News>>Weekly Seminar

Wednesday, November 4, 2009
2:30-3:30 p.m. in 406 Davis

"High Speed Rail and Air: What We Do Know and What We Do Not Know" Presented by Matthew A. Coogan,
Director of the New England Transportation Institute

What do we know about the predicted impact of high speed rail (HSR) on the rest of the multimodal transportation system? What are the diversions from air that are expected? What are the implications of such diversions from air to rail for relieving airport congestion, based on the American experience to date? What are the potential roles for rail to actually complement longer distance aviation system by providing shorter distance feeders services to airports? The presentation will review new, unpublished data concerning the role of high speed rail in providing complementary feeder services in two case studies from the Frankfurt International Airport, as well as providing a review of presently existing complementary services in the United States. The presentation will present a comparison of the expected impact of potential high speed rail systems in the California mega-region and the Northeast mega-region, from New England to Washington DC. Summaries of existing short/moderate distance trip making will be reviewed, comparing both the volume and the mode of short distance trip making in the two regions. Brief summaries will be created about the scale of demand for short/moderate distance HSR rail in the United States as compared with successful operations in Europe. The presentation will summarize the evident implications for the future of multi-modal and multi-jurisdictional planning in the two coastal mega-regions. Proposed actions to improve the quality of tools for the planning and analysis of longer distanced multi-modal investment strategies will be discussed.

Bio: Matthew Coogan, Director of the New England Transportation Institute, is a worldwide expert in the study of intermodal strategies and solutions for longer distance passenger transportation. He is the lead author of the Airport Cooperative Research Program’s (ACRP) Report # 4, Ground Access to Major Airport by Public Transportation and currently serves as Principal Investigator for ACRP Project 3-10, Innovative Approaches to Addressing Aviation Capacity in Coastal Mega-regions: Final Report. Most recently he authored the study A Regional Context for Intercity Passenger Rail Improvements in the Northeast, for the Coalition of Northeast Governors (CONEG); in the 1980’s Mr. Coogan founded and Co-chaired the CONEG Task Force on High Speed Rail, a group which lobbied for increased Federal investment in High Speed Rail. He is a founding member of the Board of Directors of the International Air/Rail Organization, based in London.

Open to the public and free.

Sponsors include the Transportation Graduate Students' Organizing Committee (TRANSOC), GA, the Institute of Transportation Studies, the University of California Transportation Center and the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, University of California at Berkeley.

(Previous Seminar announcements in the ITS News Archive.)