Archive for July, 2009
July 24th, 2009
Iowa folks may have to wait a bit on a study of extending Amtrak service to Des Moines, according to an Associated Press report today. The story is somewhat confusing, so let me break down all the Illinois-Iowa studie:
- Amtrak has done its study of service from Chicago through Rockford to Dubuque, Iowa, so it’s not affected by this. Service could start by November 2011 if funded by the federal stimulus and state officials.
- Amtrak also completed a study of service from Chicago to the Quad Cities, which would also be funded by the stimulus and the state and start in the next couple of years.
- Amtrak also added a study of extending the Quad Cities line to Iowa City.
- But on top of that, Iowa officials also want a study of continuing the Quad Cities route to Des Moines. It’s the study of the portion between Iowa City and Des Moines that’s being delayed. Also, officials eventually want Amtrak service to continue on that line to Omaha, Neb.
- Finally, Iowa officials want Amtrak to also study extending the Dubuque route farther west into Iowa. So some day, who knows how far west we could go from Rockford?
This is good news for Amtrak. Between the federal stimulus and other pro-train comments from the Obama administration, Amtrak could be expanding a lot in the coming years. Like any expanding entity though, there will be a lag. Hopefully for train advocates, the momentum continues.
July 24th, 2009
Leaving soon on vacation to Denver and then Santa Fe, and other than a possible outbound trip report I won’t be updating the blog until the first week in August. There may be a couple more posts today, though.
So, as a transportation dork, I managed to convince my wife to let us drive to Chicago Midway International Airport to fly Frontier to Denver (”DirecTV!” I said. She rolled her eyes.)
Never flew on them before. As far as I can remember, the airlines I’ve flown on are: Aer Lingus, AirTran, Allegiant, American, ATA, Continental, Eastern, Midwest, Northwest, Southwest and United.Only two deceased ones.
I’ve also never been to Colorado and New Mexico, so looking forward to that. The downside to all this, of course, is the drive to Midway. But the airport has improved over the years (way better than my just-out-of-college days of taking ATA out of there), and we got a good deal on parking.
(You know how RFD’s slogan is “The way flying should be”? Chicago airports should go with “The way flying is. Deal with it.”)
Any Frontier fans out there?
July 22nd, 2009
Chicago Rockford International Airport had a chance to be part of JetAmerica’s rollout, but were asked to provide marketing and/or revenue guarantee money up front, airport Executive Director Bob O’Brien just confirmed. The airport said no, thanks. (Toledo, on the other hand, paid for a $150,000 “learning experience” and other airports lost a bit less for an airline that never got off the ground.)
“Clearly we made the right decision and we’re not as badly bruised as Lansing and Toledo,” O’Brien said. “On the other side of the coin, I take no pleasure in being right and getting nothing. … I just wish that we could have been in the rollout and they could have rolled out.”
O’Brien is not ready to throw the JetAmerica folks under the bus, as they’ll be back in some form or another. JetAmerica is already saying as much: “We have decided to suspend our operations in order to refocus on different markets. We still strongly believe that there is an unmet need for affordable air service to secondary markets and we look forward to offering this option again in the near future,” CEO John Weikle said.
If they come back looking to fly out of RFD, O’Brien will listen, though not if they’re asking for a lot of money again
“It totally depends on what they came back with, in terms of destinations, in terms of aircraft, in terms of fare structure,” O’Brien said. “There’s no blank checks. We’re interested, but it has to make sense.”
July 21st, 2009
Not entirely new, Allegiant has been talking Hawaii for a while.
But some new potential details out of Allegiant’s smaller focus city of Bellingham, Wash.:
- Hawaii service would be at least a year away, at least out of Bellingham.
- Allegiant is considering, among others, Boeing 757, which hold at least 33 percent more passengers than the MD-80s Allegiant now uses (Those Maddogs can’t really fly the long haul to Hawaii).
- No word on where else Allegiant would consider Hawaii flights from. LAX makes a lot of sense, as do its other California cities. The big question for folks out here in the Midwest is whether they’ll start offering connecting service so we could get in on that. Of course, we’d first need to get LAX service, which Allegiant has so far deemed too far away to be profitable. I wouldn’t hold our breath waiting for connecting service from RFD to Hawaii anytime soon, but it continues to be a good sign that RFD’s largest airline has good growth options.
