The Geography of Transport Systems
The Geography of Transport Systems

Author: Jean-Paul Rodrigue

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2013-07-18

Total Pages: 432

ISBN-13: 1136777326

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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.

Show-Me Katy
Show-Me Katy

Author: Michael A. Landis

Publisher:

Published: 2018

Total Pages: 176

ISBN-13: 9780692990483

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A comprehensive, colorful look at the Missouri-Kansas-Texas "Katy" Railroad's route linking Parsons, Kansas with Sedalia, Missouri and St. Louis, Missouri. Also included are lines to El Dorado Springs; Moberly; Columbia; and Kansas City. With a special emphasis on the 1970s and 1980s, the book features more than 350 train photographs; detailed maps; and interviews with former employees. A town-by-town rundown highlights points of interest along the corridor, most of which became the Katy Trail State Park.

The Railroads of San Antonio and South Central Texas
The Railroads of San Antonio and South Central Texas

Author: Hugh Hemphill

Publisher: Maverick Books

Published: 2006

Total Pages: 0

ISBN-13: 9781893271395

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As Toyota scouted the nation in 2002 for a new plant location, a San Antonio site?s proximity to two rail lines clinched the decision. It was the city?s greatest economic breakthrough in recent years. Of even greater effect was arrival of the first railroad a century and a quarter earlier, launching the region?s first major growth.These are among the landmark events outlined in The Railroads of San Antonio and South Central Texas, the first general interest book to sort out the regional operations and impact of seven rail lines: the Galveston, Harrisburg & San Antonio/Southern Pacific; International & Great Northern/Missouri Pacific; San Antonio & Aransas Pass; San Antonio & Gulf Shore/San Antonio & Gulf; Missouri?Kansas?Texas; Artesian Belt/San Antonio Southern; and the San Antonio, Uvalde & Gulf. There is a closing chapter on Amtrak and the Union Pacific.Written by Hugh Hemphill, longtime director of the Texas Transportation Museum in San Antonio, this lavishly-illustrated book is vital to understanding the evolution of an important link in the nation?s transportation system.Included are five appendices that codify data, ranging from an index of towns and the railroads serving them to a listing of surviving depots to a summary of regional railroad museums and tourist railroads.

Waiting on a Train
Waiting on a Train

Author: James McCommons

Publisher: Chelsea Green Publishing

Published: 2009-11-06

Total Pages: 306

ISBN-13: 1603582592

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During the tumultuous year of 2008--when gas prices reached $4 a gallon, Amtrak set ridership records, and a commuter train collided with a freight train in California--journalist James McCommons spent a year on America's trains, talking to the people who ride and work the rails throughout much of the Amtrak system. Organized around these rail journeys, Waiting on a Train is equal parts travel narrative, personal memoir, and investigative journalism. Readers meet the historians, railroad executives, transportation officials, politicians, government regulators, railroad lobbyists, and passenger-rail advocates who are rallying around a simple question: Why has the greatest railroad nation in the world turned its back on the very form of transportation that made modern life and mobility possible? Distrust of railroads in the nineteenth century, overregulation in the twentieth, and heavy government subsidies for airports and roads have left the country with a skeletal intercity passenger-rail system. Amtrak has endured for decades, and yet failed to prosper owing to a lack of political and financial support and an uneasy relationship with the big, remaining railroads. While riding the rails, McCommons explores how the country may move passenger rail forward in America--and what role government should play in creating and funding mass-transportation systems. Against the backdrop of the nation's stimulus program, he explores what it will take to build high-speed trains and transportation networks, and when the promise of rail will be realized in America.

Rails Around Houston
Rails Around Houston

Author: Douglas L. Weiskopf

Publisher: Arcadia Publishing

Published: 2009

Total Pages: 132

ISBN-13: 9780738558844

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Several railroads were chartered by the Republic of Texas, but the first line built was the Buffalo Bayou, Brazos and Colorado, which began construction near the Port of Houston Turning Basin in 1851. The BBB&C would become the oldest segment of the countryas first transcontinental railroad under sole ownership: the Southern Pacificas Sunset Route, connecting New Orleans and Los Angeles and completed in 1883. By the time oil was discovered near Beaumont in 1901, Houston was such a transportation hub that it became the heart of the petrochemical industry. Houston saw narrow-gauge lines, two interurban lines, light rail, and even a monorail. For many years, the chamber of commerce proudly proclaimed that Houston was the place awhere seventeen railroads meet the sea.a More than 30 beautiful trains with names like Sunset Limited, Sunbeam, Sam Houston Zephyr, Twin Star Rocket, Bluebonnet, Texas Rocket, and Texas Chief would serve three depots.

The Texas Railroad Commission
The Texas Railroad Commission

Author: William R. Childs

Publisher: Texas A&M University Press

Published: 2005

Total Pages: 350

ISBN-13: 9781585444526

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Before OPEC took center stage, one state agency in Texas was widely believed to set oil prices for the world. The Texas Railroad Commission (TRC) evolved from its founding in 1891 to a multi-divisional regulatory commission that oversaw not only railroads but also a number of other industries central to the modern American economy: petroleum production, natural gas utilities, and motor carriers (buses and trucks). William R. Childs's unprecedented study of the TRC from its founding until the mid-twentieth century extends our knowledge of commission-style regulation. It focuses on the interplay between business and regulators, between state and national regulatory commissions, and among the three branches of government through a process of "pragmatic federalism." Drawing on extensive primary research, Childs demonstrates that the alleged power of regulatory commissions has been more constrained than most observers have recognized. As he shows, the myth of power was devised by the agency itself as part of building a civil religion of Texas oil. Together, the myth and the civil religion enabled the TRC to convince Texas oil operators to follow production controls and thus stabilized the American oil industry by the 1940s. The result of this fascinating study is a more nuanced understanding of federalism and of regulation, the forces shaping it, and its outcomes.