From Commuter Rail to Regional Rail: Operating Practices for the 21st Century

1998 ◽  
Vol 1623 (1) ◽  
pp. 127-134 ◽  
Author(s):  
John G. Allen
Keyword(s):  
21St Century ◽  
Low Cost ◽  
Rail Transit ◽  
Rapid Transit ◽  
Service Levels ◽  
Port Authority ◽  
Bay Area ◽  
Unit Costs ◽  
Commuter Rail ◽  
Low Levels

Several low-cost, low-technology measures can upgrade service levels and reduce unit costs of operation on commuter railroads. By gradually implementing one-person operation and other techniques borrowed from rapid transit, busier commuter rail properties can emulate the frequency and comfort of such modern regional rail transit lines as the Port Authority Transit Corporation, Bay Area Rapid Transit, and the Washington Metro. Metra Electric (formerly the Illinois Central Electric) offers an example of how these measures might be implemented. In their heyday, the Illinois Central Electric and other commuter railroads provided service of similar quality to today’s regional rapid transit lines. Today these commuter lines operate at needlessly low levels of efficiency, but these measures should help commuter railroads develop their potential. The result should be a win-win situation: more efficiency for management, more jobs for labor (as a result of more frequent service), and more service for customers.

Creativity Enhancement

2013 ◽  
pp. 161-168
Author(s):  
Monty McNair ◽  
Caroline Howard ◽  
Indira Guzman ◽  
Paul Watkin
Keyword(s):  
Information Systems ◽  
21St Century ◽  
Low Cost ◽  
Cost Effective ◽  
Future Research ◽  
Creative Performance ◽  
Creativity Training ◽  
Low Levels ◽  
Adaptive Approaches ◽  
Information Systems Personnel

Since the dawn of humanity, creativity has been critical to surmounting the challenges of life. Innovation is particularly essential to survival on every level from an individual solving his/her problems to a world dependent on adaptive approaches to cope with rapidly expanding populations and enormous international tensions. Currently, information systems programs are not fostering the creativity needed to sustain the innovation required to compete in the 21st century marketplace. Educators and researchers need to better understand the effects of creativity training on creative performance to best design programs that meet the needs of information systems personnel and their employers. The results of this study provide evidence that it would be valuable for organizations to experiment with creativity tutorials and recommend that future research be conducted using larger samples of individuals with low levels of creativity. Because the costs of informing people about creativity are low and creativity tutorials can be designed to be easily administered and completed, the authors recommend that a low-cost tutorial would be a cost effective and beneficial strategy for organizations to employ with information systems personnel, especially those who assess themselves as low in creativity.

Comparison of Emissions from Light Rail Transit and Bus Rapid Transit

2005 ◽  
Vol 1927 (1) ◽  
pp. 31-37 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christopher M. Puchalsky
Keyword(s):  
Fuel Cycle ◽  
Low Cost ◽  
Bus Rapid Transit ◽  
Light Rail ◽  
Rail Transit ◽  
Oxides Of Nitrogen ◽  
Light Rail Transit ◽  
Rapid Transit ◽  
Recent Advances ◽  
Plant Emissions

Bus rapid transit (BRT) is an evolving and promising transit mode that has emerged as a low-cost competitor to light rail transit (LRT) in providing medium-capacity semirapid transit. In addition, recent advances in diesel and compressed natural gas technology have caused the truism “electric rail is cleaner than diesel bus” to be revisited. A partial fuel cycle comparison of the regional or urban emissions of carbon monoxide, oxides of nitrogen, and volatile organic compounds from BRT and LRT is presented. The BRT analysis includes tailpipe exhaust emissions and fuel transportation, storage, and distribution emissions. The LRT analysis contains electric power plant emissions and line-loss-induced emissions. The analysis shows that whenever equal levels of technology are compared, LRT consistently performs better than BRT despite recent advances in the BRT mode. The analysis also shows that both modes are cleaner now than in the past.

