Land Transportation - an overview (2024)

3.13.3.2.1 Land Transportation

Although there is yet no global-gridded rail inventory available, this sector is certainly the lowest CO₂ emitter (in terms of ‘tailpipe’ emissions at least) because it has been to a large extent electrified (in Europe, for example, diesel-powered vehicles currently account for around 20% of operations (UIC 2010)). Available studies show that rail emissions make up only 1–3% of the total transportation emissions (EEA 2003; AAR 2011).

Introduction

The health effects of transportation have been summarized in Table1 and elsewhere (Cohen etal, 2014). This article considers first, the health benefits of physical activity and access; second, transport’s deleterious health effects; and third, inequities in the distribution of these effects. Finally, we consider how transportation policies affect health and health inequalities.

Land Transportation

Land transportation includes automotives, trucks, and heavy machinery and is prone to disruption and delay when fog is present. Near Windsor, ON (Canada), a highway ‘pileup’ collision during morning fog in September 1999 resulted in seven deaths as 62 cars and tractor-trailers collided. In the United States in Kingsburg, CA in November – and Waynesboro, VA in April – heavy fog resulted in highway pileups that killed 42 and injured 91 people as 40–65 vehicles collided in mountain and valley regions in 1998. The Virginia pileup is a ‘chain-reaction’ crash in a region prone to ‘heavy’ fog, heavily traveled, and which frequently experiences low visibilities. A tour bus and truck collided in Asuncion (Paraguay) in March 2000 while traveling through early morning dense fog and 30 of 45 people on board were killed. A caravan of buses transporting college students in Pennsylvania (United States) traveling through dense fog overnight collided with one another killing two and injuring 106.

In Bourg-Achard (France) in September 1997, several chain-reaction crashes claimed eight lives and injured 63 as over 100 vehicles were involved during a mid-morning ‘heavy’ fog event. Witnesses and victims reported that visibility was merely 45yd (41.148m) when the crashes occurred. On the Ivory Coast in Abidjan (Africa), ‘thick’ fog combined with dusty winds from the Sahara Desert during the Harmattan Season in December 1995 killed 14 and injured 86. News reports indicated that a similar accident in August killed 20 and injured 62, and that drivers in this region are known for speeding and for their reluctance to diminish their speeds even when weather conditions are poor. In Lisbon (Portugal), four were killed and 70hurt in a 100 car pileup in January 2000 that halted up to 6000 cars in both directions of a 20mile roadway for 5h.

In Mobile, AL in the United States, 193 vehicles collided on the Mobile Bay ‘Bayway’ highway in the country's worst fog accident ever in March 1995, sending 91 injured to hospitals and killing, miraculously, only one person. Insurance losses were estimated at over one million dollars at the time of the accident, and witnesses and victims report sitting in their cars and listening to the continuing crashes behind them. Some report driving ‘into a wall’ of fog with visibility immediately reduced from 0.5mile (0.8045km) to near zero. The roadway was closed for hours in both directions of travel. The event led to the installation of fog sensors in the hopes of avoiding a repeat of the accident. The same was done for a fog warning system in Waynesboro at a cost of over five million dollars.

Although many deaths are directly attributable to collisions, a number are caused by fires ignited during the collision process. Many factors lead to such serious consequences during fog events. These include poor visibility, vehicle speeds (posted as compared to traveled), traffic volume, roadway design and surfacing, driving habits (which include invincibility and trust of braking systems, e.g., anti-lock systems), roadway conditions (perhaps dry but sometimes wet due to mist or drizzle, previous rains, or condensation) that restrict braking ability, and windshield visibility effects. Although fog has been cited as the primary cause of an accident in generally less than 1% of all accidents in a given region, it has been cited up to 10% of the time in a fog-prone region, particularly in multiple collisions. The average claim for one vehicle is nearly $8000 (US) and over one million dollars for a multiple-vehicle crash.

The most obvious threat is reduced visibility which restricts a driver's ability to navigate the roadway. This is further diminished with increasing speeds and of serious consequence resulting in many deaths and injuries every year around the world. The visibility not only restricts horizontal distance and depth perceptions but also reduces the ability of drivers to gauge their own speed of travel. Through computer simulations a psychologist was able to determine that although drivers could learn to sustain their speeds in simulation, the addition of fog distorted or destroyed this ability. Ironically, many drivers are prone not to check their speeds in a fog situation as they seek desperately to maintain their scanning of the roadway ahead to ensure their own safety.

