Archive for October, 2009
October 21st, 2009
Just wrote a story about the turbulent first year of Direct Air at Chicago Rockford International Airport, and their hopeful plans for the future.
One big change is the type of airplane they use here. When they started service from Rockford to Punta Gorda, Fla., they used these planes:
“Like walking into a nightclub”
This time, they’ll be using these planes:
Like walking into an airplane
Now, both planes will get you where you want to go in leather seat comfort. It’s just that the first one, a brand-new Airbus A320 from Virgin America, had mood lighting and in-seat entertainment centers. The second plane, a Boeing 737-400 from XTRA Airways, doesn’t have those things. Granted, the mood lighting isn’t alone going to draw people … especially the snowbirds headed to Fort Myers. But the entertainment centers are pretty snazzy.
But how big a deal is what plane it is? Either way, “in a couple hours, you’re in sunny Florida,” said Gary Quill, director of the Charlotte County Airport in Punta Gorda. It’s a good point. And the selling point of flying out of Rockford isn’t the planes, it’s the ease of getting to the airport, the free parking, the short security lines and the fares. Of course, when Direct Air broke out some old DC-9s last year, that rubbed some people the wrong way … so you can go too far in the other direction.
But do the amenities on a flight make a difference to you? If all else is relatively equal - fares, schedule,airport convenience - I prefer an airline with in-seat satellite radio, like AirTran, or in-seat TV, like Frontier. I also dig the move toward in-flight wifi. And I am the one who convinced my wife to let us drive to Midway to take Frontier so I could try the in-seat TV and use a new airline before it got gobbled up by another carrier (luckily it didn’t, and will survive intact). But generally, schedule, fare and convenience win out. Like my next trip, to NYC, where we fly outbound on a small Midwest plane instead of a snazzier AirTran plane because the schedule is better.
Still, I’d love to fly on one of those Virgin planes. Just would be nice if they went somewhere I wanted to go.
What are your thoughts?
October 16th, 2009
Haven’t done this in a while, but some interesting stuff out there. Gasoline prices nationally are in a slight uptick because of a drop in supply, as refiners aren’t seeing margins high enough to make it worth the effort.
Just discovered the GasBuddy Blog, and Patrick had some interesting thoughts yesterday:
To stop oil prices from a sustained rally we need a few things:
1) A stronger U.S. dollar
2) An acceptable profit margin for refiners to encourage production
3) Goldman Sachs to refrain from “investing” billions of dollars into oil
4) Traders who look at numbers vs. last year. Oil inventories are still extremely healthy and things aren’t improving as fast as some believe
Gasoline prices are still well cheaper than they were a year ago, but that will change by year’s end. While 2008 saw prices fall off a cliff, 2009 will just see some ebbing.
Here are the prices from this morning (courtesy of AAA’s fuelgaugereport.com):
Gasoline: Rockford rose two cents to $2.52 a gallon today, up almost six cents in the past week but down a cent in the past month and down 61 cents in the past year. We’re ninth in the state and tied at 102nd of the country’s 280 metro area. The Illinois average rose almost three cents to $2.58 a gallon, up eight cents in the past week and one cent in the past month, but down 66 cents in the past year. The national average rost more than a cent to $2.50 a gallon, up three cents in the past week, but down almost six cents in the past month and down 58 cents in the past year. Illinois has the 11th-highest gas prices in the nation, including the District of Columbia.
Diesel: Rockford rose a cent to $2.66 a gallon, up more than three cents in the past week, but down almost two cents in the past month and down but almost $1.06 in the past year. We have the third-highest diesel prices in the state. The state average rose a cent to $2.69, a three-cent increase in the past week, but a slight drop in the past month and a $1.19 drop in the past year. The national average rose a cent to $2.65, a three-cent increase in the past week, but a one-cent drop in the past month and a $1.11 drop in the past year. Illinois is tied with the 19th-highest diesel prices in the country, including the District of Columbia.
October 16th, 2009
Found a great article this week while researching my Road Ranger story.
It’s called “10 Things Gas Stations Won’t Tell You” and is pretty enlightening on some issues of pricing, gasoline quality, credit cards and the price of soda vs. coffee.
