Photo above: bradleygee / Feature photo: eric.surfdude

Right on the heels of my post about How To Be Good (Better) Drivers and Cyclists, I read this article in the Colorado Springs Gazette.

Governor Bill Ritter just signed a bill, effective August 5, that should offer more protection to cyclists on the road. It will demand that drivers give at least three feet of space when passing a cyclist, and also make the punishment for throwing an object at a cyclist more severe. (I can only assume this is a common occurrence there.)

Under this new bill, if you’re caught throwing something at a cyclist you could get hit with a fine between $250 and $1000, and face a possible jail term of three to 12 months. Not giving the three feet berth will earn you a $110 fine.

The space considerations are nothing new in some European countries, where you will see signs along the road illustrating that you must have 1 meter of space between your car and the cyclist when passing.

North America could stand to learn more lessons from Europe when it comes to this topic.

What do you think? Will this work?

Share your comments below!

Sounds outrageous, doesn’t it?

But it’s a familiar refrain for pet owners across the United States. Unless your pooch fits under the cabin seat, he or she is restricted to cargo.

Photo: Francisco Collazo

When Alysa Binder and Dan Wiesel became frustrated with the complications of planning vacations that included their dog, Zoe, they decided to do something about it. The idea began to take shape in 2005 and Binder and Wiesel recently announced that Pet Airways, the first airline designed for pets only, will begin flights in the United States on July 14, 2009.

Speaking with Binder, it was obvious Pet Airways takes transporting pets very seriously, and the “safety, care, and comfort” of the animals will be top priority. There will be pre- and post-flight potty breaks, as well as stops along the way. Pets will be placed in private, secure carriers in the main cabin of a cleared out Beech 1900 passenger plane.

“Pawsengers” will be monitored during the flight, and there will even be an online flight status notification and pet tracking system so clients can monitor their pets’ journey from home. Pet Airways will start their service by flying cats and dogs, but is in the process of adding exotic animals.

Pet Airways will launch out of airports in New York, Washington D.C., Chicago, Denver, and Los Angeles. Binder and Wiesel anticipate adding 25 cities within the next couple years and are “definitely taking the interest of pet owners in consideration” when deciding which cities will be added.

Their website is already live, and provides more information about the company’s service.

Community Connection:

For more tips on traveling with your pet, check out Julie Schwietert’s article (that’s her in the feature photo, traveling with her pug, Penelope), “Ten Tips for Traveling with Pets.” And if you end up leaving your pet at home, here are four ways to remember it while you’re traveling.

I used to really, really hate traveling by bus, for a variety of reasons (among them, that the contraptions make me a little queasy) — so it just goes to show you how dreadful flying has gotten, and how unreliable trains have become, that in recent years the long-distance coach has become my travel happy place.

The simplicity of bus travel is beautiful: show up 10 minutes before scheduled departure, pick up a reasonably priced ticket, toss your bag in the pile next to the bus, hop aboard and take a seat, any seat. On the other end, you grab your bag from the curb and you’re on your way.

No taking off shoes, no awkward pat-down by a strange man, no metal detectors, no bag tags, no nonsense.

But no more.

Starting tomorrow, Greyhound Canada is set to ban all carry-on luggage (excluding purses) from their buses, in the wake of a string of stabbings and — of course — this summer’s horrific beheading/cannibalism incident.

I can well appreciate the need for increased security measures (currently up here, there is not even the token security screening of U.S. Greyhound operations) but banning carry-on is absurd, and here’s why:

1. It won’t make us any safer.

How many knife-wielding assailants do you know who carry their weapons in their wheelie bags? None? Yeah, me neither.

Everyone I know who carries a knife (and, admittedly, that’s not a whole heap of people) does so on their person. So simply banning carry-on, with no accompanying pat-downs or metal detectors, doesn’t do a damn thing to prevent knife crime on buses.

2. It puts all our valuables at risk.

When the hapless young clerk at the station informed me of the new policy today, the first words out of my mouth were, “But what about my laptop?!”

