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Everyone is ga-ga for the urban car-sharing services that have crossed into the mainstream. Now Hertz is fighting back with shorter rental terms at its European locations.

It will now be possible to hire a car for three or six hours for short day trips, or nine hours for overnight trips.

A Hertz survey revealed that 61 per cent of travellers would be more likely to hire a car if they did not have to rent it for a full 24 hours.

The new service – Hertz 369 – is available at over 1,200 city and airport locations across Europe, including Belgium, France, Germany, Italy, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Spain, Switzerland and the UK.

Why am I reminded of that unfortunate motel experience in 1998, when the front desk clerk asked, “You gonna need the room the whole night?” Why yes, yes we did. But I digress.

This isn’t Hertz’s descent into the equivalent of a seedy motel. This is a good thing.

You might be surprised that a full 61% of travelers don’t want to rent a car a full day. But consider parking expenses and hassle in center-city European cities, and it becomes more plausible. Consider, too, that you could use a short-term rental car to shuttle yourself to the airport, and it makes even more sense.

Of course, it all comes down to rates. But this is a welcome option.

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Oil hit $120 a barrel today, and the financial pundit class is talking about $200 oil. To quote the wisdom of Mr. T: “My prediction… is pain.”

High oil prices and travel generally don’t mix. But is there any segment that stands to benefit?

Apparently so. Trains!

As the price of fuel skyrockets, more people are traveling to North Carolina’s major cities by train. Ridership on Amtrak is up as much as 40 percent on some routes compared to last year.

40%? Pretty substantial. Perhaps enough to offset the higher cost of diesel.

But how widespread is this as a trend? It’s more likely a phenomenon on shorter, regional routes that would otherwise have been driven. Except for a few diehards, and some gluttons for punishment, most aren’t choosing to take Amtrak from California to Chicago.

Trains becoming more a part of your travelin’ life? Hit the comments.

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Bad news for aficionados of roadside American kitsch. As pointed out by commenter Mark, the Spindle, a.k.a. the Car-ka-Bob, was torn down from it’s Berwyn, Illinois site.

The Chicago Tribune confirms the deed. You might remember the giant parking lot sculpture from the movie Wayne’s World. It could have been yours: They tried to sell it on eBay.

But it is no more. The video of the destruction is below.

Related:
- Save the Berwyn Car-ka-bob!
- Update: Join the movement to save the Spindle

There’s a cliché in detective dramas, where there’s a battle of jurisdiction. Say, the FBI swoops in and tells the local cops, “We’ll take it from here.” Bureaucracy always trumps justice. Well, you’ll be pleased to know that there’s a similar battle within the federal government’s security apparatus.

America’s no-fly list is so extensive and full of errors, that even Federal Air Marshals are being kept off planes.

False identifications based on a terrorist no-fly list have for years prevented some federal air marshals from boarding flights they are assigned to protect, according to officials with the agency, which is finally taking steps to address the problem.

Federal Air Marshals (FAMs) familiar with the situation say the mix-ups, in which marshals are mistaken for terrorism suspects who share the same names, have gone on for years — just as they have for thousands of members of the traveling public.

Hey, at least they’re not being kept off because they’re carrying weapons.

But it’s nice to know that the people whose sole job is to protect passengers in flight are being kept off planes. Why, why, WHY can’t a Federal Air Marshal, showing federal law enforcement credentials get on the damn plane?

The no-fly list is still a disaster. How about this nugget:

Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff said this week that one major air carrier reports roughly 9,000 false positive hits on the watch list every day.

Let’s savor that one for a moment: One single airline has 9000 false positives. Daily.

And some of those might be Federal Air Marshals.

Downgraded: American Airlines luggage policy
American Airlines is the latest to charge an extra fee for a second checked bag. For a while, they were a holdout. This will apparently affect 4% of their passengers. I actually expected that number to be higher. Understandable move, considering the airline is losing $3.3M per day.

Downgraded: Skycap tips
Upgraded: Vindictiveness
American Airlines is being completely petty in their legal dispute with skycaps. You may recall that the skycaps won their suit, in which they argued that they were being cheated when the airline imposed a $2 fee, which most passengers believed to be paid to the skycap. (It was paid to the airline.) So now the airline strikes back by banning tips to skycaps. Vindictive, and frankly begging for another lawsuit.

Downgraded: Spirit Airlines’ baggage handling
Why just lose a passenger’s luggage, when you can burn the luggage instead?

Downgraded: Airline credit ratings, thanks to mergers. What?
Airlines keep saying how mergers will be just fab for their bottom lines. But credit rating agency Moodys’ predicts that airlines would be downgraded if mergers happen. Why? Moody’s doesn’t believe the merger partners will meet their goals, and won’t see the promised synergies happen.

Upgraded: WC signs
Better signage for public rest rooms than these? I haven’t seen them.

Upgraded: Paperless boarding passes
The TSA and Continental have teamed up to expand the use of paperless boarding passes for travelers with smartphones. I like!

Upgraded: Viagra, caffeine, and naps
For those seeking to beat jet lag, Viagra can help. (Seriously.) But for those not looking to channel their inner Bob Dole, caffeine and naps work well, too. How… intuitive.

Upgraded: Tracking your past travels
If you’ve traveled internationally between 1996 and 2006, and if you used an American credit or debit card abroad, you’re eligible for a refund of some undisclosed fees, thanks to a class action settlement. But unless you’re a supreme dork (umm, like me…) who has all your year-end summaries or stacks of credit card statements, you’ll need to estimate your spending. To make that work out for you, you need to know when you were out of the country. (For supreme dorks like me, there’s the running spreadsheet of flights and miles…) Debbie Dubrow of DeliciousBaby writes in with her credit card settlement hack to help you figure out how much time you were abroad: Look at your digital photos and check the dates. For pre-digital images, just browse the photo albums. Brilliant! But it’s not foolproof. My photos aren’t organized into albums. And on business travel, who takes photos??