high speed rail

car crazy?

With continued fluctuation in gasoline prices and increasingly congested highways, many Americans are becoming more receptive to giving up their cars – or at least trading the daily commute to and from work.[read more]

US Rail

What would we gain from investing in rail, especially high-speed rail? In short, lots: in a new documentary experts discuss the environmental, economic, and human health benefits.[read more]

High-speed rail is generally regarded as the pinnacle of attractive and green transportation. But all too often, it makes train travel more expensive and less flexible. In the end, costly high-speed lines may just push more people into cars.[read more]

China is encouraging more private sector involvement in the transport sector. Photo by Thomas Stellmach.Our monthly China Transportation Briefing shares interesting news and noteworthy research related to China’s transportation and urban development. The goal is to help people who are interested in solving China’s urbanization...[read more]

Whatever the recession’s effects on government budgets, infrastructure development in Europe continues to advance at a steady pace. The United Kingdom government affirmed last week that it would move forward with the construction of a £18.8 billion ($29 billion) high-speed link between London and Birmingham, due for opening in 2026. This in spite of draconian cuts across all sorts of public services, both in Britain and across the continent.[read more]

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]

The way we get around our cities is a critical factor in their sustainability. Here are 5 of the best blog posts we’ve featured on This Big City in 2011 exploring that very topic: Is the Supervia Highway a Wrong Turn for Mexico City? ‘While urban highways are being destroyed around the world, Mexico City is preparing to build another one...[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]

LA Times: California HSR is now more expensive: Bullet train cost estimates to rise: "Bullet train cost estimates rise to $98.5 billion. In a key change, the state has decided to stretch the construction schedule by 13 years, completing the Southern California-to-Bay Area high speed rail in 2033 rather than 2020." And now my estimate...[read more]

Congestion problems are different in every city, as are the solutions. Here are five cities with five different congestion innovations, each of which has been featured on This Big City in the last two years: Amsterdam – Congestion in Amsterdam is not only caused by cars. With the average Amsterdammer owning 1.5 bicycles, it’s...[read more]

Life at the Speed of Rail began as a project to explore how high-speed rail could transform American life in the coming decades. Andrew Colopy and I were given carte blanche to imagine a competition that calls on the design community to answer this question. We could have picked a particular location, say, along one of the currently planned high-speed rail corridors, and we could have asked entrants to focus on the real-life consequences of rail in a particular city. But we were less concerned about receiving design solutions to any particular high-speed rail challenge than the overarching challenge of bridging the design and transportation communities, and asking the design community to envision the impact of high-speed rail.[read more]

Congressman Mica's proposed bill would separate the highly trafficked Northeast Corridor from Amtrak and give ownership to the Department of Transportation. Photo by Professor Bop. Two U.S. Congressmen want to bring competitive bidding and private sector involvement into building new high-speed rail for the country. The bill proposed...[read more]