Greyhound Canada doesn’t actually expect me to let their drivers carelessly chuck my laptop bag (also jammed with camera equipment and electronics) under the bus, and then dump it on the curb at the end of the ride, for anyone to walk away with while I’m still on the bus, waiting for Susie Slow to zip her coat up in the middle of the aisle?

Ummmm, to quote Cher from Clueless, “As if!”

No way, no how. Without a secure check-in system, asking us to put our most important valuables under the bus is completely unreasonable.

3. It ignores the realities of long-distance travel.

This summer, I took the bus from New Orleans to Los Angeles — a forty-hour ride that was tough enough as is, but which would have been pure hell under this new policy.

Besides knives, let’s take a quick tally of the things Greyhound Canada has just banned: books, laptops, snack foods, water bottles (unless it fits in your purse), diaper bags, changes of clothes, deodorant/toothpaste/hairbrush/etc (again, unless it fits in your purse), ohh, I could go on and on.

Last time I checked, the only amenities available on board a Greyhound bus were the ones you carried on yourself. Goodbye, amenities. Hello, vastly increased discomfort.

4. It’s a complete corporate cop-out.

Note that both actions suggested above — incorporating metal detection and pat-downs, and creating a secure check-in system — would require staff and money. While simply banning carry-on, putting all the responsibility on passengers, is free.

I’m no fan of pat-downs and bag tags. The past few incidents have been tragic and upsetting, but I’m willing to take my chances with the psychopaths of this world — so long as I can keep my laptop and a snack handy. But if Greyhound Canada was serious about our safety, about preventing these incidents, airport-style security measures would be the way to go.

As it stands, all they’ve managed to do is inconvenience the vast majority of their customers, and put our belongings at risk, without making us one single whisker safer.

Way to go, Greyhound. I can tell this policy came straight from the finest minds in the transportation industry.

Photo by njt4148 (Creative Commons)

File this news story under “out of touch”.

Remember when Napster first came on the scene, and everyone in the music industry was in a great big hurry to shut it down?

Of course, they did shut it down successfully.

But then LimeWire came along, and Kazaa, and SoulSeek. And so on.

The music industry carried on trying to take each one down, guns-a-blazin, until finally someone at Apple had the bright idea that electronic music sharing wasn’t going anywhere, so the industry might as well try to get a piece of the pie.

Enter iTunes, and you know the rest of the story.

Sorry for the digression into recent music-sharing history, but I promise, it does relate.

See, my point is, the music industry couldn’t wrap their heads around the fact that things were changing, that people were listening to music in a different way. They couldn’t adapt, and to the extent that they could see the change coming, they could only see it as a threat. They couldn’t imagine that they might be able to co-exist with the change – or even profit from it.

I was reminded of the music industry’s war on MP3s when I read this story, about Ontario’s private coach companies attempting to shut down a popular rideshare website.

From the Globe and Mail story:

Bus line operators such as Trentway-Wagar Inc. – which launched the formal complaint against PickupPal – argue that Mr. Dewhirst’s company is facilitating the operation of an illegal transportation service. Last week the Ontario Highway Transport Board agreed and fined the company more than $11,000 for infractions of the Public Vehicles Act…

[A company representative] said Trentway-Wagar is not opposed to carpooling but simply wants all commercial operations offering public transportation to be treated equally.

Um… huh?

A website that links up drivers with passengers willing to chip in a few bucks for gas is suddenly an illegal transportation service?

Better lock up all the soccer moms who’ve ever shared rides too, while you’re at it.

The bus companies aren’t just desperate to save their (allegedly threatened) business, either. They, and the government board that’s just sided with them, appear to be completely unaware of the way technology has evolved around them:

At one point in the proceedings, Mr. Dewhirst had to explain to the board that an online forum is an Internet site where people can go to discuss a particular topic. In another instance, members of the board were flabbergasted when they suggested a change be made to PickupPal and Mr. Dewhirst offered to make the update on his computer right there in the room.

Ouch.

