McGarvey's Words: Journalist…Podcaster..Speaker

By Robert McGarvey

A huge slice of any air travel day is the time it takes to get to and from the airport and yet we don’t talk about that. We do talk about flight times, also about security line times.  Valid topics both. But not so much transit times to/from the airport.

That topic is presently on my mind because Phoenix voters recently voted down – by a two to one margin – an underhanded proposition aimed at destroying the area’s light rail system.  Partly bankrolled by Koch Bothers funds, Proposition 105 aimed to withdraw funding for the light rail.

I applaud that and in fact also voted against it.  Here’s the deal: I cannot imagine why anybody who uses the airport would have voted otherwise. The light rail has significantly reduced automotive congestion at the airport and, a local’s tip, if you are heading from the airport to a downtown Phoenix hotel, take the light rail.  It’s as fast as a car – it won’t take more than 30 minutes – and it costs $2. ($1 if you are 65 and older.)  

And your contribution to global warming is near zip.

The other reality: airports around the country are faced with crumbling road access to airports. Drive times are becoming overwhelming. From Laguardia to Logan to Sea-Tac, airport road access is a descent into circles of Dante’s hell.

Mass transit is the way to go.  

Especially because if you think airport traffic access is worse now you very probably are right.  The New York Times headline tells why:  Ride Sharing Adds to the Crush of Traffic at Airports.

Wrote Julie Weed, “Traffic at the airports — even before you get inside — has gotten worse. The cause is not just the record number of travelers. It’s also the shift to ride sharing.”

Weed continued: “The explosion in ride-share demand has caught airports off-guard, ‘and operations staff are scrambling to address it,’ said Kama Simonds, spokeswoman for the Portland International Airport in Oregon. Ride-share pickups there, she said, have climbed to 106,000 from 48,000 in the last two years.”

Weed also notes that airports, along with ride sharing companies themselves, are seeking ways to address a problem that frankly irritates increasing numbers of travelers.

But a reality is that many airports have limited choices.  They just don’t have space to build new roads.

Meantime, many ride-share drivers behave differently than traditional taxi drivers did.  The latter, historically, have had to wait in a holding lot until dispatched and told to drive to a specific terminal because passengers are waiting.  Years ago, when I drove a cab in Boston, I remember waiting in the holding lot as long as an hour – but the good news is that I did not drive around Logan Airport in never ending circles on a hunt for a fare. My contribution to airport traffic congestion was close to nil.

At many airports, rideshare drivers too have holding lots for their use – but some are fidgety and circle the airport.  That adds to congestion.

Sure, the rideshare companies say they are trying to change driver behavior and maybe they will, maybe they won’t.

And the access roads around airports are more clogged than a foie gras eater’s arteries.

That won’t change soon. Not for those who insist on driving in and out of airports.

Enter mass transit. The silver bullet for many passengers, at many airports, is mass transit. The light rail definitely is in Phoenix. But the same is true of other cities.

I am a big fan of BART from SFO to downtown San Francisco. It’s as fast as a cab and costs about $9.60 compared to maybe $45 in a cab.

LAX now has its Flyaway – another good mass transit option,

Even EWR has a PATH station on the drawing board.

In much of the country similar is true.  That’s why I usually check my mass transit options wherever I fly. It’s increasingly the smart transit play – environmentally best but also often as fast as a car.

But then there are the exceptions. You are flying into PHX but are heading to Scottsdale? For you there’s Lyft. Sorry, no lightrail.  Scottsdale has sat out the lightrail and, looking at a longterm expansion map, it is still a holdout. Why? Ask them, not me. Here’s what the AZ Republic reported the last time Scottsdale knifed light rail.

Fortunately, light rail can thrive without Scottsdale and in fact it presently serves Phoenix, Tempe, and Mesa. There are plans to extend it to Paradise Valley, Glendale and Avondale.

And now the voters have once again spoken up and once again defeated the anti mass transit lobby. So if you are heading to PHX always check the lightrail options. For me, it’s the only prelude to flying.

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by Robert McGarvey

Co-op housing: a better way for seniors?

 Where to house the ever expanding numbers of American seniors? Ask Dennis Johnson, president of the Senior Cooperative Foundation in Minnesota, where seniors control their housing destiny.

There are many such co-ops in Minnesota and Iowa and a handful more states, typically in the upper midwest. Why isn’t this housing popular elsewhere? Johnson tells why in this podcast.

