High Speed Train an International Transport Revolution

In Our highways are clogged with traffic. Our airports are choked with increased loads. We are at the mercy of fluctuating oil prices. We pump too many greenhouse gases into the air. What we need is a smart transportation system equal to the needs of the 21st century. A system that reduces travel times and increases mobility. A system that reduces destructive emissions and creates jobs. What we're talking about is a vision for high-speed rail.

Japan

At the entrance to Tokyo Central Station is a plaque which declares the Shinkansen “Product of the wisdom and effort of the Japanese people.” “As an indication of the unity of purpose and of the pride which the Japanese people feel for this achievement, this inscription …. Can hardly be bettered”, writes Rod Smith of Imperial College in his excellent history of the Shinkansen.

Japan’s first railways had been built, to a narrower gauge than ours, by a British engineer in the 1870s. The line from Tokyo to Nagoya and Osaka is the country’s principal 350 mile rail artery, accounting in the 1950s for a quarter of the country’s rail traffic although only three per cent of the rail system by length. It was electrified in 1956, enhancing capacity and reducing the journey time to six and a half hours.

This is where Japanese railway modernization might well have stopped for a generation – as it did, at electrification of principal inter-city lines, in most of Europe at the time. What happens generally seems pre-ordained after the event, and so it is both with Japan’s decision to develop the bullet train and our decision not to. Yet this is quite unhistorical, as Rod Smith explains. On the contrary, the phrase “railway downfall theory” was in vogue in 1950s Japan: the view that rail was an outdated technology which was set to follow horse carriages, canals and sailing ships, to be replaced by faster planes for the longest distances and by the far more flexible and individualistic car and truck for shorter distances.

This view was indeed widely held within Japanese National Railways itself. It was only the vision and leadership of a small group of talented managers and engineers, led by its president and chief engineer, which ordained otherwise. They essentially sidestepped projections about long-term rail decline, concentrating rather on the immediate capacity requirements of the densely populated and economically critical Tokyo to Osaka corridor, convincing the government that a patch-and-mend upgrade to the existing line was too cautious for this key route. This capacity argument, plus the availability of a low interest World Bank loan – jobs and regeneration being a good part of the case for high-speed rail, as for motorways, from the outset – led to the decision to construct a new passenger-only line for this route alone, to the standard international gauge, free from level crossings, with shallow curves and in-cab signalling allowing a consistently high line speed.

Cruising (Driving skills)

Cruising is a social activity that primarily consists of driving a car. Cruising can be an expression of the perceived freedom of possessing a driver's license. Cruising is distinguished from regular driving by the social and recreational nature of the activity, which characterized by an impulsively random, often aimless course. A popular route (or "strip") is often the focus of cruising. "Cruise nights" are evenings during which cars drive slowly, bumper-to-bumper, through small towns.

Driving is the controlled operation of a land vehicle, such as a car, truck or bus. Although direct operation of a bicycle, a mounted animal (not including chariot operation) or a motorcycle (at least in the United Kingdom, the United States, Canada and Australia) is commonly called riding, such operators are usually legally considered to be drivers and are required to obey the rules of the road which apply to all drivers.Driving in traffic is more than just knowing how to operate the mechanisms which control the vehicle; it requires knowing how to apply the rules of the road (which govern safe and efficient sharing with other users). An effective driver also has an intuitive understanding of the basics of vehicle handling.

Driving as a physical skill :

In terms of the basic physical tasks required, a driver must be able to control direction, acceleration, and deceleration. For motor vehicles, the detailed tasks include . Starting the vehicle's engine with the starting system ,Setting the transmission to the correct gear ,Depressing the pedals with one's feet to accelerate, slow, and stop the vehicle, and if the vehicle is equipped with a manual transmission, to modulate the clutch ,Steering the vehicle's direction with the steering wheel ,Operating other important ancillary devices such as the indicators, headlights, and windshield wipers

Electric charge-electromagnetic fields

Electric charge is a fundamental conserved property of some subatomic particles, which determines their electromagnetic interaction. Electrically charged matter is influenced by, and produces, electromagnetic fields. The interaction between a moving charge and an electromagnetic field is the source of the electromagnetic force, which is one of the four fundamental forces.

Electric charge is a characteristic of some subatomic particles. It is quantized: when expressed in units of the so-called elementary charge e, it takes integer or fractional values. Electrons by convention have a charge of −1, while protons have the opposite charge of +1. Quarks have a fractional charge of −1⁄3 or +2⁄3. The antiparticle equivalents of these (positrons, antiprotons, and antiquarks, respectively) have the opposite charge. There are other charged particles. The discrete nature of electric charge was proposed by Michael Faraday in his electrolysis experiments, and then directly demonstrated by Robert Millikan in his oil-drop experiment.

In general, same-sign charged particles repel one another, while different-sign charged particles attract. This is expressed quantitatively in Coulomb's law, which states that the magnitude of the electrostatic repelling force between two particles is proportional to the product of their charges and the inverse square of the distance between them.

The electric charge of a macroscopic object is the sum of the electric charges of its constituent particles. Often, the net electric charge is zero, because it is favorable for the number of electrons in every atom to equal the number of protons (or, more generally, for the number of anions, or negatively charged atoms, in every molecule to equal the number of cations, or positively charged atoms). When the net electric charge is non-zero and motionless, one has the phenomenon known as static electricity. Even when the net charge is zero, it can be distributed non-uniformly (e.g., due to an external electric field, or due to molecular motion), in which case the material is said to be polarized. The charge due to the polarization is known as bound charge, while the excess charge brought from outside is called free charge. The motion of charged particles (e.g., of electrons in metals) in a particular direction is known as electric current.