Source: Airfare data from various web sources (full economy airfare). Computer storage data from John C. McCallum. Sea freight rates data from The Eddington Transport Study (2006) and from UNCTAD (after 1980). Telephone call data from various sources. Transport and communications costs have considerably declined during the 20th century, notably
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Vehicle Use Indicators, World, 1950-2022
Source: Bureau of Transportation Statistics and Transportation Energy Data Book, Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy, U.S. Department of Energy. Since the 1950s, the number of automobiles has considerably increased, especially in developed countries. Motorization significantly reduced the number of people per automobile, from 48.2 in 1950 to 7.15
Fields of Transport Geography
Source: Adapted from P. Haggett (2001) Geography: A Modern Synthesis, 4th Edition, New York: Prentice-Hall. Each scientific discipline offers a perspective from which the real world can be understood and interpreted. Transport geography, by seeking to understand mobility, focuses on the locations that generate and handle it, on the interactions
Core Components of Transportation
For transportation to take place, four components are essential:
Transportation and the Mobility of Passengers and Freight
The mobility of passengers and freight has very different spatial dynamics. While the intensity of passenger transportation dominantly concerns short distances, freight transportation includes a wide range of geographies. The majority of the mobility of passengers is related to commuting, shopping, and recreation. These mobilities are dominantly bound by the
Spatial Flow Patterns
Spatial flow patterns can be classified as international, hinterland, and hierarchical: International (trade) patterns occur between nations and include entities such as trading blocks (European Union, NAFTA) or dependent territories (colonialism from an historical perspective). These flows mainly reflect the nature of the economic environment such as the availibility of
The Spatial Consideration of a Movement
The transfer of a unit of freight or a passenger between an origin A and a destination B is influenced by the friction of distance, which is the effect that each unit of distance may have on a movement. Spatial constraints such as distance, the physiography (elements of the landscape
Mobility of Freight (Selected Cargo)
Mobility refers to the ease that a passenger or a freight unit can move across a transportation system. High mobility requires limited efforts, while low mobility is related to complexity and high costs. The mobility of passengers is constant in its requirements (unless involving people with disabilities), with parameters related
Space – Time Convergence
Space-time convergence (also labeled as space/time compression) refers to the decline in travel time between similar locations. This implies that two locations can be reached in a lesser amount of time, which is usually the outcome of innovations in transport and telecommunications. Space-time convergence investigates the changing relationship between space
Representations of Distance
Three major representations of the friction that distance imposes on transportation can be considered: