When you go through the screening process at airports, should you carry your travel documents - passport, boarding pass - with you or not?

I went through one airport in the US last year and put mine in the tray which went through the x-ray system. This was the end of the world! I wasn't allowed to go through the security arch until the person there had inspected these documents, so she had to get a colleague to wait until my tray had gone through the x-ray process then pass her my passport and boarding pass.

However, at Washington National earlier this month I was firmly instructed to put them in the tray to go through the x-ray system.

This kind of anomaly confuses and bothers passengers, and wastes time. Can we have one method, please?

On a recent long-haul flight, the pilot made his "Welcome aboard" announcement.

In the course of this, he said he wasn't allowed to tell us the route the aircraft would be taking but if we wanted to know, we could follow it on the moving map on the in-flight entertainment system.

I did wonder how much this enhanced my personal security.

I think that, if I wanted to re-configure Detroit or anywhere else by blowing up a plane over it, I'd use a more reliable way of knowing where I was than the in-flight entertainment map or the pilot's description. Long-haul flights are a bit unpredictable in their routing because of winds and congestion anyway, so just not telling passengers exactly where they are going seems to be of little value.

Or is there really a good reason for this?

On Tuesday 26 January 2010, the underground inter-terminal shuttle opened at Washington Dulles airport.

Apparently for capacity reasons it will not be able to handle all of the needs, so some of the famous mobile lounges will be retained. These still sometimes fulfil their original function - carrying passengers direct from plane to terminal, mainly for international arrivals - but more often just shuttle between the terminals.

The "Washington Post" got very excited about the new people mover, announcing that a passenger train was now in service at Dulles airport. I think most people would expect a passenger train to take them a little closer to downtown DC than this beast ever will!

With the start of high speed trains between Guangzhou and Wuhan and Changsha, China Southern Airlines decided to fight back. It increased frequencies, decreased fares (some were available at two-thirds of the rail fare), introduced dedicated check-in and baggage reclaim, introduced fast-track security clearance and mobile phone check-in and boarding.

Result? A 5% drop in air passengers on the 819km Wuhan route and a larger reduction on the 555 km Changsha route. Load factors on the latter went down by 7 percentage points.

China Southern is now considering co-operation rather than competition - possibly some kind of code-share like those with Deutsche Bahn (German Railways) between Frankfurt and Stuttgart, Cologne and Bonn.

It - and other airlines contemplating the same course of action - could do worse than join IARO. We have a lot of experience in this field, and have also produced a report on, "Case studies on cooperation between air and high-speed rail" which brings together much information on the topic. Have a look at our web-site! This is www.iaro.com - The web-site of the International Air Rail Organisation.

We were intrigued to see, in the January issue of "Tramways & Urban Transit", a picture of a level crossing on Riversdale Road, Melbourne. The road is used by trams drawing power from overhead wires: the railway is used by trains drawing power from overhead wires.

The tram in the picture only has one pantograph, so clearly there is continuous current flowing while it crosses the railway.

Just how does this work?

I liked Bombardier's new web-site, www.theclimateisrightfortrains.com

It looks as if it has some useful resources.

It seems to be aimed mainly at the North American market - somewhere particularly in need of such things!

This very impressive book was published recently (in English) by the East Japan Railway Culture Foundation. It is both interesting and valuable.

It is perhaps just a bit dated: while it was published late last year, the opening of the Sendai Airport Link in 2007 is described as having only just happened. Presumably production took time.

The articles, arranged by geographical region, started as a long series in the periodical, "Japan Railway and Transport Review" (JRTR), which has the same publisher. They have been brought up to date, consistently edited, and published all together.

I found it an excellent source of information - both as a matter of general interest and professionally: the descriptions of, and information about, Japanese airport railways are valuable.

i have put it into the reference section of IARO's library.

All in all, a very impressive book!

I was at a meeting of the Transport Statistics Users Group in London yesterday.

Two people from the Association of Train Operating Companies (ATOC) made a presentation on their recent report on Missing Links - towns and settlements which were not rail connected but potentially could be.

The first speaker commented that, when stations and lines had re-opened since the 1980s, the results had tended to exceed forecasts - actual patronage was better than had been thought.

