Advances in Transportation SLP - Research Paper Example

Today life without systems like London’s tube or Japan’s Shinkansen is unthinkable in a society where commuting between the home and workplace depends to a large extent on this form of transport. The 19th. century was an era of great technological advances. Perhaps none of these has had as far reaching an effect on the lives of people, as has the steam engine that led to the invention of the railway. The British used this invention to maximum advantage in their colonies, to expand business opportunities, ferrying local goods like spices, tea, coffee, rubber and cotton to the shipyards from where they were marketed to every part of the western world.

The railways were used to carry the finished goods from factories to far flung corners of the world and allowed even farmers to sell their products further away from the regions where they were grown. This new means of transportation that ferried people as well as goods at speeds unmatched at the time by any other means of transport; was a boon, giving people a chance to explore new opportunities, to live away from their work places and above all to travel to far away places, that allowed them a glimpse of a world they had never seen before.

As Nobel peace prize winner Sir John Boyd Orr remarked “ After the First World War the economic problem was no longer one of production. It was the problem of finding markets to get the output of industry and agriculture dispersed and consumed.” (Boyd Orr, 1949) Railroads provided the solution to this problem by transporting finished goods to markets across the world. Huge public structure investment ensured that distances shrank and railroads began to determine the location and shape or size of new cities and towns.

Joe Biden put it in a nutshell when he remarked “public infrastructure investment raises private sector productivity ….they literally are the veins and arteries of commerce.” (Biden, 2011) Railways brought economic prosperity to people in towns and cities supplying them with every necessity - food, clothes, building material, fuel and access to markets. The railroad system resulted in a production boom; as resources and raw materials from one part of a country or continent were transported to far away factories, and finished goods marketed to every nook and corner that was now accessible through this new system of transportation.

In Russia the Trans-Siberian Railway, gave an economic boost by facilitating agricultural exports from Siberia, to Russia and Europe. In Japan, the government promoted railways to cut down dependence on imported fossil fuels. Railroads have therefore been the backbone of the Japanese urban transport system and train stations formed the nucleus around which cities bloomed. Japan was the first country to have high speed rail and Japan’s business, economy, life and culture has been greatly impacted by the bullet trains that run at amazing speeds.

High speed rail has become an efficient and convenient means of transport in Western Europe, and although this means of transportation has become popular throughout the world due to its efficiency and economy, Japan, China and Europe have the largest networks of high speed rail. It has however not taken off yet in the US. President Barack Obama in an effort to increase job opportunities in an economy that is yet to pick up after the down slide of 2008 remarked, High Speed Rail “will help accelerate job growth in an economy tha