The CityRail website discusses the environmental benefits of Sydney’s rail service compared to other modes of transportation in Australia. Over one million people travel to and from one of the train’s 307 stations daily. The rail consists of 1,595 km of track and a fleet of over 1650 carriages. The site lists several reasons as to why traveling by rail compared to other types of transportation remains better for the environment. Some arguments include energy consumption, carbon emissions, efficiency, cost, safety, community benefits, and climate change initiatives. With a straightforward set-up and quick-read style, the website produces quick knowledge for not just the Sydney rail network but environmental railway facts in general.

One of my favorite aspects of the site, the carbon calculator, can calculate the carbon emissions of your travel to and from any destination, and compare these numbers to other types of transportation including bus, small car, and large car. From playing around with the calculator, the benefits of taking the rail system became staggering when comparing carbon emissions.

Although the website provides great information about environmental benefits of the rail system, it does not include any of the negative effects rail systems can have on the environment. This may be because the CityRail Company produces the site, and they use the website to promote their business.  However, the site remains useful for those looking to explore the environmental benefits of rail transportation compared to other forms.

While there are many websites claiming to be environmental blogs, there is only one that can be THE environmental blog. While discussing a range of environmental issues, I found the transit section of the website to be especially diverse in the scope of its topics. This is promising, as the blog aims to present a variety of information about road and rail, ranging from academic studies to government plans, or the latest green technologies to tips for greener living. The blog is run by a small group of contributors with expertise in their respective fields.

Given the diversity of topics, citations in each of their posts can lead readers to easily explore ideas of interest in more detail. Even though the diversity of topics is so wide, the specific but varied nature of the posts don’t make it seem to broad of a blog. Rather, the frequent updates make it a wealth of information that viewers can search for whatever particular interests they may have. The information is accurate, accessible, and relevant. People interested in any environmental topic will find something worthwhile here.

My favorite post so far? “Blimps are making a comeback as a viable alternative to airplanes…” FINALLY! 

The Bloomingdale Trail (BT) website is a place for information and communication regarding the transformation of an old elevated railroad in Chicago into a pathway for walking, biking, and running.  The site provides information on the brainstorming and implementation progress thus far, with a well-intentioned showing of the progress.  It includes a blog-style section on news and events, however this part seems to be less updated within the past two months.   The website stresses the importance of community members involvement, with postings of community events and easy access to communication with BT authorities.  The local impact will reach many people due to the rich history and future possibilities of the trail, especially for the diverse surrounding communities.  The website was built by the Trust for Public Land, a major sponsors of the project.  Although adequate information on sponsors exists, funding and budget details are minimal.  The only other mention of money is a cost estimate for the entire project.  Information regarding specific funding intentions throughout the project timeline would be informative for community members.  The public meeting minutes are posted in the archive section, and one of them is translated into Spanish.  This makes me wonder why more of the website has not been translated into Spanish as well, as a Spanish community is on a section of the BT. Overall, the BT website provides valuable information that is not accessible elsewhere, and leaves me with questions and several sources to find answers.

Photo by Nicholas Kibre/Wikipedia

StreetsBlog, a website that opened in 2006, features daily news coverage of sustainable transportation and sustainable development.  New York City, Washington D.C., and San Francisco are the website’s niche locations, but its coverage in New York is most expansive. StreetsBlog is sponsored by a larger nonprofit called OpenPlans, and receives its funding from reader donations, advertisements, and grants. Posts feature a variety of subjects about road and rail, such as the convenience of a bike-sharing membership, a review of a study examining obesity and car use, rail transport use in Zürich, Switzerland, and others.

I think StreetsBlog does a great job in its purpose of analyzing sustainable transportation developments because domestic and international efforts are featured. Its coverage also closely follows relevant legislation that could affect transportation or community development, such as this post criticizing Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s budget. StreetsBlog is biased in the sense that it already has a set agenda on covering transportation and development issues, and the blog’s writers seem to be fairly well educated and critical on many issues. StreetsBlog does not feature a lot of coverage on rails, and I think it should try to.

Overall, the material on StreetsBlog could be very useful in analyzing case studies on road and rail anywhere. Readers get a good sense on the real projects that exist, and the possibility of expanding others.

At www.mongabay.com/brazil.html, we find an interesting website with basic but useful information about development in the Brazilian Amazon. The author details the main causes of deforestation by industry and includes a section about the role of roads in the process of deforestation. This website is particularly interesting because it goes over economic, historical, and even cultural reasons why Brazil has embraced a development approach towards the Amazon. The website belongs to Rhett Ayers Butler, a man who has completed research in Rainforests across the world. He does cite many academic journals for his data, which means he is a trustworthy source. The website has plenty of basic information on tropical forests across the world such as Borneo, Congo, New Guinea, etc.

Hosted by the Earth Island Institute, a 501(c)3 conservation organization, the Save the Serengeti website and Serengeti Railway-Highway Alert were created to oppose the construction of a highway and/or railway that would bisect Serengeti National Park in Tanzania, Africa. The website also develops and mobilizes support against the highway, highlights ongoing conservation efforts, and raises funds for projects within the park.

This site is intended to attract donors to Serengeti Watch, with many opportunities to donate money throughout the website. The site is well organized and the Highway Alert section links to many other articles on the topic, such as those from National Geographic and the New York Times, and also includes many maps and videos. In addition, the site has an extensive comment section, allowing users to interact with the moderators and express their own opinions on the subject.

The informal, news alert format of the Highway Alert section allows everyday readers to easily read the content and understand complex socio-environmental forces that come into play in the Serengeti Highway debate. The site, however, is very one-sided and there are no references or links to articles or studies with conflicting opinions. This bias makes sense though, since one of the main purposes of the site is to attract donors. Hopefully this website will peak the interest of readers and encourage them to seek out more information about the Serengeti Highway, as well as become more educated about the socio-environmental impacts of road and rail systems throughout the world.

The Nature Conservancy’s website blog (blog.nature.org), also known as Cool Green Science, is dedicated to sharing links to interesting environmental and conservation-related online news stories from around the world. Although the blog is not specifically dedicated to examining the environmental impacts of road and rail, the issue is encountered throughout the blog. A blog post from this July is especially relevant to the topic of road, rail, and environmental impact. The post reveals that the Tanzanian government, who had previously planned to build a paved, commercial road through Serengeti National Park, will not go through with its planned highway due to resistance from the conservation community and the potential impacts the road would have on people and wildlife. Despite this, paved, commercial roads will be built just outside the park, and conservationists and locals are concerned about how the new and improved access to the region will affect the ecologically fragile area. While ecotourism can be an economic benefit to some nations and communities, the increased access needed for ecotourism to be successful can significantly change the economy of local communities while also further fragmenting and pressuring ecosystems. The Tanzanian government is proposing more routes in the region that would unfortunately intersect the lands of indigenous hunter-gatherer tribes south of the park. When considering the benefits of increased access to the region, I hope the Tanzanian government takes into account the ecological and cultural integrity of the Serengeti.

This website presents the “Transport Infrastructure Impacts” section of Amur-Heilong River Basin Reader, a published book discussing the environmental issues facing the Amur-Heilong in northeast Asia. The section focuses on the history of road and railway construction in hopes of spreading global awareness of the negative impact transport infrastructure is having on one of the largest river basins of the world. While slightly difficult to navigate and specific to the Amur-Heilong river basin, the site is overall informative, easy to read, and it provides a number of links to interesting maps and photographs of the affected region. The site also acknowledges that as a text written and compiled by people who are dedicated to conserving the trans-boundary river basin, it is inevitably biased. Overall, the site is worth taking a look at.

Increasingly complex wildlife crossing structures are making it possible for larger animals to overcome roadway fragmentation. Wider, longer culverts in conjunction with tunnels and other unique transportation structures cater to even the most timid animals and show promise of mitigating some of negative effects of habitat fragmentation. Shown here is a Californian traverse designed to facilitate black bear movement.

                Compiled jointly by the Community of European Railway and Infrastructure Companies (CER) and the International Union of Railways (UIC) Rail Transport and Environment: Facts and Figures makes a compelling case for the environmental impacts of rail compared to road or plane travel. The article clearly lays out easy to understand numbers and breaks the issues down into sections: climate change and CO₂ emissions, energy efficiency, electricity mix, land take, local air pollution, noise emissions, subsidies and external cost, and core statistics from European transport.

                Rail outperforms road and air travel in almost every category. Consuming on average three to ten times less CO₂ than road and air travel, rail presents a much less CO₂ intensive means of transportation. Road and aviation transportation averages two to five times the amount of energy than rail transportation. Consuming fewer resources continues when the land required to run a train is examined; railway infrastructure occupies two to three times less land per passenger or freight unit than other modes of transportation.  When the prospect of all electric trains are considered rail is even more appealing since electric cars and planes are not feasible on a large scale at this time. Electric trains produce no local air pollution, and if produced using renewable energy sources the electricity required to run a train does not produce the long term resource scarcities that are on the doorstep for fossil fuel powered road and air transportation.