden DC’s metro, eight times a typical Saturday and busier than most weekday’s, WMATA tweeted. By comparison, 193,000 people had ridden the metro by 11 am yesterday.
Videos and photographs of packed metro stations in surrounding Virginia and Maryland continue to pour in, and by 10 am the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority has already announced that several metro parking lots are already close to capacity.
For a city that overwhelmingly voted for Hillary Clinton (90.9 percent of DC residents cast their ballot for the Democratic candidate in November), it’s not a particularly surprising outpouring of support.
But marchers are not only coming from DC and its surrounding suburbs. In the days leading up to march, there were multiple reports of planes filled with women flying to Washington to march.
Similar marches have also been planned in more than 600 cities around the country — and even internationally — to amplify the message on Trump’s first official day in office.
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As a baby boomer having marched on Washington several times during the 1960s-70 for civil rights, labor rights, women's rights----anti-war-----I was among massive numbers of people. We used to have a Congress and media that would do real estimates of march totals and we would read in our media of a million citizens making their way to Washington DC This is why these few decades marches are still calling themselves the MILLION MAN-----the MILLION WOMEN-----we used to bring out that many citizens. During CLINTON/BUSH/OBAMA----we were told the National Park Service would give media totals ----so counts done by those independent journalists and citizen groups no longer were reported in media----only that National Park Service number and indeed we saw 250,000 as a total for all marches since then. It's not that the people are not protesting----it is that they can no longer GET TO WASHINGTON whether they cannot afford to transport themselves or whether our transportation modes are scaling down no longer accommodating our rights to protest-----
It sounds much different when we read 250,000 people marched on Washington then does a million and more citizen march
“Everything that this march is about, I have been on a protest for,” Bailey said. “That was the ’60s, ’70s, ’80s, and ’90s
Below is one of the reasons why today our rights to protest are getting harder and harder to do. I have personally tried to find parking for protests in DC over these few decades and oddly the WASHINGTON AREA TRANSIT PARKING AUTHORITY has filled decks of cars everywhere---literally people from out of town cannot find places to park. DC's Parking Authority is privatized just as Baltimore's Parking Authority and yes, they are closing public garages------eliminating public open lots-----privatizing new garages to corporate development for work only purposes. When we are told through media that parking is filled to capacity at 10AM-----people are turning away from coming to that national event and staying locally. In the 1960s-70s we had public transit that would ADD RAIL CARS-----that would ADD BUSES AND SHUTTLES------
'Videos and photographs of packed metro stations in surrounding Virginia and Maryland continue to pour in, and by 10 am the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority has already announced that several metro parking lots are already close to capacity'.
Before CLINTON/BUSH/OBAMA created a Washington DC surrounded by global corporations with the city itself owned by global corporations Washington DC used to be COMPLETELY PUBLIC. There were tons of places to park-----streets were open to public parking and not permitted and given to ZIP CAR AND UBER.
THE AMERICAN PEOPLE LISTEN TO NATIONAL MEDIA TELLING THEM-----PARKING AUTHORITY SAYS NO MORE PARKING----THE PUBLIC TRAINS TELLING PEOPLE A MONTH BEFORE THE EVENT 'SOLD OUT'---AND THAT IS WHY ARE ABILITY TO PROTEST BRINGS SMALLER CROWDS.
Platinum Parking
is a subsidiary company of Robbins Parking Service Ltd. based in Victoria, British Columbia, Canada (Robbins).
COMPANY OVERVIEW
Platinum Parking is all about garage management and parking consultation since starting in Dallas in 1999 with a single location. We now operate over 120 facilities in 6 cities and 3 states. Our growth is a direct result from the close attention that we pay to each of the facilities that we manage. This attention to detail translates into improved operations and maximum financial performance at our facilities.
Platinum Parking is a subsidiary company of Robbins Parking Service Ltd. based in Victoria, British Columbia, Canada (Robbins). Robbins started business in 1967 and has grown to manage over 250 surface parking facilities, garages, and on street parking operations with gross revenues in excess of $30 mil per year. In 2004, Robbins acquired Platinum Parking and has found success in implementing tried and true systems and methodologies to improve and grow our company. In 2009, Platinum Parking acquired a Dallas based valet company, Advantage Valet, in order to expand our available services for our clients. In 2011, Platinum Parking acquired a Houston based parking company, Merit Parking, in order to expand our current client base in several cities and expand our operations to new markets.
Platinum Parking currently operates six full-service offices in Dallas, Fort Worth, Houston, Austin, Florida and New Orleans. Platinum Parking’s national headquarters is located in the heart of Downtown Dallas. With a large client presence in each of the markets that we are located, Platinum Parking knows the types of activities and the specific needs that are involved with a large office building complex in a dense, multi-use urban area.
Platinum Parking Quick Links
LOCATIONSDue to our growth over the past several years, Platinum Parking has become a regional leader for parking management in Texas and Louisiana.
PLATINUM SERVICESOur services include parking lot operations for both commercial and residential properties, temporary and event parking, and outsourced parking solutions.
Platinum Parking offers Garage, Surface Lot, Valet & Event Parking.
MAKE A PAYMENTPlatinum is more than a structure with neatly lined pieces of asphalt. We are a full-service parking management enterprise with exceptional service.
Our People Are Our Driving Force
PLATINUM PEOPLE
The parking facility is the first and last impression made on employees, members and visitors at each of our locations. Platinum Parking’s job is to ensure that every first and last impression is a positive experience by providing excellent customer service, consistent operations and superior facility appearance.
In order to efficiently and effectively operate a parking program, several different types of personnel may be needed for each location, including: management, supervisors, parking ambassadors, clerical/administrative staff, enforcement patrols and custodial/maintenance staff.
The keys to successful operations in a parking facility include: a strong site manager, well-trained employees and hands-on involvement by the company executive management.
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Platinum and its affiliates are always looking for team members who are friendly, outgoing, and enjoy helping others by delivering great customer service and hospitality.
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A consultative partner that provides ongoing input and suggestions to improve the business. Through our many years in the parking business, there is virtually no situation we have not encountered in the past, that we cannot solve in the future. Our team of experts will help with the seamless transitioning to Platinum Parking; including closing out old tenants, getting new tenants set up, issuing of new parking cards, and addressing security issues from the beginning.
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As the American people become more impoverished---as they lose their cars we see the uptick of what is an IMPOSSIBLE BUSINESS MODEL-----the Megabus----and BOLT. I have ridden these buses for very cheap prices and it is clearly not a sustainable business. They are taking the place of what used to be our STATEWIDE MTA-----STATE PUBLIC COMMUTER ROUTES that would have been filled with citizens---that would have placed more buses on routes as needed for marches like this---but Maryland if it had statewide public commuter busing has eliminated it these few decades. It is now coming back as LARRY HOGAN'S AND MARTIN O'MALLEY'S PRIVATIZATION PLAN----handing those statewide commuter routes to global corporations that WILL MAKE PROFITS by not worrying about public interest needs.
