The smarter railroad
An opportunity for the railroad industry  
          By Keith Dierkx      

Global demand for rail services continues to outpace available capacity 

and infrastructure, while aging systems and traditional business practices 

limit tangible responses to address the problem. Rail executives are being 

presented with a mandate by society to build rail systems that are smarter. 

By embracing new and existing technologies to acquire, associate and 

analyze information across the rail network and using that information to 

become more efficient and effective, they can create a more responsive 

and agile operating environment.

A smart highway that charges your car

By Cleantechnica on 26 October 2012

There are a lot of cool smart highway designs going around, but Dutch designer Daan Roosegaarde and Heijmans Infrastructure just made me want to jump in the electric car and hit the road.

This smart highway design not only charges your car, but it will light the road, show you the weather and make you feel like you are driving in the future. The roads are treated with a special foto-luminising powder to create a glow in the dark pathways, so extra lighting is not needed. The powder is charged during the day and at night it illuminates the contours of the road for up to 10 hours.

To get a weather report to the driver, a dynamic paint is used to create a road surface that responds to temperature fluctuations. The dynamic paint, for example, in cold weather may produce ice crystals on the road to alert the driver of slick road conditions.

7 Ways Tesla Motors is Changing the Game By Riley Merkel, Contributor October 22, 2012   |      Though the company is less than 10 years old, Tesla Motors has made great strides in the automotive industry. The producer and innovator of electric, sustainable vehicles is changing the way we view cars and energy sources. Not convinced of Tesla Motors' vast potential? Take a look at these seven ways the company is already changing the auto game. 1. They’re making electric cars desirable And we don’t just mean desirable to people bent on saving the planet. Tesla’s electric cars are sleek and attractive, while providing power that you’d expect from a traditional, gas-guzzling sports sedan. The Model S, for example, has been compared to the Jaguar XF and the BMW 5-series. And it’s not at all dinky. The four-door vehicle can carry five adults, as well as two children in back jumpseats. Tesla is proving that electric cars can be just as functional and handle just as well as any other car, a necessary step if electric cars are ever going to make their way into the mainstream. 2. You don’t have to wait hours to charge up One of the major perceived drawbacks of electric cars is the fact that people feel like they’ll be out of luck with their battery runs out and they’re away from home. And while the answer isn’t available throughout the U.S. just yet, Tesla has addressed the concern with the roadside Supercharger. The free charging stations, which are currently being tested in six locations in California, can fully charge the Model S in an hour or so, and if you just plug in for a half hour, you’ll add 150 miles to your range. 3. The traditional dealership model is blown

China Plans to Rapidly Grow Its Urban Rail Systems

SEPTEMBER 29, 2012 BY NATHAN 

The central government of China has approved 25 new rail projects in cities across the country — in total, hundreds of billions of dollars in new construction.

As China’s growth has continued to slow, and the U.S. and Europe have continued to perform poorly economically, the leadership in China has decided to accelerate its plans for rapid transit networks throughout all its major cities as part of a larger transportation infrastructure program. More than $127 billion (or 800 billion yuan) is to be used over the next 3-8 years in order to create 25 new subways and elevated rail lines.

“Though China’s high-speed rail network (now the largest in the world) has garnered most of the headlines when it comes to transportation there, the nation’s investments in urban rail have been just as dramatic and serve far more people on a daily basis. Its three largest metropolitan areas — Guangzhou, Shanghai, and Beijing — feature the world’s fourth, fifth, and sixth most-used transit systems, providing more than five million rides each daily, more than similar networks in New York or Paris. Most of these cities’ lines opened since 2000.”

Clean Technica (http://s.tt/1oFR3)

British City Replacing Diesel Buses with Wirelessly Charging Electric Buses

SEPTEMBER 27, 2012 BY JOSHUA S HILL 

The British city of Milton Keynes is replacing the diesel buses on its Nº7 route with eight electric buses that will use wireless charging.

A five-year collaboration agreement committing to replacing diesel buses with all new electric ones was signed by eight separate organisations, led by a subsidiary of Mitsui & Co Europe. The bus routes should see the electric buses by the summer of 2013.

The wireless charging will allow the buses to charge when power transmitted from a primary coil buried in the road is picked up by a secondary coil on the bus, which needs spend only 10 minutes parked over a coil to replenish two-thirds of the energy consumed by the bus’s route.

Clean Technica (http://s.tt/1otrW)