Rethinking America's Highways

Rethinking America's Highways
Author: Robert W. Poole
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
Total Pages: 376
Release: 2018-08-03
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 022655760X

A transportation expert makes a provocative case for changing the nation’s approach to highways, offering “bold, innovative thinking on infrastructure” (Rick Geddes, Cornell University). Americans spend hours every day sitting in traffic. And the roads they idle on are often rough and potholed, with exits, tunnels, guardrails, and bridges in terrible disrepair. According to transportation expert Robert Poole, this congestion and deterioration are outcomes of the way America manages its highways. Our twentieth-century model overly politicizes highway investment decisions, short-changing maintenance and often investing in projects whose costs exceed their benefits. In Rethinking America’s Highways, Poole examines how our current model of state-owned highways came about and why it is failing to satisfy its customers. He argues for a new model that treats highways themselves as public utilities—like electricity, telephones, and water supply. If highways were provided commercially, Poole argues, people would pay for highways based on how much they used, and the companies would issue revenue bonds to invest in facilities people were willing to pay for. Arguing for highway investments to be motivated by economic rather than political factors, this book makes a carefully-reasoned and well-documented case for a new approach to highways.

Principles of Highway Engineering and Traffic Analysis

Principles of Highway Engineering and Traffic Analysis
Author: Fred L. Mannering
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
Total Pages: 418
Release: 2020-07-08
Genre: Technology & Engineering
ISBN: 1119723191

Highly regarded for its clarity and depth of coverage, the bestselling Principles of Highway Engineering and Traffic Analysis provides a comprehensive introduction to the highway-related problems civil engineers encounter every day. Emphasizing practical applications and up-to-date methods, this book prepares students for real-world practice while building the essential knowledge base required of a transportation professional. In-depth coverage of highway engineering and traffic analysis, road vehicle performance, traffic flow and highway capacity, pavement design, travel demand, traffic forecasting, and other essential topics equips students with the understanding they need to analyze and solve the problems facing America’s highway system. This new Seventh Edition features a new e-book format that allows for enhanced pedagogy, with instant access to solutions for selected problems. Coverage focuses exclusively on highway transportation to reflect the dominance of U.S. highway travel and the resulting employment opportunities, while the depth and scope of coverage is designed to prepare students for success on standardized civil engineering exams.

Road Engineering for Development

Road Engineering for Development
Author: Richard Robinson
Publisher: CRC Press
Total Pages: 539
Release: 2018-10-09
Genre: Technology & Engineering
ISBN: 1482288206

Developing countries in the tropics have different natural conditions and different institutional and financial situations to industrialized countries. However, most textbooks on highway engineering are based on experience from industrialized countries with temperate climates, and deal only with specific problems. Road Engineering for Development (published as Highway and Traffic Engineering in Developing Countries in its first edition) provides a comprehensive description of the planning, design, construction and maintenance of roads in developing countries. It covers a wide range of technical and non-technical problems that may confront road engineers working in this area. The technical content of the book has been fully updated and current development issues are focused on. Designed as a fundamental text for civil engineering students this book also offers a broad, practical view of the subject for practising engineers. It has been written with the assistance of a number of world-renowned specialist professional engineers with many years experience in Africa, the Middle East, Asia and Central America.

The Road Ahead

The Road Ahead
Author: Philip Tarnoff
Publisher: Strategic Book Publishing
Total Pages: 197
Release: 2011
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 1612045324

America's future depends on a vibrant highway system capable of supporting industry and the travel needs of its citizens. The country's highway system can trace its roots to the movements of major armies in colonial times, such as British General Braddock using George Washington's assistance in a disastrous attack of French forces defending Ft. Duquesne. These early roads developed into the engineering marvels of today's modern highway system. But this system is in serious trouble. Inadequate funding and poor management are responsible for its gradual deterioration, and along with it, the U.S. economy. A broad range of solutions can solve this problem, some of which involve transforming public transportation agencies into privately operated utilities. Many of these exciting solutions also offer the potential to solve America's funding problems. This book is must-reading for anyone concerned with America's future, as it shows us The Road Ahead... About the Author: Philip Tarnoff received an electrical engineering degree from Carnegie Mellon University and a master's degree from New York University. He is retired from his most recent full-time job as director of a research center at the University of Maryland. Tarnoff was the president of a major transportation systems integrator and is currently working part-time as a consultant. He is also chairman of the board of a start-up company that produces devices for measuring traffic flow. He lives in Rockville, Maryland http: //SBPRA.com/PhilipTarnoff