In addition, the variation of fog intensity and duration create a rapidly changing set of visibilities during the course of travel and may be further enhanced by hilly terrain and/or protected regions. Although no criteria exist for safe driving in fog, it is clear that visibilities under 1mile (or 1.6km) while driving at speeds of near 60miles per hour (i.e., one mile per minute; or 96.54kph) compromises seriously a driver's integrity and response time to hidden hazards. This is often exacerbated by the distance between vehicles and curved or inclined sections of roadway. Thus the first lines of defense for navigating fog is the reduction of speed, the use of headlights and/or flashers, fog lights or fog-free lenses and shields, and the ‘stop, rest, and wait’ approach. Other alternatives include fog dispersion or mitigation techniques discussed later.

Rail transportation may be impacted similarly by fog conditions. In Badrshein (Egypt), on the Nile River in December 1995 at about 8.00a.m., one passenger train plowed into an express coach which had slowed due to ‘heavy’ fog. The wreck killed 75 and injured 76 as five train cars were destroyed and 40 damaged. Reportedly the train's driver could not see even a yard (approximately 0.9144m) to the front and had apparently ‘stuck his head out of the window’ to try to see better. Rail collisions have also involved motor vehicles and marine vessels at various crossings.

22.4.3 Necessary Materials and Equipment

A checklist of the equipment and materials needed is presented so as to facilitate the work. Some of these are basic regardless of the technique used.

Transportation accidents

Transport Risks Through Land Routes

In order to alleviate the increased risk of maritime energy transport, it is a reasonable choice to open up new land transport routes. Considering the characteristics of land transportation, oil and gas pipeline is undoubtedly the most important link. However, considering the flexibility of sea transport channels, the substitutability of such transport pharynx as Strait of Malacca, and the relatively limited threats of piracy, terrorism, and transportation accidents to energy security, it is necessary to act in caution and take various factors into consideration, especially cost, market operation, and environmental protection in order to choose suitable land transportation routes.

As for security, land transport does not fundamentally eliminate the safety risks that people are concerned about. If it were true that the United States was to impose an oil embargo and a sea blockade on China, the United States would also take other measures to combat land-based energy transport in order to curb China’s growth or punish China. During the war, oil and gas pipelines will also be the target of military strikes, which has been verified many times in wars and conflicts. Moreover, from the military and technical point of view, cutting off land and oil pipelines is far easier than the offshore oil embargo and blockade, and the cost is much lower.

If the fear comes from piracy and terrorist attacks, then oil and gas pipeline transportation also faces similar risks. The only difference here is that pirates are replaced by anti-government armed forces or organized criminals. In many countries, anti-government armed forces take oil transport corridors as an important target of attack. In Colombia, the 306-km-long oil pipeline located in the Departamento de Putumayo and del Nariño is often targeted by anti-government armed forces. In 1999, this pipeline was bombed up as many as 152 times [5]. In Pakistan, guns and weapons in the remote area of northern Baluchistan province have been flooding. Tribal violence has frequently occurred. Oil facilities such as oil and gas pipelines are frequently attacked by local tribes. On terrorist threat, the vulnerability of pipelines makes them vulnerable to terrorist attacks. As early as in 1981, the report issued by the US Department of Defense warned people to pay more attention to whether important oil and gas pipelines would be damaged by terrorist attacks [6]. After the September 11 event, people’s fears were further aggravated. In the summer of 2001, a pipeline linking Saudi Arabia’s largest oil terminal was attacked by terrorists.

Oil and gas pipelines will also be faced with transportation accidents such as the loss of self-efficacy and man-made destruction, and the chances of accidents are often greater than those of maritime transportation accidents. Accidents occur frequently with the extensive laying and extended running time of pipelines. Once a leak or break occurs, the environment and people around it would suffer from a serious impact. According to statistics, during the period from 1970 to 1984, 5872 accidents occurred in the US natural gas long-distance and gathering pipelines, and the annual average accidents were 404 times. For Kazakhstan’s pipelines and its supporting facilities which were designed and constructed in the 1960s and 1970s, two or three accidents occur every year and the oil leakage exceeds 200 tons [7].

