Majesty of Swedish Train Stations and Trains

Every year I offer a course at the Isenberg School of Management on Transportation & Logistics, which I very much enjoy teaching.

During my travels and time abroad I am always collecting new materials and also visuals for my course.

Presently, I am back in Europe, specifically, at the School of Business, Economics and Law, at the University of Gothenburg, Sweden,  where I hold a Visiting Professorship of Operations Management. As part of this faculty appointment I spend several weeks a year in the beautiful city of Gothenburg, which is the second largest city in Sweden, after Stockholm.

On this stunning Sunday morning in Gothenburg, I made my way to the Central Station and was delighted to see so many trains at the station, even double decker ones. I could not resist snapping the photos below and sharing them with my readers.

When I ask my students back in Massachusetts what is their favorite mode of transportation, I always get a response of  "trains," from several of them. I love riding the rails in Europe and wish that there were more such options in the US!

The below photo was taken a few days ago, when one of my close friends, Professor Kai May Lau, of the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, came to Gothenburg and spoke at Chalmers University. She also marveled at the Gothenburg Central Station.

A Multitude of Transportation Modes and My Favorite

If you conduct research on networks with a focus on transportation and logistics and teach a variety of related courses on such topics you cannot just sit and stare at a computer terminal (as I am doing now).

You need to be out in the real world to view not only what is happening as a spectator and bystander but also to experience what you research and instruct.

While spending (I just got back the US late on Saturday) another full month in Sweden I never was in a car except for the taxi to and from the airport in Gothenburg (and the rides to and from Amherst to Boston Logan to get to and from Europe).

Imagine -- how many of us in the US can say that we were never in a car for one month!

But the modes of transport that were available to me in Sweden were wonderful:

I could walk and in Gothenburg there are pedestrian walkways, lined with trees and many with bicycle lanes:

I could rent a bike (even the University of Gothenburg makes bikes available, I was told):

 

I could ride trams and I certainly did and loved the experience and, of course, I flew on planes to get to and from Europe.

I took trains.

My colleague even drove me in her golfcart on the island on which he lives in the Gothenburg archipelago where cars are forbidden (imagine transporting furniture on a golf cart).

All in all, my favorite mode of transport besides my two feet which transported me for miles was the ferries and specifically for the beauty of the views and the people that I got to talk to en route. The rides were too short!

I'll have a lot to share in my courses with new students when I return from my sabbatical.

Fragile Train Travel in NYC and Commuter Chaos vs. a Glorious Train Ride Through the Adirondacks

While my family and I were enjoying the beauty and serenity of the Adirondacks while spending several days in Lake Placid, there were several major transportation disruptions in the NYC area that affected train travel (the LIRR, New Jersey Transit, and even Amtrak) over two days.

Fascinatingly, as The New York Times article, "Amtrak Adds to Commuter Chaos in Region," reports:

The electrical travel chaos on the Long Island Rail Road on Monday offered a frustrating reminder of the fragility of a rail network still dependent on antiquated equipment.

Embedded along the railroad tracks by Jamaica Station, and soaked by rain from the night before, two or more cables shorted out around 11 a.m., the authorities said, sending a pulse of electricity into a nearby train control tower and setting fire to the century-old equipment inside.

It seems improbable that a piece of ancient machinery, a contraption of levers and pulleys designed in 1913, would be critical to the successful operation of one of the nation’s largest commuter railroads.

But the machinery, which remained on fire for about an hour, controls the 155 track switches at a crucial choke point: Jamaica Station, which 10 of the railroad’s 11 branches must travel through to get in and out of New York City.

With no way to direct trains onto their proper routes, railroad workers scrambled onto the tracks, spikes and mallets in hand, to lock the switches into place manually so that trains could travel by, a practice known in railroad parlance as “block and spike.”

For several hours, nearly the entire railroad ground to a halt.

The fragility of networks, from transportation to the Internet, and even supply chains and financial networks, was explored in our book, Fragile Networks: Identifying Vulnerabilities and Synergies in an Uncertain World.

Above I feature photos taken at the spectacular station in Lake Saranac in upstate New York, where, in contrast, the Adirondack Scenic Railroad was working beautifully and ferrying tourists between Lake Place and Lake Saranac. The station is simply gorgeous and we felt as though we were transported to another era (which we were). My husband is a huge train buff but we all enjoyed the experience a lot from seeing the station outside and inside to viewing the turning around of the engine to reading the historic boards inside the station and even talking to the pleasant gift shop operator.

As for train travel from NYC, we were told that, in the late 1800s, one would leave NYC at midnight and then arrive in Lake Saranac at 4PM the next day. This Adirondack area was known for its restorative benefits for those with lung ailments and for "cures" for tuberculosis. There were even trains that ferried sick passengers. A notable resident of the area, who lived there for 7 months (and whose residence we also toured), was Robert Louis Stevenson, the author of Treasure Island and Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, among other works. He was born in Scotland and was very sickly (and a chain smoker). His wife credited the 7 months that they stayed at Lake Saranac as giving him 7 more years of life.

A Letter from Al Gore and Trains for Warren Buffett

Teaching my transportation & logistics class is always an incredible experience! Today, I shared with my students the New York Times OpEd piece by Bob Herbert, What the Future May Hold, in which he writes: We're trundling along in the infrastructure equivalent of a jalopy, with bridges rotting and falling down, while other nations, our competitors in the global economy, are building efficient, high-speed, high-performance infrastructure platforms to power their 21st-century economies. Herbert then proceeds to imagine an America with rebuilt and healthy metropolitan areas, efficient rail and electric power networks, coupled with world-class public schools. He cites both a Brookings study and Rohatyn's recent book, Bold Endeavors, with the opening sentence: The nation is falling apart -- literally.

The themes of our Fragile Networks book focus not only on identifying the vulnerabilities of our infrastructure through the prism of transportation and logistical networks but also how to identify potential synergies through cooperation, through teaming and wise sharing of resources, and even through mergers and acquisitions. Patrick Qiang and I show in our book how to also compute a priori potential environmental synergies by capturing the underlying network structure of firms involved in mergers and/or acquisitions.

Today's New York Times also has an article on the environmental costs associated with air travel (which I also shared with my students) in which is stated that the average British commuter while commuting by rail, bus, or car in a full year would emit LESS than a single air traveler flying from London to Los Angeles! Research is now being conducted (and some terrific work is being done right here at UMass Amherst) to develop alternative fuels even using algae, that would drastically reduce the carbon imprint of air travel. The article emphasizes that the effect of carbon offsets at the present prices on emission-reduction is esssentially null (but travelers' guilt might be reduced and that is about it).

Mr. Dickenson, of the nonprofit Carbon Disclosure Project, says that he is now taking trains, flying less, and trying to conduct more meetings via phone or teleconference. The article ends with a comment about Warren Buffett's recent investment in the Burlington Northern Santa Fe Corporation. Indeed, what does it say when the world's most successful investor, Warren Buffett, is now purchasing more railroad companies?!

As Buffett has joked, This is all happening because my father didn't buy me a train as a kid. Buffett gets the importance of trains for the movement of goods in the United States of America and how environmental impacts can be reduced through mode switching from trucks to trains. By the way, as I told my students today, CSX has a very cool carbon emission calculator for determining the environmental costs associated with moving freight from different origins to destinations via rail.

In honor of Warren Buffett's vision, I have featured a photo above of some trains (toy, obviously) from my husband's collection.

I have also included a photo of the letter that I received from then Vice-President Al Gore commenting on my book, Sustainable Transportation Networks, and thanking me for it, when it was published. The letter is hanging in my Isenberg School of Management office for my students to see.