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Transportation Upgrades

New ATC System To Rely On AT&T Cell Towers 109

Posted by kdawson from the can-you-see-me-now dept.
longacre writes "The FAA has awarded the long-anticipated first contract for development of its NextGen air traffic control system: a $1.8 billion deal with ITT Corporation, beating out bids from aerospace heavyweights such as Raytheon and Lockheed Martin. ITT's design will make use of hundreds of specially modified AT&T cellular phone towers which, in addition to their normal communications duties, will relay an aircraft's position to air traffic controllers and other aircraft in real time. The initial contract is only enough to wire and test the so-called ADS-B system in the Philadelphia area and around the Gulf of Mexico — hooking up the rest of the country will take an estimated 20 years and $20 billion."
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New ATC System To Rely On AT&T Cell Towers More

New ATC System To Rely On AT&T Cell Towers

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  • Wow, 20 billion is quite a lot of money. I guess they are expecting really high benefits from that. But I think that a better air traffic control can get you no more than a 30% increase in capacity. From TFA:

    Doug Church, an official with the National Air Traffic Controllers Association, says that while his organization welcomes technological advances, he's concerned that NextGen not be viewed as a panacea. "An airport can still only handle so many flights," he says. "What we need is more concrete on the ground" in the form of new runways and airfields, he says.

    I think this guy is pretty much spot on. With 20 billion you can build LOTS of runways. I'm sure there is another way of getting rid of the bottleneck of air traffic control capacity. Just hire more people! In Europe we are managing quite well with "traditional" ways...

    • Re:Pretty expensive... (Score:4, Insightful)

      by TooMuchToDo ( 882796 ) on Thursday November 22, 2007 @01:27PM (#21447491)
      The problem with building more runways is that in most areas (New York, Los Angelas, Chicago), development is already done around the major airport. You can't expand further out. What's needed is for airlines to move away from the hub and spoke model, and fly smaller planes directly between routes. ADS-B will help quite a bit with this.

      On an unrelated note, I think IIT should have bid out the contract for tower locations, instead of just handing it to ATT.

      • Re: (Score:1, Insightful)

        by Slashidiot ( 1179447 )
        Well, the hub and spoke model works, and there are good reasons to keep it. It makes operation way cheaper, and the CO2 emissions are way lower. If the problem is that the area around the main airport in big cities is unavailable and the airport cannot grow, solving air traffic control problems is not going to get you too far.

        It probably makes more sense to build a big airport further from the cities and build good high speed trains to get you inside the city. Hurray for intermodal transport!

        • Re:Pretty expensive... (Score:4, Insightful)

          by Forseti ( 192792 ) on Thursday November 22, 2007 @03:07PM (#21448149)
          Yeah, as long as your local government is smart enough to manage such a project intelligently, and that half the project doesn't get canned after the next election. Quebec/Montreal spent obscene amounts of money of it's Mirabel airport [wikipedia.org] and now we're about to decommission it because the high-speed train and connecting highway was never completed, so people keep using the old Airport on the island...

      • Flag carriers can't abandon Hub and Spoke (Score:5, Informative)

        by Dorceon ( 928997 ) on Thursday November 22, 2007 @01:39PM (#21447593)
        International flights are operated under treaties which frequently place restrictions on number of weekly flights allowed by all flag carriers. (Not everyone has Open Skies with the USA.) Plus, flying over large bodies of water requires planes that either have more than two engines, or are rated for long distances under a single engine. (Not that they frequently lose an engine any more the way four-engined piston planes used to when the rule was made, but a rule's a rule.) Even in Open Skies cases, some airports (ie. London Heathrow) are heavily slot-constrained. What this all means is that you can't in general fly smaller planes point-to-point on international routes. You often have to fly the biggest plane you can, because you only get one flight a day. (This is what motivated Airbus Industrie to make the A380.) Thus, carriers that have both international and domestic routes are forced into a hub-and-spoke model because they have to get people to the hub to get them on the international flight.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by arivanov ( 12034 )
          Not that they frequently lose an engine any more the way...

