Land Transport – History, Evolution, and Development Essay

Can you imagine how far humanity got with the historical and technological advancements of land transportation? Check out our essay example to discover the early forms of land transportation, such as horses and carriages, and learn about the invention of the steam engine and the internal combustion engine. An emphasis is made on the impact of the intense use of automobiles on society and the environment, as well as current developments in the field of electric and autonomous vehicles. Additionally, the author touches on the future of land transport, including potential advancements in sustainable technologies.

  • Introduction

Land Transportation Negative Effects

  • Vehicles with Less Emissions
  • How to Lessen the Traffic
  • The Case of the UAE – Dubai Metro

Introduction. History of Land Transportation

Land transportation has evolved throughout the human history. It started from simple strides, taming wild horses and invention of the wheel. History puts it that the initial invention of man-made transportation occurred in the Mesopotamia or Asia. This was the time when man invented the wheel at around 4000-3500 BC (Bardou, Jean-Pierre et al, 1982). The combination of the horse and the wheel made transportation system simple as it facilitated exchange of crops. It eventually led to mass movement of people and goods, and the wheel became advanced means of land transportation.

The use of the wheel eventually led to chariots. Sumerians were the first men to first experience wheel transportation. Chariot had the ability to enhance the speed of movement. Man soon invented a four-wheeled cart that improved efficiency in movement.

There were significant improvements in land transportation as automation development took place through steam engine. This was the origin of movement of a large number of people in the 18 th century (Bardou et al, 1982). However, the locomotive steam engine was slow and majorities considered it unsafe. Man soon invented locomotive steam engines. They had the power to drag many cars. This was an obvious improvement in the land transportation development.

As time progressed, man advanced the development of the locomotive system. This resulted into improved speed and safe travel than earlier attempts. The period of the World War II marked the introduction of a diesel-powered engine. Initially man had attempted to power trains through electricity as early as 1895. However, lack of efficiency made that discovery unreliable and expensive invention. Soon, the development in subway led to dependence on electricity as the method of underground movements.

Some studies suggest that there were attempts to “use steam engine in the East during the period of 800 BC” (Bardou et al, 1982). However, man limited this discovery to personal travel and not mass movement of people.

The period of 1860 marked a milestone in the development of land transportation. This was the time when Lenoir Jean Etienne of France made an engine powered by gas. Since then, there are advancements in land transport. Automobile discovery remains significant development since the period of the wheel. Automotive is responsible for distance traveling, rise of suburbs, and mass movements of people and goods at increased speeds (Davies, 1992).

Road Congestion

Road congestion results from increased use of the road network which results into increased time of traveling. Road congestion occurs due increased usages of vehicles and urban development. Road congestion has peak and off-peak hours. Occasionally, some factors may result into road congestion. These are mainly “unpredictable accidents, incidents, road works, severe weather conditions, or some major public events, and emergency cases” (Harry and Chang-Hee, 2008). In addition, other causes of road congestion can result from different approaches to control traffic flow such as junctions, signage, and traffic lights. These factors may influence the flow of traffic significantly.

Kerner Boris attempts to explain causes of road congestion using a mathematical approach. He talks of freeway traffic to explain causes of road congestion. This highlights that a traffic can either be in a state of “a free-flow condition, or in a congested condition” (Kerner, 2004). Congestion in traffic can still have a free-flow but heavy traffic. Conversely, there can also be wide-moving jams where traffic flow is generally slow. Such theoretical approaches to explaining causes of traffic help in designing less congested roads in urban development (Kerner, 2004).

There are several factors responsible for road congestion. Some studies have classified causes of road congestion in their own ways depending on the field. For instance, economists, road engineers and authorities may look at recurrent causes of road congestion. On the other hand, other specialist may look at both recurrent and none recurrent causes of road congestion (Kerner, 2004).

Studies in America about causes of road congestion established that 25 percent of causes of road congestion were mainly accident and incident related. About 15 percent of road congestion was as a result of bad weather. In addition, 10 percent occurred due to maintenance of roads. Emergencies, poor timing of traffic signals, and special events were responsible for five percent of road congestion. Recurrent causes of road congestion accounted for 40 percent. These were incapability and insufficiencies of the existing infrastructures.

Recurrent causes of road congestion due to insufficient capacity depend on the existing road networks. Limited capacity of urban roads implies that such existing road networks can no longer accommodate growing demands as a result of many private vehicles. There has also been growing purchases of private vehicles as many people improve their economic statuses. Such changes in commuter behaviors have resulted into unrestrained demand for roads among commuters in city suburbs. There are also cases where traffic management systems are ineffective, lack of sufficient knowledge, poor placement, out of order, or lack proper timing.

There are general factors responsible for traffic snarl-ups in cities. Time of usage is similar across most cities. Majorities living in the city suburbs have morning and evening schedules for attending workplaces, schools and other places. Thus, most commuters need to get to their destinations almost at the same time. This implies that the demand for transport is high as certain period of the day than others.

Population increase is also a factor that has led to road congestion. Road infrastructures need to support the ever growing populations. Over time, such infrastructures reach their limits where even expansion is not possible. In addition, majorities occupy city suburbs where they need to commute to cities or other places for various reasons almost on a daily basis.

Over the past few decades, levels of household incomes have grown significantly. This implies that there is money to commute to places. Most people opt for comfort and safety of their own cars. Consequently, they do not rely on public transportation systems but rather their own cars. This increases the demand for road networks and carrying capacities.

Most people also blame traffic snarl-ups on poor urban planning. There are emerging settlements away from the cities to support the growing populations. City planners must contend with such challenges. Some areas lack public transport systems, such as areas of high income individuals, new settlements, and low populated areas. Such people may resort to personal means of transportation. These are contributing factors to road congestions in major cities of the world (Stover and Frank, 1988).

