PT BLOG


JVH comments on Parking News every day at PT Blog – log on at www.parkingtoday.com. Each month, there are at least 40 other comments like these, posted daily.


The absurdity of air travel pricing (posted Dec. 3) OK, I’m in Detroit, heading for Toledo; I have a three-hour


layover. I’m chatting with someone in the airport and find that I can drive to Toledo in 45 minutes, rather than wait three hours and then have a one-hour flight. So I do. However, Delta (Northwest) has different ideas. They can-


cel my return flight because I didn’t take the second leg (from Detroit to Toledo) of my existing flight. They then tell me that if I want to fly back to LA, I will have to have my ticket repriced at the “walkup rate.”What the hell is that all about? I’m sure it has something to do with the “ghost city” rou-


tine. For instance, there was a time when it cost less to fly from LA to San Antonio than from LA to Dallas, but the plane you were on to SanAntoniowent throughDallas. So folkswould sim- ply fly to “SanAntonio,” the ghost city, but get off in Dallas. When American discovered their passengers were not all


stupid, they made the rule that if you didn’t get on the plane in SanAntonio, you couldn’t fly from Dallas to LA (on that ticket). So people would simply get off inDallas, do their business, then drive the hour and change to San Antonio, get on the plane


there, and fly back through Dallas to LA. Not to be outdone, American then said they would cancel the return flight of any- one not flying the “second leg.” They gotcha there. And I think they have me here. Can anyone say Southwest?


Parking systemworks flawlessly, and fails (posted Nov. 28) The city of Reading, PA, has done a study on a new parking


system. It failed.Oh, the systemworked flawlessly, but the people didn’t use it. The concept was parking meters that have sensors in the street and could be updated by cell phone. The city got a lot of data, found that people do a better job


of paying for parking in Reading than the rest of the country (77%vs. 50%), but that not a single person used the feature that allowed them to add time to the meter. As (frequent PT Blog correspondent) Mark asks: Is that a


solution in search of a problem? Oh, and I wonder at that 50%number. How could they pos-


sibly know?Without single-spacemonitoring, it is virtually impos- sible to tell how much time is lost due to nonpayment.My under- standing is that where these monitoring systems have been installed, the compliance number is considerably lower than 50%. I wonder if the folks in Reading didn’t just pay more


because the meters were new and jazzy, and they wanted to use it out of curiosity?


Continued on Page 40


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JANUARY 2010 • PARKING TODAY • www.parkingtoday.com 39


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