The presentation of the analysis of Missing Links showed that about 15 of these had a positive benefit:cost ratio. Detailed figures for one of them - Guildford to Cranleigh - were given.

In the discussion session afterwards, I said that, if the Treasury were to look at their figures, they would apply a hefty discount for optimism bias. Their argument would be that project sponsors are always too optimistic, so all cost estimates need to be increased and revenue estimates decreased to discount for this.

However, this was contradicted by the fact that re-opened lines and stations have exceeded forecasts - so is there still a case for this optimism bias? And if there is not, it needs to be an organisation with a nationwide view (like ATOC, Network Rail or a local authority association) which says so. I urged ATOC to make a start!

This led to an interesting if light hearted discussion about terminology - should we start talking about negative optimism bias?

Remember - you read it here first!

This potentially confusing piece of description reminded me of some other terminological infelicities I'd come across in the past.

In the 1970s, British Railways received grants for the socially necessary but unremunerative passenger sevices they were obliged to run. In some parts of the country - the deep rural areas and the commuter belt south of London - most trains were part of an unremunerative service. The odd ones which were not tended to be referred to as Non-Unremunerative Passenger Services!

I thought this was bad enough, but then came across a list of highway classifications. At that time, we had a category of road which was known as Non-Principal Unclassified !

No doubt there are numerous other examples of the mangling of the English language!

I liked two pieces of advertising currently on display in Chicago.

As you travel to the airport on the Blue Line of Chicago Transit Authority, you notice that some of the cars of the trains have American Airlines' advertising on their sides. The adverts are just place names - London, Frankfurt, Delhi - and a picture of an American Airlines aircraft. Good, but not as much fun as the old Munich Airport line, whose trains carried posters saying things like, "Non-stop to Osaka"!

And when you get to the airport and have laboriously got to the head of the security queue, the trays you put your shoes, coats and liquids in contain Amtrak advertising. One which caught my eye was along the lines of, "If you've a hole in your sock, no-one will ever know".

Excellent!

So far this year I've made four flights - two transatlantic and two domestic within the USA. Punctuality has been variable!

The flight from London to Boston was delayed by heavy security checks at the gate - shoes off for a second time, pockets emptied, bags searched, full pat-down - and a need to queue for ice inspection (in fact, we didn't need de-icing). Result - we took off exactly 2 hours and 46 minutes late: push-back was 2 hours late.

A flight from Washington National achieved push-back a minute early, and then a 4 minute taxi time at O'Hare. This was amazingly short - the cabin crew hardly had time to welcome us to Chicago!

The next one, later in the day from Chicago to Boston, pushed back a mere 3 minutes late.

And coming back to London from Boston, push-back was 11 minutes early and take-off just 2 minutes after scheduled departure time. Thanks to some nice tail winds, we were early in Heathrow.

It looks like being an interesting year!

Booking the journey on line was easy - no complications.

I went to the ticket office the evening before my journey to pick up my ticket. Again, that was very quick, very efficient, very friendly, very easy. I had to show photo ID and sign the ticket. I was told that I had to be at the station at least half an hour before departure (8:10) next morning with photo ID.

Next morning I went to South Street Station for 7:45. The platform for the 8:10 was shown as "TBD": there were 3 Amtrak trains in the station. The platform for one of them was cordoned off with a ribbon barrier. I noticed that some people with large bags were using porters - Redcaps - who would escort them and their bags onto this train: there was someone by the ribbon barrier who would roll it back for the people being escorted and then replace it. Everyone else had to wait in the waiting area.

I've waited in worse waiting areas. There is a comprehensive news-stand: there are toilets and lots of places to eat. There are metal chairs, and the area is warm. A downside of all this is that people who have no-where warm to go tend to congregate on the seats at the station, so there are not many left for passengers.

At 7:54 - 16 minutes before departure and 14 minutes after I was told to be there - the platform was announced and a "Now boarding" message was given. A line formed in the bitter cold (minus 4 Celsius) outside the waiting area: we waited 3-4 minutes until boarding actually started. Tickets - but not photo ID - were checked.

The car nearest to the barrier was first class: the next was a Quiet Car, then an ordinary car, a cafe and 3 more ordinary cars.

I went into the Quiet Car - which was used as it should have been, with not a single use of a mobile phone.