Traffic congestion has severe impacts in terms of losses, accidents, rage, pollution, and increased maintenance costs. Most people spend a lot of time in traffic during peak hours. This increases frustration levels among commuters and lost opportunities and work hours. Time lost in traffic jams influences income levels of individuals and economy in general. Most countries calculate the hours people spend in traffic snarl-ups and translate them into monetary values.

Time lost in traffic also have effects on fuel consumptions. As a result, some people opt to relocate their businesses or switch their jobs or places of residence in order to save time for use during the day. Traffic snarl-ups also affect choices of social amenities. For instance, most people would like neighborhood schools, close shopping centers and places of work. Physical distances affect choices of such facilities and individuals’ social life schedules. However, critics and town authorities maintain that people are responsible for road congestions due to their choices of lifestyle such as the choice of residential place, mode of transportation, and avoidance of public means.

Road congestions also results into economic and productivity losses. People suffer increased commuter prices due to long hours in traffic snarl-ups. In addition, individuals, organizations, and business entities suffer losses due to traffic congestions as people spend productivities hours in the jam. Consequently, there are persistent loss of opportunities, increasing costs of running business, pollution and rates of accident (Link et al, 1999). These factors affect individuals in terms increased taxes, prices of commodities, and health.

There are countries that have reached the peak of traffic snarl-ups. To this end, road congestion has become a threat to countries’ economic developments. Governments have purely based such claims on road congestion alone. Consequently, road congestion has prompted governments to act immediately so as to avoid the negative impacts of road congestion on the economy. In some case, reliance on private cars as means of transport is no longer attractive due charges and taxes that come with them. Such economic impacts have forced most governments to upgrade their urban transport systems to the world-class status, introduce transport management systems, construct freeways, expand train systems, and promote the use of public transportation systems.

Road congestion is also responsible for growing cases of road carnage and incidents. Studies base this observation on the idea that an “increase in traffic volume will increase the rate of road accidents and incidents” (Winston and Langer, 2006). Most records show that cases of road accidents and incidents are common during rush hours. In addition, there are instances of reduced visibility during morning and evening hours or strong sun’s rays that affect drivers’ visibility. Such cases are responsible for increased road accidents. Still, some drivers suffer fatigue or lose concentration due to long hours in traffic jams and working hours have increased the rate of road accidents. Cases of careless driving or driving while drunk have increased the rate of road accidents globally. We may attribute the main cause of growing rates of road accidents to increasing numbers of vehicles on the roads. To this end, we must remember that road accidents and incidents themselves are also contributing factors in road congestion. This is a case of cause and effect relations in road usages.

Road congestion leads to decreased lifetime of the road surface. Road layers have the elasticity so as to support the weight of different types of vehicles using them. Vehicles cause massive deflection of the road surfaces when they are standstill, moving slowly, or when their numbers are high. Over time, the road surface losses its elasticity as top layers become lesser effective. This results into frequent maintenance than expected (Winston and Langer, 2006). Most roads have 25 years of life expectancy with scheduled maintenance of three times for the top layers. Still, areas of high traffic experience early drops in quality of the road than expected.

Costs of vehicles maintenance are high in areas of heavy traffic. Traffic congestion is not ideal for high speed modern vehicles. Thus, sudden acceleration and brakes have negative effects on the vehicle engines. Engines run even if the vehicles are in traffic despite the fact that no movements take place. This calls for frequent servicing of vehicles even above the manufacturers’ recommendations. Maintenance costs also take into account wear and tear of vehicle parts such as brakes and clutch as their usages increase with acceleration and sudden brakes.

Psychologists observe that among the main causes of road rage occur as a result of frustrations due to traffic snarl-ups. The main culprits are people of predisposed outbursts personalities who may take such frustrations to strangers in order to vent their anger. They tend to change lanes frequently or follow other motorists closely.

Air & Noise Pollution

Increase in road congestion and pollution goes beyond air pollution alone. There is also noise pollution that environmentalists find as an emerging source of concern. There are exhaust emissions that are responsible for the rising quantity of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. This takes place when vehicles are idle, but the engines are “in motion, sudden accelerating and braking within short distances” (Kerner, 2004). The issue of global warming has shifted focus from main industries to transportation system as significant contributors in emissions of greenhouse gases through combustion of fuels. As a result, vehicles manufacturers enhance technology in new vehicles to reduce emission of CO 2 and improve fuel efficiency.

The main sources of noise pollution mainly come from hooting, roaring vehicles engines, and radio and music systems in vehicles. The noise reaches the recipient through the normal transmission mode of air to ears. Noise levels depend on different factors such as “humidity, ambient temperature, air pressure, vehicle type, and the grade of the road surface” (Link et al, 1999). These factors are part of any road. However, slow movements of vehicles increase the level of noise as road congestion tends to concentrate such noise pollution in busy roads. Thus, noise pollution forms a part of concern for road users.

New Vehicles with Less CO2 Emissions

Most industry studies indicate that enhanced vehicle fuel efficiency has resulted into a drop of CO 2 emissions. According to Motor Industry Association (MIA), the National Average Carbon Emission (NACE) for new vehicles of 2011 had a figure of CO 2 emission below 200 grams to 197.1 grams for the first time (Motor Industry Association, 2012). This represented a drop of 2.3 percent from the previous year.

The effort among to reduce CO 2 emission among vehicle manufacturers started more than five years ago. The average drop of CO 2 emission has been 10 percent. Most new passenger vehicles form part of this calculation. Thus, the figures presented are representative in calculating the CO 2 measures. The drop is due to enhanced vehicles technology among main manufacturers in the world. The main is to meet CO 2 emissions in target markets that include the US, Europe, Australia, and other emerging economies. Consumers have also changed their purchasing habits to march the environmental requirements. This has improved due to government subsidies, especially in Europe where the government facilitate the purchase of environmental friendly cars by subsidizing the costs.

