Training For Travel (Again)

~ Yesterday, I caught a train into the centre of Adelaide. Hardly a remarkable event given the everyday nature of the task. However it soon dawned on me that all transport systems are not created equal, and the transport system in dear little Adelaide is probably the least equal of all the major cities in Australia.

The reason for catching the train was so I could start getting used to the idea of not having my own motor vehicle to speed me from point A to point B, in a convenient and timely manner. You see, in ten days I fly to Melbourne for three weeks to house sit for the same people I house sat for in January. While in Melbourne I will be relying on that city’s extensive network of trams to get me from Fitzroy North into the city centre (and home again). And when I hit New York in July, I will be using the subway system there to navigate my way quickly from Washington Heights to downtown Manhattan.

Unfortunately, Adelaide is not Melbourne or Manhattan. As a result, the transport system here is nowhere near as frequent as the ones found in those two cities. Apart from the rush hour, here the trains run every half hour or so, and at night about once an hour. On weekends the trains again run about once an hour.

It stands to reason that if you are going to use the train system here, it helps to have a timetable for the line servicing your suburb, since if you miss one train you might have to wait up to an hour for the next one! In Melbourne and Manhattan, it doesn’t seem to matter that much if you miss your train/tram when you know another one will be along in 10-15 minutes. When the transport system is that frequent, you can pretty much dispense with timetables. Not so in Adelaide. Luckily I only had to wait for 20 minutes or so for the ride into town, but that was more than enough (and yes, I do now have a timetable for the Outer Harbor line which passes close to my home).

Still it’s good practise for world travel. It is easy to take modern transport systems for granted, even one as intermittent as Adelaide’s. But once you start travelling from country to country, using public transport becomes as much a part of the experience and adventure as anything else you might do. Especially when the signage and timetables (if they exist at all), are in a language you cannot speak – let alone read.

Come to think of it, this is as good a place to bear in mind this quote from Clifton Fadiman: "When you travel, remember that a foreign country is not designed to make you comfortable. It is designed to make its own people comfortable."

24 Hours of World Air Traffic

A friend recently sent me a copy of this amazing video apparently showing the world’s air traffic for a period of 24 hours, with each green dot representing one aircraft. But is it real or is it a fake?

Quite frankly, I didn’t know. The video has been circulating around the Internet for some time, either attached to e-mail messages, or uploaded multiple times to video hosting sites like YouTube, Vimeo, Google Video, and dozens of others. So today, I decided to try and track down the people or organisation that created the original video, and see if I could turn up the definitive answer.

To my surprise, the answer was not that hard to find with both the Wired and NASA websites providing links to the clip. The original video animation was produced to be shown on the high definition 3D-Globe "Orbitarium" in Technorama - The Swiss Science Center in collaboration with the Institute of Applied Information Technology In IT, at the Zurich University of Applied Sciences.

It seems the boffins at the school used a commercial website called FlightStats to gather global flight and schedule information for the departure and arrival times of every commercial flight in the world. They then plugged all that data into a computer to assemble their simulation.

As mentioned, the animation shows all scheduled flights over a 24h period (based on 2008 data). Apparently, every day some 93,000 flights are starting from approx. 9,000 airports, with between 8,000 and 13,000 planes in the air at any one time!

So, to answer my own question: Is it real or is it a fake? I am happy to declare the video animation to be real. I'm glad that's cleared up.

Next?

24 Hour Internet - $27.50!

~ Excuse me while I vent my spleen! I’ve just been reading a review of the Oaks Plaza Pier Hotel (15, Holdfast Promenade, Glenelg, Phone: 8350 6688), in my local Adelaide weekend paper, The Advertiser (May 8, 2010).

Dianne Mattsson, the reviewer, gives the hotel an overall rating of four stars, and for all I know it deserves everyone of them. However, the thing that has got my blood boiling is the list of ‘facilities’ she mentions – one of which includes 24 hour Internet access for AU$27.50* per day.

Twenty-seven fifty!

You can park your car with them for $16.00 a day, but if you want Internet access you have to pay $27.50 per day!

Are they mad?

Almost every budget chain hotel/motel in America provides free WiFi Internet access as a matter of policy, and here in Australia we have some dinky little hotel charging $27.50 a day. Do they think people are going to spend their whole stay locked in their rooms surfing the Internet? Are they afraid that the few cents it costs them to provide Internet access for each room is going to send them broke? Can’t they see, providing free Internet could set them apart from their opposition and give them the edge they need to attract more guests?

Heck if it really is that expensive to provide ‘free’ WiFi to each room, why not add a few dollars per day to each room rate, and recoup their investment that way. Some guests will use the service a lot; others will use it a little; and still others not at all.

In an age when WiFi enabled computers and mobile phones are ubiquitous, it makes no sense to charge your guests an extra $27.50 a day to keep in touch with family, friends, or the boss. Especially, when more and more local cafés are providing free WiFi to attract customers through their doors.

Mind you, the Oaks Plaza Pier Hotel is not alone in slugging travellers huge fees for Internet access. In Australia this appears to be the ‘rule’ rather than the exception. So in their defence, the hotel might argue they are just following the industry norm. To which I would say, So what? How about thinking outside the square? More importantly, how about joining the rest of us in the 21st Century, and providing what should be an essential service to your guests – just like the ‘free’ linen service, television, and other standard room facilities every traveller now takes for granted.

For my part, I will never pay extra for Internet access, when I can choose a hotel that provides the service as part of their standard booking. The more travellers refuse to pay extra (and explain why they choose not to stay at hotels that do charge extra fees), the sooner these hotels will begin to include free WiFi or broadband access as part of their standard service.

* While the Oaks Plaza Pier Hotel does give you the option to pay $10 for two hours of Internet access, in my opinion this is even more a waste of money, and a further insult to their guests.