Dulles: White elephant no more
Dulles: White elephant no more......(Update: This doesn't refer to the huge snowstorm bearing down today (12/18/09) on Washington and environs as we speak, undoubtedly caused by the global warming fiasco in Copenhagen)
An indication that we’re coming out of the recession is said to be the crowded parking lots again at major airports. Maybe so, particularly over the holidays.
But I wouldn’t know, even though my wife and I took a trip recently to Chicago, leaving from Dulles and arriving at Chicago’s convenient little Midway Airport via Southwest. A good Stafford neighbor took us to Dulles and then picked us up when we got back, adding to our continuing pleasures of retirement.
We compared two routes between Stafford and the airport. I usually had preferred the I-95, Beltway, and Dulles access routes. Our friend had chosen to turn off I-95 onto Route 234 past Manassas and up I-66 and then north on Route 20. Turns out, they were about equal in elapsed time (50 minutes) when we tried them, of course during non-rush-hour trips.
We have consistently ruled out going via Reagan National, since the parking there was typically very difficult and Southwest didn’t serve there. Why court hassles?
But especially during the holidays, headaches are hard to avoid inside the airport. You face the huge lines of stressed travelers awaiting security checks by those oh-so-courteous federal guards and friskers who sadly pollute all our airports, it seems.
Happily, those customary travails are mostly tolerable for me and my wife. After all, since she has been largely wheelchair-bound for the past several years, we get to scoot to the head of the long lines of travelers fixing to remove their shoes, etc. That, of course, does nothing to prevent me from forgetfully leaving my pocket knife on my person, then loading it with my other stuff into a tray to be scanned and added to the pocket of some civil servant.
Used to be, my wife’s disability also would virtually guarantee we’d be at the front of the line for pre-boarding, with other wheelchair customers only occasionally competing for the choice bulkhead seats inside the plane.
But now, because wheelchair users get such huge preference in the security lines, we increasingly see a lot more of them. Fact is, it can be comical to watch a few wheelchair passengers bunching up at the boarding gate, jockeying to get on first.
Air travel out of Dulles seems to be improving nevertheless. For most flights, travelers no longer must ride those miserable “mobile lounges.” You know what I mean--those oversized, clumsy contrivances unique to Dulles. They were meant to pioneer a superior mode of getting from ticket counter to flight line and back to baggage claim. Seeing their many problems, no other airport apparently decided to try them.
Now the geniuses running Dulles are working hard to complete work on a passenger train system like the other big airports use. This one is arising underground, at an undoubtedly outrageous cost to taxpayers, but it looks very impressive at this stage of development. A product of hometown favorites Mitsubishi and Sumitomo, it’s due to debut in about a month.
The one smart thing in Dulles Airport’s history appears to have been the choice of that huge site far from anywhere. Labeled a white elephant at the time by nearly everyone, it eventually spurred solid commercial development and has become a mighty magnet for taxpaying businesses large and small. I and Virginia are thankful.
Ben Blankenship is an Aquia Harbour resident and career journalist. Reach him at info@staffordcountysun.com".
An indication that we’re coming out of the recession is said to be the crowded parking lots again at major airports. Maybe so, particularly over the holidays.
But I wouldn’t know, even though my wife and I took a trip recently to Chicago, leaving from Dulles and arriving at Chicago’s convenient little Midway Airport via Southwest. A good Stafford neighbor took us to Dulles and then picked us up when we got back, adding to our continuing pleasures of retirement.
We compared two routes between Stafford and the airport. I usually had preferred the I-95, Beltway, and Dulles access routes. Our friend had chosen to turn off I-95 onto Route 234 past Manassas and up I-66 and then north on Route 20. Turns out, they were about equal in elapsed time (50 minutes) when we tried them, of course during non-rush-hour trips.
We have consistently ruled out going via Reagan National, since the parking there was typically very difficult and Southwest didn’t serve there. Why court hassles?
But especially during the holidays, headaches are hard to avoid inside the airport. You face the huge lines of stressed travelers awaiting security checks by those oh-so-courteous federal guards and friskers who sadly pollute all our airports, it seems.
Happily, those customary travails are mostly tolerable for me and my wife. After all, since she has been largely wheelchair-bound for the past several years, we get to scoot to the head of the long lines of travelers fixing to remove their shoes, etc. That, of course, does nothing to prevent me from forgetfully leaving my pocket knife on my person, then loading it with my other stuff into a tray to be scanned and added to the pocket of some civil servant.
Used to be, my wife’s disability also would virtually guarantee we’d be at the front of the line for pre-boarding, with other wheelchair customers only occasionally competing for the choice bulkhead seats inside the plane.
But now, because wheelchair users get such huge preference in the security lines, we increasingly see a lot more of them. Fact is, it can be comical to watch a few wheelchair passengers bunching up at the boarding gate, jockeying to get on first.
Air travel out of Dulles seems to be improving nevertheless. For most flights, travelers no longer must ride those miserable “mobile lounges.” You know what I mean--those oversized, clumsy contrivances unique to Dulles. They were meant to pioneer a superior mode of getting from ticket counter to flight line and back to baggage claim. Seeing their many problems, no other airport apparently decided to try them.
Now the geniuses running Dulles are working hard to complete work on a passenger train system like the other big airports use. This one is arising underground, at an undoubtedly outrageous cost to taxpayers, but it looks very impressive at this stage of development. A product of hometown favorites Mitsubishi and Sumitomo, it’s due to debut in about a month.
The one smart thing in Dulles Airport’s history appears to have been the choice of that huge site far from anywhere. Labeled a white elephant at the time by nearly everyone, it eventually spurred solid commercial development and has become a mighty magnet for taxpaying businesses large and small. I and Virginia are thankful.
Ben Blankenship is an Aquia Harbour resident and career journalist. Reach him at info@staffordcountysun.com".
posted by Ben Blankenship at
10:59 AM
