Intermodality

This Thursday and Friday, Houston Tomorrow is sponsoring a conference on “Megaregions and MetroProsperity.”
The America 2050 initiative explains:

As metropolitan regions continued to expand throughout the second half of the 20th century their boundaries began to blur, creating a new scale of geography now known as the megaregion. Interlocking economic systems, shared natural resources [...]

In 1985, 7 U.S. cities had commuter rail systems. Today, 14 (including Salt Lake City, above) do. Those new starts differed in significant ways — especially in level of service — from the existing systems. But now we may be seeing a third generation of commuter rail. The good news is that it offers more frequent and more reliable service. The bad news is that it costs more.

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It’s Labor Day. The summer is over and, sooner or later, the public is going to start paying attention to the Houston mayoral race.
The mayor of Houston is one of two local elected officials — the other is the Harris County Judge — who can get media attention pretty much whenever they want. Thus, in [...]

Carolyn Feibel has a great piece in the Chronicle on freight rail. Not only does it take a big big picture look at transportation — which doesn’t happen very often — but it focuses on freight, not people.
Where ever you are, look around. We are all outnumbered by stuff: food, clothes, gadgets, appliances, furniture, building [...]