It'll do no good. The claim will be that it's the economy.

It will be interesting to see what things look like on Sunday as the holiday weekend come to an end. NY area airports were supposed to experience delays & pax advised to arrive 2 hours prior to .... My nephew worked ground services out of T1 at JFK and he was home early, just another typical day for long-haul int'l flights that he's in charge of - on time arrivals & departures. And, plenty of TSA's standing around - just hanging out ...

AAA said roads will be jammed with increased drivers behind the wheels over last year - NOT, decided to hit the roads last minute. Our late rush hour leisure trip earlier this evening up I-95 to eastern CT took a little over 2 hours and 15 minutes, much faster than I expected (it's usually 2 hours on a good day - expected to be 3+ hours in heavy traffic, but didn't happen) and moving above the posted speed limit with few delays on the Merritt Pkwy portion, even better cruising speed on the Pike, just 1 trooper sitting off the shoulder at Exit 70 northbound.

More folks staying put & not going anywhere ?? Keep TSA off Amtrak & bus terminals ....

A friend of mine sent me a text that she had arrived at PHX two hours early for her flight to Seattle. Got checked in, bags checked and through security "faster than I think I ever have."

That was today at about 3 PM.

I know a few people who opted to drive 8+ hours this year vs flying. Not worth the hassle.

Anyone notice if the Cancer Box lanes were roped off? That was a tactic they used last year to claim the National Opt Out Day had been a failure.

This year, the absolutely last thing they need is a video of them violating someone on the way home for Thanksgiving when all the TV camera are out at the airport doing their travel hype stories.

I did not sense any sort of mad rush flying UA through ORD and SFO yesterday afternoon. Crowds were at the level I'd expect during a "normal" peak period at hub airports, only skewed more towards families. It was certainly a far cry from the holiday throngs of yore.

As you indicate: GoAmtrak! Works for me.^

I hope I'm not being too pedantic here, but Amtrak's train cars are all about eighty-five feet long with the particular cars running to Newport News being able to sit up to 84 people (up to 672 [one was probably a cafe] for that particular train). In fact, most passenger rail cars in the U.S. are that long until you start getting into the light-rail, subway, or lower-desnsity rail (Portland's WES, New Jersey's River Line, etc.).

Scanners in ORD were the only option on Thursday. :(

Airports in the NY area were busy yesterday, but they certainly were not jammed pack - local news crew tried to put their best spin on it - there're fewer flights in the air so the planes were near/full. Major highways were busy as usual, especially around the major shopping malls - which we also opted out.

My nephew (downstairs) went back to work today, he was able to take 4 days off from his ground duties at JFK working for CA - 2 scheduled days off & 2 vacation days. Both pax & cargo traffic down for them last week - in prior years, it was all hands on deck ....

To accommodate all that demand, Amtrak borrowed commuter trains and ran them between cities -- my understanding is that MARC (Maryland commuter) trains were running into Penn Station!

And NJ Transit trains were running into Washington Union Station! ^

Oh no! This has me really concerned - TSA should really do something about trains running into things... :D

Oh, wait... You probably meant that MARC trains were running to Penn Station, rather than crashing into it! :) :D

Don't jinx it...the TSA is probably chomping at the bit to install NoS in train stations, and pro-TSAers love to insist that this sort of thing is imminent, so we should shut up and get used to it in airports.

In 2010, JFK had 46.5M passengers, or 127,000 per day if you assume each day equal. (source: Wikipedia).

NY Penn Station gets 300,000 passengers per day. (source: Wikipedia).

Operating at their peak "speed", how long does it take a NoS to "process" one person?

A WBI machine was in a NJ PATH station several years ago for a couple of weeks and Chertoff himself has been seen and heard trying to get NJ Transit to install such machines.