Creativity Enhancement

2011 ◽  
Vol 2 (3) ◽  
pp. 1-8
Author(s):  
Monty McNair ◽  
Caroline Howard ◽  
Indira Guzman ◽  
Paul Watkin
Keyword(s):  
Information Systems ◽  
21St Century ◽  
Low Cost ◽  
Cost Effective ◽  
Future Research ◽  
Creative Performance ◽  
Creativity Training ◽  
Low Levels ◽  
Adaptive Approaches ◽  
Information Systems Personnel

Since the dawn of humanity, creativity has been critical to surmounting the challenges of life. Innovation is particularly essential to survival on every level from an individual solving his/her problems to a world dependent on adaptive approaches to cope with rapidly expanding populations and enormous international tensions. Currently, information systems programs are not fostering the creativity needed to sustain the innovation required to compete in the 21st century marketplace. Educators and researchers need to better understand the effects of creativity training on creative performance to best design programs that meet the needs of information systems personnel and their employers. The results of this study provide evidence that it would be valuable for organizations to experiment with creativity tutorials and recommend that future research be conducted using larger samples of individuals with low levels of creativity. Because the costs of informing people about creativity are low and creativity tutorials can be designed to be easily administered and completed, the authors recommend that a low-cost tutorial would be a cost effective and beneficial strategy for organizations to employ with information systems personnel, especially those who assess themselves as low in creativity.

Rediscovering the Urban Railroad

1997 ◽  
Vol 1571 (1) ◽  
pp. 169-174 ◽  
Author(s):  
John G. Allen
Keyword(s):  
North American ◽  
Long Island ◽  
Central City ◽  
Rail Transit ◽  
Quality Service ◽  
Rapid Transit ◽  
High Quality ◽  
Commuter Rail ◽  
Industrial Cities ◽  
High Quality Service

The urban railroad represents a long-established but little-understood range of rail transit in several older North American industrial cities. In most instances urban railroads are officially classified as commuter rail, but the genre also includes a couple of lines in the rapid transit category. Several urban railroads incorporate elements of both modes. The urban railroad uses conventional railroad technology and rights of way to provide high-quality service within the central city. Examples of the urban railroad include Metra Electric in Chicago, Cleveland’s Red Line, and the urban portions of Philadelphia’s Regional Rail and New York’s Long Island Rail Road. Neglected and overlooked for decades, the urban railroad has untapped potential to attract amenity-conscious customers and relieve ridership pressure on nearby bus routes.

Low Temperature Fault Isolation Using Soft Defect Localization

2012 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kristopher D. Staller
Keyword(s):  
Low Temperatures ◽  
Laser Scanning ◽  
Low Cost ◽  
Fault Isolation ◽  
Laser Scanning Microscopy ◽  
Cold Temperature ◽  
Multiple Point ◽  
Defect Localization ◽  
Low Levels

Abstract Cold temperature failures are often difficult to resolve, especially those at extreme low levels (< -40°C). Momentary application of chill spray can confirm the failure mode, but is impractical during photoemission microscopy (PEM), laser scanning microscopy (LSM), and multiple point microprobing. This paper will examine relatively low-cost cold temperature systems that can hold samples at steady state extreme low temperatures and describe a case study where a cold temperature stage was combined with LSM soft defect localization (SDL) to rapidly identify the cause of a complex cold temperature failure mechanism.

Paper 5: Development of the San Francisco Bay Area Rapid Transit System (Bartd)

1966 ◽  
Vol 181 (7) ◽  
pp. 20-31
Author(s):  
S. D. Forsythe ◽  
T. J. Lowe
Keyword(s):  
San Francisco ◽  
San Francisco Bay ◽  
San Francisco Bay Area ◽  
Rapid Transit ◽  
Design And Development ◽  
Transit System ◽  
Bay Area

The San Francisco Bay area is facing a mounting problem of handling the ever-increasing flow of traffic. With this traffic rising so rapidly in an area severely constricted by topography it has been concluded that freeway, bridge, and parking improvements alone cannot meet the Bay area's mounting transportation needs. Rapid transit, utilizing only a fraction of the space and with much less cost, would provide far more passenger capacity than automobiles on freeway and as a result a billion dollar rapid transit system has been planned for the Bay area. This paper describes the design and development of the BARTD system at present being undertaken.

scholarly journals The Productive Landscape in the Desert Margin for the Sustainable Development of Rural Settlements: An Innovative Greenbelt for Maranjab Desert in Iran