People pushed off cheap airplane routes----moved to trains---AMTRAK AND CSX controlling all trains as MARYLAND'S MARC TRAIN-----raising rates moving people off trains to these MEGABUSES-----these cheap busing services were never expected to stay in business----they were used to FURTHER DEREGULATE OUR STATE PUBLIC TRANSIT SYSTEM.
So, did MEGABUS increase its services to Washington DC for this march on Washington?
NO BECAUSE IT IS NOT PROFITABLE EVEN WITH FULL LOADS.
So, inside these transportation sources is yet more tiering----pay more for this pay more for that and we are not really getting anything more----they are simply creating MARKETS.
'If our parking sounds like our health care plans----it is global Wall Street creating TIERING BY CLASS------we have been egalitarian----they are creating the mindset of CLASS. Know what a ONE WORLD ONE GOVERNANCE has as CLASS-----the extreme global 1% and 99% as extreme poverty serfs and slaves. Don't fight to be in a CLASS'.
What used to be berths for our state commuter transit buses are now held for these private global bus services that will disappear.
Paris for a pound: Megabus expands routes to four European destinations (but how many tickets will REALLY cost £1?)
By Amy Oliver for The Mail on Sunday
Published: 08:00 EST, 16 April 2012 | Updated: 11:10 EST, 16 April 2012
- With hiked rail fares and petrol prices at an all time high, the cost of holidaying at home, let alone abroad may prove difficult for some this year.
But, like a knight on a blue and yellow charger, budget coach operator megabus.com has zoomed in to the rescue.
Or so it claims.
The company, owned by Stagecoach has launched a UK to Europe coach service with seats starting at £1.
L'autobus Méga: Budget coach operator megabus.com has launched a UK to Europe service with low-cost trips to Paris, Boulogne, Brussels and Amsterdam
If you're prepared to spend up to 12 hours on a bus, listening to the duff, duff, duff of your fellow traveller's iPod while taking in the delicate aroma of the on-board toilet, then congratulations! Paris, Boulogne, Brussels and Amsterdam could be your oyster.
But a quick search for bargain £1 tickets to all four destinations on megabus.com proved tricky today - mainly because there weren't any.
A Stagecoach spokesman told MailOnline that tickets range from £1 to £40 and include the ferry crossing and free on-board wi-fi.
He added the company started selling UK to Europe tickets last month and had already sold out of more than 80 trips.
Cheap: If you're prepared to spend up to 12 hours on a bus then Paris, left, Boulogne, Brussels and Amsterdam, right, is your oyster
LONDON TO PARIS: MEGABUS VS EUROSTAR
We Brits like a bit of comfort but we also can't resist a bargain. No crick in the neck or 'numb bum' caused by hours of coach travel is going to come between us and a ticket to Paris that only costs £4 thank you very much. But say we did want to fork out for a business premiere ticket on the Eurostar, how would it compare to the Megabus?
MEGABUS (London to Paris)
- Cost: From £1
- Time: 8hrs and 40mins
- Standard coach seats with handy net pocket that you can't get your drink in
- On-board toilet quite close to your seat
- If you're lucky the last person may have left a copy of Cosmo
- Chance to grab sandwich and crisps at Victoria station
- Free wi-fi on board
- Exclusive access to array of drinking establishments at station before departure (warning: that G+T may cost more than your ticket)
- Cost: Up to £276
- Time: 2hrs 23mins
- Extra spacious, comfortable seats
- On-board toilet, away from your seat
- Complimentary newspapers and magazines on board
- Full at-seat meal service and drinks such as Champagne and fine wines
- Access to free wireless internet in all Business Premier lounges
- Exclusive Business Premier lounge access with complimentary bar
The cheapest available ticket from London to Paris on megabus.com today was £4, while the most expensive to Brussels was £15.
Stagecoach chief executive Sir Brian Souter said: 'With the rising cost of living, rocketing fuel prices and running a car becoming more and more expensive, everyone is looking to make their money go further.
'For too long, people in many parts of Europe have been paying too much for their coach travel.
'Our new network offers families, students and tourists great value fares and high-quality coaches. These services will deliver a long-overdue shake-up to the over-priced European coach travel market.'
He added: 'We launched megabus.com in Scotland nine years ago and it has already transformed intercity travel in the UK and North America.'
Stagecoach also revealed today that it is investigating the potential for a sleeper coach service between the UK and Europe.
The company is working in partnership with Belgian manufacturer Van Hool on a sleepercoach fitted with 48 seats and tables for use during the daytime, which could be converted into 43 bunks on overnight services.
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If you Google this article you will see a sign saying MICHIGAN MULTIMODAL GATEWAY-------this is the same thing our Maryland Governor Larry Hogan is calling MTA LINK SYSTEM upgrade-----they are making us believe there is intent to build all these different kinds of private public transportation structures when their is absolutely no intent to do so----global transit corporations service global corporate campuses moving people around in the course of doing a job.
We all know a MEGABUS and a BOLT will not last. Michigan with Detroit leads in bankruptcies to austerity----as with Maryland there is no intent in US cities deemed Foreign Economic Zones to have people moving around freely that are not the global 1% and their 2%.
These several years of Obama and Clinton neo-liberal Congress broke down our public transit by defunding, dismantling oversight and accountability making these services horrible-----and by sending Federal support for public transit TO THESE GLOBAL TRANSIT CORPORATIONS.
CLINTON/OBAMA BUILT THIS DEREGULATED, PRIVATIZED MESS.
Who uses public transit the most? Women, children, seniors, poor. Who is killing all of the above? CLINTON/OBAMA GLOBAL WALL STREET PLAYERS.
'Taking Amtrak from East Lansing? Parking will cost you'
Megabus cuts service to East Lansing next month
Alexander Alusheff , Lansing State Journal Published 7:32 a.m. ET Dec. 23, 2016 | Updated 8:01 a.m. ET Dec. 23, 2016
Megabus to cut service in East Lansing Alex Alusheff/Lansing State Journal
Buy Photo(Photo: Julia Nagy/Lansing State Journal)
EAST LANSING – Rajasi Joshi departed on one of the last Megabus trips to Chicago from East Lansing on Thursday afternoon.
The company is stopping its service at the Capital Area Multimodal Gateway on Harrison Road on Jan. 9.
"It kind of sucks, because there's not much else," said Joshi, a graduate student at Michigan State University. "This is more convenient."
The decision was based on customer demand, said Megabus spokesman Sean Hughes, as well as low fuel prices and competition from other coach operators.
“It’s part of a corporate restructuring.” Hughes said.
