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Megaregion Planning and High-Speed Rail

2020-05-18 21:43:39 | 日記
下面51due教员组为大家整理一篇优秀的代写范文- Megaregion Planning and High-Speed Rail,供大家参考学习。这篇文章讲述的是巨型区域规划和高铁在美国新兴的巨型区域的背景下,主要研究了过去十年中高铁的状况。通过东北大区域的例子,作者向我们展示了经济发展如何将大都市变成昂贵,人口稠密和拥挤的地方。因此,大区域为高铁规划提供了适当的空间和经济规模(Todorovich,262)。与州际公路和机场不同,高铁系统在经过经济活动的高人口密度大都市区时表现最佳。此外,对欧洲高铁规划的评估对美国决策者也具有重要意义(Todorovich,263)。此后,纽约州区域计划协会(RPA)推出了“美国2050”计划,该计划将高铁确定为主要交通投资(Todorovich,261)。
Megaregion Planning and High-Speed Rail

Author: Petra Todorovich

Megaregion Planning and High-Speed Rail mainly examines the status of high-speed rail (HSR) over the past decade, within the context of emerging megaregions in the United States. By the example of Northeast Megaregion, the author shows us how the economic development turned the metropolitans into expensive, densely populated, and congested places. Therefore, Megaregions offer an appropriate spatial and economic scale for HSR planning (Todorovich, 262). Unlike the interstate roads and the airports, the HSR system performs best while passing through high-population-density metropolitan areas with economic activity. In addition, the assessment of high-speed rail planning in Europe has a significant implication for U.S. policymakers (Todorovich, 263). The New York-based Regional Plan Association’s (RPA) America 2050 program launched after that, which identified the HSR as the key transportation investment (Todorovich, 261). This chapter is divided into three parts: the megaregion idea, the emerging megaregion, megaregion and HRS. Petra Todorovich proposes that the HSR is necessary to consider in providing connectivity and mobility within megaregions and must be motivated by grants, to realize the integrated Megaregion economy.

The megaregion and HSR strategy implements the concept of external scale economies, especially the agglomeration economies of scale. A regional focus on HSR planning causes it allows geographic entities to harness the strengths of multiple economic sectors and the local community, providing advantages that individual metropolitan centers cannot achieve. The HSR strategy also implements the concepts of labor markets, knowledge economy, and technology. By collapsing travel times between urban centers, HSR could broaden the employment pool for workers while they have more housing and commute options (Todorovich, 267). The labor pooling will boost the productivity of service and bring more knowledge-sector workers. The government’s efforts and investments in HSR also develop the public-private partnership. Therefore, economic integration and transportation interplays deepen labor markets for businesses and foster economic synergies among industries. By freeing up capacity on overcrowded areas, the economy increases the capacity for growth, providing more efficient utilization for existing assets, such as interstate highways, airports, and freight rail (Todorovich, 267). Therefore, the economy could approach its equilibrium. By the end of chapter, the author evaluates the economic effects of transport infrastructure, which could generates real estate opportunities around rail stations and makes business for transportation-oriented development (Todorovich, 267).
While economic benefit is the main advantage of megaregion and HSR planning, Petra Todorovich addresses another two advantages: safety and reliability and environmental friendly. HSR not only owns shorter times and safety but also brings more energy efficient and low carbon modes of transportation (Todorovich, 263). The role of new technology is to increase the demand for sustainable mobility systems, clean energy sources, emerging megaregions, and markets.
Even the megaregion planning and HSR strategy have economic benefits, both of them face public policy issues and economic disequilibrium from different aspects. First of all, metropolitan regions currently undertake several public policy issues: the expensive living cost, the growing social and economic disparities, and overburdened and deteriorating infrastructure systems, and the rapid growth of population (Todorovich, 263). To capture the benefits of above issues, the America 2050 program addressed a plan without precedent at two scales: policymakers and funding, while the leadership required for the plan and facilitate partnerships needed to meet the challenges (Todorovich, 263). Although the federal government has already made several attempts on HSR, projects such as Northeast Corridor, was barely considered for the grant because of the frustratingly technical reason: the length of projects, that none of the projects could be completed within two years (Todorovich, 266). The overdue project would trigger another new corridor-wide environmental impact statement (EIS), which is necessary for HRS grant (Todorovich, 266). Overall, The federal government still has no structured policy framework and dedicated funding for the HRS planning. They face the claim that the high cost of HSR makes it a hard way of achieving the supposed economic growth.
Petra mentions on several funding, for example “congress passed $13 billion on Amtrak” and “commit the high-speed rail program with another $2.5 billion” (Todorovich, 265),to emphasize that funding plays a tremendous role in megaregion planning but isn’t being used properly and efficiently. While there is no panel data in the chapter, the author uses one figure and several numbers to point out the importance of megaregions and HRS planning. Figure 24.1. Emerging Megaregions of the United States draws major metropolitan areas of the U.S (Todorovich, 265), showing the connecting major population and job centers in Megaregion. By addressing the number of population , such as “add 130 million additional Americans by 2050” (Todorovich, 263), the author believes that megaregion planning will benefit regions by facilitating the common regional issues. She also mentions about “Eleven emerging U.S. megaregions capture over 70 percent of the nation’s population and jobs” (Todorovich, 263), that current transportation is already operating at capacity. Under this circumstance, it is crucial to understand the economic and transportation “pressing needs”.
In my opinion, the role of HSR in the process of economic development and integration still remains controversial, even the author mentioned several times about how HSR systems create capacity for growth in the congested megaregions. This is often undeniable that HSR is a compelling innovation option to improve growing social and economic disparities at a massive scale and significantly enhance the economies of localization (Todorovich, 263). Even though, the key issue remains unaddressed for me: Will HSR achieve supposed economic impacts and benefits? Is HSR the only way to complete megaregion planning? On the hand, extensive funding for the airport systems and interstate highways in the U.S. has made HSR hard to compete with, even with additional grants or investments (Ashiabor & Wei, 29).On the other hand, the author didn’t present enough panel data to study the accessibility impacts of HSR on the development of new metropolitan areas in each HSR city. Hence, I may find more evidences and details to identify if HSR could make wider economic impacts as expect.

Works Cited
Ashiabor, S., & Wei, W. (2012) Advancing High-Speed Rail Policy in the United States.

Todorovich, P. (2011). In Regional Planning for a Sustainable America : How Creative Programs Are Promoting Prosperity and Saving the Environment (pp. 261–267).


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