Cameron on Transportation

Monorails: Too Expensive and Slow to Be Mass Transit’s Future — If Their Past and Present Are Any Guide

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While taking a summertime break this week, here’s a column I wrote awhile back. What is this fascination that people have with monorails? I can’t tell you how often people suggest them as “the answer” to our state’s clogged roads. “Why don’t we build a monorail down the middle of The Merritt Parkway?,” asked an architect at a recent meeting. To my astonishment, such an idea was once studied!

Cameron in the Air 2025

Being Tortured by Your Airline Flight? Try Dr. Cameron’s Cures for What Ails You.

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Think air travel horrors are just about delays and lost luggage? Your body has other plans. Forget plane crashes and fights about who gets the armrest. If you survive TSA, a middle seat, and boarding group 9, now you have to make it through the flight itself without your body unraveling like cheap luggage on a baggage carousel. Let’s start with deep vein thrombosis, or what they call the “Deadly Window Seat Special.” You sit there for five hours without moving (thanks, beverage cart), and your blood turns sluggish, like airport Wi-Fi during a gate change.

Talking Transportation 2025
Air France sleeping on flight airplane

Yes, You Can Sleep While Traveling — But How Well? And for How Much?

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There’s something very satisfying about the efficiency of overnight travel. In the best of conditions you make your journey and awake, refreshed, at your destination. But how well you sleep depends a lot on how you travel. Here’s my list of overnight travel options, from worst to first:

DRIVING ALL NIGHT

In my carefree youth I once drove all night from Chicago to New York City. Tired and wired (on a LOT of coffee) I encountered no traffic and made really good time, but arrived exhausted.

Cameron on Transportation
South Norwalk station parking lot

Commuters: Be Prepared for a Nightmarish Train Ride, Maybe Like One of These

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We take our train service for granted. For the 80,000 daily Connecticut riders on Metro-North the service is dependable and on-time — usually. But not last Thursday evening, June 5, the hottest day of the year (so far), when the overhead catenary power lines were dragged down near Westport. No power means no trains. What caused the problem won’t be known for a while.

Talking Transportation 2025

CT Loses a Billion a Year in Car-Tax Revenue But Isn’t Trying to Stop the Tax Cheaters

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“This is the number one form of tax evasion in Connecticut. Connecticut is losing millions annually and our DMV does not care.”

So says Stonington Tax Assessor Jennifer Lineaweaver, president of the state association for her profession (the CCAO). She’s speaking of Connecticut residents who register their cars in other states to avoid local property taxes. Land of Steady Bad Habits
“Connecticut is also losing money on registrations, emissions, insurance and unpaid parking tickets that cannot be enforced,” she says. It’s super easy to get Maine plates for your vehicles — without even traveling to the state or having an address there.

Talking Transportation 2025
Sherwood Island State Park jetty

Expand Your Horizons with TOR — An Alternative to Driving to Concerts, Beaches and Other Recreation Spots

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The recent cool and weather aside, it’s officially summer! Time to get out and enjoy our state’s wonderful parks and beaches and take advantage of TOR. You know what TOD is, right? Transit Oriented Development is building homes and offices near mass transit facilities. Well, I’m going to suggest you think about TOR: Transit Oriented Recreation.

Talking Transportation 2025
Grand Central Terminal Main Concourse

Did You Know …

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Over the 20 years I’ve been writing this column, I’ve come across some “fun facts” about transportation. Try dazzling friends at your next BBQ with some of these gems.

HIGHWAYS:

• The average distance driven on Interstate 95 in Connecticut is 11 miles. Some 180,000 vehicles drive all or part of the 112 miles that I-95 runs through our state. But even factoring in true interstate drivers (think Florida to Maine), the average distance driven in Connecticut is tiny. Why?

Talking Transportation 2025
truck burning oil

A Lot of Transportation Is Hazardous to Our Health

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Our air stinks. In fact, Fairfield County ranks in the top 25 of most polluted areas in the U.S., mostly due to ozone levels. And while much of those noxious gases drift our way from New Jersey and New York City, a large part of our pollution is home-grown: it’s due to heavy volumes of traffic, especially diesel trucks, which emit nitrogen oxides (NOx) and volatile organic compounds (VOCs)—key ingredients in ozone formation. Yes: I-95 is hazardous to your health. And all of this gets worse in the summer due to the heat which increases ozone production, often trapping it over our heads due to temperature inversions.

Talking Transportation 2025
On the train on the phone cell service on Metro North

Fumbling Media Coverage of Transportation News

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Don’t believe everything you read or see in the media. Sage advice on any topic, but especially when it comes to coverage of transportation. A couple of recent stories illustrate my point. Improved Cell Service on Metro-North
The governor and CDOT’s commissioner held a media event recently in Stamford to promote the fact that AT&T has improved its cell coverage along the New Haven line. That telco spent $6 million installing 30 high-powered macro towers and small cell nodes, some of them on CDOT land, in a public-private partnership.

Talking Transportation 2025

Avelo Airlines: Neither Woke Nor Broke

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Connecticut’s favorite local airline, Avelo, is in trouble for making a strategic business decision: taking a long term contract with ICE (U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement) to fly deportation flights for the Department of Homeland Security. Starting in May they’re dedicating three of their twenty 737 jets to fly from Mesa, Arizona, to destinations both in the U.S. and overseas (presumably flying over the “Gulf of America”), possibly even heading to El Salvador to deliver deportees to prisons there. The public reaction, while understandable, is misplaced. Avelo has enjoyed amazing success flying out of New Haven’s Tweed airport, growing from 50,000 passengers in 2019 to a current 600,000 happy flyers. They fly to 31 different destinations and have recently added flights from Bradley airport.

Cameron on Transportation
U.S. Customs agent

Intrusions into Travelers’ Privacy and the Search for Illegal Immigrants — Interesting Times at the Border

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Last week’s column on the “Real ID” deadline to allow drivers licenses to be used to clear TSA at the airport struck a nerve. Among the many comments received, was this from Jan van Eck, who wrote:

“It is not, and never was, the purpose of TSA inspectors to go check identification papers a la East Germany: “papers, please.” Their function is to check for weapons being brought aboard an aircraft. That’s it. When (your column) counsels the citizenry to go get a Real-ID driver’s permit (and fork out an extra $30 for it), you are subtly encouraging the erosion of personal liberties, including the liberty to travel freely without some government bureaucrat questioning you.”

Oh, but that fun is just beginning, Jan, as you’ll find the next time you return to the US from overseas.

Talking Transportation 2025
Real ID Gold Star on License

You’ll Need a ‘Real ID’ on Your Driver’s License to Use It for Identification on Flights, Starting May 7

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Quick. Look at your Connecticut driver’s license! If you don’t see a gold star in the upper right corner, you’ll soon be unable to use that as ID to fly. By May 7, 2025, the familiar dance at airport security will change for Connecticut residents. That’s when the long-delayed Real ID requirement takes effect, and if you’re still flashing a standard driver’s license (without the gold star), you may find yourself grounded — literally.

Talking Transportation 2025
Aerial view of a parking lot

There Is No Free Parking

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As the housing debate rages statewide, one of the issues seldom addressed is that of “free parking.”

It’s one thing to increase housing density to hopefully bring us more affordable domiciles, but we have to remember that parking must be part of the equation, properly managed and priced. Critics argue that each parking space in a new development takes up about 325 square feet. That means two or three spaces could require as much land as a studio apartment or small store. And the cost of parking just adds to construction costs: as much as $10,000 per space on a surface lot, $50,000 on a parking structure and $100,000 in an underground lot. Consider Bridgeport, where as many as 200 homeless are living on the streets.