Continuing to clear out some articles, here’s some travel and transit related articles:
- Canceling Hotel Reservations. I wrote earlier about how it is getting harder to not pre-pay for hotels. Now comes news about how Hilton and Marriott are making it harder to cancel reservations without penalty. Hilton Hotels & Resorts and Marriott International will now penalize people who cancel reservations within 48 hours of the planned stay, up from 24 hours. In most cases, the penalty is the price of one night’s room rental.
- Bigger Than a Breadbox. The TSA has a present for you: You now get to separately screen all electronics bigger than a phone. More trays you get to balance; more chance for stuff to disappear.
- RealID and California. There used to be a worry as to whether California Drivers Licenses would comply with RealID and thus be good for travel. Good news: You can opt for a RealID compliant license in January 2018. The bad news is that you have to brave the DMV in person to do it.
- Riding the River. A graphic designer has envisioned America’s rivers as a subway system.
- Reading Reflectors. We’ve all seen the colored reflectors in the roads. Here’s how to decode them.
- Refilling TAP Cards. LA County has made more places you can get TAP cards: any county library. That’s a plus. On the other hand, Tap2Go is still a pain. We lost two TAP cards, and went there to cancel them. You could replace them for a $5 fee (more than the cards were worth, on average), but there was no option to transfer the balance to an existing TAP card on the account. Boo.