          This one lost both: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_Transat_Flight_236 [wikipedia.org]

          • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

            by Dorceon ( 928997 )
            It sprung a fuel leak. No number of engines would have kept it in the air.

            • Re: (Score:2)

              by arivanov ( 12034 )
              Actually no. It sprung a fuel leak and the pilots decided to equalise the starboard and port fuel tanks. If they would have kept the vent closed they would have lost only the leaking engine. So it was about to lose one anyway, but the pilots error made it two for good measure.
            • well one engine was a loss because of the fuel leak, mismanagement of the situation (the exact reasons for which have not been made public iirc but misdiagnoses is suspected) made them lose the other one too.

        • I fully agree with you with regards to international flights. I'm speaking more of domestic flights (such as those within the US, as well as those between countries in the Western EU like Ireland, UK, Germany, etc). I think this will become more of reality as Ultra Light Jets become more prominent.

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by Dorceon ( 928997 )
            If you have a lot of domestic flights going to an international gateway for the purposes of connecting onto your international flights, you're naturally going to get people connecting at the hub for domestic flights anyways. Also, the hubs where the problems are worst aren't busy just because they're hubs--they're also the largest cities. NYC is going to have a lot of travel demand whether or not you intentionally hub there, and once you add all those point-to-point flights to NYC, people are going to conne
      • Well here's how I see it. AT&T is the largest GSM service in the US and since GSM is pretty much a world standard, so that shuts out Verizon CDMA (which in my opinion has better coverage than AT&T) If Europe wanted to do the same thing keeping everything GSM would be a wise decision.
        • What type of cellphone technology in use doesn't matter. It's simply an issue of geography. IIT is just colocating equipment at the cell tower location. They could put each communications hub on the top of every Mcdonalds for all they care.

      • Re: (Score:1)

        by tarpy ( 447542 )

        The problem with building more runways is that in most areas (New York, Los Angelas, Chicago), development is already done around the major airport. You can't expand further out.

        True to a certain extent...in Chicago, at least, there's been an on-going attempt (for 10+ years) to reconfigure ORD's runways and add some more, smaller runways (the better to help with regional jets), but, this being America, that plan has been consistently held up by pissy people who live near an airport ("but we didn't know that there's be planes flying overhead when we bought the place 10 years ago"!) and the eco-nuts who are generally opposed to an increase in air traffic.

        What I don't get is we ha

      • Airport Expansion (Score:5, Interesting)

        by DesScorp ( 410532 ) on Thursday November 22, 2007 @11:15PM (#21451063) Journal
        A little background first: I work in IT at an airport, and I'm somewhat familiar with some of the administrative aspects of airport management.

        "The problem with building more runways is that in most areas (New York, Los Angelas, Chicago), development is already done around the major airport. You can't expand further out."

        While this is true somewhat, its still not an impediment to airport growth. Most airports are public entities, and thus have powers of eminent domain. Most will try to buy properties they want without resorting to ED in order to keep good relations with the neighbors, but if pressed, they'll use ED if needed. Airports have purchased entire border neighborhoods and paved them over, and they've gone to court and seized them as well. They still have to pay compensation, but likely not what owners would have gotten had they sold when first approached.

        "What's needed is for airlines to move away from the hub and spoke model, and fly smaller planes directly between routes."

        Airlines are already doing this, but with mixed success. The fact is, those kinds of routes just aren't as profitable. In fact, the airline industry will probably contract severely over the next twenty years. We might well end up with only two or three major carriers, and far fewer airports, as smaller regional airports close down. In order to keep current levels of air service, unless a major technology breakthrough comes along that makes direct flights cheaper, it'll take massive government subsidies to keep the number of flights we have now. I just don't see that happening.

        Just as the coming of the airliner spelled the end of passenger rail, the coming of teleconferencing may spell the end of business travel, which is what drove the airlines in the first place. The airline industry will likely be dominated by cargo in a quarter century, with goods far outstripping people in the airplanes. Its likely that air freight companies will be America's largest commercial air providers in a quarter century. Fedex already has the largest commercial fleet in the world.

