About Adib Kanafani (Edit profile)

Adib Kanafani is Cahill Professor of Civil Engineering in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at the University of California, Berkeley (kanafani@berkeley.edu).

Multimodal Transportation in California: Connecting Planes, Trains, and Automobiles

Adib Kanafani

The continued population growth expected for California will bring increasing demand for mobility and pressure to expand the capacity of the transportation system, including intercity transportation. If historic trends are any indication, we know that no single mode—rail, air, or highway—by itself can meet this increasing demand. Making the best use of each mode and creating interconnections among them are key to coping with rising demand for transportation.

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2018-02-07T23:32:04+00:00Categories: ACCESS 33, Fall 2008|Tags: , |

Balancing Act: Traveling the California Corridor

Adib Kanafani

On a flight from San Diego to San Francisco, I sat beside a woman who by coincidence was also returning from the August 1997 demonstration of automated highways. I expressed my enthusiasm for full automation to turn highway lanes into automated electronic railroads, with individual automobiles, akin to rail cars, hooked up electronically. Off the highway, these cars would revert back as individual automobiles to provide the ubiquitous local accessibility people expect from cars.

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No Rush to Catch the Train

Adib Kanafani

There is little doubt that a high-speed rail line could be built in the California corridor, connecting San Francisco and Los Angeles. To be sure some major obstacles must be reckoned with. It will have to cross the Tehachapi Mountains directly, if it's to keep travel time under control. This means some extensive and expensive tunneling. The large, low-density, and expansive metropolitan regions of the Los Angeles Basin and the San Francisco Bay Area will have to be penetrated by an exclusive, grade-separated rail system, which will also require some extensive urban construction. Nontechnical but equally tough obstacles would include possible opposition by communities along the corridor, especially in rural areas where the high-speed line would cut through but not serve.

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