The guiding principles behind senior co-ops spell out what make them different, special.  Such as: these co-ops “put the well-being of the members above other considerations.”

As you listen to this podcast, dream about how your community would if it had senior housing co-ops. Then take it to the next step, action.

Listen here

Part 1 of our housing co-op series is here, student housing.

by Robert McGarvey

When are you too old to fly?

The question is getting asked. We are living longer, many of us still want to see the world around us, many companies – and definitely universities – are keeping older employees on staff and active, and the upshot is that seniors are still on the road, both in pursuit of personal bucket list destinations and also as traditional business travelers.

At the other end of the age spectrum, just about all carriers have restrictions on kids flying solo. Delta, for instance, won’t allow children younger than five to fly alone and it won’t allow unaccompanied minors on redeye flights (except for those originating in Alaska or Hawaii or connecting with international flights). At least some airlines require children to be declared as unaccompanied minors – who receive special supervision, for a fee.

Now the question is beginning to pop up: what about seniors? Should there be limitations on their travels? Possibly including special fees?

Understand, this is a Pogo moment where they are me. I am not pointing fingers at others.

A trigger for this inquiry is that lately I have heard more stories from friends – also leading edge Baby Boomers – about how hard travel has gotten for them, how jet lag lasts longer, how more medical issues seem to crop up when far from home. Are these anomalies? Or part of a broader trend?

Let’s start by removing the elephant from this cabin and that’s cognitive impairment (Alzheimer’s etc). I know a 60 year-old with tragically profound cognitive impairment. I know many people in their 80s who are as clever as they were at half the age. Those with cognitive impairment bring significant challenges to the travel experience. There also are no blanket prescriptions. The best advice is such issues have to be decided individually. No more will be said on that topic.

Ditto for severe physical impairments. Delta offers sound advice on this, other airlines do similarly.

What about the rest of us, on the kinds of flights we usually take?

Short flights honestly do not seem to pose a significant issue to the 65+ who are otherwise in good health. Scan the literature and there is not much written about geriatric travel and the one and two hour flights that make up the bulk of my business travel. And using myself as a case study of one I can say no health issues arise on those flights.

It’s the long-haul flights where the literature grows dense. For instance, a St. Louis geriatrician flatly says, “jet lag worsens as you get older.” Definitely my experience, also what I hear from others. Recovery from a hop to Paris 20 years ago that took a day or two now may take a week. “As you get older you feel more tired for longer. It takes about five days for me to recover from jet lag now,” traveler Tim Huxley, 58, told the South China Morning Post.

A key issue is that older travelers have less ability to make the physical compensations often made necessary by long-haul travel, Dr. Winston Goh told the South China Morning Post. Our aged bodies are less resilient and we don’t generate new cells as swiftly.

Alcohol also hits senior harder and that applies all the more to booze at 30,000 feet or in an airport club. It’s why I rarely drinking booze on the road.

The SCMP adds that deep vein thrombosis (DVT) is more of an issue for seniors on long haul flights. That’s a potentially deadly blood clot. The usual precaution is to get up and walk every hour or so. I know I’ve done that since I first wrote about DVT going on 20 years ago.

And then there is a grim finding that longterm, chronic jet lag and related sleep deprivation are associated with cognitive impairment.

At least some physicians also insist that a heavy travel schedule may be associated with more pronounced aging – very probably because our sleep habits are disrupted and so is our diet (who eats as healthy on the road as at home? I know I do not). We simply live unhealthier lives traveling and that may be associated with more signs of visible aging (say hello dry skin and wrinkles).

Business travel indeed may be killing us.

Bottomline: travel definitely is harder past a certain age. What age? For some it’s 60. Others, 80. Still others haven’t hit that age for themselves yet and that’s key: this is a personal matter.

Here’s the other reality however: most of us know when it’s time to put the rollaboard in storage. I have personal friends who have done exactly that in the last year, a decision triggered – in every case I know – by a medical issue that made it prudent to dramatically cut back on travel.

Makes sense to me. My plan is to travel until I no longer can depend upon myself, physically and/or mentally, to navigate through airports and in unknown cities (where the usual chore is no more complicated than getting from the airport to the hotel). I commend that philosophy to you.

Do we need airlines to get involved, to force seniors to fly with designated supervision? Absolutely not. Most seniors – especially most who are still actively on the road – are fit, healthy, perfectly capable of making their own travel plans and decisions.