Most of these achievements are as a result of carbon trading scheme that aims at reducing the quantity of CO 2 in the atmosphere. The target has been on the transport sector for long-term agenda on reduction. These achievements from new vehicles show that manufacturers of motor vehicles are playing their roles of combating environmental degradation, reducing greenhouse emission, and pollutions from motor vehicles. Such efforts do not involve government interventions or regulations but are rather technological breakthroughs in vehicle manufacturing.

Ways to Lessen the Land Transportation Traffic

Developments in land transport have created issues of traffic in most urban centers. Every year, cases of road congestion increase as more vehicles use roads. Thus, such issues have led concerned individuals to look for alternative means of combating road congestion. Approaches to alleviate road traffic include improved public transport, charges and taxes, urban planning and development, and pool vehicles programs.

Developing public transit system is the basic approach to combating road congestion. This should include improving public access to public vehicles by creating new routes, and investing in efficient and safe vehicles such as subway lines, speedy trains, and modern public buses. These are basic methods of managing transport in urban cities.

Governments can also introduce charges and taxes to combat road congestion. This is the case in London whereby car owners pay charges to access central routes in the city and pay parking fees too. Such charges aim at making use of personal cars lesser attractive. Consequently, people will resort to public modes transport (Harry and Chang-Hee, 2008).

Urban traffic also results from poor planning. Most families tend to move to urban suburbs and commute either with personal vehicles or public means of transport to workplaces. Consequently, road congestion spread throughout the main routes. The fundamental aim is to focus on renewing urban planning, improving existing infrastructure, and reducing activities at the metropolis.

There are also car pool lanes in efforts to reduce road traffic jams. This initiative targets commuters to metropolises. In addition, commuters who use same routes can have ride sharing initiatives (Bonsall, 2002). This can work among government institutions, schools, universities, and other large organizations.

How to Improve the Land Transportation and Encourage the Use of Public Transportation – The Case of UAE

Dubai is a pioneer in developing the most extensive road network in the UAE. Thus, other emirates can learn from it. Dubai has been experiencing transport challenges until the year 2005. These were mainly road congestion, growing ownership of private vehicles, increased road accidents and deaths, low use of public transport systems, and heavy noise and air pollution. The country estimated that it losses roughly “AED 4.6 billion annually due to road congestion” (Chaudhry, 2012).

The government of Dubai was aiming at maintaining the growing economy through enhancing its road network, and acting as a role model for the UAE region. Consequently, the government created Roads Transport Authority (RTA) to handle issues of land transport.

The main approach involved improving the road network. The points of concentration were increasing capacity of the roads and reducing delays at the junctions. Specifically, RTA focused on enlarging the existing road networks, developing new roads, establishing ring roads at strategic developments, and establishing free flow junctions” (Chaudhry, 2012). These efforts have reduced commuting time for the public through reduction of road congestion. There are also bridges to reduce reliance on existing bridges and tunnels. These initiatives have both social and economic advantages to the public.

RTA also focuses on introducing policies to encourage “the use of public transport and eliminate the use of private cars, and make the best use of the available land transport facilities” (Eriksson, Garvill and Nordlund, 2008). The usages of policies have been effective in other places such as in the EU zone. However, policies can only be effective when planned and implemented well in order to enhance public acceptability. This is true in cases where change of behavior is mandatory. RTA can use push and pull measures to encourage the use of public transport systems. Successful approaches would involve increased tax and charges, and at the same time, providing alternative means of public transportation. This should come as a policy package.

RTA has also focused on public education through Mobility Management Plan, which covers international best practices on land transportation, enhancing the use of available facilities, and reducing time consumed in the traffic jam.

In UAE, the RTA of Dubai aims at developing integrated public transportation system (Chaudhry, 2012). This is the Dubai Metro project and road network for buses. Consequently, the public has begun to notice benefits of such initiatives. The integrated infrastructure aims at combining tram lines with road networks in order to increase access for the public.

The RTA has an ambitious plan of integrating the public transportation systems by creating many stations for different modes of transportation. This aims at enabling ease of transfers for commuters among “buses, water transport, and taxis” (Chaudhry, 2012).

According to Santos and associates, the RTA is working on a program of Transit Oriented Developments (TODs) (Santos, Behrendt and Teytelboym, 2010). The program aims at creating a coordinated urban planning that covers road networks for efficient and safe accessibility among the public. This is to address the needs for sustainable means of transport for the public in city suburbs.

Road transport has come a long way. The invention of the wheel and automotive engine changed revolutionized the way people and goods movement. Modern modes of land transport have their challenges. It is this challenges that men are trying to address in order to increase efficiency of land transport. The focus is mainly on road transport. This leads us to reflect on what lies ahead for land transport, future vehicles, environmental pollutions, congestion, and development plans for both transport systems and urban use.

Some observers believe that futures cars shall be fuel efficient. They shall depend on technological innovation for ensuring that they are free of CO 2 emission. Technology shall assist vehicles recognize different traffic signals, road signage, and other vehicles.

Still, some say that future transport shall utilize technology in every possible aspect. There are cases that vehicles of the future shall warn of bad weather and inform the occupant of possible collisions. In addition, such vehicles will let the drivers know if they are out of their lanes or fatigued. Differences in such cars will enhance driving experiences due to transformation from what is available today.

Further, there shall be a shift from petroleum cars to electric and hydrogen fuel cells powered cars. Such sources of car energy shall lead to low pollution of the environment because such fuels do not emit any CO 2 or pollutants.

Another area of focus shall be on land transport planning and development. The focus shall be on building secure and safe roads or land transport system that aims at serving every member of society. Focus on sustainability of land shall remain a key element on developing efficient land transport. In addition, any future developments of land transport will strive to create a link with other means of transport. Such developments shall take into account the environmental impacts of such developing road infrastructures.

Most countries shall put their priorities in building super highways, complex road networks, and enhanced road safety through education, facilities, and increased accessibility to the masses as the case of Dubai Metro. There shall be a well developed urban land transport information system, and the public shall rely on the public transport than on personal cars due to enhanced efficiency.

