May 4, 2007
GAHHH! Frontier Airlines Flying Right Outta Town
It's "all airlines, all the time" here on SFist.
After the lukewarm-to-good news of JetBlue flying out of SFO, we're greeted with some bad news: Frontier Airlines is vacating the premises--no more "commuter flights" to and from LAX.
It's a shame, really. This airline, from the four times we flew this route, appeared to be have everything that JetBlue is known for, minus the history of extended runway visits: Frontier is low-cost, friendly, and, yeah, has that 20-odd channels of DirectTV thing going for it. Plus each plane has a really cute animal on its tail.
Anyways, bad news for those of us for whom visiting L.A. is a semi-frequent and necessary evil. Hmmmm . . . what's that? Southwest and Virgin are coming soon? At least there'll be a few options besides the "majors."
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There's always JetBlue from Oakland to Long Beach...not a bad way to go.
Of course, when our state catches up to the rest of the advanced world, we'll have high speed rail to go back and forth to Los Angeles. The CA High Speed Rail Authority just concluded it'll be about two and a half hours downtown to downtown with high speed rail! That beats the airlines and without the environmental damage. How cool! (Literally.)
Take the train! Lower impact, environmentally speaking. I vastly prefer train stations these days, anyway..quieter, low key, not ramped up on travel hysteria like airports are.
Today if you take the train to LA you can count on either catching a bus from Bakersfield or a multi-hour delay on the Coast Starlight (which even on time takes 11 hours to get there). It's much faster to drive a car.
Dave's right, we really need high speed rail.
I'm totally for hi-speed rail, but I just took Southwest from Oakland to LAX for $49.
From my house to BART to AirBART to the airport to LAX was around 2.5 hours. I could do it in 2 if I had to. If it's SFO to LAX once JetBlue takes hold, it's less than 2 hours for under $100.
The point is, how will hi-speed rail be priced? Will it be economically viable to compete? Will it need to be subsidized by the state to be price competitive? If so, how much?
Questions that will need to be answered...
Even if high-speed rail stays on the drawing board for awhile (which it might, given the opposition to it) it would be nice if they could implement something revolutionary: "Regular Speed Rail". Based on those stories I've heard about the Coast Starlight, we don't even have that yet!
Since someone mentioned it, AirBART (aka "How to Spend 30-40 Min. To Go Two and a Half Miles") also needs to be put out to pasture. That direct BART spur to the airport is long overdue.
David, the answers to all your questions (and more) can be found on the High-Speed Rail Authority website.