Winging It

Amtrak has spent decades under threat from presidents and some members of Congress who see it as a waste of money. But numerous attempts to reform it or shut it down have failed because most members of Congress know how vital good rail service is in the Northeast. What's more, trains are popular with many of their constituents, even if those people have little or no service they use. Now, Amtrak's new president, Alex Kummant, appointed last year by President Bush, is offering a refreshing perspective, talking of expanding service rather than cutting it. Read more about what he and Amtrak's supporters in the Senate have planned here.

We have added a handy feature to philly.com that provides links to all of the key traffic and weather Websites in the Philadelphia region.Watch the traffic move -- or not -- or I-95, get the latest updates on highway conditions, check on mass transit or on the status of a flight to or from PHL. A link directly from this page can be found near the bottom of the right-hand column, under useful sites. Take a look here

Amtrak last week added food-cart service to four more of its Acela Express trains that run between Boston, New York, Philadelphia and Washington. Ten Acelas, all of them leaving one of the end points between 1 p.m. and 4 a.m., now have the rolling carts on them, allowing you to buy a snack or a drink without ever leaving your seat. Regular cafe service is still available, and first-class passengers get meals served at their seats (you can't call the meals "free" -- you paid for it in your very pricey ticket.)

We have found rolling cart service on European trains convenient and appealing, although it's been a few years since we rode trains extensively there, so we hope it's still being offered. (If not, let us know.). In fact, the service in Germany and Switzerland was so handy, we kept buying something every time the cart came by, consuming more coffee and snacks than we should have!

In case you missed this news story last week:

France Breaks Rail Train Speed Record
The Associated Press
ABOARD TRAIN V150, France - A high-speed French train with a souped-up engine and wheels broke the world speed record Tuesday for conventional rail trains, surpassing 354.1 mph.

The black and chrome train with three double-decker cars, named the V150, bettered the previous record of 320.2 mph but fell just short of the ultimate record set by Japan's magnetically levitated train, which sped to 361 mph in 2003.

Amtrak continues to set records for the number of passengers it carries. In the first seven months of the its fiscal year, since Oct. 1, ridership was up 5 percent over the same period of 2006. Trains that run in the Boston-to-Washington Northeast Corridor gained but the biggest increases were in other routes under 500 miles. The company news release can be found here

Amtrak will be offering a luxury train service that could be a unique place to entertain your clients. Read more here

The last 24 hours have brought multiple announcements from airlines and Amtrak about technology upgrades designed to help the customer

Southwest Airlines said you can now use PayPal, the electronic-payment system owned by ebay, to pay for tickets on its Web site. Northwest Airlines announced a a similar deal with PayPal last month. A news release with more information can be found here

US Airways said today it arranged with Usablenet mobile to provide PDA and web-based cell phone users with content and functionality from its usairways.com Web site that is optimized for these devices. A customer now can buy a ticket from a handheld device, in addition to getting flight schedules. Find a news release about it with this link.

At Amtrak, the upgrade is at 44 of its busiest stations (which includes Philadelphia 30th Street, No. 3 in riders). The railroad has new Quik-Trak ticketing machines with better touchscreens, brighter graphics and ADA-compliant features that Amtrak says should help disabled travelers. Eventually, there will be 300 new machines in 150 stations. Find Amtrak's news release here.

And what, you say, does adding a big chunk to Philadelphia's Convention Center have to do with Philly Road Warriors? Some of you -- who knows how many -- live elsewhere and travel here, sometimes to meetings in the big building in Center City. And more conventioins and larger conventions mean more business for PHL, airlines and Amtrak. Here's the latest on expansion plans for the center.

The ongoing track work on the Philadelphia-Harrisburg Keystone line means some schedule changes for both Keystone and SEPTA R5 Paoli-Thornburg trains, starting next week and continuing until early November. You can find revised scheules at www.amtrak.com and at www.septa.org.

Amtrak says its computers are fixed and its issuing tickets electronically again. Let us know if you experience any problems. Read about the problems over the weekend here.

Philadelphia cab drivers have started a 48-hour strike that has created long lines at 30th St. Station. New York cabbies also are reported to be involved in a job action. Read what we know about the taxi strike.

Amtrak says its rolling food-and-beverage carts have been a big hit and they will be added to more Acela trains that stop in Philadelphia. The carts have been used on some European trains for years, with the attendant rolling it up to your seat for service. Read more details in an Amtrak news release. M/p>

Amtrak has restored service between Philadelphia and Wilmington that was suspended this morning. Delays are still possible because of restricted speeds on the line. The service was disrupted because of an overturned truck on I-95 that caught fire and spilled debris on the tracks below. Check with Amtrak.com for updates as the day goes on.

Some of our leaders have been trying to kill Amtrak for years. It's not working. The national passenger rail system had record ridership in the fiscal 2007 year that ended Sept. 30. Here's Amtrak's news release with lots of detail.

News about Amtrak today includes a release from the railroad about what happens when investments are made in infrastructure that speeds up service. More people ride. Amtrak's news release is here.