I don’t think I could name another more useless waste of government time, than sitting around trying to shut down ride-sharing forums – particularly with concerns about climate change pre-occupying much of the world. Shouldn’t the government actually be encouraging this sort of thing?

They may manage to take down PickupPal here in Ontario, but that won’t mean anything in the long run.

As PickupPal’s founder said in the story: “The government has been blindsided by the technology, and the world has changed around them.”

Photo by Drown (Creative Commons)

Depending on your point of view, this news will either revolutionize your flight experience or make it even more revolting:

WiFi is now available in the friendly skies.

Late last month, airlines began rolling out on-board wireless internet service for passengers who just can’t bear to be disconnected while in flight.

The service, provided by GoGo Inflight Internet, is currently offered on select Virgin America, American Airlines, and Delta flights originating in New York City and terminating in San Francisco, Los Angeles, or Miami.

Service is also scheduled to become available on certain Air Canada flights in the near future.

As with most amenities on planes these days, in-air WiFi isn’t free, and it comes with some strings attached.

The service is currently provided for $12.95 per flight, and is supported on most handhelds and laptops that meet specific minimum web browser and software requirements (that information can be found here).

For the sake of your fellow passengers, though, certain uses are restricted. Voice over Internet phone (VOIP) service, for example, is blocked. Other audio and video components may be blocked as trial runs of the service provoke customer complaints.

Initial reviews of the service have largely been positive. Blogger Ryan Block tried out the service on Virgin’s inaugural wired flight this weekend, and reported that speed is pretty good.

Yet some tech analysts wonder what kinks will need to be ironed out of the system before it can be implemented on a wider scale, asking, for instance, how service concerns will be addressed.

For now, passengers on the handful of flights offering WiFi are GoGo’s test market. How about you? Are you looking forward to wired flights, or will the skies become less friendly if your fellow passengers are always connected?

Photo: Magitisa (Flickr creative commons)

2008 seems to be the year of the low-cost regional express bus service. (Catchy, huh?)

BoltBus, Megabus, and Neon have all rolled out new routes in the US North East.

The features? All three make near-identical boasts: wi-fi, extra leg room, “premium” service. They bill themselves as a quasi-luxury express service, for busy business travelers who need to rush between major cities with no milk-run stops along the way.

Well, last night I gave “Neon” – Greyhound’s new express service between New York City, Syracuse, Buffalo and Toronto – a try. And let me tell you, luxury was the last word on my mind.

My ticket noted that I was required to be at the station one hour before departure. Trouble is, Neon doesn’t run out of Toronto’s main bus terminal. The “station” was a street corner in downtown Toronto, which was bad enough last night, when the temperature hovered above 0 degrees celsius. Think how cold it’ll be in January!

I showed up 45 minutes before departure time and joined a ragged line of shivering passengers. There were no signs to direct us or to indicate that we were in the right spot. A Neon employee eventually came and took our passport information, and tried to separate the Megabus passengers from the Neon passengers – turns out, we were all mixed together in the same lineup.

Just before our departure time, there was still no sign of our bus. Then a Megabus vehicle rolled up and parked. The driver switched off the engine, closed the doors and walked away, into a coffeeshop, ignoring our Neon girl’s shouts.

Right on schedule, our bus showed up – and had nowhere to park. It pulled up a block ahead, at which point the passengers at the back of the line broke into a mad dash, leaving the people who’d been waiting in the cold the longest to shiver some more at the back of the new line.

It was no Indian train station, obviously, but it was as chaotic a scene as I’ve experienced in Canadian public transit in my life.

Once we were boarded and under way, things settled down. The wi-fi was slow but functional, the electrical sockets worked. (Though if there really was much extra leg room, I didn’t notice it.) We were delayed for an hour or so at customs, while one passenger got a serious interrogation, but that’s not the company’s fault.

After that, we had a quiet, smooth night’s ride, and rolled into New York City just after 6 am this morning.

The verdict? It’s all about expectations.

