Modern travel can be quite maddening. So why do so many of us willingly put ourselves through this gauntlet of misery to reach our destinations?

This formula is becoming more common for the modern traveler, where we are careened into airplanes like sardines: a delay leads to missed flights, to being stuck overnight in drab hotels, squandering our precious money and time on lousy but extremely expensive food.

How did modern travel become such an anxious and forsaken purgatory? And can anything even be done about it?