As for the flexibility and mobility of transportation, oil and gas pipeline is obviously inferior to maritime tanker. Although pipeline is the convenient means of transporting oil and gas by land, it is very vulnerable. Oil and gas pipelines last long distance, many of which pass through complicated and turbulent areas. Compared with ocean transportation, their flexibility is poor, and the safety risks are relatively large. A simple explosive device can make it break down. When piracy or terrorist attack or an oil and gas transportation accident occurs in a maritime transport channel, other oil tankers may make a detour. Although the distance is prolonged, the continuity of supply may be guaranteed. However, when an attack or an accident happens to the pipeline, it is very passive, with only little or no substitute pipeline, so the transportation interruption is difficult to avoid, and the recovery time is long. Comparatively speaking, the cost of ensuring the safety of oil and gas pipelines is often higher than that of marine transportation.

In terms of economic benefit, oil and gas pipeline transportation is obviously inferior to sea transportation. Ocean transportation, with large-volume strong passing capacity and relatively low cost, accounts for a large majority of international energy trade, especially oil trade. In 2000, the total tonnage of goods shipped by sea was 5.5 billion tons, accounting for 95% of world trade by weight. Among them, energy accounts for about 50% of the total cargo transport (crude oil accounts for 30%). Oil and gas pipeline is the best choice for land oil transportation and it is an important supplement to sea transportation, but its construction cost is high and the construction time is long. According to statistics, from 1992 to 2001, the international community invested up to 15 billion dollars in the Caspian pipelines, surpassing the investment of $13 billion in oil and gas development. In addition, the transit fee also increases transportation cost. It is estimated that Turkey earns $300 million transit fee per year from the Baku–Ceyhan pipeline [8].

The construction and operation of transnational oil and gas pipelines are also greatly influenced by such factors as geopolitics and interstate relations. Some countries, out of political and diplomatic considerations, use oil and gas pipelines and energy as their trump card to occasionally push or block at any cost the construction of a pipeline which is highly related with interests. On the Caspian oil pipeline issue, oil and gas pipeline became geopolitical bargaining chips in the political and diplomatic contests among the countries concerned. The Baku–Ceyhan pipeline becomes a typical politicized pipeline, which was eventually completed with strong support from the United States, Britain, and other countries, while the construction of the pipeline passing Iran failed because of the western opposition.

It was many years ago that India agreed with Iran and other countries to import natural gas through pipelines, but it has long been shelved because of the fears that the pipeline going by Pakistan will not safeguard its strategic interests. In recent years, although Pakistan has become more and more positive, it encountered more resistance from the United States. To restrain the energy cooperation among India, Pakistan, and Iran, the United States has for many years strongly supported the construction of the Turkmenistan–Afghanistan–Pakistan–India gas pipeline (TAPI) and suppressed the long-planned Iran–Pakistan–India pipeline (India exited later). The former US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton even threatened with financial sanctions. However, in March 2013, the construction of the Iran–Pakistan natural gas pipeline (IP) was officially started, which not only made the long-dragged construction of the TAPI pipeline in danger of being shelved but also may make an impact on South Asia, Central Asia, and the surrounding complex geopolitical situation.

The European Union has always been trying to reduce its dependence on Russia, so it favors the Central Asia “Nabucco” gas pipeline project, which bypasses Russia. However, Russia took tit-for-tat actions. It started “North Stream” and “South Stream” projects and in order to split EU and draw some of EU countries to its side, called on some of them to participate. At present, the first phase and second phase of the “North Stream” project, which bypasses Ukraine to transport gas to EU, has been successively put into operation in November 2011 and October 2012, and the “South Stream” project, with the source of gas from the Central Asia and the pipeline traversing from the south of Russia to Italy and other countries, was also started in December 2012. However, the EU-led “Nabucco” project made slow progress because of capital and gas source problems. In June 2012, Hungary even announced the withdrawal from the project.

1.8 Environment

Production of pure metallic copper from mineral deposits (mines) involves many steps, including mining, concentration, smelting, leaching, and electrorefining or electrowinning, as well as land and water transportation.

Mining raises dust during blasting and trucking. It also alters the landscape by removing material from the surface and dumping waste rock in piles around the mine.

Concentration raises dust during crushing and produces small-particle tailings waste during concentration. Most concentrators minimize water use and contamination by recycling as much water as possible from the tailing ponds.

Smelting produces SO₂-bearing offgas. Fortunately, processes have been developed to capture this SO₂(g) and make it into sulfuric acid, itself a valuable product. Smelters also produce solidified oxide slag which, in some locations, is a valuable abrasive and cement-making raw material.

