The Rise of Megaregions as Transportation Networks in the U.S.
Highway congestion, increasing energy consumption, and lengthening commute times are all pressing issues faced by America’s transportation system today. In order to keep up with the rising demand for the movement of goods and people, it has been predicted that by 2050, our traditional highway system and transportation infrastructure will have grown and changed into one with 11 highly concentrated regions of travel and commerce, generally grouped around areas that are clusters of America’s largest cities today. According to the articles from the links below, each megaregion will function as its own network to allow efficient movement of goods and people within the region. Then, all of those regions will be linked by high-speed rail (HSR), which will most likely be used for moving mainly large shipments goods over these long distances that separate each megaregion, but they may also transport passengers occasionally.
In class we learned that networks can be dynamic, changing over time. This evolution of the U.S. transportation network is a current and tangible illustration of how the process of altering a network occurs. America’s highways and cities are adapting so that they will be a better fit for the fast-paced lifestyle of the 2010s. The theory of these 11 megaregions actually suggests the development of 11 networks (the 11 megaregions) within the main network (the continental U.S.). Looking at the country as a whole, we can view each megaregion as a node, and the HSRs connecting them as paths. Within each of these “megaregion nodes,” there are cities that can also be viewed as nodes, and the highways connecting them will serve as paths. If we consider the number of passengers traveling on each road as a way to measure the strength of that path, we would see that within each megaregion, the ties would be very strong (many people will be commuting within the regions daily). The ties that join each region would be much weaker, as it’s likely that these high-speed rails would be used to transport mainly goods from region to region, rather than people. However, just because these ties are weak does not mean that they are not as valuable. The movement of raw materials and finished products among the regions is essential to the well-being of the national economy.
Sources:
http://www.america2050.org/content/megaregions.html#more
http://theweek.com/articles/549127/america-ready-rise-megaregion