        A much-smaller airline industry will be transporting mostly pleasure travelers, as high speed Internet has made long distance meetings a reality. America's greatest aircraft designer, Lockheed's Kelly Johnson, has predicted that the airline industry will basically disappear soon because of advances in IT. Looking at the numbers, its hard to disagree with him
        • As both a pilot, and having a career in IT, I agree with most of your post. But I don't see business travel going away. I know quite a few people that commute weekly (one lives in Chicago on the weekends and works in Boston during the week).

    • Re: (Score:1, Interesting)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Actually, having flown extensively in both airspaces, it works like shit in Europe and the Eastern US. Your European system is exactly the same as the US system, as it is in all of the developed world. Moreover, the current system is horribly inefficient; most air traffic routes are at least 5% longer then needed. For example, the preferred jet routing from BWI to MIA is DAILY J61 HUBBS J193 HCM ISO J121 CHS J79 OMN.AMNEY1 which is 8% longer then a straight line. Yes, that's 8% more jet fuel burning, 8% mor
    • Do keep in mind that this is a Union Boss speaking the Union Party Line. He's not exactly disinterested in schemes that will mean more jobs and better job security for those whom he represents.

      I think this guy is pretty much spot on. With 20 billion you can build LOTS of runways.

      Just for reference, Denver's new airport [colorado.edu] cost five billion dollars. The new runway [portseattle.org] under construction at Sea-Tac will cost (according to current estimates) just over a billion dollars when it enters service next y

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by vinsci ( 537958 )
      Air traffic controller personnel, radar manufacturers, resellers etc have all been fighting this system for well over a decade, simply because it is a lot more cost effective than the present system while also being more useful and accurate. These people would rather have money in their own pockets than more secure flights that are consuming less fuel and saving airlines money by spending less time in the air. Even the US government has been fighting this system in the past, simply because it wasn't invente
    • For perspective, the cost estimate to expand Ohare airport to handle more traffic was $7.5 billion. So you aren't building a whole lot of runways for $20 billion.

    • With 20 billion you can build LOTS of runways

      Atlanta's 5th runway, 1.3billion, Seattle's 3rd runway, 800million...

      I think you might be underestimating the cost of runways.
  • ...I can use my cell phone on the plane. But only in Philadelphia.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by eakerin ( 633954 )
      Finally, something to do while circling the Philadelphia airport for 30 minutes waiting for your turn to land. I've never had as many late flights as when I was flying into and out of PHL.

      • Re: (Score:1)

        by afidel ( 530433 )
        Don't fly out of Newark/Atlanta/O'Hare/JFK/BOS/DFW much do you? All are considerably worse than Philly.
    • You still can't use your cellphone on a plane (at least, not until the plane has a picocell onboard with a satellite uplink). The equipment to support ADS-B is going to be colocated at ATT cell tower sites.
  • I hope no aircraft fly around here in the mountains, AT&T signal sucks around where i live. AT&T (well cingular) built the towers in the valleys rather than on the mountains, so not sure if they would work.

    Its great if you live in the valleys, you get awesome signal, but if you live at higher elevations it sucks (like my town on a plateau above the tower).
    • My guess is that they'd point the ATC system facing Up, for planes waay above the towers, instead of aiming it down at homes near all that pesky Terrain.

      And besides, it's not as if they have dozens of regular ATC towers over your mountains right now, is it?

      • But because the towers are below the top of the mountain, they will have issues because of the mountains.
        • Some yes but far less than people on the ground have.

          the higher up the user is the less bumps in the ground matter because the angle from the tower to the user for a given horizonal difference is steeper.

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by account_deleted ( 4530225 )
      Comment removed based on user account deletion

  • Can You Hear Me Now? (Score:1, Redundant)

    by rueger ( 210566 )
    Somehow those words take on a rather ominous tone.....
  • Can you say ROAMING?! lol. But seriously, whenever you're "roaming" with a cell it's because your carrier doesn't own the tower you connected to. And a lot of the time that's because it's a privately owned tower. Like some company or person built it and now they sit around doing nothing while the money pours in from all the carriers paying for their customers to use the tower. And they can charge whatever they want so that's why roaming is so expensive. So if a plane wants to connect to a private tower
  • I'm guessing that that 20 bil is just for the prototype. It'll be another hundred before it's actually operational, if ever.