Heap leaching alters the landscape by placing ore on the earth's surface and acid leaching it in the open. Extreme caution must be taken to prevent the acid from reaching the water table.

Electrorefining and electrowinning are contained in buildings, so their impact on the environment is not large. Generation of sulfuric acid mist above the electrolytic cells can adversely affect the working environment. Covering the cells and providing effective extraction fans ameliorates this problem. Well-designed workplace clothing and equipment are also essential. An important example is filtered breathing equipment for employees. These issues are discussed in depth in their specific chapters.

Beyond legal requirements, an important goal of the copper industry is to produce pure copper while minimizing deleterious effects on the environment. In 2020, this is a top goal of copper management and employees. Post-mine-life landscape rehabilitation is an important part of attaining this goal. Several videos describe rehabilitation (Hanson, 2016; Munsey, 2015; Teck Resources Limited, 2016).

Introduction

Economic development comes with a number of profound modifications in the human environment. One of the greatest changes has been the invention and spread of motorized machines to travel large distances overland. Land transportation has brought with it hazards associated with the weight of vehicles, which is sufficient to run over and crush humans, but more importantly with their speed, since a large amount of kinetic energy is released when the vehicle is suddenly stopped. At the inquest of the first known road fatality in 1886 (a female pedestrian hit by a car in London), the coroner said, “this must never happen again.” Since then, over 40 million people have perished in road traffic crashes all over the world and the equivalent of today's total population of China have been injured.

Introduction

Coastal infrastructure systems are a vital part of urban and rural development, coastal socio-demographic dynamics, and the global economy. For instance, ports and industrial facilities act as a link in marine and land transportation of goods acting as a major source of employment and an economic catalyst (Dwarakish & Salim, 2015). However, their strategic geographical location also makes them vulnerable to both chronic and punctuated flood-related hazards such as sea-level rise or hurricanes events that threaten infrastructure performance now and in the future. Moreover, while flood inundation alone carries significant implications for damage or loss of functionality of various infrastructure (e.g., housing, power systems, transportation), the multihazard and compound nature of severe storms along the coast further hampers infrastructure performance. For example, multihazards from hurricanes or tropical cyclones, including wind, rain, storm surge and waves, produce complex loading conditions that induce significant damage to structures and infrastructure systems with loss of functionality and other cascading consequences. Flood-related damages to coastal infrastructure can result in threats to public safety and quality of life, particularly given risks to housing and transportation systems used in emergency response (Stearns & Padgett, 2012; Testa, Furtado, & Alipour, 2015); health and environmental impacts, given potential coastal industrial failures leading to spills of hazardous materials such as oil (Bernier, Elliott, Padgett, Kellerman, & Bedient, 2017; Cruz & Krausmann, 2009); and far-reaching economic implications due to disruption to business operations or infrastructure services, such as intermodal transport of goods (Becker et al., 2013; Nair, Avetisyan, & Miller-Hooks, 2010).

Given the importance and potential vulnerability of structures and infrastructure systems to coastal flood events, coastal risk and resilience assessment frameworks have received growing attention in the literature (Kameshwar et al., 2019; Kammouh, Gardoni, & Cimellaro, 2020). These frameworks often rely on inventory models for the built environment along with the understanding of exposure to scenario-based or probabilistic hazards.

The effects of these hazards on infrastructure performance are often assessed through fragility, or vulnerability, models that may vary in the fidelity with respect to uncertainty treatment, performance metric of interest, consideration of single or multihazard loads, or incorporation of cascading effects like debris, to name a few. Depending on the aim of the analysis, risk models may move beyond infrastructure damage or functionality quantification to include such consequences as economic losses or environmental impacts (Bernier et al., 2017; Bernier & Padgett, 2019a). Resilience frameworks increasingly emphasize the value of assessing not only immediate postevent infrastructure performance (vital to emergency response or inspection deployment), but also the long-term functionality and recovery over time (with implications for planning and resilience enhancement interventions) (Balomenos, Hu, Padgett, & Shelton, 2019). Furthermore, the role of infrastructure systems in supporting broader community resilience (Kameshwar et al., 2019; Koliou et al., 2020) and coupled modeling of natural-built-human systems along the coast has received heightened attention in recent years (Ellingwood et al., 2016; Fereshtehnejad et al., 2020).