The New Jersey-based company will make cuts in Chicago in January as well, he said.
From East Lansing, Megabus travels to Ann Arbor, Grand Rapids and Chicago. It's among four services that travel to Chicago from the hub in East Lansing. The others are Amtrak, Greyhound and Indian Trails.
Joshi was among a handful of people waiting to board the bus on Thursday afternoon. While there are other options, she said, she prefers Megabus because it makes fewer stops than the other bus lines and costs less than Amtrak, which departs early in the morning.
A ticket to Chicago on Megabus costs $39, though the company frequently offered deep discounts. That's compared to Amtrak tickets that start at $29, though the cheaper tickets often sell out quickly, and Indian Trial and Greyhound fares that run about $30.
The company’s decision to leave is a disappointment to the Capital Area Transportation Authority, which manages the multimodal gateway, said Laurie Robison, director of marketing for CATA.
“The ridership based on their standards was not sufficient,” she said.
Megabus has run routes from East Lansing since May 2012, Robison said in an email, and was supposed to remain through November 2020.
Pam Erickson, of Okemos, was taking the bus to Chicago Thursday to meet her daughter before they flew to California for the holidays. It was her first time taking Megabus, but her children have used it many times.
"I'm sad to see it go," she said. "It's easier to take a bus than to drive."
________________________________________
Here we see yet another transportation expanded under the guise of building public participation in that transit vehicle......our Amtrak. Nixon sold this to great fanfare as key to helping those same POOR, DISABLED, SENIORS----so Federal funding was sent to expand and strengthen AMTRAK----a private rail corporation that has these few decade now been called UNABLE TO SUPPORT ITSELF. It was never meant to support itself----the subsidy was for PUBLIC INTEREST ---USING FEDERAL TAXES PAID BY WE THE PEOPLE for public transportation options.
During those 1970s rallies to Washington AMTRAK was key in transportation of 99% of citizens-----today AMTRAK has been crippled with cuts to funding because of CLINTON/BUSH/OBAMA few decades of massive and systemic frauds against all our public agencies including our Federal and state public transit agencies----
LOTS OF FRAUD AND CORRUPTION MOVING BILLIONS AWAY FROM SUSTAINING AND MAINTENANCE OF AMTRAK AND MARC TRAINS.
'Amtrak, which was created in the Nixon Administration, should stop competing with ''the poor, the handicapped, and the helpless'' for Federal help, he said. ''We believe the Amtrak experiment has gone on long enough,'' he said. ''It should now be forced to pay its way or get out of business.'' '
So yes, there were citizens able to buy an AMTRAK or MARC TRAIN ticket but they were sold out fast because the number of cars and runs have been reduced.
Who Owns Amtrak?
By Maya Black
Amtrak is a corporation that the U.S. federal government has chartered. In other words, the government created the corporation, but Amtrak has its own board of directors whom the president of the United States appoints. The federal government owns most of Amtrak's shares, making the government the corporation's largest stakeholder. Amtrak reported that it carried more than 30 million passengers in fiscal year 2013.
AMTRAK will be bankrupted with the advent of HIGH-SPEED RAIL OWNED BY GLOBAL CORPORATIONS........
CUT SUBSIDY REQUEST, AMTRAK IS URGED
By ERNEST HOLSENDOLPH, Special to the New York Times
Published: March 14, 1981
WASHINGTON, March 13— Senator Howard W. Cannon, who has declared his support for subsidized passenger train service, offered some friendly advice to Amtrak today: Compromise on your request for Federal assistance for next year or risk reductions that could eliminate all service except for the Northeast Corridor.
Senator Cannon, a Nevada Democrat, offered his advice to Alan S. Boyd, the president of Amtrak, in one of a series of Congressional hearings on the Reagan Administration's proposal to reduce the Federal subsidy for the railroad in the fiscal year 1982 by more than 30 percent.
Amtrak has proposed a budget that includes $970 million in Federal subsidies to support its operations next year, but the Administration wants to cut the assistance to $613 million. Mr. Boyd said a reduction of that amount would force Amtrak to drop all service except that linking Boston, New York, Philadelphia and Washington.
Senator Bob Packwood, the Oregon Republican whose home base would lose its passenger rail link to Chicago under such a service reduction, told Mr. Boyd: ''I've been told by Amtrak officials that if trains between Chicago and California were run full every day, with everybody paying the full fare and eating all they could hold, we would still have to subsidize the train.''
Alternative Cut Proposed
Mr. Packwood appeared to agree with Robert Blanchette, the head of the Federal Railroad Administration, who said that Amtrak should first cut all trains that operate deeply in the red and then work to preserve only those trains that can be operated with passengers paying at least half of the cost of each trip.
''I understand that long-distance trains have 27 percent of the riders but receive 63 percent of the subsidies,'' Mr. Packwood said. Mr. Blanchette, also testifying before the Senate Commerce Committee's Subcommittee on Transportation, refused to identify the trains he thought should be sacrificed, saying such decisions should be made by the Amtrak management. ''The Government is like the board of directors of Amtrak, setting policy, but the details should always be left to the professional management,'' he said.
Mr. Boyd said that, besides restricting service to the Northeast Corridor, the $613 million subsidy proposed by Secretary of Transportation Drew Lewis would pay off protected employees, about 23,000 of whom would lose their jobs. Time Running Out
Meanwhile, Senator James J. Exon, Democrat of Nebraska, a member of both the Transportation Subcommittee and the Budget Committee, said that time was running out on the effort to find a workable plan to keep Amtrak in operation. The Budget Committee of the Senate will set spending levels in the next week to 10 days, he said, and the House will act later.
Mr. Boyd said that the proposed reduction would end the prospect for a national rail system. He proposed instead that high subsidies be continued so as to give the railroad time to negotiate new labor contracts this year and possibly reduce the operating cost sharply.
Nearly 60 percent of the operating cost is for labor, which is considered high by railroad experts. Much of that cost stems from low productivity, Mr. Boyd said, Some personnel, such as engineers, may draw four-and-a-half days' pay for working as little as eight hours in a week, he said.
Senators who appeared willing to cut Amtrak's assistance sharply found a friend in Arthur D. Lewis, president of the American Bus Association, who testified that the intercity bus industry stands ready to take aboard everyone who now uses passenger trains.
Amtrak, which was created in the Nixon Administration, should stop competing with ''the poor, the handicapped, and the helpless'' for Federal help, he said. ''We believe the Amtrak experiment has gone on long enough,'' he said. ''It should now be forced to pay its way or get out of business.''
____________________________________________
Here we see yet another transportation expanded under the guise of building public participation in that transit vehicle......our Amtrak. Nixon sold this to great fanfare as key to helping those same POOR, DISABLED, SENIORS----so Federal funding was sent to expand and strengthen AMTRAK----a private rail corporation that has these few decade now been called UNABLE TO SUPPORT ITSELF. It was never meant to support itself----the subsidy was for PUBLIC INTEREST ---USING FEDERAL TAXES PAID BY WE THE PEOPLE for public transportation options.