  • The real cause of delays... (Score:3, Insightful)

    by jbwolfe ( 241413 ) on Thursday November 22, 2007 @01:45PM (#21447647) Homepage

    FTA: "the entire overhaul will cost taxpayers up to $20 billion over 20 years. But the airline industry insists that any early advances can't come soon enough.

    You can say that again. From a users perspective, they have been doing things the same way for as along as I've been involved (20 years)- well overdue for some significant technological advances! It really doesn't strike me as a difficult problem as it boils down to to a space/time/position equation.

    And again: "We are at catastrophic levels in terms of congestion," says David Castelveter of the Air Transport Association, the trade group for major U.S. airlines. "The controllers are using age-old procedures and separation standards that they put into place decades ago.""

    While this might make a difference for enroute control, it will have no impact on airport congestion. For that, only more concrete will make a difference and this is the primary driver of delays. Huge barriers exist to improving airports, both political and economic.

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by TubeSteak ( 669689 )

      While this might make a difference for enroute control, it will have no impact on airport congestion. For that, only more concrete will make a difference and this is the primary driver of delays. Huge barriers exist to improving airports, both political and economic.

      You may or may not be aware of this, but large numbers of smaller planes have been pressed into service over the last several years. Smaller turboprops may be cheaper to fly, but they still use up gates, takeoff/landing slots and Traffic Control resources.

      These smaller planes carry less people without having a proportionatly smaller airport footprint (for lack of a better word).

  • Why can't the planes own internal GPS relay their EXACT position to the ATC towers?

    What am I missing?

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by s800 ( 940543 )
      GPS is a one way communication. Duh.

      • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

        by ScrewMaster ( 602015 )
        DUH nothing. If the planes can talk to the towers they could certainly transmit their GPS co-ordinates. There may be some reason why the Feds don't want aircraft broadcasting their precise positions, though.

        • If the planes can talk to the towers they could certainly transmit their GPS co-ordinates. There may be some reason why the Feds don't want aircraft broadcasting their precise positions, though.
          At least a few States have time delayed (10~15 minutes) maps of the positions of air traffic around major airports.

          Look for it online, California is probably the easiest one to find.

    • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

      by EmagGeek ( 574360 )
      They can. see my other post in this thread. Mode S transponders are GPS linked and transmit an aircraft's exact location digitally on top of their squawk. Any Mode-S receiver can receive this signal and know the tail number of the plane and its exact location. The thing is that the transponders can only transmit so far, so it helps to have receivers everywhere.

    • Re:WTF? Cell Towers? (Score:5, Informative)

      by Dantoo ( 176555 ) on Thursday November 22, 2007 @07:06PM (#21449813)
      That is precisely what this (ADS-B) does. At the moment, when not in radar coverage, the pilot uses the radio to report his position which he reads from his GPS (or other instruments). ATC copy this down and track his movement from these position updates. Now the problem with this is that by the time he reads out the position and ATC copies it down, the aircraft has actually traveled several miles.

      This is the start of the problem. You don't actually have a pinpoint position to work with. You actually have a circle of probability which is combination of equipment and reporting errors. You could fit a lot of planes on a 100 mile route if you only had to keep them a mile apart and you had constant, pinpoint instant updating position information.

      After getting the position report, ATC now have an expanding bubble of possible positions the aircraft could actually occupy until they get the next voice update which might be 30 minutes hence. This could end up expanding to 30 miles wide and 120 miles long before it is updated again. (Updating resets the probability circle back to just a couple of miles again). To keep aircraft from colliding you have to separate the the great big probability of position areas, not just a couple of points. Two aircraft could occupy 200 miles of airspace and it is now full; room for no more.

      ADS removes the pilot and the ATC from the position reporting chain. The aircraft equipment just codes and sends the position directly to the ATC equipment. The position then automagically just appears on the controller's screen (with a display note saying that it is ADS derived). In busy airspace these reports can be generated only seconds apart pulling that circular error of probability back in to only a couple of miles with each update. You can now fit 50 planes into the airspace where you might have put only a couple before.