July 20th, 2009
I’m addicted to using priceline.com for hotels when traveling, even for occasional weekend jaunts to Chicago. You can get some sweet deals, and the geographic boundaries are such that you have a decent sense where you’re staying.
But I’ve never tried it with air travel or car rentals. When flying, my schedule is always so tight I can’t take a chance on Priceline giving me an early morning or late night flight, no matter how cheap.
However, I’m contemplating using priceline for my rental needs on an upcoming vacation. Anyone have any experience with rentals through them?
July 20th, 2009
First Air Azul came and went. Now, JetAmerica has come and gone, at least “indefinitely”.
“We are reluctantly suspending our public charter operations effective today,” said John Weikle, CEO, who has been with the company since April. “Finalizing the slots required to support our charter program at Newark has taken longer than expected and we have decided to suspend our operations in order to refocus on different markets. We still strongly believe that there is an unmet need for affordable air service to secondary markets and we look forward to offering this option again in the near future,” concluded Weikle.
Bet Chicago Rockford International Airport officials are glad they didn’t have to shell out marketing dollars for an airline that never took off. Though, under the category “Hope springs eternal, RFD still has pages for New York City and Baltimore/Washington. Guess those won’t be with JetAmerica, at least.
What’s interesting is the “refocus on different markets” caveat by Weikle. Maybe they’ll try Florida, which was part of Air Azul’s original plan. Or maybe they’ll do BWI. Who knows. It just seems NYC is out.
You can bet RFD folks will be skittish if Weikle wants to bring his next idea here, at least if he wants money to do it. A subsidy is out, I’m sure, and even extra marketing money could be in doubt - on the one hand, RFD folks like to “market the destination, not the airline” but they’ve been burned by startups before.
If there was a no cash opportunity, I’m sure RFD would consider biting. But otherwise, they’ll remember what happened to the Toledo airport:
The port authority spent $119,000 on advertising and other marketing assistance to promote JetAmerica, money it stands to lose unless the carrier somehow establishes service to another New York-area airport that qualifies under the terms of a Small Cities Air Service grant the agency obtained to support Toledo-New York flights. “It’s unfortunate because the carrier’s not going to come here,” said Carla Firestone, a port authority spokesman. The silver lining, she said, is that the port authority “spent almost all of those dollars right here in the community” on local billboards and media advertising.
July 17th, 2009
While searching for information on auto production, I came across an article on Spike.com listing the 7 Ugliest Cars Ever Built.
I was happy to see one of my top choices was on the list, the Pontiac Aztek:
The picture doesn’t do it justice (or, it does it too much justice) as it’s really the rear end that’s particularly ugly. Here’s what Spike said:
Unfortunately, Pontiac ignored the warning signs and produced this malformed atrocity, and the Aztek was almost immediately hailed as one of the ugliest automotive designs of all time.
This stigma apparently just fueled Pontiac’s designers even more, as they began adding more plastic moldings, chrome pieces, and various lights and vents - perhaps in an attempt to confuse and distract potential buyers into some sort of purchase-crazy frenzy before they could come to their senses.
Mercifully, it didn’t work, and the Aztek was gone after 2005, concluding its four year run.
What are the ugliest cars you’ve seen?
July 17th, 2009
Got an interesting set of questions/comments from a reader on my last post and decided to break my response for all to see:
Q. the reason china is escalating is because thats where all of our jobs went…. remember chinese mostly ride bicycles although they are building GMs there now , only to sell them back here in the US ( cheaper labor costs again) Why can’t we buy Oil from non-opec nations who would willingly sell their Oil for cheaper than OPEC. And god forbid we tap our own oil in Colorado, wyoming, utah. huge reserves there more than iran, iraq saudi arabia has..
A. Actually, car sales within China are starting to boom again:
China has halved purchase tax on small vehicles, announced incentives for people to replace old cars under an economic stimulus package aimed at boosting domestic consumption to counter a slump in exports.
Demand for cars in China has rebounded, with sales surging 47 percent in May alone. China is at the start of another boom in car sales that is being propelled by rising incomes in third-tier cities and could continue for a few years, JPMorgan China economist Frank Gong said last week.