During those 1970s rallies to Washington AMTRAK was key in transportation of 99% of citizens-----today AMTRAK has been crippled with cuts to funding because of CLINTON/BUSH/OBAMA few decades of massive and systemic frauds against all our public agencies including our Federal and state public transit agencies----
LOTS OF FRAUD AND CORRUPTION MOVING BILLIONS AWAY FROM SUSTAINING AND MAINTENANCE OF AMTRAK AND MARC TRAINS.
'Amtrak, which was created in the Nixon Administration, should stop competing with ''the poor, the handicapped, and the helpless'' for Federal help, he said. ''We believe the Amtrak experiment has gone on long enough,'' he said. ''It should now be forced to pay its way or get out of business.'' '
So yes, there were citizens able to buy an AMTRAK or MARC TRAIN ticket but they were sold out fast because the number of cars and runs have been reduced.
It's all TRUMP's FAULT-----we will hear from all the 5% to the 1% Clinton/Obama Wall Street pols and players who pushed and forced high-speed rail on WE THE PEOPLE knowing this will kill our AMTRAK.
Cuts to AMTRAK through CLINTON/BUSH/OBAMA is why women from across the nation in large numbers could not reach Washington DC to protest----SOLD OUT FAST!
Privatizing Amtrak
- Chris Edwards
October 17, 2016Private passenger rail service thrived in the United States between the mid–19th century and the early–20th century. By the late 1950s, however, passenger rail was struggling because of the rise of automobiles, buses, and airlines. Railroads faced large tax, regulatory, and union burdens not faced by other modes of transportation.1 Federal micromanagement stifled railroad innovation and prevented railroad companies from cutting costs.2 Railroads paid heavy property taxes and were burdened by a special excise tax on rail tickets from the 1940s until 1962.
After a number of major railroads went bankrupt, Congress took over passenger rail in 1970 with the creation Amtrak. Amtrak is structured like a corporation, but the government owns virtually all the stock. The government's rail company was supposed to become self-supporting, but it has never earned profits, and it has consumed more than $40 billion in federal subsidies over the decades. In 2014 it had revenues of $3.2 billion and expenses of $4.3 billion, and it received direct federal subsidies of $1.5 billion.3
It seems unlikely that passenger rail will play a large role in America's transportation future. Rail carries few people compared with automobiles and airplanes, and it makes little economic sense for most intercity trips. However, privatizing Amtrak would allow entrepreneurs to innovate and make rail more competitive and financially viable. Congress should get out of the passenger rail business and give rail the private-sector flexibility it needs to better compete against other modes of transportation.
Amtrak's Failures
Amtrak has many woes. Its quality of service is mediocre and its trains are often late. For the overall system, only about three-quarters of Amtrak's trains are on time, with its long-distance routes having a particularly bad record.4 Amtrak loses more than a billion dollars a year, with its operations are so inefficient that it even loses money on its food service.5
Amtrak has an expensive and inflexible workforce. It has 20,000 employees earning an average $105,000 a year in wages and benefits.6 The company pays a huge amount of overtime, a substantial amount of which appears to be unnecessary and improper.7 More than a dozen collective bargaining agreements cover 86 percent of the workforce.8 Unions undermine efficiency by protecting poorly performing workers and pushing for larger staffing levels. They resist innovation and create a bureaucratic workplace. Former Amtrak head David Gunn complained that at Amtrak's maintenance facilities, workers from different unions were not allowed to share work on projects outside their narrowly designated specialties.9
With late trains and endless losses, Amtrak's management has been subject to much criticism. Over the years, federal auditors have charged Amtrak with a lack of strategic planning, inefficient procurement policies, weak financial management, and insufficient accountability.10 Auditors found that the company manipulated its financial statements to obscure unfavorable data.11 And the company has a history of hiding information from investigators and presenting unrealistic projections to Congress.12
However, most of Amtrak's problems are created by Congress, which prevents the company from making rational business decisions. In particular, Congress insists on supporting an excessively large nationwide system of passenger rail that does not make economic sense. Nor does it make environmental sense for Amtrak to run routes with low ridership.
In his 2004 book, End of the Line, rail expert and former Amtrak spokesman Joseph Vranich argued, "congressional requirements that Amtrak spend money on capital improvements to lightly used routes are outrageous. ... Throughout Amtrak's history, it has devoted too much of its budget to where it is not needed, and not enough to where it is."13
Amtrak operates 44 routes on 21,000 miles of track in 46 states. Amtrak owns the trains, but freight rail companies own about 95 percent of the track. A Pew Research Center analysis found that the system loses money on 41 of its 44 routes, with an average loss-per-passenger of $32.14 An analysis by Randal O'Toole found similar results—only four Amtrak routes earn an operational profit.15 Some Amtrak routes lose hundreds of dollars per passenger and fill less than 40 percent of the seats.
The few routes that earn a positive return are in the Northeast, whereas the biggest money losers are the long-distance routes, such as New Orleans to Los Angeles. The Government Accountability Office found that the long-distance routes account for 15 percent of Amtrak riders but 80 percent of its financial losses.16 In sum, Amtrak spends a lot of money maintaining high-loss routes at the expense of routes with heavier traffic.
Advantages of Privatization
Privatization would increase rail efficiency and reduce costs. A private rail company could prune excess workers, base worker pay on performance, and end harmful union rules. It would be able to close the routes that are losing the most money. Passenger rail makes sense in the Northeast corridor between Boston and Washington, D.C., but that corridor accounts for less than 500 miles within a 21,000-mile system. Other routes may also make sense within a lower-cost privatized system. A privatized Amtrak could close the most uneconomic routes and shift investment and maintenance dollars to the core routes to improve service quality.
Reforms abroad show that privatizing passenger rail works. In his book, Vranich counted dozens of nations that had either partly or fully privatized their passenger rail systems.17 He found that privatized rail systems generally provide better service, increased ridership, and more efficient operations.
In Britain, state-owned British Rail was consuming large subsidies and experiencing a declining market share in transportation. In 1994 the government split up the company and privatized the track infrastructure separately from passenger service operating companies. But ending vertical integration has created some problems, and track infrastructure has since been renationalized.
