Neil Planzer, Vice President for Air Traffic Management with Boeing, was one of the panellists in a session on air traffic management and related infrastructure at ATAG's Aviation and the Environment Summit in Geneva this week.

The subject is heavily acronym-laden, and panellists were urged not to use them without explanation.

Being rebuked for omitting to do this at one stage, Mr. Planzer explained that he had also inadvertently omitted to explain that Boeing was an acronym for Best Operating Efficiency In New Growth.

Nice one!

I went to Air Transport Action Group's Aviation and the Environment Summit 2012 in central Geneva, and was much impressed by how pedestian friendly and transit friendly the city is.

Surprises started as I was leaving baggage reclaim. As you move from airside to landside - but firmly airside - there is a machine dispensing free public transport tickets for Geneva! You get 80 minutes free travel on all modes (including second class on the train): all you have to do is push a button and take a ticket.

And since there are 4-6 trains an hour into central Geneva, taking 6 minutes, and the central station is a focus for buses, trolleybuses and trams serving a range of places, you can almost certainly reach your hotel free.

And there you find the next example of public transport friendliness. As you check into the hotel, you are asked if you are going to use the buses. If you answer yes, you are given a free ticket on the local buses, trams, trolleybuses and trains for the duration of your stay!

Wowee!

I don't know if they still do but the Steigenburger chain of hotels would at one time give you a free public transport ticket for the duration of your stay, but I know of no-where else that generous!

Oh, and motorists automatically give way to pedestrians on crossings too - although the busier ones are light controlled.

Well done Geneva!

I liked a South West Trains poster I saw yesterday at Surbiton station, a very busy commuter station in south west London.

It showed peak trains to and from London, with a colour-coded indication of how busy they were on a typical day.

Red meant that there was usually limited standing room, yellow meant that all seats were usually taken and green meant that seats were available.

There are sometimes complaints by passengers that they were 'forced to stand'. But if they caught an earlier train or a slower train or just went to a different part of their favourite train, they would probably find seats. This kind of information helps.

A recent report published by AASHTO highlights the problems faced by drivers of the Baby Boom generation - those born shortly after the Second World War.

Culturally, they are very car dependent - but they are are less able to cope with today's roads and traffic.

Drivers aged 65 and over account for 8% of miles driven, but 17% of all traffic fatalities occurred in crashes where at least one driver was 65 or over.

Vermont leads the nation in traffic fatalities in crashes involving a driver aged 65 or more. 32% of fatalities were in crashes involving a driver aged 65 or over, significantly more than the next 9 states (24% - 21%).

The report can be found on the web-site of AASHTO.

I was impressed to see the response to the introduction of high-speed suburban trains running from Kent into St. Pancras along HS1, the high speed line to Brussels and Paris.

A premium fare is charged for these, and there were doubts that people would pay for speed. Clearly, those doubts are unfounded.

Southeastern, the operator, has published percentages of London trips made on the high speed trains in 2011 compared with 2010. These are shown below, with 2010 figures in brackets.

Ashford: 71% (69%)
Canterbury: 71% (66%)
Dover Priory: 65% (64%)
Folkestone: 73% (67%)
Gravesend: 33% (26%)
Ramsgate: 62% (56%)

Gravesend is the closest of these to London, and the one with the most frequent non-high speed train service, which no doubt accounts for the lower percentage of high speed train users.

Read more in Southeastern's press release on the web-site of Southeastern.

The Spanish winter timetable has a train from A Coruna to Alacant (Corunna to Alicante) at 10:00, arriving at 22:15 having crossed the whole of Spain diagonally from north west to south east.

On the way, apparently it changes gauge four times!

This must be a record!

I was travelling home from St. Pancras yesterday. Because of my previous employment with British Railways, I am entitled to free first class rail travel (but for leisure purposes only), so I was travelling in the first class compartment which was at the extreme rear of the train, adjacent to the ticket barrier.

As departure time approached, the rest of the rear car got quite full: people were standing in the vestibule.

One man didn't like this, so he came into the First Class area with his daughter (about 9 - 10 years old), and started to phone his wife. As he did so, he warned his daughter to look out for ticket collectors: if one came, he said, they would have to move out into the vestibule.

She was clearly unhappy about this, and when he had finished his phone call, persuaded him to move out anyway.

I was intrigued that there was a law-abiding youngster and a less than law-abiding father!

Some time ago, one of these posts criticised the lack of signage at St. Pancras International - the East Midlands Trains part, serving Luton Airport. The information given once one approached the platforms was quite limited.

Things have changed - for the better.

Now, at the end of each platform, there is an indicator showing the stopping points of each train. The overhead departure indicators on each platform do the same - even for the First Capital Connect trains which only use the station at weekends when the through Thameslink route is closed.

Excellent!

What do you do when trains are longer than station platforms - especially platforms at little-used stations where there is limited justification for spending a lot of money on platform extensions?

After all, if passengers can get out of trains where there is no platform, they might injure themselves.

The UK rail industry has been through several contortions on this issue, but at last an innovation seems to be coming in which works, is cheap and is logical.

For some time, new trains have been equipped with selective door opening (SDO) - so that train crew can prevent doors in some cars from opening at specific stations.

You might think that this would be enough - but the safety lobby asked, 'What if the train crew forgot to do this? Then someone could still get hurt'.

Now, the SDO mechanism has been linked with an electronic tag at the end of each platform. The doors on each vehicle will not open unless the vehicle has passed this tag. If the platform is too short, the vehicles at the end won't pass the tag and the doors won't open!

Stunning!