rail

Imagine a scenario by which our country’s most populous state, notorious for freeways, traffic nightmares and smog, could reduce driving by 3.7 trillion miles by 2050 (compared to trends forecast under business as usual), the equivalent of taking all cars off the state’s roads for 12 years. Imagine saving 140 billion gallons of gasoline through 2050, reducing oil consumption by an amount roughly equivalent to seven years’ worth of all US offshore oil production. Imagine saving some 3,700 square miles of California farmland, forests, recreation areas, and other currently open space that would otherwise be lost to sprawl. Imagine eliminating 140 premature deaths and 105,000 asthma attacks and respiratory symptoms each year.[read more]

What a year this has been for This Big City! 2011′s 30th most popular post got more hits than 2010′s most popular post, so we’re going to run through the year’s 30 most popular articles, starting here with 30-21. Check back later today for 20-11 and the top ten. 30. Five Controversial Pieces of Urban Architecture Is it even possible to...[read more]

    Union Station, Denver (by: John Giez, creative commons license) Continuing a bit of a tradition on this blog, here are some really fun photos of holiday festivity on public transit and rail systems.  You'll notice some themes, including the Chicago Transit Authority's famous Holiday Train, and the amazingly photogenic...[read more]

 Photo by USACEpublicaffairs On 6 December, the New South Wales Parliament held its second day of hearings for an inquiry into the cost of rail construction in Sydney.  The inquiry was called because of a general perception that rail costing is too high here compared to other cities in Australia and around the world....[read more]

A hot topic within the transportation sector these days concerns the epic possibilities of a national network of High Speed Rails.  Obama’s failed Jobs Bill dedicated $10 Billion towards furthering the technology and implementation.  Here at Earthgarage we are wondering if a High Speed Rail program is this administration’s...[read more]

While railroads were once the backbone of American transportation, the nation has since become notoriously car-centric, an arrangement that many modern urban planners and environmental advocates alike decry as inefficient, polluting, and conducive to sprawl. A number of recent proposals, from upgrades to urban and commuter transit to an...[read more]

San Jose Mercury News High-speed rail price tag soars again, this time on pace to surpass $60 billion : "The California High-Speed Rail Authority's new cost estimates released Tuesday show the initial stretch of construction between Merced and Bakersfield will cost $10 billion to $13.9 billion depending on how it's built. Project...[read more]

        I once called the Atlanta BeltLine “the country’s best smart growth project.”  I still haven’t seen one that is better in concept.  But now, with a few years of history, how is the implementation coming along?  Is the reality matching the vision? The challenge with writing about the BeltLine...[read more]

      New York’s City’s hugely successful and justly celebrated High Line wasn’t the first elevated urban railroad bed to be converted into a much-loved linear park.  Today, as we mark the national holiday of France, let’s also pay tribute to the elevated park in Paris that NYC planning director Amanda Burden...[read more]

Credit: © Santa Fe Railyard Community Corporation, Frederic Schwartz ArchitectsEditor’s note:  This is the second in a series of interviews by Mary Jones with the 2011 winners of the Rudy Bruner Award.  The Santa Fe Railyard Redevelopment was one of four Silver Medalists.  For more information on the Rudy Bruner Award...[read more]

A study by Montreal University found that children living in economically disadvantaged urban areas are the most likely to choose walking and cycling. Photo by Nicola Jones. Welcome to “Research Recap,” our series highlighting recent reports, studies and other findings in sustainable transportation policy and practice, in...[read more]

Getting around in cities all over the world has remained relatively the same over the last half a century: we get picked up by buses or subway cars and, after a few stops and the inevitable delay, we disembark and step onto well-stamped concrete or pavement. The evolution of public transportation -outside of the meteoric rise of information technology- has been a boring, straight line, but the systems themselves, those systems cannot be reduced to linear conclusions.[read more]