There were comfortable seats with good big tables (large enough for 2 A4 pages to be spread out side by side: my table had old coffee stains on). The table lifted up and then tilted back (there is a diagram!): the space between it and the seat in front was fine for a small briefcase or shoulder bag. There was plenty of space for large wheeled cases - behind seats, or in the overhead lockers (which, like on aircraft, can be closed). The lockers are quite low, so leaving the seat without bumping your head is a challenge. The locker doors stick out into the aisle and, if not closed, can be dangerous.

In the seatback pocket there is a set of customer safety instructions, a magazine and a poster, "If you see something, say something".

The welcome announcement at each station was friendly but quite long - two and a half minutes. It included mention of the quiet car, and explained the ticket checking process (your ticket is examined by a friendly individual, most of it removed, and a coloured piece of card put behind you to indicate to the crew how far you are travelling). The direction was described as westbound - more southbound, surely? The announcer added that there were trash receptacles and bathrooms in each car!

Initially the route runs beside a freeway: there are 3-4 tracks. At Back Bay, the first station stop, there was a nice poster with historic (1920s) pictures of railways in the area.

Initially the ride was jerky, along tracks shared with commuter trains. In places it was single track, along a narrow formation with no room for widening.

Leaving the second stop, Route 128, the train was pretty full.

The route was through attractive rolling wooded countryside - very pretty in the snow and with a bright blue sky.

Car parks at commuter stations had been cleared of snow. The line was only fenced in places. Commuter station platforms were generally low level, but with a wheelchair ramp at the south end. Amtrak stations tended to have high platforms.

There was some evidence of closed stations along the route.

There were several freight sidings (in the British sense of the word) - some with freight cars with much graffiti on.

As we arrived at each station, the announcer said that, "All doors should open on one side": this was no doubt helpful to locals who expect to have to alight from a limited number of cars at some stations, but to me it seemed a pity that he didn't say which side!

Providence station is sub-surface and quite gloomy from inside the train, although the State Capitol building looked beautiful against the blue sky as we approached the station.

The new station at T.F. Green airport was visible, under construction and nearly complete - to open later this year?

Ride quality in Rhode Island was good, with some high speeds reached.

The absence of other traffic on the route - admittedly, on a Saturday - was noticeable. This wasn't the West Coast Main Line, with Pendolinos rushing past every few minutes!

The Connecticut countryside was very beautiful, especially the towns of Groton, New London and Mystic.

As we approached New Haven, there was an announcement about the likely number of passengers joining the train, urging people not to put bags on the seats beside them.

South of New Haven, there was an announcement from the Passenger Support Representative. He was going to ride with us to New York and come through the train to "freshen up the restrooms" (presumably the bathrooms didn't need it!) and collect trash. He actually came through twice - once for newspapers and once for other trash.

The variey of overhead line equipment supports along the route was quite noticeable - some appeared to be quite old and rusty. South of Bridgeport, bits of the catenary looked as if it was on its side - horizontal, not vertical.

The station at Stamford is big and modern, but with little on-platform shelter - one clearly does not wait on the platform for one's train.

There were sizeable quantities of scrap rail and other debris beside the track.

South of Stamford the formation widened out, generally with 4 tracks.

The cafe car was closed from New Rochelle (at 11:20) until after we left New York (with a new crew) at noon.

The New York area was obviously much more built up, much busier, although in places under-used and disused railway formation was obvious.

The approach to New York City was quite spectacular, on elevated route - in one place crossing subway lines.

There was a long tunnel under the East River into Penn Station, where lots of passengers left the train and several joined it. The train was less full south of New York, although all window seats and quite a few aisle seats were taken.

At Newark, some of the PATH trains had a new blue and silver livery - much nicer than the old and tatty grey. South of Newark the ride was very smooth.

At Metropark station, there was work going on on the northbound platform line (there are 4 tracks and a platform on each side of the right-of-way). To allow passengers to join trains, there was a wooden structure covering the unusable tracks with, in 2 places, a step up. One suspects that the arrangement would not commend itself to the UK Health and Safety Executive.