Let’s leave it that way.

Listening to “CU 2.0 Podcast Episode 49 Alain Glanzman WalletFi” at https://www.buzzsprout.com/268738/1593688-cu-2-0-podcast-episode-49-alain-glanzman-walletfi

by Robert McGarvey

SFO fired the first shot – on 8-19 it forbade airport shops, restaurants, vending machines, et. al. from selling plastic water bottles. We are instructed to bring our own refillable bottles and to grab our water at some 100 hydration stations.

Watch for this to spread to airports across the country and globally. Single-use plastics are cluttering our planet. Can we recycle our way out of this? Hah. “As investor Rob Kaplan of Circulate Capital recently told National Geographic, ‘There’s no silver bullet to stop plastic pollution. We’re not going to be able to recycle our way out of the problem, and we’re not going to be able to reduce our way out of the problem.’”

Much recycling is ineffective. Maybe even a scam. Just don’t use single-use plastics. That’s the exit and water bottles are a good place to start.

There’s a loophole in the SFO bans, by the way. Water can be sold in plastic bottles bigger than one liter, reports SFGate. My reaction to that is big deal. (1) What traveler buys a half gallon water jug? Not me. (2) It’s as easy to ban big bottles as it was smaller ones so if there’s a flagrant parade of giant jugs watch for a broader ban.

The bigger loophole is that the ban does not apply to juices, sodas, etc. It should.

Globally we use more than one million plastic bottles a minute. No one wants that much trash. Recycling efforts are noble but Sisyphean. Mountains of trash accumulate daily.

Repeat: no one wants this much garbage.

We can do our part. Personally as I walk around Phoenix where I live, I usually have a metal water bottle, stamped with the name of one resort or another, I couldn’t tell you which, or maybe it was a handout at a business meeting where, in recent years, there are ever more giveaways of logo metal water bottles. Point is: they are free.

It’s no big deal to carry a small metal water bottle in a carryon bag. For years I’ve carried a small travel umbrella (go to New York or Belfast enough and you’ll never fly without an umbrella). A water bottle is a little smaller and lighter.

Some pundits report that business travelers are grumbling about the SFO ban. Reported WAPO: “Although public reaction has mostly been positive, the news has resulted in some disgruntled business travelers who bristle at the inconvenience of having one more item to pack.”

I don’t get. What’s the inconvenience of toting a lightweight refillable bottle when measured against a planet that is choking with waste plastics?

Water bottles are just the first shot.

Color me also opposed to plastic straws which I never use. If you like straws buy a metal straw. They are cheap and small. California has a plastic straw ban (customers have to ask for a straw to get one); more states will follow. Plastic straws simply are bad. Something like 7.5% of the waste plastic in the environment is from straws and stirrers. Stop it.

I’m on record in my attempt to support the flygskam movement – but I am equally on record noting that it just isn’t easy to cut back on flying because our transportation alternatives suck.

It is easy to cut back – eliminate – a lot of plastic. I remember as a kid liking the feel of glass Coke bottles. Paper straws were fine too in that era (although I think reusable metal straws are a much smarter solution in 2019).

While we’re at this, ban single-use plastic bags too – as many nations already do. So does California. It’s easy enough to carry a small string sack, or cloth bag.

We can make a difference when it comes to plastics. I hear the pain when the talk is about flygskam. Single use plastics are different. They are easy to eliminate – we won’t miss them – and the planet will thank us.

You want some plastic in your life? Have at this.

Circle the date, October 26. Las Vegas. That’s when Susan Mitchell, a longtime credit union consultant, is convening another meeting of the Credit Union Underground, this time in parallel with Money 20/20, probably the meeting of the best and brightest in the disruptive quadrant of financial services.  

The point of each Underground is collision with disruptors. A lot – maybe most – credit union executives cling to their individual comfort zones. But get with reality. Maybe half of today’s 5500 credit unions will go poof in the next decade.

Bye bye.

At the Undergrounds, attendees get exposed to disruptive thought – abut they also see they aren’t required to face the challenges alone, a lot of credit union people are in the same boat.

A Mitchell belief is that widespread cooperation helped build the credit union industry. And a renewed commitment to cooperation just may be its salvation.

Ask yourself this: what’s your institution’s purpose? Who did you help today? Whose life did you change?

Credit unions were created to help community members, to change lives. Are they still doing that?

