"TRB's National Cooperative Highway Research Program (NCHRP) Report 755: Comprehensive Costs of Highway-Rail Grade Crossing Crashes describes a process for estimating the costs of highway-rail grade crossing crashes. A spreadsheet-based tool to facilitate use of the cost estimation process is available online." --Publisher description.
HIGHWAY-RAIL GRADE CROSSING IDENTIFICATION AND PRIORITIZING MODEL DEVELOPMENT Highway-Rail Grade Crossing Identification and Prioritizing Model Development develops an optimization model and heuristic. This seminal work expertly allocates monetary resources between public highway-rail grade crossings in the State of Tennessee. Highway-Rail Grade Crossing Identification and Prioritizing Model Development applies particular countermeasures. These countermeasures aim to decrease the total number of severe to fatal road accidents with respect to budget available.
This book offers a timely collection of articles on innovative research and developments in the vast field of rail transport, including rail operations, management, economics, vehicles interior design and sustainable infrastructure. It addresses academics and professionals specializing in railway transport analysis, innovation, systems design and new technology. Continuing on the tradition of the previous volumes, the book reports on innovative solutions for energy saving, noise reduction and baggage handling. It elaborates on the implementation of digital technologies and discusses sustainable rail operations along transport corridors. The concept of hyperloop is also discussed as a possible transport mode of the future. All the contributions were selected through an internal competition and a double-blinded peer review process organized by the RailUniNet members
The American public has a fascination with railroad wrecks that goes back a long way. One hundred years ago, staged railroad accidents were popular events. At the Iowa State fair in 1896, 89,000 people paid $20 each, at current prices, to see two trains, throttles wide open, collide with each other. "Head-on Joe" Connolly made a business out of "cornfield meets" holding seventy-three events in thirty-six years. Picture books of train wrecks do good business presumably because a train wreck can guarantee a spectacular destruction of property without the messy loss of life associated with aircraft accidents. A "train wreck" has also entered the popular vocabulary in a most unusual way. When political manoeuvering leads to failure to pass the federal budget, and a shutdown is likely of government services, this is widely called a "train wreck. " In business and team sports, bumbling and lack of coordination leading to a spectacular and public failure to perform is also called "causing a train wreck. " A person or organization who is disorganized may be labelled a "train wreck. " It is therefore not surprising that the public perception of the safety of railroads centers on images of twisted metal and burning tank cars, and a general feeling that these events occur quite often. After a series of railroad accidents, such as occurred in the winter of 1996 or the summer of 1997, there are inevitable calls that government "should do something.