At another station, Metuchen, there was the same arrangement but also two temporary piers sticking out from the high-level platform. At stations further south, the design of these became obvious. They consist of a flat platform some 2 metres by 2 metres with rails along two sides and legs at one end: presumably the other end is fixed to the existing platform so that they cover one set of tracks and allow passenges to board the train on the next set. Curiously, there were some of these at stations on the 2-track section of line - why could passengers not be boarded from the wrong platform instead?

Baltimore Penn station was full of MARC suburban trains - curious: I thought that they didn't run on Saturdays.

We left BWI Airport, the penultimate stop, 5 minutes late, but arrived at Washington Union Station 3 minutes early - thanks to the wonders of recovery time. We'd run between 1 and 9 minutes late all the way - the two particularly late departures (Stamford and Metropark) seemed to be because of work on the track. Most station stops were 2 minutes.

The station in Boston was 15 minutes walk from my hotel: add to that the 30 minutes unnecessary check in time, the 6 hour 40 minute train journey and the half hour ride on the subway to my hotel and the overall journey time was just short of 8 hours. I got a substantial amount of work done.

If I'd flown, I'd have had a 5 minute walk to the subway, a 30 minute ride to the airport, a 60 minute check in, a 60 minute flight and a 50 minute ride to my hotel - just over three and a half hours. But I'd have missed the beautiful scenery, the leg-room, the working space - so I'm glad I did it!

A number of road pricing and congestion charging proposals in the UK have been resoundingly rejected by the public.

One reason is that bodies - especially local government - promoting the concept are supposed to remain neutral. This makes debate with opponents who make false claims and misrepresentations difficult to handle - the promoter is then seen as an advocate and not a neutral.

People with vested interests can easily hijack the proposals, misrepresent issues like the level of charges and privacy, and cause the proposal to be rejected. So - among other things - people likely to benefit from the scheme can be led to believe that they will end up paying significant amounts for something for which they've already paid.

Planning for road pricing? Beware!

Travelling on the Dubai Metro in November, I noticed an unattended bag in the baggage pen of the Gold Class car and drew this to the attention of the attendant. I was told that it belonged to the security officer!

Subsequently on another train I noticed an unattended ladies handbag: I told the train attendant who said it was hers. She then went off through the train to check tickets - leaving the bag there! I did wonder what was in it!

The issue arising from this - apart from the totally trusting and casual attitude which seems wholly alien to one who travels regularly on the London Underground - is the need for personal storage space for crew personal property. The Dubai Metro trains are automated, with no driver's cab: clearly there is no storage for hand-bags and lunch packs and such-like. Maybe there should be?

Over the last few weeks I have been able to compare the economy class seating on some big long-haul aircraft - and it was fascinating.

Cathay Pacific's A340 has 2-4-2 seating. It's comfortable with good leg-room. There was no intrusive in-flight entertainment box under the seat in front of me - some aircraft have this, and it's a nuisance because it means you can only comfortably stretch out one leg! However, because the seat pillars were offset, I couldn't totally stretch out my legs.

The in-flight entertainment was less comprehensive than on Emirates' A380 - less music, extracts only from classical symphonies and concertos, and no cameras.

The plane was very quiet with comfortable seats. They recline by moving the seat squab forward, rather than by moving the seat back backward. This is better for the person behind, but reduces the legroom for the person reclining!

The left hand seatbelt is thicker than normal, and padded. I didn't find this particularly comfortable.

Emirates B-777
Seating is in 3-4-3 configuration. The seat pitch was poor when the seat in front was tilted back. Footroom was restricted in some window seats.

The seat-back pockets were really too small: I had A4 sized papers to look through and there wasn't enough room for them.

The in-flight entertainment was reasonable, although control using the mouse was difficult, with unintuitive movements and unpredictable results.

I really only used the map and the cameras. On the map, there were too many distracting advertisements and irrelevant bits of Emirates news. The forward and downward camera options were good.

Emirates' A380
My flight was at 7:45 and the first metro arrives at the airport at 6:47, so I needed the service to be quick and efficient - and it was. I had checked in my bag the previous day (and, well done Emirates, checked it through to Barcelona on BA from Heathrow, on a completely separate booking - and Emirates gave me air miles on the BA flight!).

The security queue was quick and efficient: there was slight ambiguity in the signage to the gates, possibly because you could go one way for a lift and a different way for escalators.

