Tag: transportation

  • Data Displays

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    Brendan Barry
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    This past weekend I saw the film Darkest Hour with one of my mates. The film focuses on Winston Churchill at the very beginning of his term as prime minister. Coincidentally I was walking through some of the very rooms and corridors depicted in the film—and rather accurately I should say—just one week prior. One…

  • Airport Codes

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    Brendan Barry
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    I managed to find myself in a handful of airports over the last few weeks. Consequently I brushed up on my airport codes, the three-letter abbreviations you often find on boarding passes and data displays. Well, if only I had seen this particular reference from xkcd. Credit for the piece goes to Randall Munroe.

  • The Sinking of the Vasa

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    Brendan Barry
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    In 1628, Sweden launched one of its largest and most powerful warships not just in Sweden, but in all of Europe. She was to participate in the wars with Poland and Lithuania as Sweden sought to expand her growing empire. After two years of construction in Stockholm’s naval yard she set sail into a calm…

  • Building New Railways in America

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    Brendan Barry
    in

    I wasn’t expecting this piece to fall into the queue for today, but you all know me as a sucker for trains. So today we have this nice set of small multiples from the Guardian. It looks at…I guess we could call it train deserts. They’re like food deserts, except we’re talking about trains. What…

  • Septa’s Train and Trolley Service

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    Brendan Barry
    in

    Well, everyone, today you get two posts. The first and earlier (and planned) post is about polling in Pennsylvania. Relevant to those of you following the US election. But today’s post is about what trains are running in the city of Philadelphia. If you haven’t heard, the city’s mass transit agency, SEPTA, and its primary…

  • China’s Straddling Bus

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    Brendan Barry
    in

    Apologies for the lack of posts the last two days. I visited Wisconsin to trace some of the courthouse records of the Spellacys. And while I will try to return to them later next week, today we go to China. During my recent holidays, the media made much ado about a new straddling bus in China.…

  • Long-distance Amtrak

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    Brendan Barry
    in

    Today’s post is not super complex, but we all know I am a sucker for transit. Especially Amtrak. Back home on the East Coast, it runs both quickly and reliably along the Northeast Corridor and the Keystone Corridor. But as this graphic from the Wall Street Journal shows, that does not quite hold up for…

  • Striking the Balance Between Airline Prices and Service

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    Brendan Barry
    in

    Yesterday I took a look at the Alaskan Airlines and Virgin America merger. Part of the disappointment on the internets centres around the service and experience delivered by Virgin. I mean who doesn’t like mood lighting, right? Well the Economist took a look at international airlines by both price and service. And if we use…

  • Merging Alaska Airlines and Virgin America

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    Brendan Barry
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    Alaska Airlines and Virgin America made some news the past few days when they announced Alaska would purchase Virgin America for $2.6 billion. I mapped out the flight routes of the two carriers to see where they overlapped. You can see the results in my piece for the blog today below. Credit for the work…

  • Fighting Off My Jet Lag

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    Brendan Barry
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    As I mentioned earlier this week, I visited London for work for a week and then took some rollover holiday time to stay around London and then visit Dublin. But now I am back. And this week that has meant all the jet lag. And while everybody experiences jet lag and recovers from it differently,…