Using modeling and simulation users can apply realistic interactions with their synthetic environments representing real world. In this study the synthetic environment is a hardware railroad model representing a miniature replica of a full-size railroad system under study. The hardware model is tested by means of real-time adaptive software simulator consisting of two subsystems: the virtual ra...

The railroad industry is being challenged by recent state regulations requiring the disclosure of routing information of trains carrying hazardous materials (hazmat) to the general public. While there is a need to know, the dissemination of such information is contrary to both industry practice and Federal Railroad Administration (FRA) rules. The conundrum is that there needs to be disclosure t...

In January of 1979, a railroad tank car containing the chemical acrylonitrile started leaking at a rail yard in south suburban Chicago. The chemical was manufactured by American Cyanamid Co (Cyanamid) in Louisiana. Cyanamid had leased the tank car, filled it with acrylonitrile, and delivered it to the Missouri Pacific Railroad for transport to the Chicago suburbs. The leak occurred while the ca...

Abstract We exploit exogenous variation arising from the historical rollout of Swedish railroad network across municipalities to identify impacts improved transport infrastructure on innovative activity. A connection led a local surge in patenting due an increased entry and productivity inventors. As expanded, inventors connected areas began develop ideas with applications outside economy, whic...

A methodology is developed in this paper for evaluating and enhancing the performance of urban transportation systems in the aftermath of a disaster. A performance measure is proposed for assessing overall and distributional impacts based on the concept of accessibility. The methodology is demonstrated with two case studies. The first focuses on passenger railroad disruption in the catastrophic...

This paper estimates the effect of access to transportation networks on regional economic outcomes in China over a twenty-period of rapid income growth. It addresses the problem of the endogenous placement of networks by exploiting the fact that these networks tend to connect historical cities. Our results show that proximity to transportation networks have a moderate positive causal effect on ...