Basement Office

Senator wants accounting from US Airways on Philly fares

The Post-Gazette reported Tuesday that when Southwest Airlines drops its flights between the two cities [Pittsburgh and Philadelphia] next month, the price for a US Airways round-trip ticket will increase from $118 plus taxes to $698 plus taxes. US Airways would be the only airline operating direct flights between the cities.

In the letter dated today, Mr. Casey said an increase of about 500 percent would be “detrimental to intrastate travel.”

You know what’s detrimental to intrastate travel? A passenger rail system that lags behind that of even third-world countries. Even at a modest 90 MPH, the trip could be taken in about three hours. Which is less than what I suspect it would take by air when you take into account the security theater and tarmac delays that are endemic to air travel.

But as it is, unless you’re game for the 8 hour trips, courtesy of Amtrak, that may or may not be on time, and don’t mind arriving in the middle of the afternoon after getting on at 7 a.m. or rolling in after midnight, you’re out of luck.

Let’s work on fixing a system that has proven itself to work in the past, and stop wasting time trying to prop up an industry that was never designed to work in anything but an era of cheap energy.