line 8: nuevos ministerios - aeropuerto

The flight back to London Gatwick was long. No disrespect but Terminal 1 in Madrid is a shamble. I mean, why the fuck did they decide to built the Metro entrance 15min walk to the departure gates. Bloody ridiculous! And once you're inside the gates, the vastness of the space that greets you is nonsensical. There is too much wasted space. In fact, the whole of the Madrid's Metro big stations are filled with dead spaces. I couldn't help counting the amount of empty kiosk/shops that needs letting. So much wasted space and wasted opportunity for rents. As you would expect from 'Hardjet', our flights were slightly delayed due to a passenger using false ticket to board the plane in Gatwick. What an idiot!! 30 minutes...35 minutes...and everyone was slowly cursing. 38 minutes and we began our boarding process. So far so good. We sat at the back of the plane and our Czech stewardess began her boarding procedure. We soon noticed that our Czech girl wasn't in a good mood so; we made sure we stayed away from her. I remembered her well-made hair bun because it reminds me of those S&M dominant mistresses.

Going back to my previous thoughts about Madrid Terminal 1; can there ever be too much space for circulation? A bit of trivia for you, Madrid has the fastest growing public transport network in the world and fifth populous. It is also sixth longest metro network in the world next to London, New York, Moscow, Tokyo and Seoul. Now, I'm not going to bother writing about its metro system, if that's your interests, read it somewhere else. I'm sure there are hundreds upon hundreds of substantial info regarding the subject. What interest me is the urban transport problems we face nowadays.

Modern cities are locations with high level of accumulation and concentration of economic activities and its complex spatial structures that are supported by transport systems. Majority of these transport systems are public transport. Most of its dire problems are often related to urban areas and take place when transport systems cannot satisfy the numerous requirements of urban mobility. Now, as you would expect, urban productivity is highly dependent on the efficiency of its transport system (i.e. moving labour, consumers and goods between multiple destinations). On top of that, important transport terminals such as ports, airports, and railways are located within urban areas thus contributing to a specific kind of problems. Congestion is a word we all know and hate. Yet, it still is a major issue which we haven't responded properly. Of course there have been tremendous investments from government to provide access to city dwellers. But, is this enough? Are we doing the right thing? Or, are we wasting the millions & billions of funding on outdated concepts and sub-par approach to city planning? Either way, I'll be discussing this further throughout the year.

As soon as we took off, Paolo & Toru was knocked out! So much for post-trip discussion. They didn't wake up until we touched down in Gatwick. Home Sweet Home...Never thought I'd say that! Excited, I wonder what has changed since our last conversation...