This book examines the promise of High Speed Rail (HSR) technologies to win market share from carbon-intensive air transport through the strategic optimization of rail productivity and efficiency. While the positive impacts of HSR at both urban and long-distance levels are well-documented, this resource focuses on what has been a challenging area for HSR deployment historically: the integration of HSR accessibility at the regional level. The author provides tools and methods to better measure the feasibility of integrating regional HSR with existing transport networks, and includes in-depth case studies to demonstrate the contributions of expanded high speed rail access on sustainable development. Shares options for maximizing efficiency and effectiveness of high speed rail transport; Compares strategies for integrating urban, long-distance, and regional high speed rail transport; Explores new dimensions of high speed rail deployment b y linking transit networks with increased regional accessibility.

Mobility is fundamental to economic and social activities such as commuting, manufacturing, or supplying energy. Each movement has an origin, a potential set of intermediate locations, a destination, and a nature which is linked with geographical attributes. Transport systems composed of infrastructures, modes and terminals are so embedded in the socio-economic life of individuals, institutions and corporations that they are often invisible to the consumer. This is paradoxical as the perceived invisibility of transportation is derived from its efficiency. Understanding how mobility is linked with geography is main the purpose of this book. The third edition of The Geography of Transport Systems has been revised and updated to provide an overview of the spatial aspects of transportation. This text provides greater discussion of security, energy, green logistics, as well as new and updated case studies, a revised content structure, and new figures. Each chapter covers a specific conceptual dimension including networks, modes, terminals, freight transportation, urban transportation and environmental impacts. A final chapter contains core methodologies linked with transport geography such as accessibility, spatial interactions, graph theory and Geographic Information Systems for transportation (GIS-T). This book provides a comprehensive and accessible introduction to the field, with a broad overview of its concepts, methods, and areas of application. The accompanying website for this text contains a useful additional material, including digital maps, PowerPoint slides, databases, and links to further reading and websites. The website can be accessed at: http://people.hofstra.edu/geotrans This text is an essential resource for undergraduates studying transport geography, as well as those interest in economic and urban geography, transport planning and engineering.

Over the past decade, China has built 25,000 km of dedicated highspeed railway—more than the rest of the world combined. What can we learn from this remarkable experience? China’s High-Speed Rail Development examines the Chinese experience to draw lessons for countries considering investing in high-speed rail. The report scrutinizes the planning and delivery mechanisms that enabled the rapid construction of the high-speed rail system. It highlights the role of long-term planning, consistent plan execution, and a joint venture structure that ensures active participation of provincial and local governments in project planning and financing. Traffic on China’s high-speed trains has grown to 1.7 billion passengers a year. The study examines the characteristics of the markets for which high-speed rail is competitive in China. It discusses the pricing and service design considerations that go into making high-speed rail services competitive with other modes and factors such as good urban connectivity that make the service attractive to customers. One of the most remarkable aspects of the Chinese experience is the rapid pace of high-quality construction. The report looks at the role of strong capacity development within and cooperation among China Railway Corporation, rail manufacturers, universities, research institutions, laboratories, and engineering centers that allowed for rapid technological advancement and localization of technology. It describes the project delivery structures and incentives for delivering quality and timely results. Finally, the report analyzes the financial and economic sustainability of the investment in high-speed rail. It finds that a developing country can price high-speed rail services affordably and still achieve financial viability, but this requires very high passenger density. Economic viability similarly depends on high passenger density.

This Policy Focus Report was a product of the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy, the Regional Plan Association and their joint venture America 2050. The Lincoln Institute of Land Policy has been engaged in a series of projects with the Regional Plan Association for more than a decade. The partnership spawned the national initiative known as America 2050, which is aimed at meeting the infrastructure, economic development and environmental challenges of the nation, in preparation for a population increase of about 130 million by 2050. A major focus of America 2050 is the emergence of megaregions - large networks of metropolitan areas, where most of the population growth by mid-century will take place. Examples of megaregions are the Northeast Megaregion, from Boston to Washington, or Southern California, from Los Angeles to Tijuana, Mexico. High-speed rail is capable of linking employment centers and population hubs in corridors up to 600 miles in length in 11 U.S. megaregions.This Policy Focus Report was a product of the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy, the Regional Plan Association and their joint venture America 2050. The Lincoln Institute of Land Policy has been engaged in a series of projects with the Regional Plan Association for more than a decade. The partnership spawned the national initiative known as America 2050, which is aimed at meeting the infrastructure, economic development and environmental challenges of the nation, in preparation for a population increase of about 130 million by 2050. A major focus of America 2050 is the emergence of megaregions - large networks of metropolitan areas, where most of the population growth by mid-century will take place. Examples of megaregions are the Northeast Megaregion, from Boston to Washington, or Southern California, from Los Angeles to Tijuana, Mexico. High-speed rail is capable of linking employment centers and population hubs in corridors up to 600 miles in length in 11 U.S. megaregions.

This innovative resource presents comprehensive and detailed information on wired and wireless seamless access systems consisting of various types of transmission media including microwave, millimeter-wave, THz wave, and lightwave in fibers. This book explains heterogenous networks consisting of various transmission media with many media converters. Applications of seamless access networks for public infrastructure such as airports, railways and information and communications systems are described. The book focuses on two important features of seamless access systems, including high-capacity transmission capacity limitation due to economics as well as physics, and low-latency transmission. Latency has significant impact on applications including financial transactions and online gaming. Low-latency data is very important for self-driving cars as well. This book presents the concept of sensor-over-fiber, where many antenna units are connected through optical fibers to gather sensor responses coherently. This book provides possible scenarios of future mobile networks which have many antenna units and opto-electric device technologies. Readers will learn about basic and state-of-the-art signal estimation techniques and concludes with exploration of social issues on future information and communication (ICT) infrastructure.

High speed rail (HSR) is being touted as a strategic investment for connecting people across regions, while also fostering prosperity and smart urban growth. However, as its popularity increases, its implementation has become contentious with various parties contesting the validity of socioeconomic and environmental objectives put forward as justification for investment. High Speed Rail and Sustainability explores the environmental, economic and social effects of developing a HSR system, presenting new evaluations of the proposed system in California in the US as well as lessons from international experience. Drawing upon the accumulated experience from past HSR system development around the world, leading experts present a diverse set of perspectives as well as diverse contexts of implementation. Assessments of the California case as well as cases from Japan, France, Germany, Italy, Spain, Taiwan, China, and the UK show how governments and stakeholders have bridged the gap between the vision and the realities of connecting metropolitan regions through HSR. This is a valuable resource for academics, researchers and policy-makers in the areas of urban planning, civil engineering, transportation and environmental design.

This book makes a major contribution to the debate and is directed at researchers, decision makers and students who are interested in the wider economic development impacts of transport.