Governments must ensure that transport infrastructure is developed with the ability to cope with current and future climatic shifts.
New York’s Metropolitan Transportation Authority was hit hard by a 79% ridership reduction during the pandemic. It needs an extra $8 billion through 2024 to avoid service cuts and layoffs.
Spencer Platt/Getty Images
Transit agencies could use the money to buy new subway cars, buses and maintain rails. The funding is designed to build on last year’s emergency aid, which kept transit operating through the pandemic.
The Port of Savannah used to export cotton picked by enslaved laborers and brought from Alabama to Georgia on slave-built railways. Cotton is still a top product processed through this port.
Joe Sohm/Visions of America/Universal Images Group via Getty Images
Geographers are documenting slave-built infrastructure, from railroads to ports, in use today. Such work could influence the reparations debate by showing how slavery still props up the US economy.
A review of all public road and rail projects worth $20 million or more and completed since 2001 reveals a 21% cost overrun. Worryingly, costs of bigger projects blew out more often and by more.
The UK cannot wait 30 years for a modern rail network.
In this March 2019 photo, rescuers work at the scene of an Ethiopian Airlines Boeing 737 Max crash south of Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. Deregulation is playing a role in transportation disasters.
AP Photo/Mulugeta Ayene
High-profile rail and aerospace disasters of recent years have been the deadly consequence of the systematic erosion of safety precautions due to deregulation.
Electric trains use seven times less carbon dioxide than cars. With careful planning, railways could drastically cut emissions from a sector that now accounts for a quarter of the carbon in our air.
George Eliot (1819-1880), aged 30.
Alexandre-Louis-François d'Albert-Durade/National Portrait Gallery
It’s hotter and more crowded on the Underground but some things have got better for commuters.
A proposed new train in Mexico would connect the archaeological site of Chichen Itza, on the Yucatan Peninsula, easier to reach from Cancun.
REUTERS/Mauricio Marat/National Institute of Anthropology and History
An ambitious new train would link resorts like Cancun to inland ancient ruins and colonial towns. That means laying rail across 932 miles of dense jungle, pristine beach and indigenous villages.
Eskom and Iscor were formed to feed the railway network’s need for cheap electricity and steel.
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Though formed by the state, Eskom and Iscor enjoyed very little state support in their infancy. To survive, they had to cooperate with the private sector companies they were meant to compete with.
Driverless cars will form a fast, efficient transport network, which will make car ownership redundant. But they could also spell the end of public transport.
The problem of unsafe drinking water afflicts poor communities most.
Reuters/Carlos Barria
Just as America’s highways, sewage systems and water pipes need fixing, so does the growing gap between rich and poor. Trump and the Democrats could use that money to address both.
The world’s first commercial hydrogen-fuelled train in Germany.
David Hecker/EPA
Professor in Transport and Supply Chain Management and Deputy Director, Institute of Transport and Logistics Studies (ITLS), University of Sydney Business School, University of Sydney