High Speed Rail: Report

Movement signifies the existence of life. Where there is no movement, internally and externally, at absolute spatial and temporal scales, there can be no life. We are biased as a species to acknowledge only life that we can observe and movement is the parameter for observation. This is why we have difficulty grasping the changing circumstances of our environment; we do not readily notice the movements of bacteria and plants, organic and geologic materials, demographics, and many other constantly shifting factors that affect our daily lives at every level. We, ourselves, are increasingly judging the quality of our own livelihoods by the limits of

US HSR June 2011 in Chicago!

High Speed Rail 2011 - Chicago from Steven Skemp on Vimeo.

Report Outline

Alternative Transportation: High Speed Rail in the USA
[RL] Introduction
Growing transportation demand
>population growth
>income growth
Current transportation modes
>Airplanes: intercity travel
>Private vehicles (cars and trucks): intercity and intracity travel

Transport of Goods!

As populations grow and urbanization continues, demand for goods also increases as much if not more. Not only should we be concerned about how people achieve sustainable mobility, but also how the things they consume and produce (food, clothes, all kinds of waste) are moved from place to place. A prominent idea within sustainability issues is the need for regional independence (local goods, esp. urban agriculture), meaning less reliance on transportation of goods/waste between cities. However, we cannot really limit free trade to reduce energy consumption and other environmental impacts since our global economy is currently based on the importing and exporting of goods. So, the need for technological innovation is vital and urgent in this sector of transportation reform.

European Union: Transport

http://europa.eu/pol/trans/index_en.htm
http://europa.eu/legislation_summaries/transport/intermodality_transeuropean_networks/index_en.htm
Summary: ...to be cont'd.

Prof/Tom's comments;

If you go to the first link above, and go to the tab for "more info" you will find the 2011 White Paper report from the EU at http://ec.europa.eu/transport/strategies/2011_white_paper_en.htm 
In 2001, the EU issued a White Paper that set out its goals for alternative transportation for the next ten years.  In 2006 there was an interim report on the progress and, now, there is the new report which gives the EUs goals to 2050.

Since the EU is the premier location for a coherent, progressive policy to go to alternative transportation, I think it would be very useful to study this history.  They have spent 100's of billions of Euros on this effort.

Transportation Research Board (TRB)

http://www.trb.org/Main/Public/Home.aspx This website has a lot of information throughout it. If we use it we're going to have to really search through all of their documents and books for info that we can easily get through pdf's and such. I've found a few so far but I'm thinking if we look enough mayeb we can find some good overviews of alternative modes of transportation as a whole. It's got all different kinds of categories and links, but a lot of the sources are books that we can't read over the web. Throughout all of their source links, if you look long enough, there are plenty of pdf's and journal articles to skim too. I'm sure we could find something good here. http://www.trb.org/PublicTransportation/Blurbs/Rails_to_Real_Estate_Development_Patterns_Along_Th_165077.aspx For example this pdf is pretty interesting to skim through. It's about three different railways and the studies

Contrasting Visions of Urban Transport

http://www.vtpi.org/cont_vis.pdf This document isn't one that covers alternative modes of transportation in am overall sense. I just found it interesting. From what I've picked up from the intro and conclusion it seems to be mostly about keeping public modes of transportation, for example buses, public or privitizing them. It discusses which seems to be more efficient from the stand point of one article saying that privitizing would be better and