Public Transportation … for Your Car? | Atlantic Cities
Anwar Farooq has patented an eyebrow-raising invention. A train-ferry for car commuters. This kind of system would certainly eliminate traffic congestion in our highways. This rapid commute system would enable long-distance car commuters to hop aboard a train instead – while still bringing their personal vehicles with them.
On The Right Track - The Architect’s Newspaper
An autocentric culture sets a high bar for the rest of the nation as mass transittled by light raillchugs ahead on the West Coast.
National attention focused on the recent opening of the Expo Line, an 8.6-mile light rail route that connects downtown LA with Culver City. But that’s just the tip of the iceberg. Before all is said and done, Los Angeles —long stereotyped as a car-only city—will have more than 100 miles of public transit lines, as the West Coast, home to the nation’s first light rail line in San Diego and to its most comprehensive light rail system in Portland, continues to add a slew of new rail.
New lines, stations, infrastructure, and transit-oriented developments are popping up and in planning stages in and around Seattle, Portland, San Francisco, Sacramento, Los Angeles and San Diego. And if you count West Coast–adjacent cities such as Phoenix and Denver, there are even more. Los Angeles and Seattle are set to double their offerings while Marin and Sonoma are just beginning to add rail to the mix.
When switching to a sustainable transport system, one key factor involves shifting more freight transport from road to rail. This change, however, can result in increased environmental problems in the local urban environment – primarily due to transshipment from train to lorry, that must almost always take place in order to transport the freight the last mile.
For historical reasons, intermodal freight terminals are generally located in close vicinity to the passenger train station. An increased level of rail freight leads to more local air pollution, noise and congestion at these central locations. If, on the other hand, freight is transported by road the entire distance, the negative effects inside cities may diminish, for instance because many lorries do not need to enter the urban core.
So the question is: how can this dilemma of global sustainability versus local sustainability be resolved? Sönke Behrends investigated the issue in his thesis at Chalmers University of Technology.
“Local politicians and authorities must take rail freight more into account when planning cities; in part to create a better city for residents, and in part to increase the competitiveness of rail, which is currently limited by freight terminals that are difficult to access and that have a low degree of efficiency during transshipment to lorry,” he says.
The most rewarding life experience has been the move to New Hampshire where one may enjoy all of nature’s beauty, healthy lifestyle if you want to participate in a variety of sports, and, most importantly, experience the genuine character of the citizens. The majority of people here are open and sharing, will give of themselves to help their community as well as provide monetary support of services that are viewed favorably to maintain a quality of life.
The DownEaster train is extremely important to our people here and offers pleasant and reasonable cost transportation from Massachusetts to Maine. Towns along the track appreciate this wonderful asset and many are leaving cars in the garages to commute by rail. There are dedicated volunteers who service the stations and make every effort to deliver a positive experience to riders. My train station photo is an award that was given to a volunteer of thirty years of service in our town. Along with the photo came the personal respect of the community; something better than what is captured in a photo.
Dover, New Hampshire
China Railways Maglev CRH1 train which runs between Shanghai and Beijing is capable of average speeds of 431km/h.
The Urbanophile » Blog Archive » Report from the Rail~Volution
I was in Boston last week for part of Rail~Volution 2009, America’s premier transit conference. I was part of a panel on the use of social media for transit advocacy. It’s clear this is a topic a lot of people are trying to figure out. I don’t want to go too far topic, but maybe I’ll do a post on that in the future, since obviously I’ve got a lot of experience in the space. In the meantime, just ponder this: why are almost all influential blogs and web sites in this space run by more or less independent people instead of agencies or organizations?
Currently only 5% of Dubai residents use public transportation, but authorities are hoping to raise that number to 20% by keeping regular fares between 50 cents and $1.50, the same as the bus system.
Dubai unveils $7.6-billion mass-transit rail system — latimes.com
Most cities have patterns of transport where daytime commuting and business peaks are interchanged with nighttime goods transport. Although we are most aware of daytime congestion and pollution through transport, we should not forget that transport at night also contributes to these problems -albeit on a lesser scale.
What is needed is environmentally sound means of transport offering cheap, coordinated transport to all major goods firms and stores. A smarter city would have either a municipal goods transport system, or a ‘transport exchange’, where goods suppliers bid for routes and cooperate with each other in order to avoid high road-pricing tariffs.
Receipt and dispatch notifications would be sent and processed in real time between automated warehouses, goods depots, city docks and railheads. Smart choreography would ensure a minimum of congestion, a minimum of inefficiency and minimum pollution.
Challenges for this model would be -like so many others- interoperability of systems (RFID, barcode standards, CCDs, etc.) In some ways we would also need to build on the existing EDI (end-to-end) methods to inter-operate with city systems.
