No, which is why she doesn't get a whole caravan accompanying her. However, it doesn't appear like she even gets a police escort; it's just her and her driver. I'm not surprised that the driver is a trained officer and not a regular chauffeur, as he may also double as protection.

Eh, is the president's chauffeur secret service? I'd be surprised if they didn't have training, same with a police commissioner or higher up like a mayor. If it goes down, going to want all the personnel there able to defend the VIP.

Looks like it was an awesome time!

Dropped some visitors (one was from Gabon, another had an accent I couldn't place) at rave that was held in a part of the Budd plant last night. Always wanted to go to a rave...

Was it replaced? Read in another article same design used by French National Railways.

Apparently this design of gate is being used by SNCF (National Rail Network of France). If it's good enough for the TGV...🤷🏾‍♂️

Still need something to help keep lines safe and clean.

"The gates, from Conduent Transport Solutions, include a 3D imaging system that can sound an alarm if someone tries to piggyback their way past the gate without paying. The sensors can also recognize wheelchairs, strollers and luggage."

Although the article cites fare recovery, this may be more about doing a better job keeping problem users from accessing the system. That could boost safety and cleanliness, and get more people to use the line.

On both subway lines (BSL as well as MFL)

🤦🏾‍♂️

Maybe this can keep them off the train, or at least help.

I think they are charged a small processing fee for card transactions.

Many if not most don't carry cash, that's why car readers are installed. I don't want to go to an ATM for you, take the payment you are required to take and let's go.

Something I've wanted to try: apparently it's illegal in Philly for a cab to drive with a broken credit card machine, or it was. It wasn't illegal not to have one I don't think, but if a car was equipped it had to work. If a driver made a pickup with a broken card machine, a rider had the right to leave the car without paying. What many people who did this found was the machine wasn't actually broke, the driver just didn't want to take credit card payments, as they got less from the fare. Suddenly a broken card machine worked. All the cabs I've ever used, and to be sure there haven't been many, had working card machines.

The pushback to describing it as "loop around" is that it implies it adds extra time to a pickup vs parking on the shoulder, and it doesn't. It adds an extra minute to stopping, but once in the lot there is little to no difference in pickup times. The "loop around" only matters if someone for some reason was driving nonstop through the lot to go to arrivals, which Uber and Lyft drivers do have to do in order to access the the commercial road from where they make pickups, but they don't have a choicr tomdo what they need to do. However, if you are coming early to pick someone up, there is virtually no difference between sitting in the lot vs sitting on the shoulder, except one is legal and had vending machines and the other is illegal and dangerous. One caveat is if parked on the bridge shoulder, which is even worse but thankfully most cars are not parked there. Other caveat is of there is traffic on the arrivals road from the lot.

Cabs do have an upperhand, in price and in wait time, especially at airports. Just a lot of people have been burned by them pretty bad pre-uber days, or pre-uber-going-bad and are just used to Uber, they don't think much of using one even when there is a line of cabs waiting in front of them while they are waiting for an Uber to show up. Just told someone the other day about this, although because of his prior experiences he said he was inclined to just wait for Lyfts.

They are always tweaking the algorithm. There's "priority rematch", introduced back in 2018which is when the apps (Uber/Lyft) pair a driver making a dropoff at the airport with someone needing a ride who has just arrived. This is supposed to lead to riders get their rides just a bit quicker while removing the need for drivers to go to the lot. As a result however, if incoming flights aren't making heavy demands on ride-share vehicles someone in the lot can wait a long time for a ride than would be the case before they implemented priority rematch.

If you are referring to the lot on Bartram, that's not the lot anymore. The new lot is entered off of the car rental road, same road used to access the Marriott as well, and empties out further back up the road at the split for the car rental road and road to arrivals and baggage claim. Yeah, the old lot, which was fairly close to the Wawa, and also for a time served as the lot for Black car/limos and briefly for ride-share cars, wasn't as well lit and also not as populated. The new road is squarely on airport property and is more well lit and "secure feeling".

The main Uber lot is on Island Ave, across from what used to be the Overseas Terminal. 4700 Island Ave, next to the Double Tree hotel. There is a an additional lot close to the pickup area for Comfort class and Lux vehicles, sharing the lot with limos and other Black car vehicles, next to the cab staging lot past the gatehouse.

I see at at JFK and EWR all the time, particularly EWR as I take people there often. It's not just a PHL thing.

Shouldn't find too many Uber's waiting on the shoulder. There's a lot for them very close to the pickup area, next to the lot for taxis and limos, past the gatehouse that causes the backup there. Safer, closer and there is a bathroom.

You don't have to "loop around". The road empties out onto the approach road for the terminals. Provided there's no traffic it takes seconds. Only problem is there often it traffic from non commercial vehicles getting caught in the line for taxis, Ubers and limos that bears to the right.

There very much is a danger. One of these days there's going to be a bad accident as someone gets hit pulling away from that shoulder, or even trying to slow down to park on it. Cars coming off the highway doing 40-50mph and someone is braking hard to pull into a spot on the shoulder. It's infuriating.

It is not almost the same time to get to the terminals from the lot as the Wawa. The points about the bathrooms and snacks is true, but the road from the cell phone lot empties onto the arrivals road almost at the start of the pickup area. It's almost as close as parking on the shoulder of the road as it approaches the pickup area. The lot even has some vending machines in it for snacks now. The main issue with the lot is vehicles leaving it can get caught in a jam caused by ride-share, taxis and other commercial drivers entering the road for them to make pickups. The road needs better signage so that non-commercial vehicles don't sit in the line, having to be directed away once they reach the gatehouse controlling the road, which slows down the the throughput and causes the traffic jam.