      RADAR does exactly the same thing as ADS. The ground equipment asks the plane where it is and it sends back a reflection (primary) or a coded pulse (secondary) which is then displayed on a controllers screen. The difference with ADS is that instead of an enormously expensive piece of ground equipment to decode and receive the signal it can all be done on a regular vhf/uhf radio. If you add another radio antenna to a cell tower nobody cares. You can also utilise the existing ground network to carry the signal back to the ATC centre. You don't have to pay techs to install and maintain your own proprietary equipment.

      Try building a couple of hundred multi-million dollar radar dishes across the landscape and every kook, luny, luddite and portable Faraday cage wearing weirdo will be out to stop you and protect the speckled barn toad as a bonus.

      The huge advantages of ADS are that it is accurate, cheap and has a small ground footprint. It can be adapted for long range (hf) and satellite updating for oceanic sectors. It's all win. If someone asks "what will do when it breaks?" Well look out he window, we're doing it now.
      • Gee, whats it gonna cost...

        gps + linux + multipath transmitter using UHF transponder uplink to satelite or downlink to ground receivers...

        Surely its already been invented/designed/built, just send the plans to china to build 1 million of em and install em in all planes for free.

        Just ask NORAD / NASA to 'clone' their current operations. I thought nasa can track every space junk and rock in orbit, and NSA can track all planes already, just
        upload that data to the airports.

  • Relies on Mode S? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by EmagGeek ( 574360 ) on Thursday November 22, 2007 @02:08PM (#21447799) Journal
    It sounds like this system is just picking up the Mode-S transponders in modern planes, and relaying that information to ATC. Aircraft equipped with modern GPS, even general aviation aircraft, also pick up these Mode-S transmissions and plot other aircraft on the GPS display.

    Right now, only Mode-C is required by law, and even then only within 30 nautical miles of a Class B airport. Mode C just transmits your altitude information and it is up to radar to determine your x-y position. Mode S is much more accurate because GPS is accurate to feet, where radar is only accurate to hundreds (or maybe thousands) of feet in x-y, and not accurate at all for altitude (which is why we have Mode C).

    I can't imagine it'll actually cost 20 Billion to retrofit cell towers with Mode S receivers and internet relays. A land-based Mode S receiver is probably $100, and they can ride the data on AT&T's EDGE or 3G network for next to free. This seems like a cash grab to me.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by rbanffy ( 584143 )
      "A land-based Mode S receiver is probably $100"

      You obviously never saw a government buying stuff ;-)
    • I wish it were based on something a little more robust than Mode-C/Mode-S. There are lots of issues [rfdesign.com] with interoperability between the two modes [airsport-corp.com], as well as neither mode scaling very well.

      Imagine ethernet without a checksum, no CSMA/CD algorithm, and reply frame types that can only be told apart by knowing what the request was!!!

      Truly frightening, IMHO. I wish they could break with backward compatibility and start fresh with a clean, all-digital, robust solution. They could learn a lot from the cell phone

    • I was with you until the last bit. I wouldn't want the device getting "SIM Card error" or getting wiped out because a nearby football stadium was emptying out and everyone was calling home. The celltower will provide less obstruction and piggyback on hardline, microwave link or whatever trunk type the tower is using to route the calls received, plus a QoS agreement so if it's a choice between adding on one more "honey I'm leaving now" or routing the Mode S traffic the cellphone is the one who gets dropped
  • We're going to rely on tech that's been developed by a company that's primary specialty is WASTEWATER?! Oh, sure they have a defense systems department, but their main headline is fluids management.

    Someone get me an aspirin and kick the laugh track on.

  • They won, if you call that winning (Score:5, Interesting)

    by amightywind ( 691887 ) on Thursday November 22, 2007 @02:12PM (#21447827) Journal

    I am glad ITT won. I worked a contract on Lockmart's effort. It was one of the worst large projects I have ever seen. It was a C++/AIX effort and managed by pinheads like something out of the 1950's. For what the software does it was horrendously complex. Because the government is unwilling to retrain the air traffic controllers the system has an bizarre anachronistic GUI. They actually worked hard to reimplement the interface feature for bizarre feature. It is no great comfort that the US depends on systems like this for air safety.

    • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

      by Oswald ( 235719 )
      Which bizarre GUI interface are we talking about here? Center controllers have a sort of GUI overlaid on their radar scopes, but it doesn't do anything more complicated than presenting "buttons" to be clicked. They have a different GUI on their URET, but that's only a few years old, and it's a pretty standard X interface.

      FAA management is fucked up indeed, but I honestly can't think of what legacy GUI they would be working to preserve.

  • Dont see how this will help (Score:3, Insightful)

    by tyler_larson ( 558763 ) on Thursday November 22, 2007 @02:18PM (#21447873) Homepage
    So, it sounds like they're spending $1.8 billion to create an infrastructure to do what our current infrastructure does, except using cell phone towers. How is this better than radar + mode C or mode S?

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by rbanffy ( 584143 )
      GPS is accurate to a few feet, while radar is not.

      IIRC, it's also more automated and allows mostly straight-line flights until you reach the airport, reducing distances traveled and fuel consumption. Even a modest reduction in fuel consumption gets a huge number in the end. This ends up in lower fares and more profit for airlines that, in turn, allows them to invest more in more sophisticated technology.

      The increased accuracy and automation also allow for more density - more planes in the air at the same ti

      • GPS is accurate to a few feet, while radar is not.
        IIRC, it's also more automated and allows mostly straight-line flights until you reach the airport, reducing distances traveled and fuel consumption. Even a modest reduction in fuel consumption gets a huge number in the end. This ends up in lower fares and more profit for airlines that, in turn, allows them to invest more in more sophisticated technology.

        Plains already use GPS. Planes already are allowed to do straight-line flights. This "upgrade" has n

    • I'm guessing it will help poor ailing AT&T with the money they can charge for using their cell towers.
  • The ADS-B system was invented by Håkan Lans [wikipedia.org]. His business home page: GP&C Systems International AB [www.gpc.se].

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by ernstp ( 641161 )
      Nice! Hope he actually gets something from this. There's been some high profile coverage of this (and the color graphics patent) in Swedish media.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by m2943 ( 1140797 )
      You mean the guy who filed a patent on bitmapped color graphics displays a year after the Apple II shipped with the feature? (Not to mention other uses prior to that.)

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by vinsci ( 537958 )
        There is a very, very interesting (and scandalous) background story here. Take your time: http://www.mobergpublications.se/patents/index.html [mobergpublications.se]

        For your information, Apple licensed the Lans color graphics patent as did IBM and others.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by m2943 ( 1140797 )
          For your information, Apple licensed the Lans color graphics patent as did IBM and others.

          Heck, I was using color graphics displays prior to 1979; anybody who filed a patent on this in 1979 was a patent troll. If Apple paid for it, it simply means that he was asking for a small enough sum not to be worth fighting--a typical patent troll strategy.

          There is a very, very interesting (and scandalous) background story here.

          The guy was trying to claim infringement on a patent he knew he didn't own, and judges are

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by vinsci ( 537958 )

            The rest of that "scandalous" story is a conspiracy theory with no proof to back it up.

            On the contrary, there is a lot of facts that backs up the conspiracy against Lans and this story has received a lot of investigation in Sweden from mainstream media. The Swedish government has protested to the US. Even the European Parliament has reacted.

            This conspiracy involves both the color graphics patent as well as the ownership to the navigation systems patent, the Americans tried in fact to take ownership of i

            • Re: (Score:2)

              by m2943 ( 1140797 )
              On the contrary, there is a lot of facts that backs up the conspiracy against Lans and this story has received a lot of investigation in Sweden from mainstream media.

              Lans started the lawsuits and he screwed up. If people take advantage of his mistake to bankrupt him, that's not a "conspiracy". And given that his first lawsuit was a patent troll, why should anybody even give a damn?

              The Swedish government has protested to the US. Even the European Parliament has reacted.