Governments shall increase their involvement in the development of land transport system. The main focus shall be on continuous investments through construction of new road networks or upgrading the existing ones. Future development in land transport shall attract private sector participation.

Further, the government shall develop policies to reduce the use of personal cars and allow road users use existing infrastructure wisely. The focus shall be on enhancing public access to such transport facilities. Such policies may aim at introducing taxes to make use of personal cars lesser attractive. In addition, there shall also be pull measures that strive to create many alternatives for the use of personal cars. They can achieve this by enhancing public transport and transport infrastructure. These efforts shall aim at creating the best international practices on land transport and reduce road congestion, at the same time, reduce environmental pollution from too many vehicles.

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Bonsall, P. (2002). Car share and car clubs: Potential impacts. Leeds: Institute for Transport Studies.

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Davies, E. (1992). Transport: On Land, Road & Rail. London: Franklin Watts.

Eriksson, L., Garvill, J., and Nordlund, A.M. (2008). Acceptability of single and combined transport policy measures: the importance of environmental and policy specific beliefs. Transportation Research Part A: Policy and Practice, 42 (8), 1117-1128.

Harry, W. R. and Chang-Hee, C. B. (2008). Road Congestion Pricing in Europe. Implications for the United States. Northampton, MA: Edward Elgar.

Kerner, B. S. (2004). The Physics of Traffic: Empirical Freeway Pattern Features, Engineering Applications, and Theory. Berlin: Springer.

Link, H. et al. (1999). The Costs of Road Infrastructure and Congestion in Europe (Contributions to Economics). Heidelberg: Physica-Verlag HD.

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The History of Transportation

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Whether by land or by sea, humans have always sought to traverse the earth and move to new locations. The evolution of transportation has brought us from simple canoes to space travel, and there's no telling where we could go next and how we will get there. The following is a brief history of transportation, dating from the first vehicles 900,000 years ago to modern-day times.

Early Boats

The first mode of transportation was created in the effort to traverse water: boats. Those who colonized Australia roughly 60,000–40,000 years ago have been credited as the first people to cross the sea, though there is some evidence that seafaring trips were carried out as far back as 900,000 years ago.

The earliest known boats were simple logboats, also referred to as dugouts, which were made by hollowing out a tree trunk. Evidence for these floating vehicles comes from artifacts that date back to around 10,000–7,000 years ago. The Pesse canoe—a logboat—is the oldest boat unearthed and dates as far back as 7600 BCE. Rafts have been around nearly as long, with artifacts showing them in use for at least 8,000 years.

Horses and Wheeled Vehicles

Next, came horses. While it’s difficult to pinpoint exactly when humans first began domesticating them as a means of getting around and transporting goods, experts generally go by the emergence of certain human biological and cultural markers that indicate when such practices started to take place.

Based on changes in teeth records, butchering activities, shifts in settlement patterns, and historic depictions, experts believe that domestication took place around 4000 BCE. Genetic evidence from horses, including changes in musculature and cognitive function, support this.

It was also roughly around this period that the wheel was invented. Archaeological records show that the first wheeled vehicles were in use around 3500 BCE, with evidence of the existence of such contraptions found in Mesopotamia, the Northern Caucuses, and Central Europe. The earliest well-dated artifact from that time period is the "Bronocice pot," a ceramic vase that depicts a four-wheeled wagon that featured two axles. It was unearthed in southern Poland.

Steam Engines

In 1769, the Watt steam engine changed everything. Boats were among the first to take advantage of steam-generated power; in 1783, a French inventor by the name of Claude de Jouffroy built the "Pyroscaphe," the world’s first steamship . But despite successfully making trips up and down the river and carrying passengers as part of a demonstration, there wasn’t enough interest to fund further development.

While other inventors tried to make steamships that were practical enough for mass transport, it was American Robert Fulton who furthered the technology to where it was commercially viable. In 1807, the Clermont completed a 150-mile trip from New York City to Albany that took 32 hours, with the average speed clocking in at about five miles per hour. Within a few years, Fulton and company would offer regular passenger and freight service between New Orleans, Louisiana, and Natchez, Mississippi.

Back in 1769, another Frenchman named Nicolas Joseph Cugnot attempted to adapt steam engine technology to a road vehicle—the result was the invention of the first automobile . However, the heavy engine added so much weight to the vehicle that it wasn't practical. It had a top speed of 2.5 miles per hour.

Another effort to repurpose the steam engine for a different means of personal transport resulted in the "Roper Steam Velocipede." Developed in 1867, the two-wheeled steam-powered bicycle is considered by many historians to be the world’s first motorcycle .

Locomotives

One mode of land transport powered by a steam engine that did go mainstream was the locomotive. In 1801, British inventor Richard Trevithick unveiled the world’s first road locomotive—called the “Puffing Devil”—and used it to give six passengers a ride to a nearby village. It was three years later that Trevithick first demonstrated a locomotive that ran on rails, and another one that hauled 10 tons of iron to the community of Penydarren, Wales, to a small village called Abercynon.

It took a fellow Brit—a civil and mechanical engineer named George Stephenson—to turn locomotives into a form of mass transport. In 1812, Matthew Murray of Holbeck designed and built the first commercially successful steam locomotive, “The Salamanca,” and Stephenson wanted to take the technology a step further. So in 1814, Stephenson designed the "Blücher," an eight-wagon locomotive capable of hauling 30 tons of coal uphill at a speed of four miles per hour.

By 1824, Stephenson improved the efficiency of his locomotive designs to where he was commissioned by the Stockton and Darlington Railway to build the first steam locomotive to carry passengers on a public rail line, the aptly named "Locomotion No. 1." Six years later, he opened the Liverpool and Manchester Railway, the first public inter-city railway line serviced by steam locomotives. His notable accomplishments also include establishing the standard for rail spacing for most of the railways in use today. No wonder he’s been hailed as " Father of Railways ."