However, British passenger services have thrived since privatization. Rail ridership has more than doubled in the past two decades, from 740 million passenger trips to 1.5 billion.18 Ridership is hitting levels not seen since the early 1920s, and ridership growth has surpassed the growth elsewhere in Europe. Despite the increase in passengers, the on-time performance of British passenger rail is quite high and surveys find solid levels of customer satisfaction.19
Rail privatization in Britain brought entrepreneurial innovation to the industry. Vranich noted that "private operators have demonstrated more initiative, imagination, and visionary planning than state-run British Rail did in its prime or Amtrak does today."20 In a 2013 study, the European Commission found that UK's railways were the "most improved" in Europe since the 1990s.21
Japanese rail privatization was also a success. In the 1980s, Japanese National Railways (JNR) was stagnating as a result of bloated labor costs, labor strife, and political manipulation. The government-owned JNR was "conservative, indolent, and fearful of change."22 The government broke up JNR into six regional and vertically integrated passenger rail companies in 1987, and then it started privatizing them in the 1990s.
The JNR companies reformed rigid union rules and slashed workforces by roughly one-third following the reforms.23 A National Bureau of Economic Research study found that labor productivity in the Japanese passenger rail companies increased, on average, about 50 percent with the restructuring and privatization of the 1990s.24 It also found that accident rates were cut in half. The study concluded, "The Japanese approach to rail restructuring has succeeded in many ways, by improving productivity, cutting operating deficits, decreasing fares, and providing better services."25
The privatized Japanese rail companies still receive subsidies, but they are more efficient than before and provide better service. Vranich called the results of JNR's privatization "stunning."26 As in Japan, Britain continued to subsidize rail infrastructure after privatization, but the subsidies are now less than elsewhere in Europe.27 The important thing is that the system is more efficient, and ridership has soared. So while subsidies should be ultimately eliminated, the first job in the United States is to fix the rail system's institutional structure by privatization.
A Canadian example also illustrates the power of privatization. In 1990, the government-run passenger rail company, Via Rail, was losing money and canceling services. Fortunately, an entrepreneur stepped in to run the routes through the Rocky Mountains. Today, the Rocky Mountaineer company operates four hugely successful routes in western Canada. Travel writers and international tourist organizations laud the services.28
The United States has its own positive experience with rail privatization—freight rail privatization. When the Penn Central Railroad collapsed in 1970, it was the largest business failure in American history to that date. Other railroads followed it into bankruptcy. Congress created Conrail in the mid-1970s to replace the failed private railroads. The government-owned company consumed $8 billion of subsidies and floundered until Congress deregulated freight rail under the Staggers Rail Act of 1980. Deregulation allowed Conrail to become profitable, and it was privatized in 1987. Since then, U.S. freight railroads have been a dramatic success. Rail's share of total U.S. freight has increased substantially in recent decades.29
TODAY FREIGHT TRAINS ARE OWNED BY JUST A FEW BILLIONAIRES LIKE BUFFET ---THIS IS NOT FREE MARKET.
Leading rail experts, including two former champions of Amtrak, support privatizing the company. Anthony Haswell founded the National Association of Railroad Passengers in 1967 and is referred to as the "father" of Amtrak. He lamented, "I feel personally embarrassed over what I helped to create."30And Joseph Vranich, the former Amtrak spokesman, came to recognize that the government-run system was a mistake:
Amtrak is a massive failure because it's wedded to a failed paradigm. It runs trains that serve political purposes as opposed to being responsive to the marketplace. America needs passenger trains in selected areas, but it doesn't need Amtrak's antiquated route system, poor service and unreasonable operating deficits.31
Amtrak supporters argue that since other modes of transportation receive subsidies, so should passenger rail. But Amtrak currently receives vastly more subsidies—measured by subsidies per passenger mile—than other modes of transportation, including automobiles, buses, and aviation.32 Automobiles receive relatively little in net subsidies because government highway spending is mainly covered by fuel taxes. That said, subsidies to all modes of transportation should be cut.
The problem for passenger rail is not that it needs more subsidies, but that competitors to rail have become more efficient over time. Real rail prices have risen in recent decades, while real airline prices have plunged because of the deregulated and competitive airline environment.33 Intercity bus prices have also fallen with the rise of low-cost firms such as Megabus. To tackle air and bus competition, rail needs to be moved to a private and deregulated environment.
Amtrak supporters say that we should subsidize passenger rail to reduce energy consumption and help the environment. But intercity buses are more energy efficient than trains, and thus better for the environment.34 Also, running half-empty trains over Amtrak's long-distance routes is a waste of energy.
Passenger rail will probably not play a big role in our transportation future. Today, rail carries very few people compared to automobiles and airplanes. Even a high-speed rail system in the Northeast would reduce automobile use in that region by less than 1 percent, according to a Department of Transportation study.35
But who knows? Maybe that assessment is wrong. Perhaps entrepreneurs could bring enough cost cutting, flexibility, and innovation to passenger rail that it could become financially viable in numerous U.S. corridors. We will never know unless we free passenger rail from the federal government.
____________________________________________
ZIPCAR is of course called INNOVATIVE, deregulating street parking and downtown parking garages and lots to evermore private transit corporations. We now have spaces for SMART CAR----FOR UBER----and less and less space for WE THE PEOPLE PARKING.
UBER WITH SMART CAR is killing what used to be affordable PUBLIC TAXI SERVICE. Yes, all those cabs used to be public and ZIP CAR when it started was sold by global Wall Street pols in US cities deemed Foreign Economic Zones as that STARTUP democratizing transportation. Of course the owner was a global 2% selling to a global corporation but not before deregulating all our US city street zoning----killing public and private competition-----and ZIP CAR price rates are now growing and growing.
It will no doubt be ended as once enfolded into the GLOBAL RENT-A-CAR which of course saw ZIP CAR as a competitor taking market share with CHEAPER RATES. AVIS OR ENTERPRISE GLOBAL CAR RENTALS do not want a ZIP CAR because they are two expensive a business model to create profit margins wanted-----ZIP CAR will disappear as UBER takes that market. UBER of course has that goal of being SELF-DRIVEN tied to global corporate campuses moving their human capital from here to there.
When I asked the women having come to Baltimore to try to get to the march on Washington -----what other options they had------they said we rented a VAN to get to Baltimore but there will be no PARKING FOR THAT VAN in DC----I said ZIP CAR would have the same problem. How much does a one-way UBER RIDE TO MASS MARCHES IN WASHINGTON DC COST?
These global rich being called INNOVATIVE-----creating the successful STARTUPS are simply using these business structure to MOVE FORWARD ONE WORLD FOREIGN ECONOMIC ZONE policies----they are not being INNOVATIVE they are marching to global Wall STreet saying use this to dismantle all public transportation.
Steve Case Grosses $96 Million in Zipcar Sale to Avis
Jeff Green
January 2, 2013, 1:56 PM EST Steve Case and his Revolution LLC fund for startups will gross about $96 million in the sale of car-sharing service Zipcar Inc. to Avis Budget Group Inc., a deal that validated his early backing in the industry.