              Well, then the Swedish government can

  • Build More Airports (Score:5, Insightful)

    by p0tat03 ( 985078 ) on Thursday November 22, 2007 @02:52PM (#21448065)

    ... and the public transit systems to tie them into urban centres. There is no reason why airports have to be within a metropolitan area, if there's a fast monorail/train/rapid transit from the city to the outskirts, there is PLENTY of cheap land left to build airports.

    Or better yet, start re-developing our aging and deteriorating rail networks. IMHO there's no good reason much of the east coast is dominated by air travel at all. I'm not sure about Americans, but here in Canada traveling from Toronto to Ottawa (about 450km) takes about the same time by air as by rail (including check-in, security times, etc). Rapid rail transit, IMHO, is THE answer to short and medium range travel. The only time one should have to step on board an aircraft is when flying halfway across the continent. Even going all the way across the state should be well within the means of fast rail travel (not to mention cheaper).

    Hell, on a train I get on-board WiFi, a HUGE amount of legroom, seats that don't try to squeeze me, and non-dry non-stuffy air. Not to mention a soothing, quiet clickety-clack of the rails instead of the roar of jet engines. Oh, and no security, no travel restrictions... It is a superior way to travel in almost every way.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by rbanffy ( 584143 )
      "traveling from Toronto to Ottawa (about 450km) takes about the same time by air as by rail (including check-in, security times, etc)"

      Just wait until people start bombing and de-railing fast trains...

      • Re:Build More Airports (Score:5, Interesting)

        by moosesocks ( 264553 ) on Thursday November 22, 2007 @07:08PM (#21449823) Homepage
        The difference is that high-speed trainset will tend to stay upright when derailed, and slowly grind to a stop due to its articulated design. Although the train will "derail" in the sense that the wheels will be touching the ground instead of the track, in order for one car to topple, either an extraordinary amount of force must be applied to that one car, as to cause it to shear away from the rest of the trainset (at both ends!), or the entire trainset would have to topple simultaneously. The amount of energy that would be required for either of those things to happen is considerably more than what you'd get from some nutjob carrying a backpack full of explosives.

        The French TGV has had a number of high-speed derailments, and out of the 1.2 billion people that have used the service, there hasn't been a single fatality while the train was running over 100mph (160km/h), with an exceptional low-speed safety record as well. This includes a number of rather severe incidents [wikipedia.org], including a terrorist bombing, level crossing accidents, and at least two incidents in which the ground beneath the track dropped into a sinkhole.

        Compared to virtually any other form of transport on the planet, the TGV's safety record is probably as close to perfect as you're ever going to get.

        Unlike a plane, in which a bomb would likely down the craft, killing all on board, an attack upon a train a highs-speed train wouldn't be all that deadly, given that there would hardly be any casualties outside of the blast radius. The train station would be a far greater point of vulnerability than the train itself.

        So, no. I don't think we have anything to worry about. If you're concerned about safety and security, articulated high-speed rail is hands-down the safest form of transport known to man.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by rbanffy ( 584143 )
          While I can't disagree with the TGV numbers, it's not every train accident that has a happy ending. This one http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eschede_train_disaster [wikipedia.org] comes to mind.

          Even the lightest of trains going at 200+ km/h is not something to be taken (pun intended) lightly and I bet a creative terrorist would not find it to be very challenging to plant a bomb in such a way to cause a really big mess.
          • Oh, sure.... but my point was that it's MUCH more difficult to cause a catastrophic derailment of an articulated trainset than it is to derail a conventional train or crash a plane. Safety is emphasized so heavily on high-speed rail that the trains often end up being safer than their slower counterparts.

            You'd also actually want the train to be as HEAVY as possible if you're inside. If the train derails, you'd want linear momentum to be on your side so that you plow through anything in your way. A lighter

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Nkwe ( 604125 )
      Would you be happy to have that new airport (or its supporting systems) in your back yard? Do you want the the end of the runway, the flight path, the road system, or the rail line feeding the airport to go right by your house? I would like more airports as well but I don't want it in my back yard. You don't want it in your back yard, and pretty much all locations that could benefit by more airports are going to be in someone's back yard. While building a new airport is not impossible, it is very difficult