Technically speaking, the first navigable submarine was invented in 1620 by Dutchman Cornelis Drebbel. Built for the English Royal Navy, Drebbel’s submarine could stay submerged for up to three hours and was propelled by oars. However, the submarine was never used in combat, and it wasn’t until the turn of the 20th century that designs leading to practical and widely used submersible vehicles were realized.

Along the way, there were important milestones such as the launch of the hand-powered, egg-shaped "Turtle " in 1776, the first military submarine used in combat. There was also the French Navy submarine "Plongeur," the first mechanically powered submarine.

Finally, in 1888, the Spanish Navy launched the "Peral," the first electric, battery-powered submarine, which also so happened to be the first fully capable military submarine. Built by a Spanish engineer and sailor named Isaac Peral, it was equipped with a torpedo tube, two torpedoes, an air regeneration system, and the first fully reliable underwater navigation system, and it posted an underwater speed of 3.5 miles per hour.

The start of the twentieth century was truly the dawn of a new era in the history of transportation as two American brothers, Orville and Wilbur Wright, pulled off the first official powered flight in 1903. In essence, they invented the world’s first airplane. Transport via aircraft took off from there with airplanes being put into service within a few short years during World War I. In 1919, British aviators John Alcock and Arthur Brown completed the first transatlantic flight, crossing from Canada to Ireland. The same year, passengers were able to fly internationally for the first time.

Around the same time that the Wright brothers were taking flight, French inventor Paul Cornu started developing a rotorcraft. And on November 13, 1907, his "Cornu" helicopter, made of little more than some tubing, an engine, and rotary wings, achieved a lift height of about one foot while staying airborne for about 20 seconds. With that, Cornu would lay claim to having piloted the first helicopter flight .

Spacecraft and the Space Race

It didn’t take long after air travel took off for humans to start seriously considering the possibility of going further up and toward the heavens. The Soviet Union surprised much of the western world in 1957 with its successful launch of Sputnik, the first satellite to reach outer space. Four years later, the Russians followed that by sending the first human, pilot Yuri Gagaran, into outer space aboard the Vostok 1.

These achievements would spark a “space race” between the Soviet Union and the United States that culminated in the Americans taking what was perhaps the biggest victory lap among national rivals. On July 20, 1969, the lunar module of the Apollo spacecraft, carrying astronauts Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin, touched down on the surface of the moon.

The event, which was broadcast on live TV to the rest of the world, allowed millions to witness the moment Armstrong became the first man to ever step foot on the moon, a moment he heralded as “one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind.”  

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6 Transportation Revolution

evolution of transportation essay

The transportation revolution in the United States began when Americans taking advantage of features of the natural environment to move people and things from place to place began searching for ways to make transport cheaper, faster, and more efficient. Over time a series of technological changes allowed transportation to advance to the point where machines have effectively conquered distance. People can almost effortlessly travel to anywhere in the world and can inexpensively ship raw materials and products across a global market.

But this technology is not ubiquitous, and it is not necessarily democratic. As a famous science fiction writer once said, the future is already here, it’s just not very evenly distributed. Modern transportation infrastructure is controlled to a great extent by large corporations, but the benefits of transport are depended on by everyone. And transportation technology itself requires specific conditions such as abundant, cheap, portable energy in the form of fossil fuels, and public infrastructure created by our own and foreign governments, that even those large corporations depend upon but don’t control.

When we think of transportation, it is natural to think first about going places. Getting on a plane in one hemisphere and getting off on the other side of the world is a life-changing opportunity which was unavailable to most people as little as a generation ago, and unthinkable two generations ago. But more crucial to our daily lives than the freedom offered by world travel is the cargo from the other side of the world that reaches us quickly in the holds of jets and more slowly but in almost unimaginable volume in containers on ships. The global transportation of foods, raw materials, and finished goods goes virtually unnoticed in our daily lives, but makes our contemporary consumer lifestyle possible.

evolution of transportation essay

Although even the early stages of the transportation revolution allowed people like seventy-year old Achsah Ranney, from Chapter Five’s Supplement, to travel regularly between her children’s homes in Massachusetts, New York, and Michigan, the more significant change was the ability of her sons and of other Americans to move freight from place to place. The ability to effectively ship food and other goods to where they were needed allowed people to stay put, and even to concentrate themselves in cities in a way they had never been able to do before. The growth of eastern cities depended just as much on the transportation revolution as did the building of new cities in the west.

As we have already seen, early Americans made amazing journeys with very primitive methods of transportation. The people who crossed Beringia and settled North and South America were able to cover startlingly long distances on foot. European explorers crossed dangerous oceans to visit the Americas in tiny ships. Human and animal power has been used extensively throughout American history, and is still used today to reach remote areas off the grid. But it is clear that improvements in transportation technology have been among the most powerful drivers of change in our history. And the transportation revolution has certainly changed our relationship with the American environment.

evolution of transportation essay

Technological improvements to ocean-going ships in the fifteenth century made European colonialism possible in the first place. Ships became bigger, faster, and safer. More people and goods could leave the safety of coastal waters and cross the oceans, and the places these improved ships connected became centers of trade, population, and wealth. This pattern of growth repeated itself as new technologies were developed to help Americans expand across the continent.

As we have seen, American colonists depended on trade with England and with the sugar planters of the West Indies to make their outposts in New England and Virginia successful. But from the beginning of the American Revolution to the conclusion of the War of 1812, relations between the new nation and Britain were tense and trade suffered. If it had not found a way to ship people and goods to and from its own frontier, the United States would have remained a coastal nation focused on ports like Boston, New York, Philadelphia, and Charleston. The barely-remembered Whiskey Rebellion of 1791, when George Washington led United States troops against American farmers in western Pennsylvania, was really about transportation. Farmers west of the Appalachian mountains could not easily haul wagon-loads of grain to eastern markets, so they turned their harvests into a more portable product by distilling grain into whiskey. The farmers believed the government’s excise tax on distilled spirits had been instituted to drive them out of the whiskey business for the benefit of large Eastern distillers. Since they had few other sources of income, the tax was a serious issue for westerners. Luckily, the incoming Jefferson administration repealed the tax in 1801 and increasing Ohio River shipping provided new outlets for western produce.

