Long-distance Transportation Infrastructure in a Climate-constrained Future: Reliable High-speed Rail Service for Economic Growth

The research project will develop a life cycle framework for prioritizing resiliency upgrades to high-speed rail (HSR) systems in the face of future climate change. Improving HSR resilience will create opportunities for growing future passenger travel thereby having direct positive impacts on economic growth. There are no methods for assessing HSR infrastructure deployment options for future service that may or may not be impacted by extreme events. Plans to deploy HSR in the US have been fraught with technical, economic, political, social, and legal challenges that generally result in the selection of a few alignment options for each region. The potential for extreme events like flooding or disruptions to electricity provision from water-constrained thermo-electric generation have not been considered. As a result, there exist no robust infrastructure design framework that would allow researchers and practitioners to understand how upfront investments that may reduce the vulnerability of HSR to extreme events may result in upfront costs but may also lead to less impacted future rail service. The project intends to develop this framework. The implementation will be in the form of a life-cycle resiliency model and methodological framework for policy and decision makers.

Language

  • English

Project

  • Status: Completed
  • Funding: $80000.00
  • Contract Numbers:

    DTRT13-G-UTC30

  • Sponsor Organizations:

    National Transportation Center @ Maryland

    1173 Glenn L. Martin Hall
    University of Maryland
    College Park, Maryland  United States  20742
  • Project Managers:

    Zhang, Lei

  • Performing Organizations:

    Arizona State University, Tempe

    Tempe, AZ  United States 
  • Principal Investigators:

    Chester, Mikhail

  • Start Date: 20140401
  • Expected Completion Date: 0
  • Actual Completion Date: 20150430
  • Source Data: RiP Project 37164

Subject/Index Terms

Filing Info

  • Accession Number: 01575255
  • Record Type: Research project
  • Source Agency: National Transportation Center @ Maryland
  • Contract Numbers: DTRT13-G-UTC30
  • Files: UTC, RIP
  • Created Date: Sep 1 2015 1:43AM