And know that that is a path to survival. Purpose fuels existence.

This is a wide ranging podcast. Listen and you just may find your path to survival.

For Ramones, go here. 

Listen to the Mitchell podcast here:

Like what you are hearing? Find out how you can help sponsor this podcast here. Very affordable sponsorship packages are available.

Find out more about CU2.0 and the digital transformation of credit unions here. It’s a journey every credit union needs to take. Pronto

By Robert McGarvey

On a May 5th United flight from San Diego to Houston, an unnamed female passenger in first class entered the bathroom where she noticed a blinking blue light. She did not know what it was but she took the device to the flight crew. United Corporate Security subsequently determined it was a video recording device.

Then, per a document compiled by the FBI, “After viewing the information on the device, a male was caught on video installing the device in the first class lavatory of this particular flight.”  Apparently the man’s face wasn’t visible but – using his clothing and also jewelry – an ID was made. The arrest of Choon Ping Lee, who works for Halliburton, an oil field service company, followed.  

Creeped out? Justifiably. But here’s the grim reality: throughout your travels, very probably you are being spied on.  In some cases it’s by state sponsored security forces. In other cases it’s by miscellaneous creeps, perverts, and miscreants.

Does it really matter who?  Is it more comforting to know the Chinese government has eavesdropping devices in your Beijing hotel room – which it probably does and it also probably has your cellphone tapped – than it is to know that your Airbnb host is a perv who has cameras in rooms?

Guess what, it’s nothing new. In 1983 I co-wrote a book called The Complete Spy, which detailed the hundreds of legally available devices that let ordinary citizens spy on their spouses, children, neighbors, co-workers, bosses, you name it.  A theme of the book was that our privacy was evaporating and we seemed uninterested in fighting back.  

It is much, much worse today.

You don’t have to be Erin Andrews to have your privacy robbed. But a take away from the Andrews caper is that a determined eavesdropper can – with few roadblocks – easily spy on us in hotels.  And spying in hotels is surprisingly common

There’s even a claim that a hidden camera was found in a cruise ship cabin.

Why would anyone want to spy on me or you? Who the hell knows.  

Some nation states spy compulsively.  The Soviet Union and East Germany did it routinely (and if you visited either, you were eavesdropped upon. This is beyond question).  Today, Russia ranks high among nations that eavesdrop on foreign visitors. But China does likewise (maybe even more so).  The Saudis do too. Ditto the Israelis.  But you also hear about the French, Singapore, and many, many more nations. It’s not just nation states however.

As for who else eavesdrops in hotels, it can be anything from a business competitor to a jealous spouse or a just plain weirdo.  Remember Gay Talese’s The Voyeur’s Motel, where he documents a motel owner who systematically spied on guests.

Don’t say it can’t happen where you are staying.  Especially not because spying has gotten easier.

What’s new today is that eavesdropping has become very cheap and very low skill.

Around $40 will buy you a perfectly good spy camera.

For a few extra bucks, you can get a camera disguised as a clock or a bluetooth speaker.

Such cameras are usually wireless and battery powered. It takes essentially no skill to set up a camera.  

That’s a scary difference. A generation ago, cameras were expensive but also high maintenance.  Now cameras are installed by dropping them in place and, very probably, forgetting about them. Who needs to retrieve something so cheap?

How can you fight back?  The good news is that self-defense detection weaponry too is proliferating.

Now for Spy vs. Spy. There is plenty of technology that says it can find hidden eavesdropping technology and that has a prima facie credibility in that these devices typically connect via wiFi and/or Bluetooth. A device, or app, that hunts for Bluetooth and WiFi in the immediate vicinity may well pinpoint a nearby camera.

Some also hunt for a glint from the lens of a hidden camera and they just may find them.

But they may not, too. The better, pricier eavesdropping tools are built to foil the cheap detectors.

Dial up the price of the detector to north of $50, or even better, north of $100 and your odds of finding spy gear escalate.

Experts also recommend an oldfashioned physical inspection. Look for what’s out of place – a blinking blue light in a United lavatory – and you’ll hit the bullseye without any tech.

But even with preventative steps, don’t count on having privacy wherever your travels take you.  For 40 years people have asked me what I do to avoid being spied upon. My answer has always been the same: nothing.  I assume I may be spied upon, I act accordingly, and if I am spied upon, so be it.

I really cannot think of any surer strategy. Especially not today.  