I bought into the hype, and expected this overnight bus ride to be less unpleasant than every other overnight bus ride I’ve ever taken. When really, apart from the wi-fi (which is pretty cool) this is standard Greyhound fare. It’s cheaper than flying, it’s faster and more reliable than the train, and the overnight option means you don’t have to waste a day.

If that sounds like what you’re looking for, by all means give it a shot.

Neon runs between Toronto and New York City every morning at 8:45 am, and again overnight, departing at 8:45 pm.

Photo by mudpig (Creative Commons)

It’s always a little strange to see the mainstream travel media latch on to a not-quite-new phenomenon and glam it up with a fancy title.

Exhibit A: Cyber-Hitching

It’s hip! It’s edgy! It’s a green travel solution to your recession-prompted money woes!

And it’s also… better known as ride-sharing. It’s been a popular feature on Craigslist for years.

Still, while I might poke a little fun, this trend piece from the Guardian does offer a sweet collection of ride-sharing websites that I hadn’t heard of before.

Next time you need to stick out your cyber-thumb, check out

carshare.com
liftshare.org
avego.com
hitchwiki.org
pickuppal.com

Have you ever set up a ride-share? Which site did you use?

Was it a good experience, or bad? Let us know!

Photo by Alpha Tango Bravo / Adam Baker

Photo by jfeuchter (Creative Commons)

Drinking and driving is a bad idea in any country: it’s stupid, easily avoidable, and puts the lives of everyone on the road at risk.

But in much of the world, getting caught after one too many won’t result in serious punishment – which is probably one reason why it’s not seen as much of a crime by so many drivers.

It’s a whole different ballgame in Norway, though, where fines for these sorts of violations are calculated based on the driver’s income.

Back in January, a real estate mogul was caught driving with nearly four times the legal limit of alcohol in his blood.

The fine? A jaw-dropping $85,000 USD.

That bad boy wasn’t the first to get hit in the wallet, either. A few years back, another Norwegian businessman paid $30,000 for his sins.

Feeling any sympathy? Not me. After all, it’s not like these millionaires can’t afford a cab.

The cause of the crash, which killed at least 153 of the 172 people on board, has not yet been determined.

While most aspects of flight safety are beyond passengers’ control, experts do offer some tips to frequent flyers:

-Choose non-stop flights over multi-stop routes: Because most accidents, like today’s crash, occur during take-off or landing, reducing the number of take-off and landing events decreases the likelihood of crash potential.

-Choose larger planes over smaller ones: In major accidents, larger planes with greater passenger capacity offer statistically significant survival advantages compared to planes with fewer than 30 seats.

-Know your emergency exit: Simple enough, and though it won’t always save your life, it may increase your chances.

-Fly with safe airlines: Though any airline and any aircraft can experience adverse events, AirSafe.com maintains a list of the airlines that have had no fatalities since 1970. They even list airlines by region.

-Learn the six basic crash positions: Morbid? Yes. Life-saving? Potentially. Check out AirSafe.com’s video on the six basic crash positions:

If you’re a regular Pulse reader, then you know that every few weeks or so I’m due a new rant on the American airline industry.

It’s that time again.

A recent article in The New York Times reported what any frequent air traveler already knows: “Sleeping at an airport overnight…has become a lot more common lately,” due to the fact that “airlines are no longer as free with complimentary hotel vouchers as they once were.”

If you’ve ever had to fold yourself into an uncomfortable airport chair to catch a few winks or if you’ve woken up from a power nap with a neck stiff from the arm rests that are deliberately intended to keep weary passengers from lounging, then you might just be interested in a little invention by entrepreneur Frank Giotto.

The Mini Motel, a sort of pup tent equipped with air mattress, was developed by Giotto after spending an unanticipated night in a German airport. In addition to the sleeping comfort afforded by the Mini Motel, the tent comes with a pillow, reading light, and alarm clock. The price isn’t half bad, either: at $39.99, the Mini Motel is certainly cheaper than a hotel, and it’s cheaper than most tents on the market.

No word on whether Giotto’s invention has been popping up in more airports or how airport officials are responding to the Mini Motel, though Giotto thinks that airlines will welcome his invention– it’s one less item airlines will have to spring for!

