June 2007 Mechanical Engineering: Editorial

editorial

transportation explosion

By
John G. Falcioni,
Editor-in-Chief

They're getting ready to begin ripping rock here in New York City, and it's about time.

But unlike blasting rock to build foundations for tall skyscrapers, this time sandhogs will work with rock that's 140 feet beneath the corner of Second Avenue and 63rd Street in Manhattan. Sandhogs are crews of urban miners who blast out parts of the city's rocky core.

For years, one of the many political controversies encircling this metropolis has been the infamous 63rd Street tunnel that was intended to connect one of the country's busiest commuter systems, Long Island Rail Road, with Grand Central Terminal.

It has taken nearly 40 years for the tunnel-boring machines to continue what they started in the 1960s, and that's to extend an existing tunnel that has been partially dormant under the city and enable suburban commuters direct access to the East Side.

The recent push has been due, in part, to the pressures of overcrowding on the city's labyrinthine transit system. New York City has a legendary mass transit system that includes subways, buses, trains, vans, ferries, and a huge fleet of cabs. Without it, the metropolitan area would be difficult to navigate, especially during rush hours.

But while this area's above- and underground transit structure may be unique, matters of transportation and infrastructure are perplexing problems shared by planners throughout the country and around the world. Sure, efficient rail systems in Germany and Japan are often cited as models, but urban sprawl and its consequences for transportation systems are universal.

If moving passengers into and out of crowded areas like New York, Chicago, and Los Angeles isn't difficult enough, how does one successfully reach suburban and urban areas, and what about delivering freight in an ever-more-demanding and mobile global economy?

Considering the complexity of the world's current and often aging transportation infrastructures, one of the challenges is to develop efficient vehicles in order to make those systems work. Even while the development of new 555-passenger aircraft, 357-mph French trains, and 158,000-ton cruise liners garner many of the recent headlines, they won't help serve the biggest needs.

What will help, however, is what's going on in R&D centers that are developing new composite materials, and design techniques to manage fuel reduction. These are developments at the heart of improving overall transportation efficiencies.

Many are working to improve vehicles, or to fix cracks and other safety hazards on railroads (see Executive Editor Harry Hutchinson's article, "Right on Track," in this issue). Kudos also to China and California, which are actively considering high-speed trains to relieve pressure on local airports and roads. Because so many of us rely on transportation systems, matters of maintenance, infrastructure, and vehicle development must be dealt with concurrently.

Transportation is at the core of the world's economy, and its efficiencies, in the long run, speak to other global matters of great consequence, such as sustainability.

History chronicles William "Boss" Tweed, who died in 1878, as the leader of Tammany Hall, the name given to New York City's Democratic party machine that used patronage as a common business practice and wielded major power. Boss Tweed got things done—albeit not in the most aboveboard way. But not even Boss Tweed could find a sure way to deal with the magnitude of today's transportation revolution, I'm afraid. So it looks like it's up to the engineers.