What’s Better for the Environment: Raising the Gas Tax or Fuel-Efficiency Standards?

http://www.infrastructurist.com/2011/08/25/whats-better-for-the-environment-raising-the-gas-tax-or-fuel-efficiency-standards/

Down the Drain: Infrastructure Needs a Cheering Section

http://www.commonwealthmagazine.org/Voices/Perspective/2011/Summer/001-Down-the-drain.aspx

Infrastructure must adapt to protect economic growth from the threat of climate change

http://www.defra.gov.uk/news/2011/05/09/infrastructure-climate-change/

The past as prologue: US passenger rail service in the last half-century

To commemorate the 40th anniversary of Amtrak's start of operations, the editors at Greater Greater Washington have compiled a slideshow visually documenting the evolution of passenger rail service since the early 1960s. Here are a few snapshots of recent history in US passenger rail transport.

For some perspective on precipitous decline in the US passenger rail sector during the 1960s, compare the two maps above, less than a decade apart. Such loss was particularly steep in the Northern Plains, where passenger service on the relatively heavily-travelled mainlines of the early 1960s and prior was in many cases reduced to no more than one train with two lightly loaded carriages daily by the late 1960s.

Note how the network became 'rationalized' by comparing the above map with the 1970 one, illustrating the government takeover of passenger rail service between passage of the Rail Passenger Service Act and the first run of an Amtrak train, which was the Clockers service between Philadelphia and New York (now branded along with its connecting routes as Northeast Regional, a slower but cheaper alternative to Acela Express). Sixty percent of cities with passenger rail service lost it when private rail companies save for a few such as Southern and Denver, Rio Grande and Western (though both ultimately turned their passenger operations to Amtrak within a decade of its creation) relieved themselves of the passenger carrier business.

Other than frequency increases and scheduling improvements since 2000, as well as the replacement of Metroliner with Acela along the Northeast Corridor, the present state of Amtrak rail service is not much different from its 1971 state. Given the sparse network, a low modal share for passenger rail is quite understandable, with the implication that increasing frequency and coverage of service appears a reasonable remedy.

A 'ConnDOT Super 7-like' case in the making, or merely ignorance of lessons from the economic crisis?

According to a news release in Next American City this weekend, the Sierra Club recently charged that the sponsors of a third orbital motorway for Houston, the Grand Parkway, "purposely constrained “the purpose and need” section of the plan to preclude the no-build option" and that "the environmental assessment ignored the impact of induced growth" (Schmitt). Schmitt also notes that the proponents of project, while acknowledging that the new motorway is not necessary, make a 'build-it-and-they-will-come' argument in its favour, quite unabashedly making the case that sprawl is inevitable in a few decades due to people moving to Texas to buy larger houses and hence enjoy a higher quality of life. We can only hope that they assume the federal government will succeed in its attempts to resuscitate the housing market and return the economy to the debt, consumption, and sprawl-based growth trajectory of the past three decades, a scenario that the triple convergence of rising energy costs, demographic change, and unsustainable debts and deficits would render highly unlikely.

The airship as a low-carbon replacement for freighter jets

The Daily Climate provides an overview of recent interest in airships for transporting goods, citing Lockheed Martin's prototype as a candidate for commercialization in the near future.

Something may happen in Chinese policy making process

the Chinese government sacked its railway minister Liu Zhijun and announced he is under investigation.

http://articles.timesofindia.indiatimes.com/2011-02-12/china/28542642_1_railway-minister-announcements-liu-zhijun

Feb 12, 2011

After this news,
China slow HSR

http://www.dailytech.com/China+Slows+High+Speed+Trains+Amid+Reports+of+Shoddy+Construction/article21489.htm

April 28, 2011

This link is also interesting
http://nextbigfuture.com/2011/05/china-high-speed-rail-impact-on-china.html