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Welcome to ATRA Wiki
Some initial work has been done organizing and stubbing out the contents of this wiki. If this is your first visit, please familiarize yourself with our minimal policies and editing tips in Help:Contents and Help:Editing.
The Mission of ATRA Wiki
ATRA Wiki is an ongoing effort to catalog and define the world of advanced transit--the ideas, the achievements and the people behind them.
What is Advanced Transit?
Advanced transit is any significant improvement over the commonly available means of transit. Advanced transit includes components, systems or policies -- and combinations thereof -- whose application have the potential of improving the (1) energy efficiency, (2) environmental performance, and (3) public benefits of the public-private transportation system. When we think about transit, we are not just thinking about public transit systems but also any system that moves large numbers of people in the urban environment, like freeways and automobiles. We usually focus on moving people but we think that some of our ideas could also be applied to moving things.
Most of our ideas are improvements that everyone understands, like separating fast traffic and dangerous traffic from other kinds of traffic. Anyone who has used a freeway understands that idea. We visualize systems that bring together several of these ideas, making the resulting technology much more efficient and usable than what is possible from a single approach.
Technology is just a tool. Good technology will do what it is designed to do but it depends on good engineering, including system engineering, to take a form that has more benefits than liabilities. In spite of the enormous complexities and difficult politics of our world, we think that great improvements are possible in our transportation systems.
What is Here for You
People often have their own ideas about how to improve transportation systems. Most of us started out with great ideas and only discovered later that some other people thought the same way. No, we do not all agree about what we think will make the difference. Where we agree is in thinking that something innovative can be done.
Please start by exploring the materials that are here to see how your ideas relate to the ideas of others. You will find people here who are interested in your ideas. They will want to make sure that your ideas find a place here, if they do not already have a place.
If you came here to start to learn about the possibilities for improving our transportation systems you can start out the same way. If you see articles where we have not handled a subject well, please feel free to register and bring us up to date. This is an ongoing project. We believe that we will be working on this transportation vision for many years to come.