My favorite is “I hate it when gas prices are going up”:
Stations earn on average between 10 and 15 cents on a gallon?of?gas. Ironically, they earn the least when prices are highest. When fuel climbs, gas stations must shrink their profit margin to remain competitive, meaning they earn less per gallon than usual. But another big cost during tough times is something they can’t do anything about—credit?card?fees, which add up to about 2.5 percent of all purchases. When gas is at, say, $2 a gallon, the station pays credit?card?companies 5 cents a gallon; when gas hits $3, that fee becomes 7.5 cents—more than half the station’s entire average profit. “Those credit card fees are miserable for the gas station business,” says Mohsen Arabshahi, who owns five Southern California gas stations.
How do station?owners make up for lost revenue? “Prices go up like a rocket and come down like a feather,” says Richard Gilbert, a professor of economics at UC?Berkeley. For several weeks after wholesale prices drop, stations can earn as much as 20 cents a gallon before retail prices are lowered to reflect the change.
What catches your eye?
October 15th, 2009
Just wrote about Road Ranger’s use of self-supplied gasoline as opposed to linking with Citgo or BP or Mobil.
Jeff Lenard of the National Association of Convenience Stores made some good points:
But brand loyalty isn’t what it used to be, Lenard added, because people shop based on price, convenience and experience. Gas stations differentiate themselves on service rather than the sign out front.
“If they like your store, they’re going to like your gas,” he said. “If they like the customer service, if they like the food offerings, if they like the cleanliness of your store, they’re going to trust you sell good fuel.”
For me, I choose a gas station based mainly where I am when I need gas. I’m the kind of customer that must drive them wild - no loyalty whatsoever. Today, I went to Road Ranger because it was on my route and because I like their coffee … at least compared with the other nearby option. But I’ll go a variety of gas stations depending on the time. What’s inside usually doesn’t matter because I try not to buy much inside … I get my gas, use my card and go.
Road Ranger’s “Top Tier” detergent gasoline is interesting, mainly because Honda is one of the automakers behind Top Tier and I drive a Honda Fit. But my owners manual doesn’t say anything about using specifically that kind of gas … I’ll ask my mechanic but I suspect my patterns won’t change unless he says “Oh heavens yes, use Top Tier”.
What drives your gas station decision? Do you have any brand loyalty?
October 15th, 2009
Passenger Seat regular Sally Hanks asked a good question that deserved its own post.
Speaking of freeways: Although I would welcome the widening of U.S. 20 from I-39 to IL-2, I question the prioritization. If they come up with an assesment that says it needs it, and/or the funds are available, why don’t they direct those funds to widen I-90 between Elgin and Rockford? No assesment needed there!
Thanks for the question. A few things:
- Remember, I-90 between Elgin and Rockford is the Illinois Tollway, so all widening projects there are paid for by tolls not by state construction funds. By statute, IDOT can’t send its money, which comes from fuel taxes, registration fees and other funds, to tollway projects.
- Even if they could, Elgin to Rockford is much farther than the U.S. 20 project. They couldn’t get very far in that widening if they put this money to it.
- It’s not that the assessment is to determine if the project is needed - they’ve already determined it is - it’s the necessary environmental study to see what alignment the road should be in, and whether widening can be done without too many negative impacts.
- Actually, from a pure numbers point of view, the 20 project does pretty well vs. the tollway. First of all, there’s a separate project to widen the bypass between the Cherry Valley interchange and where I-39 heads south. That presumably is a higher priority, and would cause a bit of a choke point on U.S. 20 if more of the bypass isn’t widened. Also, while traffic on the bypass is less the Tollway, it’s not tons less. The portion where U.S. 20 and I-39 share actually has higher traffic than the tollway does for a good chunk of the Elgin-Rockford stretch; while the rest of the bypass to be widened has perhaps 5 to 25 percent less traffic, according to Getting Around Illinois.
But I think point number 1 is the biggest key. Thanks for the question!
October 14th, 2009
A “pavement failure” on the outbound Kennedy Expressway near The Loop has caused all sorts of havoc with traffic downtown, several news outlets are reporting. Apparently, a contractor was filling up an underground tunnel with concrete and used too much pressure, causing the pavement to break above. The Kennedy will be reduced to one lane outbound for a few days, and state officials advise motorists to avoid downtown expressways for the next 24 hours.
Hopefully it turns out to just be human error, and not existing problems with the pavement. You always hate for pavement to *fail* but better for it to be because of external, preventable reasons than it just collapsing because it was in bad shape.
