[IP] Letter to America
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Subject: Letter to America
Author: EEkid@xxxxxxx
Date: 13th December 2004 10:59:18 am
Jurek Martin: Letter to America
Published: December 10 2004 19:48
Airports are gateways to countries, especially those serving capital cities.
They can, do or should reflect at least some of the values and standards that a
country likes to think is its public face to the rest of the world.
London's Heathrow, for example, is messy but it works, a reflection of the
great British virtue of muddling through against all odds. Charles de Gaulle in
Paris is quintessentially French: lots of style but infuriatingly difficult to
negotiate. Moscow's Sheremetyevo had all the charms of Soviet bureaucracy,
offset by vodka and Cuban cigars.
Which brings us to the strange and disturbing case of Dulles Airport outside
Washington, DC. I think there is a conspiracy of silence in the American media
not to report about Dulles and it is time it was broken.
On the plus side, Eero Saarinen's elegant design, even if now extended, still
soars over the flat Virginia countryside, sometimes seeming all the more
beautiful because for years it has been an oasis in a desert of construction.
But that is the sum of the plus side, period. Whether leaving or arriving,
Dulles is without other redeeming virtues.
Two recent personal trips, and anecdotal evidence beyond number, show an
airport in chaos - think Calcutta, Nairobi or any other erstwhile Third World
hell hole, where to get on or off a flight was often an achievement in itself,
and you have Dulles. This is not exactly appropriate for the world's only
superpower.
The slowly shuffling lines to pass through security snake endlessly inside and
sometimes outside the airport itself (I calculated upwards of half a mile on
one recent non-holiday midweek afternoon). Every other person seems to be on a
cell phone to airlines saying they were going to miss flights in spite of
arriving two hours early, to friends and relatives advising of cataclysmic
delays.
Women and children can be seen weeping while businessmen gnash their teeth. A
Scandinavian ambassador of distinctly democratic persuasion says that for the
first time in his long career he has started using diplomatic privileges to
evade the chaos. Meanwhile the airport's public address system is either silent
or incomprehensible, unless warning that smoking is prohibited.
I used my time in line to call The Washington Post to say I thought there was a
story here that a reporter might investigate, but I don't think one ever
appeared. What did make page one, though, was a photo of a just opened high
tech walkway, thus fostering the illusion that everything is up to date in
Dulles, as well as Kansas City. Give me a break.
The collective agony is compounded because to complain publicly is not allowed
any more when the issue is national security, even if its implementation is far
from perfect. It is, for example, patently obvious that Dulles does not have
enough security gates, but to point this out could mean a one way ticket to
Guantánamo.
It would also be unwise to ask if it is always entirely necessary to half
undress before passing through screening, frozen-footed, clutching belt-less
trousers, boarding passes and government-issued identification clenched between
teeth.
Last month I witnessed a security agent ordering a mother to pass a
three-month-old separately through screening (by rolling the child through,
perhaps).
Arriving is no breeze either, especially on flights from overseas. Passengers
are funnelled through a series of narrow, windowless corridors, often moving no
faster than they were on the way out before passing through security, only to
be subject to the not always tender mercies of customs and immigration, which
is another story entirely.
Another Dulles indignity has just been added. Those waiting in the
international arrival hall used to be able to get a glimpse of the huddled
masses inside whenever the swing doors opened to let passengers out. Large ugly
black screens now prevent even this minor facility, installed presumably to
stop terrorists inside passing hand signals to their accomplices outside (as if
they would not be using cell phones anyway).
Finally, there is the question of how to get the 25 miles from Dulles into the
capital of the land of the free. Just about every other country regardless of
the state of development has managed to provide a variety of transport options
at a reasonable cost.
But at Dulles there is no economical downtown bus any longer, unless you count
the under-advertised one connecting to an underground stop some miles away,
practical only if travelling fairly light.
There is no light rail or underground service, though the airport access
highway has plenty of space for one in its central reservation.
This is because not-in-my-backyard suburban communities in Virginia keep
objecting to the cost and because federal and state governments, caring little
about public transportation in any case, will not independently step into the
breach.
Even the taxi service, which costs 50 bucks and up, is a monopoly (and this in
the bastion of capitalism) while the ubiquitous blue van facility, at about
half the cost, can take its time depositing you at your destination. And,
naturally, car parking rates seem to rise every quarter.
Finally it is impossible to say if Dulles is a nice place to eat and shop. You
can do neither while shuffling in line. You are just relieved to get out of the
place on the same day.
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