Case, the co-founder of America Online Inc., invested in car sharing in the mid-2000s, when the business model was still untested. By August 2012, his fund was the largest shareholder in Cambridge, Massachusetts-based Zipcar, which rents cars by the hour or the day in cities and on college campuses.
The success with Zipcar reinforces Revolution’s stated goal of investing in startups designed to disrupt established business. The Zipcar exit will be among the largest for the fund, created in 2005, said a person familiar with Revolution’s finances who wasn’t authorized to talk publicly about them.
Zipcar’s board agreed to a bid of $12.25 a share, or about $491 million, Parsippany, New Jersey-based Avis Budget said today in a statement. The offer, which has been accepted by holders of 32 percent of Zipcar’s shares, is 49 percent higher than Zipcar’s Dec. 31 closing price.
Case’s Revolution Living LLC had a 16 percent stake as of Aug. 28, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. Case, a board member, also personally owns 1 million shares, the data show.
Early Investment
After leading AOL’s acquisition of Time Warner Inc. for $124 billion in 2001, Case stepped down as chairman of the combined company in 2003. The board voted to drop AOL from the company’s name in September that year, reflecting investors’ disappointment in the slumping shares.
Case, 54, formed Revolution in 2005 as a $500 million fund to invest in health care, wellness and other companies. Flexcar, a car-sharing startup, was one of his first forays in August 2005. Case said at the time he got interested in Flexcar while walking past one of its parking spots at 17th and O streets, near Revolution’s offices in Washington. He used the service several times to reach meetings around the city. Zipcar bought Flexcar in 2007.
Revolution now has investments in about 30 companies. They include daily deal website LivingSocial Inc.; exercise tracking venture RunKeeper; HelloWallet, an online service helping employees manage their expenses; and SparkPeople, a website helping people reach their fitness goals.
Last year, Revolution cleared about $100 million in the sale of Medicare exchange company Extend Health Inc. to Towers Watson & Co, the person familiar said. In the largest exit, American Express Co. bought money-card company Revolution Money in 2010 for about $300 million. The fund owned just under 50 percent of Revolution Money, according to the person. Another Revolution startup, Lime Media, was merged with health lifestyle company Gaiam Inc. in 2007. Financial terms for weren’t disclosed.
Zipcar IPO
Zipcar sold shares in an initial public offering at $18 each in April 2011. After initial gains, the stock had been trading under its IPO price for the past year. Demand for car-sharing, however, continued to surge, prompting Enterprise Holdings Inc. and Hertz Global Holdings Inc., the two largest U.S. car-rental companies, to offer such services to customers. Zipcar’s acquisition by Avis Budget, the No. 3, signals a shift in the industry to embrace drivers who don’t want to own cars.
Case, who co-founded AOL in 1985, also chairs efforts on entrepreneurship for President Barack Obama’s Council on Jobs and Competitiveness. Case didn’t respond to an e-mail and phone call seeking comment.
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If women were lucky enough to get close to Washington DC thinking they would then use an alternative source of transport to get to the march location-----perhaps THE PUBLIC BIKING that CLINTON/OBAMA pretends has anything to do with growing public transportation. Now, any REAL intent to grow biking into a US city deemed Foreign Economic Zone would start by making these bicycles FREE ------people need the ability to simply get on a bike downtown go where they want------and drop it anywhere that is convenient. That is the opposite of what is being installed in all our US cities deemed Foreign Economic Zones and guess what?
THEY ARE TAKING MORE AND MORE STREET SPACE where public parking has been----again assigned to a global corporation which is charging LOTS OF MONEY TO RENT A BIKE that then needs to be brought back to the same location. How many tourists or citizens go back to places they are traveling downtown? You cannot use these to move to and from work because they cost too much to rent------tourist will not use them for to much because they are again too limiting====what this does is further capture PUBLIC SPACES AROUND PARKING.
Know how easy it is for a city to create a bike repair and place structure involving only local citizens building that local economy---the costs would be lower than this contract.
'following the city's approval Wednesday of a $2.36 million Charm City Bikeshare contract with Canadian company Bewegen Technologies'.
You won't see women trying to get to a March on Washington looking at this transportation option if they make it to DC area-----
Baltimore approves bike rental program to launch in fall with 500 bicycles
Baltimore will roll out its $2.36 million Charm City Bikeshare program in the fall, with 500 bicycles at 50 stations around downtown and surrounding neighborhoods. Two of the bikes are displayed at a news conference announcing the program outside City Hall.
(Colin Campbell / Baltimore Sun)
Colin CampbellContact ReporterThe Baltimore Sun
Beginning in fall, 500 bicycles will be available around Baltimore for short-term rent.Beginning this fall, 500 bicycles will be available for short-term rent around Baltimore, following the city's approval Wednesday of a $2.36 million Charm City Bikeshare contract with Canadian company Bewegen Technologies.
The bicycles, 200 of them featuring electric-assisted pedaling, will be placed at 50 stations around Baltimore in an area spanning from the Inner Harbor west to Union Square, north to Charles North, east to Canton and south to Locust Point.
It hasn't been determined how much the bikes will cost to rent, but it is expected to be about $4 per hour, with the first half-hour free, similar to programs in other programs, officials said.
D.C.'s Capital Bikeshare offers more than 3,000 bikes at 350 stations across the Washington area. It charges a fee for membership ranging from $8 per day to $85 per year, plus the rental rate.
Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake, who controls the city's spending board that approved the contract, said Baltimore will join more than 700 cities in 50 countries in launching a bike-share program.
The number of pedal-assisted bicycles in the city's program will be the largest of any program in North and South America, Bewegen CEO Alain Ayotte said.
"For Baltimore, expanding our network of sustainable transportation options is critical both to retaining our residents and attracting new families into our city," Rawlings-Blake said. "Being a bikeable city means being a better, more livable city, and it also means making Baltimore greener, cleaner and healthier."
Bewegen has selected Corps Logistics to manage the contract, handling installation, operations, maintenance, support and customer service. The New Jersey-based company will move its headquarters to Baltimore this summer before the launch, said Jim Duffney, Corps Logistics founder and CEO.
The company plans to hire about 80 local employees, Duffney said, including veterans at the Baltimore Station, a transitional residential treatment program for men recovering from homelessness and drug addiction.
Each bicycle will be equipped with GPS technology to track its whereabouts, officials said. The city expects to reach out to neighborhood residents to determine where the stations would be the most effective.
Opting to ride a bike instead of driving a car not only saves money but contributes to better cardiovascular health and fitness, Rawlings-Blake said.
"We may see a positive ripple effect in the overall health of our city with the implementation of the bike-share program," the mayor said. "That is a great bonus."