Listening to “CU 2.0 Podcast Episode 47 Randy Karnes CU*Answers for Small Credit Unions” at https://www.buzzsprout.com/268738/1513849-cu-2-0-podcast-episode-47-randy-karnes-cu-answers-for-small-credit-unions

Know your competitors: They shape your future – CUInsight http://bit.ly/2N1FAHf #creditunion

by Robert McGarvey

I am looking at my travel schedule and in September up pop a couple trips to Las Vegas. A trip to Santa Fe is also a definite maybe. Is it time for me to put up or shut up, to practice flygskam abstinence or just stay home?

In June I wrote – somewhat favorably – about flygskam aka flight shame, the Sweden born movement to scorn air travel that is fast trending across Europe. The core idea is that air travel is hideously polluting – and global warming is no joke. The ice is melting in the North Pole, South Pole, Greenland, you name it. And summer temps in Phoenix where I live crest ever higher (especially the daily lows which are higher and higher. It’s not unusual to walk out into 90+ weather at 6 a.m.) so for me global warming isn’t an academic issue. It’s in my face daily.

What can I do about it?

I can pollute less. Understand, I rarely drive and when I do it’s a 2017 BMW which runs very clean. Mainly I walk or take the light rail around town. Now I see a Washington Post piece headlined, “Europe’s flight-shame movement has travelers taking trains to save the planet.” I have to ask myself: what about me?

The Wapo story’s lead focused on one Johan Hilm, a Swede traveling from his home country to Austria. That’s a flight of about two hours. Mr. Hilm chose to take a combination of train, bus, and ferry in a journey that took more than 30 hours.

Explained the Wapo reporter, “one passenger’s share of the exhaust from a single flight can cancel out a year’s worth of Earth-friendly efforts.” He added: “so they are digging out their parents’ yellowing Europe-by-rail guidebooks and trading tips on the most convenient night train to Vienna. “

What about me?

A flight from Phoenix to Las Vegas is about 70 minutes, costs around $150, and, for me, the airport is maybe a 20 minute light rail ride from my door step which happens to be where the light rail stops. Talk about convenience. In a lifetime of flying I have never had it so good in terms of ease of airport access (and inside Sky Harbor is a well run place). That makes flying a slam dunk – except for the pollution and the global warming.

So I hunt online for a train and indeed there is one, also for around $150. There also are nine departures daily. Of course there are many more flights but with nine, a train departure will suit me.

But then there is the duration. The distance between Phoenix and Las Vegas is around 250 miles – the drive time is about four and one half hours. How long is a train ride? The quickest train is about 10 hours. The typical duration is 20 hours.

Read that again: 10 to 20 hours. For a trip you can make in a little over an hour by plane and under five hours in a car.

Is walking the only way left? That would take about 80 hours (plus sleeping and rest time).

But there is a flygskam style option: a bus. Trips take about five hours, there are nine departures daily, and price is around $25.

What about Santa Fe? Trains there take around 10 hours and cost about $135. A flight on American takes an hour and a half and a round trip costs under $200. A bus costs around $50 one way and the trip takes from 12 to 18 hours.

There indeed is the problem. Going full in with flygskam flight abstinence necessitates suffering. Standing up for the environment necessitates long flight alternatives that, at least with trains, often cost around the same.

The US is not alone in this. A UK Guardian writer recently noted, “Taking a flight from London to Edinburgh results in 193kg of CO2 emissions; opting for the train means you produce 24kg – that’s 87% less. But as I compared both prices and travel times for my journey, opting for air travel was not only quicker, it also cost much less. Later in the year I’d like to visit a friend in Barcelona: I can fly in November for £37; train travel is more than £250.”

Plainly we need more and better alternatives to planes if we in fact are going to use them. It is well and good to talk flygskam purity but until viable alternatives are on the table, only zealots will ditch air travel and cheers to them – sincerely – but I just am not sure I am ready for long, long train rides. I haven’t been on a long distance bus ride in maybe 45 years and can’t say I much liked it when I took them so I am not keen on that option.

Will I take the train to Las Vegas? Ask me later, I haven’t decided. And, frankly, I’m not quite sure how to explain to the client that the trip took many multiples longer and also cost the same as a flight. Maybe more. That just isn’t easy to justify.

But neither is contributing unnecessarily to global warming. There’s our dilemma. How do we get where we’re going while doing the least damage? How indeed.