    • I agree... (Score:3, Informative)

      by Goonie ( 8651 )
      I cannot for the life of me understand why there isn't a TGV-style fast train between Boston, New York, Philadelphia and Washington DC. Next step would probably be a line from New York or Philadelphia to Pittsburgh and Cleveland, and from there on to Detroit.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by afidel ( 530433 )
        Uh, they DO have just such a service, it's called Acela Express and it links Boston - New York - Philadelphia - Washington, DC at speeds up to 150MPH. You can go from Penn to Union in as little as 2:45. The next step should be to upgrade the lines along the Capitol Limited line which links Washington DC to Pittsburgh, Cleveland, Chicago. See this link [amtrak.com] for the Accela route and this link [amtrak.com] for all of Amtrack's NE/midwest routes.
        • 2:45 for a 230-mile journey? That's barely 83 MPH average speed. It's barely faster than the British rail system. The TGV does Paris-Lyon - a 291-mile journey - in 1 hour and 51 minutes. That's a 157 MPH average speed.

          When Acela is doing New York-Washington in under two hours, then talk to me about having "high speed rail".

  • Pros and Cons (Score:4, Funny)

    by vmxeo ( 173325 ) on Thursday November 22, 2007 @03:06PM (#21448145) Homepage Journal
    To me, piggy-backing the ATC on AT&T's equipment would have some immediately obvious advantages and disadvantages. On the downside, air traffic controllers might start noticing flights getting 'dropped' from their radar screens, especially during peak call times. On the other hand, if they get too busy, the NSA could totally jump in and help them out.
    • it has nothing to do with the cell phone systems. they're just sticking the equipment for this system on the same tower. why build new towers if you can just toss it on existing ones?
    • "beep boop, the aircraft you are tracking has crashed or is outside of the coverage area, please try again later"

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by afidel ( 530433 )
      Actually I imagine it has to do with the cell tower locations not the cell network. They want to use the emergency generators and landline facilities as well as the towers themselves.
  • After literally years telling us we can't use cellphones on airplanes because:
    • rf interferes with the avionics
    • the cellphone basically spams all cell-towers

    They're now going to implement a system which enables every airplaine over the continental US of A to use rf to cell-towers for the sake of better tracking.

    Someone please clearly explain how they've not just flat out admitted lying to everyone since the dawn of time.

  • U.S. Government: Can we listen to all Internet traffic? We'll give you the fat FCC contract.

    AT&T: Um...OK!
    • http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ITT_Corporation [wikipedia.org]

      I find it even more intriguing that ITT is a previous Republican Party ally (at least back to the 70s), supported Hitler, and assisted the overthrow of Allende in Chile. A company with a history of right-wing intrigue, allying with a proponent of national spying (AT&T), points markedly to a "smokey room." This doesn't have to be a grand conspiracy either: friends scratching friends backs.
  • Looks like spying for the NSA paid off. When does the revolution start?
  • If anyone needs to hide a plane, you can park it in my driveway if you'd like.
  • So this system (ADS-B) is based around the concept of planes broadcasting ~1/sec their ID/location/3d-velocity.

    You'd want to have amazingly fabulous encryption on that or you've just created the terrorists vision of heaven.

    I trolled Wikipedia [wikipedia.org]:

    ADS-B messages can be used to know the location of an aircraft, and there is no means to guarantee that this information is not used inappropriately. Additionally, there are some concerns about the integrity of ADS-B transmissions. ADS-B messages can be produced, with simple low cost measures, which spoof the locations of multiple phantom aircraft to disrupt safe air travel. There is no foolproof means to guarantee integrity

    and it referred me to this page about security concerns for ads-b [airsport-corp.com]

    Sounds like it's a great concept, but may have some major holes which are yet to be addressed.

  • "...specially modified AT&T cellular phone towers which, in addition to their normal communications duties, will relay an aircraft's position to air traffic controllers and other aircraft in real time."

    Am I the only one this rings a big alarm bell with? Anyone who's been in an earthquake or similar disaster knows how quickly the cellular network becomes utterly useless, either due to being overloaded with "We just had a quake!" traffic or equipment failure. Witness the Nisqually quake [washington.edu] of 2001, or the Lo [berkeley.edu]

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