Environmental Analysis of High-Speed Rail: Calendar

REC # TOPICS KEY DATES
R1 Project motivation and background
  • Growing environmental impacts of transportation, and shifts to faster modes
  • Congestion of the air transportation system
  • High-speed rail development in Europe and China
  • High-speed rail in the United States
 
R2 The case of California and the Northeast Corridor
  • Overview of the proposed California high-speed rail development and current air traffic
  • Overview of the Northeast Corridor: Rail and air transportation
  • Current controversies
  • Discussion on nonlinear behavior of these systems
 
R3 Full class recitation: Tutorial on Vensim  
R4 Demand forecasting and uncertainties
  • Introduction to demand forecasting
  • Current challenges and limitations
  • In-class exercises related to demand forecasting and uncertainty
 
R5 Full class recitation: Introduction to random variables, probability and statistics  
R6 Evaluating the environmental impacts of high-speed transportation
  • Introduction to high-speed rail and air transportation emissions impacts.
  • Discussion of the California case
  • Lifecycle emissions resources (e.g. databases for looking up emissions factors)
  • In-class exercises: example lifecycle emission calculations (for personal vehicles?)
Preliminary project assignment 1 due
R7 Full class recitation: Midterm project presentations  
R8 Network models of high-speed transportation
  • Overview of network models of rail and air transportation systems
  • Cooperation and competition between high-speed rail and aviation
  • Discussion on Northeast Corridor network
Preliminary project assignment 2 due
R9 Project feedback and discussion
  • Feedback on preliminary project assignment 1
  • Project discussion.
  • Guest lecture from Cambridge Systematics
 
R10 Project feedback and discussion
  • Feedback on preliminary project assignment 2
  • Discussion on stakeholders
Preliminary project assignment 3 due
R11 Project lab hours
  • Open lab time for students to work on projects
 
R12 Project lab hours
  • Open lab time for students to work on projects
Project paper draft