By James McCommons
Throughout the tumultuous 12 months of 2008--when gasoline costs reached $4 a gallon, Amtrak set ridership documents, and a commuter educate collided with a freight educate in California--journalist James McCommons spent a 12 months on America's trains, chatting with the folk who experience and paintings the rails all through a lot of the Amtrak method. prepared round those rail trips, ready on a teach is equivalent elements commute narrative, own memoir, and investigative journalism.
Readers meet the historians, railroad executives, transportation officers, politicians, govt regulators, railroad lobbyists, and passenger-rail advocates who're rallying round an easy query: Why has the best railroad state on the earth became its again at the very type of transportation that made smooth existence and mobility possible?
Distrust of railroads within the 19th century, overregulation within the 20th, and heavy govt subsidies for airports and roads have left the rustic with a skeletal intercity passenger-rail procedure. Amtrak has persevered for many years, and but did not prosper due to an absence of political and fiscal help and an uneasy courting with the large, ultimate railroads.
While driving the rails, McCommons explores how the rustic may well stream passenger rail ahead in America--and what position govt should still play in growing and investment mass-transportation structures. opposed to the backdrop of the nation's stimulus application, he explores what it is going to take to construct high-speed trains and transportation networks, and whilst the promise of rail might be discovered in the US.
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Extra info for Waiting on a Train: The Embattled Future of Passenger Rail Service
Example text
Public transport services need to be updated and reviewed to better cater to the transport needs of the growing elderly population. Trips made by the elderly in the future are expected to become more spatially and temporally diverse (TCRP, 2004). If the elderly want to engage in trip chaining (when one links more than one trip, of similar or dissimilar purpose, to participate in more activities in any given day, and to minimise time spent travelling), and if the main mode of transport is public transport, it may prove to be quite stressful for the elderly because planning and coordination is required.
Tracking can be defined spatially within State (with an on-board electronic odometer (OEO) shut down capability when out of State via the GPS system); and within a local jurisdiction15. An electronic odometer records distance within jurisdiction. There is a central computer wirelessly intercommunicating with the OEO, which calculates the road-use charge and applies it at point of sale, at the fuel pump. Once the charge has been paid (EFTPOS…) the system turns OEO back to zero, re-initiating the road-user charge procedure.
Third, the sample sizes used in the experiments to date are not sufficient to demonstrate clearly how much of a shift TravelSmart can produce. The statistical tests suggest that some significant shifting of car driver trips has occurred as has a shift in car passenger in Perth. , 2003). A recent review for the UK Department for Transport (Department for Transport, 2002) states: “It is clear that the techniques will generally only work ‘on their own’ where there is a large gap in perception between what exists and what people believe exists.