Transportation Library News

Airports cash in on long delays.

Airport terminals have always tried to cater to the needs of hungry, bored, tired, and stressed travelers. However, with the recession bringing down air traffic, airports have turned to retail to offset decreased demand for aeronautical concessions. Since 9/11, wait times and delays before flights have increased dramatically. According to Airport World, many airports now "exceed 60% of their annual gross revenues from retail." This high percentage is understandable considering the $27 billion "airport retailing" market. To see the business and marketing research being conducted in this unusual and growing field read "The perfect market?" in the August 2009 issue of Airport World, http://nucat.library.northwestern.edu/cgi-bin/Pwebrecon.cgi?BBID=3511202.

More Flying Cars

In August we posted a note linking to an article on the dream of building a flying car http://www.library.northwestern.edu/transportation/news/2009/08/flying_cars_anyone_1.html. That dream is even closer to reality, as Terrafugia <http://www.terrafugia.com/> demonstrates their flying prototype. Watch an interview with their CEO on Forbes' web site, <http://video.forbes.com/fvn/travel/inside-terrafugia-flying-car?partner=links&boxes=lastslide

Take a Look at a Book

The Transportation Library has acquired The World of the Medieval
Shipmaster: Law, Business and the Sea c.1350-c.1450 by Robin Ward. Here is an description of the book from the publisher's Web site:

Despite a background of war, piracy, depopulation, bullion shortages, adverse political decisions, legal uncertainties and deteriorating weather conditions, between the mid-fourteenth and the mid-fifteenth centuries the English merchant shipping industry thrived. New markets were developed, voyages became longer, ships and cargoes increased in size and value, and an interest in ship ownership as an investment spread throughout the community.

Using a rich range of examples drawn from court and parliamentary records, contemporary literature and the codifications of maritime law, this book illuminates the evolving management and commercial practices which developed to regulate the relationships between shipowners, shipmasters, crews and shipping merchants. It also brings to life ship performance, navigation, seamanship, and the frequently harsh conditions on board.

CTA: Need for AED isn't seen

Chicago Tribune (IL) - Tuesday, November 10, 2009
Author: Jon Hilkevitch, Tribune reporter

Defibrillators would not have helped any of the 176 CTA passengers complaining of chest pains in the last two years, an analysis by the transit agency found.

Nonetheless, CTA officials still are interested in acquiring the heart-shocking devices if outside funding can be identified.

It would cost $5 million to $5.5 million to deploy defibrillators at all 144 CTA rail stations and on the agency's approximately 2,000 buses, said Amy Kovalan, CTA chief safety and security officer.

The agency does not expect to put defibrillators on its 1,200 rail cars, because train operators are instructed to proceed to the nearest station in a medical emergency. .

CTA records show more than 900 cases of passengers complaining of chest pains over the last five years. The analysis this summer did not evaluate all 900 cases, Kovalan said. Instead, 101 cases from 2008 and 75 cases through this August were studied.

Last year, 73 of the cases were onboard buses and 28 were on trains. So far this year, 56 were on buses and 19 were on trains, officials said.

In none of the cases did the individual suffering chest pains lose consciousness, Kovalan said. "We looked at the data and did not see a case where defibrillators were warranted," she said.

Only unconscious victims with no pulse and not breathing are candidates for defibrillators, according the American Heart Association.

A recent incident occurred Oct. 8, when a rider on a Blue Line train apparently suffered a heart attack, transit officials said.

As CTA personnel called for the fire and police departments, a customer onboard who was a nurse and another customer attempted to assist the ill rider until emergency help arrived. The ill customer was taken to a hospital.

Containerized Living

Containerized shipping has been with us now for roughly half a century. Its history is well-documented in books such as Marc Levinsons's The Box: How The Shipping Container Made TheWorld Smaller and The World Economy Bigger (http://nucat.library.northwestern.edu/cgi-bin/Pwebrecon.cgi?BBID=4407690) and Arthur Donovan and Joseph Bonney's The Box That Changed The World (http://nucat.library.northwestern.edu/cgi-bin/Pwebrecon.cgi?BBID=4573722). It truly revolutionized shipping, enabling globalized trade on a scale that would otherwise have been impossible to sustain. Over time, though, individual containers fall out of use, due to factors such as wear or changes in standards. An inescapable side effect of containerized shipping, thus is the existence of large numbers of disused containers. We're now seeing a new revolution derived from these containers—housing.
There have been various initiatives using containers as housing for poor people in various parts of the world. See, for example, the October 4, 2008 story from the Voice of America News on their use in Ciudad Juarez (http://www.voanews.com/specialenglish/archive/2008-10/2008-10-04-voa2.cfm). Moving beyond the simply utilitarian, the New York Times published an article titled "The Shipping Container as Building Block" (Sunday, February 1, 2009, Business Section, p.10, online at http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/01/business/01newreal.html?_r=1&scp=1&sq=shipping%20container%20as%20building%20block&st=cse#), discussing the results of a design competition challenging architects to develop "housing so cool that everybody would want to live in it." The first-place design is one that closely resembles the Habitat structure featured at Expo '67 in Montreal (http://www.habitat67.com/, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Habitat_67). An earlier article, "Last Stop for Long-Haul Containers" (http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9D07EFD6153CF934A25754C0A9659C8B63&scp=2&sq=shipping%20container%20as%20building%20block&st=cse#
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/17/technology/17sun.html?scp=4&sq=shipping%20container%20as%20building%20block&st=cse) appeared in the Home and Garden section (Thursday, July 17, 2003).
As can be seen in this video, turning shipping containers into living space provides an elegant solution to the issue of what to do with retired containers which would otherwise litter the landscape for years to come:
Finally, we have clearinghouses for shipping container housing (http://www.shipping-container-housing.com/ and http://firmitas.org/), and Bob Vila on shipping containers: http://video.bobvila.com/m/21320565/converting-steel-shipping-containers-to-housing.htm.
Is there a shipping container in your future?

The Transportation Library's Digitalization Project

The Transportation Library of Northwestern University, http://www.library.northwestern.edu/transportation, in conjunction with the Consortium of Academic and Research Libraries in Illinois (CARLI) http://www.carli.illinois.edu, has been involved in a digitalization project spanning 2008 and most of 2009. This project has resulted in the digitalization of 289 reports, periodicals and monographs produced by or for the Chicago Transit Authority or the Regional Transit Authority. Researchers interested in transportation in Chicago and the surrounding region will be able to access these electronic materials through the Northwestern University Library's catalog NUat, http//nucat.library.northwestern.edu/

Late by Design

The Operations Room, a blog written by two professors at the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University, has a recent entry with this title about a New York Times article on the intentional lateness of commuter trains in New York City. According to the article, the trains depart New York City terminals one minute late, but arrive on time at all other stops.
The blog entry notes:

" Beyond the sheer anecdotal value of this fact, there are a few interesting issues here: First, This one-minute is basically the safety buffer the trains' system carries to improve service in its largest market. In order to reduce the number of people that are late to their trains, the conductors wait another minute and recover this minute later by driving faster (I guess). Second, we usually associate operations with improving efficiency, but this is a good example, I think, of intentional inefficiency, targeted at improving service."
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