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BWI was transferred to the designation INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT back in REAGAN/CLINTON empire-building global market days and for these few decades the space and hubs designated to these international airlines were EMPTY-----I often came to BWI and would simply look at transit traffic-----at the same time in order to make room for these international hubs the state reduced cheap air fair plane routes-----this occurred all around the nation. Today there are a few still in business with reduced hubs-----almost always taking people to tourist destinations and not simply cities to where citizens may want to visit family or vacation.
As Maryland and Baltimore MOVE FORWARD to making the East Coast mirror the West Coast in Foreign Economic Zone installation the airports around Washington DC long ago cut its cheap rate routes and hubs----so don't think women were able to FLY INTO WASHINGTON or nearby on low-rate air flights----the flights available would have been very LIMITED.
Most of our low-cost air corporations were pushed out of business during the GAS PROFITEERING of CLINTON/BUSH. Remember all those high gas prices and airlines pushed into bankruptcy------that was the goal----today they are bring a few low-rate airlines back with very limited HUB SPACE. Huge drop in American citizens ability to fly wherever they want.
BBJ: BWI is spending millions to increase the number of international passengers
Posted on March 7, 2016 by Elizabeth LoweEditor’s note: The following article appeared on BizJournals.com on March 4, 2016.
By Rick Seltzer
Amanda Gutierrez stood next to a large suitcase on a Friday evening at Baltimore/Washington International Thurgood Marshall Airport’s international terminal, preparing to check in for her WOW Air flight to London.
“It worked out, and we got less than $700 for our round trip to and from Europe,” said Gutierrez, 25, a medical school researcher preparing to spend two weeks visiting a friend and touring Europe. “Our friend had told me WOW had really cheap flights, and we were looking to go.”
Gutierrez isn’t alone in wanting to travel outside the U.S. International traffic has been on the rise at U.S. airports for years, with domestic carriers’ passenger boarding alone rising from 62.6 million in 1996 to 102.6 million in 2014, according to federal data.
Nor is Gutierrez alone in trying to travel on the cheap. Experts are projecting continued overseas travel growth driven by foreign carriers and low-cost airlines new to American shores.
That has BWI’s leadership hoping to ride international service to new heights. The skies aren’t entirely clear — the established U.S.-based carriers likely aren’t coming in greater numbers to the Linthicum airport, and its major operator, Southwest Airlines, seems happy to take its international expansion slowly. Worse, BWI has to contend with other regional hubs long-positioned for international service like Dulles International Airport in Virginia and even Philadelphia International Airport.
But at the end of the day, airport leadership and industry experts agree BWI has the chance to cruise to new international altitudes. The airport is spending millions on incentives and capital costs toward that goal, it’s positioned itself to attract the hot low-cost airlines, and it has a large surrounding market to tap.
“BWI is doing the right things,” said Michael Boyd, a Colorado-based aviation consultant. “It’s a major population center. It certainly can support some additional international traffic. I’m not talking about just going down to San Juan to get a sunburn. I’m talking about gateways to major international centers.”
Boyd and other experts see BWI as being in the perfect spot to tap into major changes in travel favoring nontraditional air carriers. Thanks to the aggressive, government-subsidized carriers based around the Persian Gulf and those in huge opening-up markets like China, there are many destinations and more travelers set to be served by airlines offering cheap tickets, they said.
Several even mentioned China’s Hainan Airlines as a good fit for BWI. The Chinese airline commenced service between Los Angeles and Changsha in January, its eighth North American route. In 2015, it started a Shanghai-to-Boston route and is widely considered to be looking for more destinations.
Speculation aside, some upstarts have signed on at BWI in the last year. The low-cost WOW and Norwegian Air Shuttle started flights out of the airport. BWI CEO Ricky Smith called Norwegian an airline to watch and said his business development team is engaged in discussions to bring new low-fare carriers onboard.
Smith didn’t name those carriers. But he predicted future increases in international traffic at his airport.
“We think we have some very good days ahead of us,” Smith said. “We spend a lot of time looking at unserved and under-served markets. Our search-and-development team spends time around the clock talking to new carriers and existing carriers.”
Future increases in international service would be keeping with a trend at BWI. International passenger traffic jumped 31.9 percent last year to a record 1.1 million. It far outpaced domestic growth of 5.8 percent. International growth has been faster than domestic growth at BWI in each of the last six years, although domestic traffic still accounted for the vast majority of BWI’s 23.8 million passengers in 2015.
Smith has a plan for convincing new overseas carriers to come to BWI, and for encouraging its existing airlines to expand international service. It starts with airport enhancements.
To that end, BWI is nearing completion of a $100 million connector between its D and E concourses. The connector, slated to open this summer, will add gates and capacity.
It will help Southwest in particular, Smith said.
Southwest is only a recent entrant into the international market, flying its first international flights out of BWI in 2014 after it acquired AirTran Holdings Inc. But the airline has signaled intent to grow service to Latin American locations from BWI.
Beyond serving Southwest, Smith has a simple plan for boosting BWI’s international service: Focus on cost.
“There’s a strong base here for low-fare international service,” he said. “Our strategy is to build on our low-fare domestic position and position ourselves as the low-fare international airport for this region.”
BWI can make the case that it’s the lowest-cost airport in the region. Its cost per enplanement, a measure of how much airlines pay on average per passenger at an airport, is far below competing airports at $9.85, according to data from DWU Consulting LLC. Reagan National came in at $11.26, Philadelphia stood at $12.81 and Dulles was $26.55.
Other strategies in play include marketing BWI in overseas locations and maintaining long-term relationships with airlines, Smith said. Even though he’s been CEO at BWI for less than a year, he pointed out that he previously spent 17 years at the airport as chief operating officer. He also kept up to date on BWI and kept up his relationship with airlines in his previous position as director of Cleveland Hopkins International Airport. Beyond that, the airport’s business development team does much of the heavy lifting on wooing airlines, he said.
BWI has also moved recently to boost its service with a more traditional long-haul carrier, British Airways.
The airline will be bringing a 787 Dreamliner to BWI later this year in what Smith cast as a major win. The new aircraft will be configured with 214 passengers in three classes. British Airways had previously used an older plane design, the 767, to fly between BWI and London’s Heathrow Airport. The airline flies 767s with 189 seats for long-haul flights.
BWI and the State of Maryland lured the new plane to BWI using an incentive deal that could total as much as $6 million in 2016 if the BWI-Heathrow route does not meet certain metrics. But it was necessary to keep a keystone service that proves BWI works for international flights, Smith said.
The British Airways incentive was a special grant approved through the state, but BWI can use an incentive program to lure airlines that can provide certain levels of service, Smith said.
It would be harder to convince other traditional carriers to fly out of BWI, Smith said. They’re already entrenched at other airports.
“If we go after the traditional international carriers, we would have to, in essence, convince them to leave Dulles for here,” Smith said. “What has worked for us is to go after those nontraditional international carriers.”
