Ever since the 1930s, comic strips and movie serials, Buck Rogers and Flash Gordon, it has been predicted. There soon may be city transportation where travelers won’t need to drive on crowded streets nor use polluting gasoline.

They’ll go sailing through the air on controlled rails in little capsules. A new monorail idea is that they’ll be powered by passenger legs. No smelly, burning fossil fuels, just throbbing human muscles pumping away like captive critters in cages.

Big and getting bigger internet giant Google has plans to expand its business with this innovation. According to reports, Google is investing a million bucks in a company called Shweeb. They plan to develop such an effective, if a bit crazily radical, overhead transportation system.

We senior roamers are all too familiar with the rip-off practice. The ads tout hotel room rates at $99.99. Then, when you check out, the out-of-pocket price is actually up to $159.99. Of course, says the sneering-at-your-stupidity desk clerk, there’s the resort fee, wi-fi fee, turn-down fee, honor bar fee, state/city tax and several other add-ons you shoulda expected.

Maybe there will be some relief, or at least exposure to the rip-off tactics if Missouri Senator Claire McCaskill succeeds in getting a national bill passed. The proposed law is that all charges are stated up front when customers reserve rooms.

It may not lower the actual out-of-pocket cost, but at least you’ll know exactly what the room price is when booking. Now, if the good Senator can apply the law to airline add-ons and gas station signs, we senior travelers may benefit from something rare in the travel business: truth in advertising.

Many seniors retiring today have the option of choosing to move out of their home town, away from their native land and settle in a city on the other side of the world. Not only can it be less costly, safer and free of excessive taxes, but the culture more traditionally senior-friendly.

The 18th annual Mercer Quality of Life survey listed 230 cities, with the top five rankings going to Vienna, Austria, Zurich, Switzerland, Auckland, New Zealand, Munich, Germany and Vancouver, Canada. The top U.S. cities on the list, at #28 is San Francisco, #34 Boston, #35 Honolulu and #43 Chicago.

If you’re wondering, the bottom five on the list are Khartoum, Sudan, Port-au-Prince, Haiti, Sana’a, Yemen, and (Operation Desert Storm vets are not surprised to know) Baghdad, Iraq.

The airline says one reason for the new, squashed seating is to end the hassle about overweight passengers. With rows combined into a long bench, Airbus hopes to get more people aboard, as well as allow wide people to stretch out more comfortably.

Of course, the argument will still be concerning passengers who weigh twice or more as much as others. Since they also occupy at least twice the space, whether on a seat or bench, shouldn’t they pay twice the price?