2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (4) ◽  
pp. 2077
Author(s):  
Mahnaz Sarlak ◽  
Laura Valeria Ferretti ◽  
Rita Biasi
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Land Use ◽  
Low Cost ◽  
Agricultural Systems ◽  
Rural Settlements ◽  
Green Belt ◽  
The Sustainable Development ◽  
Research Questions ◽  
New Form ◽  
Low Levels

About two billion rural individuals depend on agricultural systems associated with a high amount of risk and low levels of yield in the drylands of Asia, Africa, and Latin America. Human activities, climate change and natural extreme events are the most important drivers of desertification. This phenomenon has occurred in many regions of Iran, particularly in the villages in the periphery of the central desert of Iran, and has made living in the oases so difficult that the number of abandoned villages is increasing every year. Land abandonment and land-use change increase the risk of desertification. This study aims to respond to the research questions: (i) does the planning of green infrastructures on the desert margin affect the distribution and balance of the population? (ii) how should the green belt be designed to have the greatest impact on counteracting desertification?, and (iii) does the design of productive landscape provide the solution? Through a wide-ranging and comprehensive approach, this study develops different scenarios for designing a new form of green belt in order to sustainably manage the issues of environmental protection, agricultural tradition preservation and desertification counteraction. This study proposes a new-traditional greenbelt including small low-cost and low-tech projects adapted to rural scale.

Rail noise grade separation alternative analysis case study

2021 ◽  
Vol 263 (4) ◽  
pp. 2842-2850
Author(s):  
Paul Burge ◽  
Jim Cowan
Keyword(s):  
San Francisco ◽  
Traffic Safety ◽  
San Francisco Bay Area ◽  
Alternative Analysis ◽  
Noise And Vibration ◽  
Bay Area ◽  
Commuter Rail ◽  
Grade Crossing ◽  
Grade Separation ◽  
The City

The San Francisco Bay Area has an existing commuter rail system that brings commuters from southern regional communities into the downtown city center. One of the communities served by commuter rail service is the City of Palo Alto, CA, which includes four active grade crossings, each requiring train horn sounding for each train event. The City wished to evaluate various options to eliminate the noise generated from horn soundings by creating road/rail grade separations at each existing grade crossing and other possible noise and vibration control elements. The alternatives included crossing closures, rail bed trenching, viaducts, roadway underpasses, and tunnels. A noise and vibration study was undertaken to provide an analysis of which alternatives would provide better reductions in noise and vibration in the surrounding community. The study included an assessment of existing noise levels and predicted future noise and vibration levels for construction and operation of each proposed alternative using current established noise and vibration methodology. The results of this study included comparisons of the noise and vibration associated with each of the of the proposed alternatives that could be used in conjunction with other studies considering cost, traffic, safety, aesthetics and other factors to select an overall preferred alternative.

Does Investing in Rail Transit Benefit the Poor? A Comparative Study of Rail and Bus Travel by Low-Income Households in the California Household Travel Survey

2018 ◽  
Vol 2672 (6) ◽  
pp. 11-20
Author(s):  
Ryland Lu
Keyword(s):  
Low Income ◽  
Household Income ◽  
Bus Rapid Transit ◽  
Rail Transit ◽  
Rapid Transit ◽  
Travel Survey ◽  
Household Travel Survey ◽  
The Poor ◽  
Household Travel ◽  
Low Income Households

This paper addresses academic discourse that critiques urban rail transit projects for their regressive impacts on the poor and proposes bus funding as a more equitable investment for urban transit agencies. The author analyzed data from the 2012 California Household Travel Survey on transit trips in Los Angeles County. The author cross-tabulated data on the modal breakdown of transit trips by household income category and on the breakdown of household income associated with trips by bus and rail transit modes. The author also comparatively evaluated the speed of trips (as a ratio of miles per hour) taken by rail and by bus by low-income households in the county. The author found convincing evidence that, on average, trips low-income households made by rail transit covered a greater distance per hour than trips taken by bus transit, but that trips made on the county’s bus rapid transit services with dedicated rights-of-way had a higher mean speed than those taken by rail. Moreover, the mode and income cross-tabulations indicate that rail transit projects only partially serve low-income households’ travel needs. To the extent that equitable transit planning entails minimizing the disparities in access, both rail and bus rapid transit projects can advance social justice if they are targeted at corridors where they can serve travel demand by low-income, transit dependent households.

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