There was no gate information until the upper level, the duty free area, which was quite crowded. However the gate processing was efficient. There was a 2-level gate lounge - First and Business, and Economy below. The economy lounge was big, with toilets and free newspapers (including the Financial Times).
Television screens had messages calling passengers by zone - families, then from the back of the plane: I saw no evidence that this was policed so if you just turned up, you could probably just walk through.

There were three jetways in use - one for the upper deck, and two for the lower deck (Zone C, and Zones D, E, F and G at the rear).

The lower deck started with row 44. This is behind, and a few steps down from, the flight deck.

Seating was in 3-4-3 layout. The seat support was just slightly in the way if you wanted to stretch your legs out, but there was no in-flight entertainment box there.

The seatback pockets were big, unlike those on the 777.

Spotlights were well positioned and the airflow was good although difficult to reach when strapped in.

The airshow (moving map) was good, with the map over most of the screen and flight information on the right hand side: stationary, in the airport, ground speed was 0 and true air speed 70 miles/hour!

The television screen included the seat number - nice.

Forward, downward and tail cameras (the latter high on the tail, looking forward) were accessible on the airshow: there was useful streaming information below the map but too many advertisements. Changing between screens or between cameras was sometimes slow and unresponsive. Coming in to land at Heathrow, you got full benefit of London rain on the camera lens! The ability to switch off the Arabic text - displayed for half of the time - would have been appreciated.

There was a USB port and a power socket between each economy class seat (and at each first/business class seat).

The cabin was quiet.

One downside is the limited headroom when the overhead bins are open. They are also quite heavy when full, so people who were not particularly tall had trouble shutting them.

My notes record the push-back as being "imperceptible" - which is impressive, on an aircraft that size.

There were plenty of toilets - at the front, one each side and two up the staircase towards the flight deck (and, possibly, more for the flight deck crew).

Windows look big but in fact are not - they are less than A4 size. They look big because the window orifice on the internal skin of the aircraft is much larger than the window proper on the outside.

When the seatbelt sign pinged for turbulence, there was no check by the cabin crew that people obeyed. There was also the usual reluctance to turn the sign off again afterwards so as usual some people ignored it.

There was a lot of crew communication - the "ping ping" sign - which was a nuisance if you wanted to sleep!

I was very close to the front of the aircraft and, probably because there was a separate jetway for first and business class passengers, was able to disembark quite quickly.

I was told by someone who had tried it that the business class seats on the Singapore Airlines A380 were actually not very comfortable. Because they convert to a bed, they are very wide - too wide to sit in comfortably!

In September last year, the UK Department for Transport issued a report, "Public experiences of and attitudes towards rail travel: 2006 and 2009".

In section 7.9, they discuss some interesting responses to the question, "Why did you use train for your last long distance train journey?".

Almost one in 10 of the respondents mentioned that they chose rail because it gave them the opportunity to do things while travelling.

68% had read, 52% had looked at the view, 44% ate or drank and 41% had chatted to travelling companions. 38% had used mobile phones and 28% listened to music. 16% had done work for their job while travelling.

Interesting!

When doing an economic evaluation of a transport investment scheme, it is conventional to put in money for the value of time savings brought about by the scheme. This is because time spent travelling is viewed as wasted - it's a cost. So if your journey takes less time, that's a benefit: time is saved so you can do more with it.

Certainly this is reasonable for car travel (unless, like too many, you indulge in 'distracted driving' - or you have a chauffeur!). It's reasonably true for air travel - certainly for short-haul air travel, where your overall end to end journey is so broken up you can't do anything much with it.

However, for a long-ish train journey, is it true that travelling time is a cost? If you can and do work, it can be a benefit. Especially if no-one is using a mobile phone or radio and distracting you!

Certainly I find a train a very conducive area for complex reading or writing.

And should this change the way we do transport evaluations? If in-train time has a positive value and in-vehicle time for air or road has a negative value, perhaps this should be reflected in evaluations?

Although, obviously, not to the point where it's not worth speeding up trains because it would reduce the working time of the passengers!

With apologies for the delay - our blog is now back, and I will be posting comments of interest shortly!

The main web-site, www.iaro.com, and the traveller's web-site, www.airportrailwaysoftheworld.com, are also now fully available.