Fortunately for BWI, that’s the part of the international market expected to grow fastest.
“The traditional carriers, they’re adding incremental service, so they’re not going to be announcing 40 new routes,” said Matthew Cornelius, vice president, air policy at Airports Council International North America. “But, particularly in Europe, the explosion of ultra-low-cost carriers like Ryanair and EasyJet, that’s a much more mature situation. As they max out their European options, I think a lot of them are going to look at where we go next. Even Frontier or Spirit or WOW, they’re going to be the ones growing faster with more route options.”
Airports Council International runs an annual program Cornelius likened to “speed dating” for airlines and airports. The two parties feel each other out during short meetings. Airlines tend to be interested in a local market’s business base, economic trends and recreational travel base.
At the end of the day, the major driver is economic conditions, Cornelius said. Markets need enough travelers to make the financial figures work.
And while the Baltimore-Washington market has plenty of inbound and outbound travelers, it also has other airports with which to contend. Dulles is a major impediment to winning passengers and planes.
BWI has long had an advantage over Dulles from the traveler’s perspective — it has a direct rail link. The MARC train pulls up to a station at BWI’s doorstop. Passengers without a car have had to take the D.C. Metro’s Silver Line and connecting bus to get to Dulles.
That’s set to change in a few years when the Silver Line is extended all the way to Dulles. Meanwhile, BWI has another challenge in international expansion — its greatest strength, Southwest, is also a weakness of sorts.
Southwest does not codeshare with other carriers, industry experts said. That means BWI’s biggest airline is a largely domestic carrier that doesn’t have ticket-selling deals linking to international carriers. It also means BWI tends to be an origin point and a destination point for international service, rather than a stop along the way for passengers flying elsewhere on longer itineraries.
Yes, Southwest is expected to grow internationally. But its expansion will be limited by its willingness to buy planes capable of long-haul flights over the Atlantic. Southwest CEO Gary Kelly said during a 2015 BWI Business Partnership appearance that his airline was focused on 737s flying to North America. And industry experts haven’t seen anything signaling changes in that strategy.
“The thought of Southwest getting an aircraft capable of transatlantic service is interesting,” said Tom Reich, director of air service development at AFCO AvPorts Management, an aviation consulting firm in Dulles. “I’ll believe it when I see it.”
What Southwest could more easily do to boost transatlantic flights at BWI is start codesharing. The airline has been mentioning at industry conferences a move toward a new reservation system allowing it to do code-sharing, Reich said.
The move would allow passengers to book flights over the ocean on a European carrier, disembark at BWI, and then board a Southwest flight to another U.S. destination, all under the same itinerary.
It would turn Southwest’s Baltimore hub from a location that doesn’t feed other airlines’ traffic to one attracting more interest overseas, Reich said.
“Southwest suddenly becomes more attractive to a low-cost carrier in Europe,” he said.
Of course, there’s nothing keeping travelers from booking on separate airlines themselves. They’re showing willingness to do it at BWI.
It’s what Gutierrez did to get to BWI. She started with a Southwest flight from her home of Houston and spent a seven-hour layover at BWI in order to get her cheap WOW flight, which she booked separately.
“WOW usually only flies out of BWI or Boston, so we took a one-way flight here,” she said. “We thought we’d give it a try. It’s cheap. We can’t pass it up.”
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The deliberate profiteering from a few decades ago extremely high gas prices had a goal of pushing local and regional business as TRUCKING, TRANSIT, AND AIRLINES out of business to be enfolded into global corporations and that is what occurred. All those regional cheap airlines and routes went bankrupt-------even national airlines used gas prices to go to bankruptcy where they send all labor benefits, wages, and pensions just so they could reorganize into consolidated global airlines.
THAT WAS THE ATTACK ON YET MORE WAYS AMERICAN CITIZENS COULD TRAVEL-----
Here we see these now global airlines creating CHEAP FLIGHTS as was done in the US---now those cheap flights are from FOREIGN ECONOMIC ZONE CITIES TO OTHERS. The goal now with cheap flights is to get that foreign citizen to move to our US cities deemed Foreign Economic Zones-----these are the HUBS BEING OPENED IN BWI----and other airports around the US.......
More women from overseas had it easier to come to our Washington DC march then US WOMEN.
Young adults MOVING FORWARD into ONE WORLD FOREIGN ECONOMIC ZONES here in the US should be more concerned with moving around our region and nationally----as foreign travel will be soon only something a global 1% and their 2% do.....these global rates are short-lived.
Hmmmmm, if only 250,000 women really marched on Washington-----that could have been entirely a DC population.
'Washington, DC
Place in: District of Columbia, DC, Washington-Arlington-Alexandria, DC-VA-MD-WV Metro Area, District of Columbia, United States
672,228 Population'
WOW Air offers $99 fares to Europe; What's the catch?
Today in the Sky
Ben Mutzabaugh , USA TODAY Published 6:44 p.m. ET July 15, 2015 | Updated 9:16 a.m. ET July 16, 2015
Upstart Icelandic discount carrier WOW Air has created a stir by offering $99 one-way fares from the USA to Europe.
So, what's the catch? The fares are legit, but there are some major limitations. WOW Air's limited flight schedule and small U.S. footprint mean the deal won't be available to most U.S. travelers. And return fares are only available for higher (but still generally modest) prices.
WOW's sale covers flights from Boston and Baltimore – its only two U.S. destinations – to just two European cities: Paris and Amsterdam. And thanks to blackout dates and WOW's less-than-daily flight schedule on the routes, the $99 fares are offered only one day a week on each route.
And passengers traveling between from Boston and Baltimore also must connect via WOW's hub in Reykjavik when traveling to or from Amsterdam and Paris.
Another major limitation: the $99 fares aren't offered on the return flight. They're available for more-pedestrian rates that are as low as $210 (limited availability) to $300 and up. Still, bargain-hunters willing to comb the carrier's schedule could put together a round-trip itinerary for as little as $350.
For those unfamiliar with WOW, it operates with an "ultra low-cost" model. That means it charges for everything from checking a bag (starts at $48) to requesting an advance seat assignment ($3 to $38 per flight). Small carry-on bags are free, but bags weighing more than 11 pounds will cost at least $29 to bring on board.
But if all that sounds OK – and if you can get to Baltimore or Boston and navigate the limited calendar of availability – then the $99 fares are being offered through March 10. Availability on the narrow window of days remained decent as of Wednesday evening (July 15), though fares could sell out at any time.
And, in addition to the advertised fares to Paris and Amsterdam, WOW also was selling some flights to Dublin for $99. Those flights were available from Boston and Baltimore, but only during January and February. As with WOW's other flights to mainland Europe, a connection via Reykjavik is required.
As for the Paris and Amsterdam fares, scroll down for the complete list of restrictions for the $99 Europe-bound routes:
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