Jeffrey McManus

The New Thing

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Entries Tagged as 'Transportation'

Handy Table of Airline Fees

August 26th, 2008 · 4 Comments · School of Customer Service, Transportation

Flying somewhere used to be simple, but recently airlines have begun to implement unbelievably complicated pricing policies. If you ask them, they’ll say it’s because of the increase in the price of oil. But it’s funny how all these special fees only seem to go up, never down. Some airlines are saying that this kind [...]

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I Don’t Think That “Business Model” Means What You Think It Means

June 5th, 2008 · 4 Comments · Deep Thoughts, The Funny, Transportation

Continental Cuts 3,000 Jobs as It Grounds Planes – NYTimes.com
Continental’s move, which equals a 16 percent reduction in its capacity, had been rumored in industry circles on Wednesday. The details came in a message to employees from Continental’s chief executive Lawrence W. Kellner and its president, Jeffrey A. Smisek.
“The airline industry is in a crisis,” [...]

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American, Cutting Back, Plans $15 Bag Fee

May 21st, 2008 · 2 Comments · School of Customer Service, Transportation

Link: American, Cutting Back, Plans $15 Bag Fee
“It’s the end of an era,” said Robert W. Mann Jr., an airline industry consultant in Port Washington, N.Y. Referring to the range of fees that customers face, Mr. Mann added, “Soon, like freight, we will pay by the pound for passenger air travel.”
Horse hockey. Only the amateurs [...]

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The Era of GPS Is Fostering Mindless Truck-Driving

December 4th, 2007 · No Comments · Transportation

Link: Turn Back. Exit Village. Truck Shortcut Hitting Barrier
"This little village would seem to be an obviously poor place through which to drive your average large truck. There is no room to pass and no room to maneuver.
But trucks and tractor-trailers come here all the time, as they do in similarly inappropriate spots across Britain, [...]

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Revisiting the User Experience of a 100 Year Old System

October 16th, 2007 · 1 Comment · Transportation

Link: Navigation Help for Surfacing Subway Riders
"It is one of those embarrassing, frustrating, infuriating experiences of everyday life that many New York subway passengers are loath to admit: that disorienting moment when they step onto the street, lost in a city they know — or think they know — perfectly well. Which way is Ninth [...]

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Residential Parking in San Francisco

February 14th, 2007 · 13 Comments · Transportation

I’ve already blogged about the gigantic scam that is parking enforcement in San Francisco. There is a sub-scam at work for people who live in certain neighborhoods: the residential parking permit system. It’s intended to make parking more sensible for people who live in high-density neighborhoods, and it may very well serve that purpose, but [...]

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A Precious View of Public Transit in Portland

January 29th, 2007 · No Comments · The NY Times Spins Another Cliche About The West, Transportation

From our the museum of condescending, cliched NY Times stories about the West comes another gem, this one about an aerial tramway in Portland.
Let’s imagine that you just arrived in the United States from some other country for the first time, and somebody handed you this story about the Oregonians and their crazy sky-subway to [...]

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San Franciscans Hurl Their Rage at Parking Patrol

January 5th, 2007 · 2 Comments · That's Pretty Messed Up Right There, The NY Times Spins Another Cliche About The West, Transportation

Link: San Franciscans Hurl Their Rage at Parking Patrol
"They think they can take out their frustration on government in general" by abusing the [parking control] officers, who work 40-hour weeks for about $40,000 a year," she said, adding, "They say, ‘I’m tired of the city taking my money.’ "
There certainly is money in parking tickets. [...]

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All of BART on a Yahoo! Map

October 15th, 2005 · 2 Comments · Maps, Things What Look Good, Transportation, Web/Tech, Yahoo

All of BART on a map, yo. I’d have pimped this earlier in the week but I got sidetracked with some other stuff.
I wrote a tool to make creating simple maps like this super easy. I’ll be releasing this tool soon so everybody can play. Until that happens, if you can hack together an XML [...]

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