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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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R12 | Project lab hours
- Open lab time for students to work on projects
| Project paper draft |