In the next section of this chapter, international case studies of coastal flood impacts on infrastructure are posed to highlight key considerations in risk assessment, leverage potential comparative analyses, and showcase the results from a series of PIRE place-based research studies. The Port of Rotterdam and the Houston-Ship Channel—two of the most important petrochemical complexes and port regions in the world—are adopted as case studies to analyze the effects of coastal hazards on infrastructure systems. Given the vital role of industrial and transportation infrastructure in supporting broader community resilience in such regions, along with the significant consequences of damage or functionality loss, select industrial and transportation infrastructures are considered for the case studies. Furthermore, this chapter will subsequently highlight future opportunities for philosophical shifts in infrastructure design and management in flood-prone regions. In particular, concepts “smart resilience” and performance-based coastal engineering are explored as promising paradigms.

Transportation hazards

Transportation hazards have become such a common part of global society that it seems only events of a truly spectacular nature merit international news coverage. Transportation is a technology on which the entire world depends for travel, commerce, and industry. The vast system of land, sea, and air transportation involves complex and expensive infrastructure, humans or machines to conduct that infrastructure, and laws and policies by which the whole system is guided. A flaw or breakdown in any one of these components can and often does result in a major disaster involving loss of life, injuries, property and environmental damage, and economic consequences.

Transportation infrastructure disasters do not involve the vehicles but the systems upon which those vehicles depend. Vast engineering feats are often required to join the world’s cities, to cross mountains and waterways, and to shorten the distances from point A to point B. As with all engineering projects, a certain risk is imposed by the very nature of the forces the projects must overcome, including gravity, tension, mass, resistance, and velocity. Bridges, tunnels, raised highways, mountain roads, overpasses, airport terminals, and other infrastructure components are all subject to the realization of that risk: failure.

Airline accidents are relatively rare but are often both spectacular and catastrophic owing to the high number of people involved and the fact that there are incidents in which no passengers survive. AirSafe.com, an airline safety advocacy website, examined 342 fatal accidents involving both jet and propeller-driven aircraft between 1978 and 1995. They found that mortality rates at the time exceeded 90% in 6 of every 10 accidents (AirSafe.com, 2003). However, advances in aircraft safety that resulted from detailed investigations into the causes of accidents decreased this fatality rate considerably during the decades since the findings were published. When airline accidents occur in cities, in addition to fatalities and injuries sustained by people on the ground, structure fires and collapses often occur, requiring difficult response efforts. This problem is especially troubling in cities undergoing massive growth, whose airports, constructed in once-empty fields, are now completely surrounded by urban sprawl. Mariscal Sucre International Airport in Quito, Ecuador, where fatal crashes into residential areas have occurred, is an example. To address the high rate of fatal accidents and the inability to expand in response to growing air traffic, a new airport was constructed outside the city center in 2012, and the urban airport ceased operations in Feb. 2013.

When airlines crash into large bodies of water, recovery of remains can be difficult or even impossible, given the amount of area that must be searched and the depth of water where the aircraft comes to rest. On Jun. 1, 2009, Air France Flight 447 crashed into the Atlantic Ocean, and although radar imagery let search parties know approximately where to look, it took more than 2years to recover flight recorders to learn what had happened. The bodies of 78 of 228 passengers onboard were never recovered. An even more spectacular event is the disappearance of Malaysia Airlines Flight 370, which simply disappeared from radar on Mar. 8, 2014. Despite an exhaustive search over multiple bodies of water, and although small pieces of the craft washed up thousands of miles from each other, the full wreckage was never found and may never be, because emergency beacons transmit for only a few weeks after a crash.

Rail accidents can occur for both passenger and freight trains, each of which poses unique problems for disaster managers. Accidents occur primarily because of contact between two trains, contact between a train and a foreign object (car, animal, or debris), onboard fire, or faulty or misaligned tracks (owing to external forces, human error, sabotage, or poor maintenance).

Trains are used extensively to transport cargo, much of which is classified as hazardous. Accidents involving train cars with flammable or poisonous gases or liquids have caused several major disasters and are a significant hazard for any urban area they pass. These accidents can involve explosions, fires, the release of deadly gases, and severe environmental degradation. Evacuations may be necessary to protect the surrounding population, and rescue efforts are difficult or impossible without proper equipment and training. On Jul. 6, 2013, a parked and unattended freight train carrying 72 containers of crude oil rolled free from its position and crashed into the town center of Lac-Mégantic, Canada. The explosion and subsequent fire killed 47 people and destroyed more than half the town’s center (Canadian Press, 2014).