Also today, the U.S. Senate passed a bill sponsored by Sens. Frank Lautenberg (D.,N.J.) and Trent Lott (R, Miss.) that would give Amtrak $11.4 billion in funding over six years. The bill would provide funds for maintaining and improving the Northeast Corridor and make money available to states to start new rail lines or improve those they have. The bill would provide Amtrak more stable funding than it's ever had.

The Road Warrior column today adds to the abundance of the season, meaning an abundance of advice about coping with holiday congestion while traveling. Find it here.

Well, not a rest area, exactly. The Road Warrior needs to take a break from regular postings on this blog and doing other travel-related stories to work full time on another important topic. We expect to be back by Dec. 10 with regular postings. Other contributors will keep you informed of important breaking stories until we return on a daily basis. Thanks for your continuing interest.

Worried about global climate change? Here's something of that could be of great importance to your offspring. A major study of what America's rail network could look like in 50 years has called for investing hundreds of billions of dollars to create a better system. You may want to learn more about what a bipartisan panel of leaders recommended last week. We haven't found any comprehensive news stories by the mainstream media so you will have to see how the story was reported by organizations that advocate for better rail service. Here's a link to the National Corridors Initiative Inc. Website. Its very solid report on the study group's work is the second entry under "News items..."

We close this work week with good news from Amtrak. The railroad reached tentative agreements with nine unioins, averting a strike that could have seriously disrupted travel for both intercity passengers and commuters on SEPTA and New Jersey Transit trains.Some Amtrak employees have gone without a new contract for more than seven years. The unions were legally allowed to strike after Jan. 30, at the end of a protracted negotiation process that's governed by federal law.

The cost and hassle of flying on some routes in the Northeast drive many business travelers to Amtrak. Read more in today's Road Warrior column.

We haven't been able -- yet -- to study the issue of the carbon footprint of air travel, a topic of growing concern because of its effect on global warming. We hope to report more on it as it becomes an issue that everyone needs to think about. Today we found one of the better treatments of the topic from Bill McGee, who writes a column for USA Today and is a contributing editor of Consumer Reports. We've respected Bill's reporting on airlines and aviation for years. He researched carbon footprints for Consumer Reports' February issue, and added his personal take on it in the newspaper column. Let us know if you find other published sources of intelligence on what air travelers can do to help reduce greenhouse gases and we will post them here as well.

Tomorrow is the day Homeland Security starts enforcing new rules requiring travelers by land and sea from Canada to prove their citizenship. They must have a passport, OR two documents, a birth certificate and a government-issued ID. The rule has been criticized because of the burden it could put on routine border crossings by those who work or travel back and forth regularly, and the long lines at entry points that are likely to develop. We haven't seen much written about this, but here is a recent AP story that has more details. This should serve as a reminder to go ahead and get a passport if you don't have one already.

Amtrak assures us it won't be as time-consuming as airport security is, but it's going to do random screening of passengers' bags. Read more of the front-page Amtrak story here.

Airlines are issuing their usual alerts about areas affected by what looks like a doozie of a winter storm moving across the Midwest and upper South toward PHL and other airports in the region. Wear your mittens, button up and prepare for a slog if your're on the road or in the air tomorrow..

The Inquirer made some good points this morning in an editorial that applauds Amtrak's steped-up security plans.

We found a short but informative story about what is surely to be a topic of great concern and interest in the years ahead: the global effect on the climate of travel and tourism. Read the story here.

Change is a constant in life and so it is with what you are seeing at the top of this page today. Don't worry. What has for the last 16 months been the Philly Road Warrior blog has changed its name to Winging It, but the principal author is still the smiling guy whose face appears to the right. The Philly Road Warrior column that appears in the Monday Inquirer Business section in print and online will also be renamed Winging It. The change reflects the reality that this is primarily a space devoted to air travel.

In coming weeks, we also plan to switch to a different blog publishing platform, designed to make it easier for you to comment on what we post. Beyond that, the only other difference you're likely to notice is more comment and analysis on the news of the day, in both the blog and the column. We will still focus on news and information from around the world that is useful to the PHL flier. If you continue to visit here, we think you'll enjoy the ride. Or make that, enjoy the flight.

A slight decrease in travel, by both air and road, is expected this Memorial Day weekend and on into the summer. Read more in an Inquirer story this morning that looks at the predictions and what it may mean for the Philadelphia region's own efforts to attract visitors.

This story from a public radio program, should be of great interest to all those who wish more rail service was available as an alternative to air and road travel. Find it here.

I have always found reports from Hitwise, a Web-tracking service, interesting to see how people are using the 'Net. As you'll see from the latest (go to page 4), mapping and direction sites outpace 'em all, making me wonder if anyone reads a map on paper anymore. Find the report at this link.

This morning's column looks at the grim prospects for the airline industry caused by high fuel prices, and some of the things they need to do to adapt to the new environment. Read more about it here.