The Road Taken

The Road Taken
Author: Henry Petroski
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
Total Pages: 337
Release: 2016-02-16
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 1632863618

A renowned historian and engineer explores the past, present, and future of America's crumbling infrastructure. Acclaimed engineer and historian Henry Petroski explores our core infrastructure from both historical and contemporary perspectives, explaining how essential their maintenance is to America's economic health. Petroski reveals the genesis of the many parts of America's highway system--our interstate numbering system, the centerline that divides roads, and such taken-for-granted objects as guardrails, stop signs, and traffic lights--all crucial to our national and local infrastructure. A compelling work of history, The Road Taken is also an urgent clarion call aimed at American citizens, politicians, and anyone with a vested interest in our economic well-being. Physical infrastructure in the United States is crumbling, and Petroski reveals the complex and challenging interplay between government and industry inherent in major infrastructure improvement. The road we take in the next decade toward rebuilding our aging infrastructure will in large part determine our future national prosperity.

Roads to Power

Roads to Power
Author: Jo Guldi
Publisher: Harvard University Press
Total Pages: 285
Release: 2012-01-01
Genre: Technology & Engineering
ISBN: 0674264134

Roads to Power tells the story of how Britain built the first nation connected by infrastructure, how a libertarian revolution destroyed a national economy, and how technology caused strangers to stop speaking. In early eighteenth-century Britain, nothing but dirt track ran between most towns. By 1848 the primitive roads were transformed into a network of highways connecting every village and island in the nation—and also dividing them in unforeseen ways. The highway network led to contests for control over everything from road management to market access. Peripheries like the Highlands demanded that centralized government pay for roads they could not afford, while English counties wanted to be spared the cost of underwriting roads to Scotland. The new network also transformed social relationships. Although travelers moved along the same routes, they occupied increasingly isolated spheres. The roads were the product of a new form of government, the infrastructure state, marked by the unprecedented control bureaucrats wielded over decisions relating to everyday life. Does information really work to unite strangers? Do markets unite nations and peoples in common interests? There are lessons here for all who would end poverty or design their markets around the principle of participation. Guldi draws direct connections between traditional infrastructure and the contemporary collapse of the American Rust Belt, the decline of American infrastructure, the digital divide, and net neutrality. In the modern world, infrastructure is our principal tool for forging new communities, but it cannot outlast the control of governance by visionaries.

Safe Passages

Safe Passages
Author: Jon P. Beckmann
Publisher: Island Press
Total Pages: 419
Release: 2012-04-20
Genre: Science
ISBN: 1597269670

Safe Passages brings together in a single volume the latest information on the emerging science of road ecology as it relates to mitigating interactions between roads and wildlife. This practical handbook of tools and examples is designed to assist individuals and organizations thinking about or working toward reducing road-wildlife impacts. The book provides: an overview of the importance of habitat connectivity with regard to roads current planning approaches and technologies for mitigating the impacts of highways on both terrestrial and aquatic species different facets of public participation in highway-wildlife connectivity mitigation projects case studies from partnerships across North America that highlight successful on-the-ground implementation of ecological and engineering solutions recent innovative highway-wildlife mitigation developments Detailed case studies span a range of scales, from site-specific wildlife crossing structures, to statewide planning for habitat connectivity, to national legislation. Contributors explore the cooperative efforts that are emerging as a result of diverse organizations—including transportation agencies, land and wildlife management agencies, and nongovernmental organizations—finding common ground to tackle important road ecology issues and problems. Safe Passages is an important new resource for local-, state-, and national-level managers and policymakers working on road-wildlife issues, and will appeal to a broad audience including scientists, agency personnel, planners, land managers, transportation consultants, students, conservation organizations, policymakers, and citizens engaged in road-wildlife mitigation projects.

Airport Engineering

Airport Engineering
Author: Norman J. Ashford
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
Total Pages: 770
Release: 2011-04-06
Genre: Technology & Engineering
ISBN: 1118005473

First published in 1979, Airport Engineering by Ashford and Wright, has become a classic textbook in the education of airport engineers and transportation planners. Over the past twenty years, construction of new airports in the US has waned as construction abroad boomed. This new edition of Airport Engineering will respond to this shift in the growth of airports globally, with a focus on the role of the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO), while still providing the best practices and tested fundamentals that have made the book successful for over 30 years.