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| While it's important to be a good steward of the planet, not everything is 'an impact'. At this point the practical need for an environmental movement is really only present in large population centers, otherwise it's almost 99% a political movement. Political movements change and it's not always a good idea for investment to chase it. Processes and materials for railroads will likely always continue to improve. If nothing else, because it's harder to find people to work hard so lower maintenance track systems and train components would always be desirable. In fact I see changes driven more by what the 'worker of the future' is willing to do for any wage. In rail probably robotic loading systems. Like williambob stated though LNG isn't nearly as nice to handle as the usually quite inexpensive tarry stuff burnt by power units.
I was once one of those young engineering students and creative solutions are nice, but the purpose of engineering is to find the efficient solution. Things like tubes running all over the US motivated by pressure, magnetism, or whatever are not an efficient solution. I used to read scifi books about moving roads and other not so 'efficient' or even practical ideas. It's no doubt it could be done, but like high speed trains, mag lift trains and other technologies of the future it isn't efficient enough to pay with gov't help. It's hard to get a self sustaining point when lots of gov't money is involved.
I just remembered one of my classes at UofI (where HAL was born at DCL btw) was above the railroad development lab. All day long techs would be spinning steel wheels to destruction. At the time I thought surely this is just using up old grant money and will serve no purpose in the future. I'm not sure about the lab's contribution to rail, but after a while I figured out that not everyone before me was an idiot and something new for the sake of being new isn't engineering. Building on previous work done by smart folks isn't a bad direction. If nothing else the diesel locomotives you use today look about the same as they always have, but inside the technology in the engine and electric control systems are very different.
Technology can certainly drive some revolutionary changes, but often in the real world of moving stuff, power and fluids, the lack of really cheap energy keeps changes much more evolutionary than revolutionary.
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some new way of shipping