Roads and Rivers

On the eve of the Revolution, the only road that did not hug the east coast followed the Hudson River Valley into western New York on its way to Montreal (this was one reason colonial Americans seemed continually obsessed with the idea of conquering Montreal and bringing it into the United States). Less than thirty years later, riders working for the Post Office Department carried mail to nearly all the new settlements of the interior. The postal system’s designer, Benjamin Franklin, understood that in order for the new Republic to function, information had to flow freely. Franklin set a low rate for mailing newspapers, insuring that news would circulate widely in the newly-settled areas. But it was one thing carrying saddlebags filled with letters and newspapers to the frontier, and something else moving people and freight.

evolution of transportation essay

Rivers were the first important routes to the interior of North America. The Ohio River, which begins at Pittsburgh and flows southwest to join the Mississippi, helped people get to their new farms in the Ohio Valley and then helped them carry their farm produce to markets. The Ohio River Valley became one of the first areas of rapid settlement after the Revolution, along with the Mohawk River Valley in western New York. The importance of river shipping is illustrated by the fact that over fifty thousand miles of tributary rivers and streams in the Mississippi watershed were used to float goods to the port of New Orleans. The dependence of western farmers on the Spanish port also explains why New Orleans was a considered strategic city by the United States in the War of 1812. Thomas Jefferson’s 1803 purchase of the Louisiana Territory had actually begun as an attempt to buy the city of New Orleans, and Andrew Jackson’s defense of the port during the War of 1812 was vital to insuring the success of western expansion.

evolution of transportation essay

Early westward expansion depended on rivers, and towns and cities built during this era were usually on a waterway. Pittsburgh, Columbus, Cincinnati, Louisville, St. Louis, Kansas City, Omaha, and St. Paul all owe their locations to the river systems they provide access to. Buffalo, Cleveland, Detroit, Chicago, and Milwaukee utilize the Great Lakes in the same way. These lakeside cities exploded after the Erie Canal opened a route from the Great Lakes to the Atlantic, and allowed New York to overtake New Orleans as the nation’s most important commercial port. The 363-mile Erie Canal was so successful that another four thousand miles of canals were dug in America before the Civil War.

evolution of transportation essay

In 1800, it took nearly two weeks to reach Buffalo from New York City, a month to get to Detroit, and six grueling weeks of travel to arrive at the swampy lake-shore settlement that would become Chicago. Thirty years later, Buffalo was just five days away, Detroit about ten days, and Chicago less than three weeks. Horses pulled canal boats from towpaths on shore, eliminating the strain of travel for the boats’ passengers. Floating along on calm water was infinitely more comfortable than spending weeks on a wagon, in a cramped stage coach, or on horseback. The number of people willing to make long trips increased accordingly. And the amount of freight shipped to New York, after the canal cut shipping costs by over ninety percent, increased astronomically. Goods flowed along the Canal in both directions, offering life-changing opportunities. As mentioned previously, within ten years of the Erie Canal’s completion, the last fulling mill processing homespun cloth in Western New York shut its doors. Women no longer had to spend their time spinning wool and weaving their own textiles to make their family’s clothing. They could buy bolts of wool and cotton fabrics from the same merchant at the local general store who ground their family’s grain into flour and shipped it on the Canal to eastern cities. With fewer demands on their time, many women were able to not only improve their own quality of life, but contribute to family income by taking in piece-work, raising cash crops, or keeping cows and churning butter for sale to their local merchants.

The Age of Steam

Steam technology changed the nature of transportation. Until steam engines were put on riverboats, shipping had depended on either wind and river currents or on human and animal power. Goods could easily be floated south from farms on the nation’s rivers, but it was much more difficult and expensive to ship products against the rivers’ currents to the frontier. Flatboats and rafts accumulated at downstream ports, and were often broken down and burned as firewood. Steam engines made it possible to sail upstream as easily and nearly as quickly as down, causing an explosion of travel and shipping that radically changed frontier life.

evolution of transportation essay

Steam engines were a product of early European industrialism. The first steam patent was granted to a Spanish inventor named Jerónimo Beaumont in 1606, whose engine drove a pump used to drain mines. Englishman James Watt’s 1781 engine was the first to produce rotary power that could be adapted to drive mills, wheels, and propellers. Robert Fulton, an American inventor who had previously patented a canal-dredging machine, visited Paris and caught steamboat fever. Fulton sailed an experimental model on the Seine, and then returned home and launched the first commercial American steamboat on the Hudson River in 1807. The Clermont was able to sail upriver 150 miles from New York City to Albany in 32 hours. In 1811, Fulton built the New Orleans in Pittsburgh and began steamboat service on the Mississippi.

Although Robert Fulton died just a few years later of tuberculosis, his partners Nicholas Roosevelt and Robert Livingston carried on his business, and the age of riverboats was underway. Like Fulton’s prototype and the Clermont, the New Orleans was a large, heavy side-wheeler with a deep draft. It was not the most efficient design for shallow water, and it did not take long for ship-builders to settle on the familiar shallow-draft rear-paddle riverboats that carried freight on the Mississippi and its tributaries well into the 20th century. The shallower a riverboat’s draft, the farther upriver it could travel. Steam-powered riverboats soon pushed the transportation frontier to Fort Pierre in the Dakota territory and even to Fort Benton, Montana. Riverboats made it possible to ship goods in and out of nearly the whole area Thomas Jefferson had acquired in the Louisiana Purchase just a generation earlier. And steam-powered ocean shipping made the markets of Britain and Europe readily accessible to farmers and merchants in the middle of North America.

evolution of transportation essay

The other transportation technology enabled by steam power, of course, was the railroad. But railroads were even more revolutionary than steamboats. In spite of their power and speed, steam-powered riverboats depended on rivers or occasionally on canals to run, but a railroad could be built almost anywhere. Suddenly, the expansion of American commerce was no longer limited by the routes nature had provided into the frontier.

