On Airport Congestion and City Congestion
The comedian Jerry Seinfeld once observed that “closest thing that we have to royalty in America are the people that get to ride in those little carts through the airport.”
He continued: “Don’t you hate those things? They come out of nowhere. “Beep, beep. Cart people, look out, cart people!” We all scurry out of the way like worthless peasants. “Ooh, it’s cart people. I hope we didn’t slow you down. Wave to the cart people, Timmy. They’re the best people in the world.” If you’re too fat, slow, and disoriented to get to your gate in time, you’re not ready for air travel.”
Now, I do believe these carts have their authentic purpose, though recently navigating the airports of Houston and Atlanta — two travel hubs as sprawling as their host metropolises — I found myself, as I walked, constantly buffeted by their passing presence, or subjected to the very same imperious announcements that Mr. Seinfeld decries (and sometimes they were really quite nasty), and I’d watch as hapless travelers were often forced to execute rapid evasive maneuvers to avoid the onrushing conveyances. And sometimes, looking over, I’d see a boatload of what looked like utterly able-bodied people, looking rather smug. After the fourth “beep beep” in a row I was starting to see the world from Seinfeld’s point of view. Like, who regulates who actually gets on these things?
I thought of this when recently penning a short bit for the New York Times’ “Room for Debate” blog, which discussed the city’s plans to reduce and restrict the amount of vehicular traffic on sections of 34th Street, in favor of creating swifter bus facilities and improved pedestrian access.
The airport courtesy cart is a wonderful way to travel. Who wants to walk Houston’s or Atlanta’s long dendritic corridors (dodging those spillover queues from Auntie Anne’s) when you could be whisked, in comfort if not exactly style, directly from security to your gate? Sure, there’s plenty of mass transit options, like shuttle trains and moving walkways, and there’s always good old walking (which I frankly find a welcome respite after four hours of impersonating David Blaine’s latest act of extreme deprivation in 12F), but who wouldn’t want that private door-to-door ride?
The problem, of course, is that if everyone wanted to travel this way, the airport corridors would quickly bog down in a teeming, thrombosed mass of Lagosian proportions. Airports are able to process huge amounts of people because of mass transit, or because they walk.
And I think there’s something of a metaphor here for the presence of the car in the city of the 21st Century. On 34th Street, as the NYC DOT reports, one in ten people who travel on the street go by car. And yet they are granted an inordinate amount of space, and they exact a toll in time on the vehicles carrying many more people. It’s not difficult to imagine the car, forcing its way through a crosswalk during a right turn (as so many do), as the equivalent of that individual courtesy cart disrupting the larger flow of the stream of airport pedestrians for the sake of its few passengers. Or the driver honking as he passes a cyclist as that shrill cry of “beep, beep, cart coming through” that so vexed Seinfeld. Imagine now if, at the airport, courtesy carts were given wide swaths of real estate in which to navigate, and people on foot were relegated to a smaller, crowded, space, and you have something of an idea of the routine spatial imbalance that exists in New York City.
As with the courtesy cart, the car is a wonderful way to travel — the problem, of course, is that it gets less wonderful with each additional driver. Beep-beep.
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This entry was posted on Monday, April 26th, 2010 at 11:32 pm and is filed under Etc., Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
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April 26th, 2010 at 11:50 pm
And also imagine if those little airport carts killed a hundred people every day.
April 27th, 2010 at 7:17 am
So who does regulate who gets on the airport “courtesy carts”?
April 27th, 2010 at 11:36 am
“Fat, slow, or disoriented”? Try handicapped and elderly. I don’t think Jerry Seinfeld’s right to wander around the airport not paying attention to his surroundings trumps the right of disabled people to travel. The horns on the carts are to warn pedestrians so that the cart doesn’t hit them. The idea that the cart operator is trying to make feel inferior is entirely Seinfeld’s neurosis, not reality. And you can’t always tell by looking at someone whether they are disabled.
My point being, the comparison you are making is totally facetious. Cars are indeed a huge factor in slowing buses and trolleys, because they take up the same amount of lane width for only 1-2 people instead of 40-60. There are also millions and millions of them on the roads. Airports have plenty of space in the aisles for both carts and pedestrians to move around, there ratio of carts to peds is far, far lower, and they certainly aren’t responsible for many fatalities.
April 28th, 2010 at 9:38 am
The point he was trying to make Angela, is that if everyone in the airport wanted to ride in a cart, then the system would break down and nobody would be able to move. Or alternatively they would have to increase the size of the walkways and start regulating where carts could travel and where walkers could walk. Signals would have to be installed, and eventually the airport would grow to resemble a mini-city, dominated by cart traffic with walkers shoved to the edges.
Of course there are actual disabled people using the carts, but as a person with a slight disability who’s worked on disability advocacy, I can assure you that some heathy people are taking advantage of the system. Hopefully not a huge number, but they’re out there.
April 28th, 2010 at 4:16 pm
When I was little, I read a book I remember to this day: “If everybody did.” It had gloriously exaggerated illustrations of what the cat would look like if everyone squeezed it in the middle, or what the house would look like if everyone left their toys on the stairs. Still in print, as far as I can tell, and a great introduction to ethics for young readers.
What the average airport would be like if everyone drove electric carts is Los Angeles. Airport traffic is swift and efficient because it is not (yet) captive to carts. This is a great insight, Tom!
So, let’s ask the real question: how practical (not to mention ethical) is it to establish a mandatory system that fails if everyone uses it? Damned if you drive, damned if you don’t. This is the true source of road rage in America.
April 28th, 2010 at 5:40 pm
So cars should be restricted to the disabled and elderly. Makes sense. We’d be able to turn over most road space to pedestrians and cyclists and mass transit.
May 12th, 2010 at 11:32 am
Is it too much to ask that airport carts travel at pedestrian speeds? The purpose of the carts is to substitute for walking, not to substitute for being on time.