The Chinese government is encouraging consumer spending, road building, other construction, etc. China is no longer just the producer for the world, it’s producing for itself.
Cars, etc., especially that are being built in China are for Asia. The cost of shipping cars across the ocean offsets any savings in labor cost. Especially with growing fuel prices, it makes less sense to built a lot of things abroad. A lot of the softness in U.S. manufacturing is due to softness in demand in the U.S.
The problem with buying oil from non-OPEC countries is that countries (and OPEC itself) don’t set oil prices. The open market does. A barrel of oil generally costs the same wherever it comes from, unless the quality is different. But OPEC - which produces like 60 percent of internationally traded oil - can affect prices everywhere by cutting or boosting production.
Meanwhile, it’s not like non-OPEC nations have robust production capabilities.
Although there has been some new exploration and cultivation of oil sources, it takes time before such projects are ready for production. Cline said one of the biggest challenges for producers is skyrocketing costs for labor and steel, noting that costs for “everything that you need to build a modern oil project are rising very fast.” In addition, some new projects lack infrastructure, such as pipelines, which help bring new oil to market quickly and cheaply. Landlocked projects in Kazakhstan, for example, face extremely high transportation costs.
There are even reports elsewhere that non-OPEC production may be peaking.
Not sure where you get the data on oil reserves. According to the CIA World Factbook, the U.S. has the world’s 12th-largest proven oil reserves, and it’s not even close to the countries you list:
1. Saudi Arabia - 266.8 billion barrels
2. Canada - 178.6 billion barrels
3. Iran - 138.4 billion barrels
4. Iraq - 115 billion barrels
5. Kuwait - 104 billion barrels
12. U.S. - 21 billion barrels
Thanks for the questions. Hope I clarified some things. Keep them coming.
July 16th, 2009
So I wrote a story about gas prices a week and a half ago, noting that they’d gone down significantly in the previous few weeks (and, thankfully, they keep going down). But I noted that several sources think prices will go back up in the next year or so, depending on how the economy recovers. (I also used the term “minispike” in a front page referral to the story).
That gets me this email from a frequent critic:
MR. BONA,
~Â Â Â Â Â “MINISPIKE” ???? A DOLLAR A GALLON IN ABOUT 40 DAYS….MINI ?
~Â Â Â Â Â “$4 PER GALLON AGAIN WHEN ECONOMY IMPROVES” PER MR ARNOLD ?
~Â Â Â Â Â YOU AND MR. ARNOLD CONTINUE IN YOUR ARTICLE TO ARROGANTLY, AND
IN A CONDESCENDING MANNER, TELL US WE NEED TO CHANGE OUR WAYS
BY DICTATING WE ALL NEED TO GO TO LITTLE PUTTT/PUTTS TO GET AROUND.
WE ALL KNOW MR. ARNOLD SETS THE SPIKE PRICES IN ROCKFORD, EVEN THOUGH YOU WILL NOT ADMIT IT, AND THEN THE REST OF THE STATIONS FOLLOW IN COLLUSION, WITHIN AN HOUR MAX.
WHY DO YOU PERSONALLY FEEL THE NEED TO CONTUNUALLY, REPEATEDLY, HABITUALLY ACT
AS A PUBLIC MOUTHPIECE FOR MR. ARNOLD AND HIS GREEDY ILK ?
WHY DON’T YOU EVER CHALLENGE THESE GUYS YOU QUOTE ?
DO YOU AND MR. ARNOLD EVEN HAVE A CLUE AS TOÂ WHAT THE $4 PRICES DID TO THIS ECONOMY ? I SERIOUSLY DOUBT THAT THE ADVERSE EFFECTS ON SUCH HAVE EVEN INFILTRATED EITHER OF YOU TWO GUYS LIFE, LIKE IT HAS 90% OF US OUT HERE. GOD ONLY KNOWS WHEN WE WILL EVER RECOVER, AND YOU TWO GUYS LEARNED NOTHING BY THE “$4 RIGGINGS”, IN THAT YOU ALREADY HAVE STATED, AS A MATTER OF FACT, THAT THIS WILL REPEAT ITSELF.
WHEN CAN WE LOOK FOR YOU TO START TAKING A STAND FOR “WE, THE PEOPLE” ?