America’s first small railroads had actually been built on the East Coast before a steam engine was available to power them. Trains of cars were pulled by horses and looked a lot like stage-coaches on rails. But after Englishman George Stephenson’s locomotives began pulling passengers and freight in northwestern England in the mid-1820s, Americans quickly switched to steam. The first locomotive used to pull cars in the United States was the Tom Thumb, built in 1830 for the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad. Although Tom Thumb lost its maiden race against a horse-drawn train, Baltimore and Ohio owners were convinced by the demonstration of steam technology and committed to developing steam locomotives. The railroad, which had been established in 1827 to compete with the Erie Canal, already advertised itself as a faster way to move people and freight from the interior to the coast. Adding steam engines accelerated rail’s advantage over canal and river shipping.

Over 9,000 miles of track had been laid by 1850, most of it connecting the northeast with western farmlands. The Mississippi River was still the preferred route to market from Louisville and St. Louis south. But Cincinnati and Columbus became connected by rail to the Great Lake ports at Sandusky and Cleveland, giving the northern Ohio Valley faster access to New York markets. Detroit and Lake Michigan were also connected by rail, making the long steamboat trip around the northern reach of Michigan’s lower peninsula unnecessary.

evolution of transportation essay

By 1857, rail travelers could reach Chicago in less than two days and could be almost anywhere in the northern Mississippi Valley in three. On the eve of the Civil War in 1860, Chicago was already becoming the railroad hub of the Midwest. The Illinois Central Company had been chartered in 1851 to build a rail line from the lead mines at Galena to Cairo, where the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers joined. Galena is also located on the Mississippi on the northern border of Illinois, but rapids north of St. Louis made transporting ore on the river impossible, illustrating the advantage of rails over rivers. A railroad line to Cairo, with a branch line to Chicago, would also attract settlers and investors to Illinois. Young Illinois attorney Abraham Lincoln helped the Illinois Central lobby legislators and receive the first federal land grant ever given to a railroad company. The company was given 2.6 million acres of land, and Illinois Senator Stephen Douglas helped design the checkerboard distribution of parcels that would become common for railroad land grants. The map below shows the extent of the land the government gave to the Illinois Central Company, which a few years later showed its gratitude by helping to finance Lincoln’s Presidential campaign against Douglas.

The North’s advantage over the Confederate South in railroad miles and the Union Army’s ability to move troops and supplies efficiently had a definite impact on the outcome of the Civil War. In the years following the war, the shattered South added very little railroad track and repaired only a small percentage of the tracks the Union Army had destroyed during the war. While railroads languished in the South, rail miles in the North exploded. In 1869, the West Coast was connected through Chicago to the Northeast, when the Union and Central Pacific Lines met at Promontory Point Utah on May 10th. The building of a transcontinental railroad was made possible by the Pacific Railroad Act, which President Lincoln had signed into law in 1862.

Public or Private?

The Pacific Railroad Act was the first law allowing the federal government to give land directly to corporations. Previously the government had granted land to the states for the benefit of corporations. The Act granted ten square miles of land to the railroad companies for every mile of track they built. Land next to railroads always increased in value. The unprecedented gift of ten square miles of rapidly-appreciating land for every mile of track was a tremendous incentive to railroad companies to lay just as much track as they possibly could. Decisions to build lines were frequently based on the land granted, rather than on whether or not railroad companies expected the new lines to carry enough traffic or generate enough freight revenue to pay for themselves. In the eighteen years between the original Illinois Central grant of 1851 and the completion of the transcontinental line in 1869, privately-owned railroads received about 175 million acres of public land at no cost. This amounts to about seven percent of the land area of the contiguous 48 states, or an area slightly larger than Texas. For comparison, the Homestead Act distributed 246 million acres to American farmers over a 72-year period between 1862 and 1934, but required homesteaders to live on and to farm the land continuously for five years or pay for their parcel. The justification for the residency requirement was that the government was concerned homesteaders would become speculators and flip their farms. Railroad land grants were made with no similar stipulations because railroad corporations were expected to sell the lands they were given at a substantial profit.

Map of government land grants to railroad companies

It has often been argued that a national infrastructure project as large as a transcontinental railway could never have been built without government assistance. The West Coast and western territories needed to be brought into the Union, some historians have argued, and the only way to achieve this was with government-supported railroads. Ironically, the same people who make this argument usually also claim that it would have been disastrous for the government to have owned the railroads it had made possible with its legislation, loans, and land grants. An undertaking of this scope and scale, they say, requires that corporations be given monopolies and grants of natural resources and public credit. These arguments make it seem inevitable that giant corporations taking huge gifts from the public sector were the only way for America to move forward and build a rail network. However, history shows that this was not the only way a national rail system could have been built.

evolution of transportation essay

There are numerous examples of rail systems built and managed by the public sector in foreign countries, especially during the nineteenth century when nearly every rail system outside the United States was state-owned and operated. However, for the sake of simplicity we will restrict the comparison to the United States. The Northern Pacific Railway, a private corporation chartered by Congress in 1864, built 6,800 miles of track to connect Lake Superior with Puget Sound. In return, the corporation was given 40 million acres of land in 50-mile checkerboards on either side of its tracks. Not only did the Northern Pacific rely on the government for land and financing, the railroad used the services of the U.S. Army to protect its surveyors and to move uncooperative Indians out of its way. When the Northern Pacific’s proposed route cut through the center of the Great Sioux Reservation, established by the 1868 Fort Laramie Treaty, the corporation pressured the government to break the treaty. George Custer announced that gold had been discovered in the Black Hills after an 1874 mission protecting Northern Pacific surveyors, and Washington let the treaty be disregarded by both the railroad and the prospectors. The Indians responded with the Great Sioux War of 1876, which culminated in the Battle of Little Big Horn, where Custer and his Seventh Cavalry were wiped out by Sitting Bull and Crazy Horse leading a force of Lakota, Cheyenne, and Arapaho warriors. But although the Indians won the battle, they lost the war. Less than a year later, Sioux leaders ceded the Black Hills to the United States in exchange for subsistence rations for their families on the reservation.