Perhaps Giotto’s next invention will be an all-in-one parachute, raft, oxygen mask, and flotation device, which disgruntled and disenfranchised airline passengers will have to purchase if they want to fly.

What inventions do you think might make air travel better? Share your ideas below!

Photo: Slim Teller (creative commons)

With baggage and ticket prices increasing on what seem like a daily basis and in-flight amenities waning into non-existence, it’s easy to think that the glory days of flying are as good as gone.

Not so for certain frequent fliers, though. Check out this photo gallery of the airlines that Newsweek’s international edition refers to as the “world’s most luxurious” and see how some passengers are living large.

What’s the sweetest in-flight experience you’ve had? Share your story in the Comments below.

If you’re a budget traveler, I’ll bet you’re already hip to the cheap tickets for the so-called Chinese buses that run between Chinatowns in cities throughout the Northeast US.

At just $15, the cost of a seat is a bargain, and it’s hard to imagine the ticket price dropping lower.

That’s why I was surprised to see an advertisement for $1 bus fare between the same cities, offered by the company Megabus. With gas as expensive as it is, how can Megabus possibly afford to sell its seats so cheap?

I don’t have the answer to that question, but you may well be weighing the value of your life against marginal cost savings. After another crash of a Fung Wah bus a few days ago– this time in New York City– budget travelers may want to reconsider the cheap bus route.

Have you ever taken the Chinese buses in the Northeast? Share your experience in the comments below!

Photo: Naomi A. (creative commons)

Matador members love travel, and because they’re on the road, in the skies, and on the seas so much, they have a lot to say about how the travel industry could be better.

I asked Matador members to share ideas about how the travel industry could improve in a recent Forum post.

To be honest, I forgot about their answers until today, when I was asked to take my flats off and go barefoot through a security checkpoint at Atlanta’s Hartsfield International Airport. (Thanks, Richard Reid, for exposing millions of travelers to athlete’s foot; we’re all paying for your failed shoe bomb escapade).

Here’s what we hate about travel… and love to complain about:

*Airport Food: Is it really impossible to have at least one decent option for fresh food?

*Airport Check-In Procedures: Why do kiosks exist if they hardly ever work? Can’t baggage be handled more efficiently?

*Airport Bathrooms: Sure, we passengers should scale back on the amount of stuff we lug around with us. But since some people seem to be incapable of doing so, could you please make a few oversized bathroom stalls– and while you’re at it–install more shelves so we can put our stuff somewhere other than the floor?

*Airport/Airplane Advertisements: We know fuel costs are up… more than 85%, according to Delta’s CEO. But we’ve already paid the equivalent of our first born child for this plane ticket… why do we have to be subjected to shameless advertisements on our tray tables and extra “exciting” announcements about a “low, low fee” credit card? (US Air, I’m talkin’ to you!)

What’s your travel gripe? Sound off in the Comments section!

Photo: veganstraightedge (creative commons)

Photo by bfick (Creative Commons)

Most cities are strategizing ways to cut down on urban traffic, but few cities are relying upon bicycles as the centerpiece of their transportation initiatives. Washington, D.C., however, is willing to be a trendsetter.

This month, D.C. is scheduled to launch SmartBike DC, touted as the nation’s “first self-service bike rental program.” The idea is a variation on the business model pioneered by the company ZipCar, which is a car sharing program that has been successful in the Northeast and on the West Coast.

For a $39.99 annual subscription, SmartBike DC members will be able to pick up a bike at any of the 10 docking locations around the city. When they’re done, members return the bike to the docking location. All transactions are made with the swipe of the SmartBike DC membership card. Get pedaling, D.C.!

Community Connections: Lots of Matador members are passionate about pedaling and our blogs are full of great cycling guides and resources. Check out Hal Amen’s 8 Steps for Successful Self-Supported Bicycle Tours. And for a great travel narrative about a different kind of bike, check out Nicholas Gill’s “The Motorcycle Diaries: North India,” from Traverse.