STOP THE PROMOTING ON BEHALF OF THE OIL INDUSTRY, MR BONA, AND START SUPPORTING THE OUTCRY FOR AN INVESTIGATION INTO THIS CORRUPT, GREEDY INDUSTRY.
WE, YOUR READERS, NEED AND EXPECT AN IMMEDIATE CHANGE IN YOUR M.O., MR. BONA ! !
Now, he writes me every time I write about gas prices, accusing me of this, that and the other thing (as if I’m getting rich off the oil industry … anyone who knows my standard of living knows I must hide it well). Here is my response:
I’ll hit your points one by one:
- “Minispike” - it was mini compared to the previous two years’ spike, plus it didn’t last too long and has since somewhat abated. That’s why we called it a mini spike.
- Dan Arnold isn’t the only one who suggests gas prices could return to $4 when the economy improves globally. The same forces that led to the last run up - rapid growth in China and India vs. questions about long-term supply, the value of the dollar vs. other currencies and the effect of speculation - will be back in force.
- It stands to reason that the less fuel that’s used, the lower prices will be over time. That’s basic economics - when a product is very popular, its price is at a premium; when the popularity wanes, the price drops. So, yes, one frequent suggestion is that if Americans find ways to curb their fuel consumption, it could help with prices at the pump. If you want to use a bigger vehicle, that may be your prerogative, but you’ll pay more as you use more. It’s merely a suggestion from him, and others.
- One gas station chain in town does not “set” prices. What happens is the ones that are part of bigger chains get orders from outside the area, based on wholesale prices and trends, via computer or phone. Road Ranger of course does their own calculation too. The reason prices tend to change in concert, it’s because A. they’re using a lot of the same information on wholesale prices, B. they’re also sending people out on the street several times a day to check competitors prices and C. they don’t want to be priced too far different from competitors. You may see that last part as malicious but here’s the reason - if they’re priced way too high, they lose business to competitors, but if they’re priced too low they lose money on their margins and long-term can’t compete.
- Of course we know what $4 gas did to the economy. I write almost every day about the recession and how it’s hurting folks. And despite what you assume, Road Ranger and other retailers did not have record years in same-store sales … because even though gas prices were up, in-store sales went down accordingly. People have the same amount of money to spend at Road Ranger, etc., they just spent more on gas and less on other stuff. But high gas prices come from forces outside of Rockford.
- Just because it’s complicated and there are no easy answers does not make me a promoter for the oil industry. I’m sorry I can’t give you the simple answers you crave. My allegiance is to the facts, and telling people what they need to know, not promoting one opinion or industry over another. On that regard, I will not change…
Now, I enjoy getting questions from readers … and I like a good conversation. So if you have any questions on why gas prices are what they are, send them my way. Just don’t hope for easy answers.
July 16th, 2009
Well, don’t get your hopes up too much, opponents of a new south suburban Chicago airport. But The Southtown Star is reporting that some area residents there would rather bring in a wind farm than the much-talked-about airport.
It’s somewhat of a crazy concept for now, but local residents and airport opponents are starting to court companies that specialize in developing wind farms to see if there is any interest.
A lot of dominoes would have to fall for the south suburbs to get their own Windy City.
Since 2001, the Illinois Department of Transportation has acquired more than 2,100 acres of the roughly 5,000 needed for the airport.
But the airport is no closer to getting built, leaving vacant tracts that no longer generate tax revenue for local governments.
“It’s just sitting there, doing nothing,” Will Township Supervisor Brian Cann said. “We want to investigate all of our possibilities.”
Just as long as they they don’t steal our solar farm idea.
The story goes on to say it’s unlikely, though, that the state would yield on its plan for a south suburban airport. The capital plan signed Monday by Gov. Quinn includes at least $125 million toward the airport project, and Quinn vowed earlier this year to get it built.
Chicago Rockford International Airport officials continue to feel they can do the job of a Peotone airport. Executive Director Bob O’Brien said this week, ““I find it disappointing, personally and professionally, when existing going airports and businesses can benefit and bring jobs faster than continued land banking and related efforts at Peotone.”
RFD expects to get funding from the capital plan, too, though officials aren’t sure yet which projects will get funding.
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