Transport and Communication Costs Indexes, 1920-2015

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

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

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