evolution of transportation essay

In contrast, Canadian-American railroad entrepreneur James Jerome Hill built his Great Northern Railroad line from St. Paul to Seattle during the last decades of the nineteenth century without causing a war and without receiving a single acre of free public land. The Great Northern bought land from the government to build its right of way and to resell to settlers. Hill claimed proudly that his railway was completed “without any government aid, even the right of way, through hundreds of miles of public lands, being paid for in cash.” The Great Northern system connected the Northwest with the rest of the nation through St. Paul, using a web of over 8,300 miles of track. And because Hill only built lines where traffic justified them rather than adding track just to collect free land, the Great Northern was one of the few transcontinental railroad companies to avoid bankruptcy in the Panic of 1893.

Regardless of the ways they were financed and built, the proliferation of railroads caused explosive growth. Chicago was a frontier village of 4,500 people in 1840. When Lincoln helped the Illinois Central receive the first land grant in 1851, the city’s population was about 30,000. Twenty years later Chicago was the center of a rapidly-growing railroad network, and the city held ten times the people. In 1880 Chicago’s population was over 500,000, and ten years later Chicago had over a million residents. We will take a closer look at the changes railroads brought to Chicago in a Chapter Seven.

Internal Combustion

America’s transportation revolution did not end with steamboats and railroads and was not limited to public transportation technologies. The development of the automobile ushered in a new era of personal mobility for Americans. Internal combustion engines were inexpensive to mass produce and much easier to operate than steam engines. With the development of automobiles and trucks around the turn of the twentieth century, it no longer required a huge capital investment and a team of engineers to purchase and operate motorized transportation. Even the workers on Henry Ford’s assembly lines could aspire to owning their own Model Ts, especially after Ford doubled their wages to $5 a day in January 1914.

evolution of transportation essay

Engineers had experimented with building smaller machines using steam engines, and there were several examples in Europe and America of successful steam-powered farm tractors, trucks, and even a few horseless carriages. But internal combustion engines delivered much greater power relative to their mass, allowing smaller machines to do more work. The first internal combustion farm tractor was built by John Froehlich at his small Waterloo Gasoline Traction Engine Company in 1892. Others began applying internal combustion to farm equipment, and between 1907 and 1912 the number of tractors in American fields rose from 600 to 13,000. Eighty companies manufactured more than 20,000 tractors in 1913. After an auspicious beginning, Froehlich’s little Iowa company grew slowly and began building farm tractors in volume only after World War I. The Waterloo company built a good product, and was acquired by the John Deere Plow Company in 1918. Deere remains the world leader in self-propelled farm equipment.

The first internal combustion truck was built by Gottlieb Daimler in 1896, using an engine that had been developed by Karl Benz a year earlier. World War I spurred innovation and provided a ready market for internal combustion trucks that were much less expensive than their steam-powered rivals. By the end of the war gasoline-powered trucks had overtaken the steam truck market. Most large trucks now burn diesel fuel rather than gasoline, using a compression-ignition engine design patented by Rudolf Diesel in 1892.

Internal combustion trucks and tractors, like cars, allowed people to go farther, carry more, and do more work than had been possible using human and animal power. And they were much more affordable than comparable steam-based vehicles and easier to build at a scale that encouraged individual use and ownership. Trucking eventually challenged rail transport, especially after the development of semi-trailers and the Interstate Highway System. Although the first diesel truck engines only produced five to seven horsepower, they advanced quickly. Indiana mechanic Clessie Cummins built his first, six-horsepower diesel engine in 1919. The business bearing his name is now a global corporation doing $20 billion in annual business, mostly in diesel engines. Cummins’s current heavy truck engine is rated at 600 horsepower.

While it is easy to focus on the inventions and technological innovations of the internal combustion era, we should not lose sight of the infrastructure improvements that made these innovations valuable. Without paved roads to run on, there would have been far fewer cars and trucks and their impact on society and the environment would have been much different. The biggest road-building project in American history was the construction of the Interstate Highway System, financed by the Federal-Aid Highway Acts of 1944 and 1956. Unlike the transcontinental railroad project of the 1860s, the Interstate Highway System was paid for by the federal government and the roads are owned by the states. The system includes nearly 47,000 miles of highway, and the project was designed to be self-liquidating, so that the cost of the system did not contribute to the national debt. In addition to the Interstate System, American states, counties, cities and towns maintain systems of roads totaling nearly four million miles, about two-thirds of which are paved.

Gasoline vs. Ethanol

The economic trade-off of internal combustion for the farmers and teamsters who first adopted it was that speed and power came at a price. Where horses and oxen were readily available in farm communities and were cheap to maintain, tractors and trucks were a substantial investment. And unlike horses and oxen, tractors and trucks needed to be fueled with petroleum that made them dependent on a faraway industry. However, this dependence was not inevitable. Henry Ford and Charles Kettering, the chief engineer at General Motors, had both believed that as engine compression ratios increased, their companies’ engines would transition from gasoline to ethyl alcohol. We are all aware that the shift to ethanol did not happen, but why it did not is less well-known and may surprise you.

evolution of transportation essay

Most history books faithfully repeat the inaccurate story that Edwin Drake’s famous 1858 oil strike in Titusville Pennsylvania came just as the world was running out of expensive whale oil. Actually, there was a thriving market for alcohol fuel in the mid-nineteenth century United States. Ethanol was price-competitive with kerosene, and unlike kerosene it was produced by many small distillers, creating widespread competition that would continue to drive down prices. Unfortunately for ethanol producers and fuel consumers, the alcohol fuel industry was wiped out when the Lincoln administration imposed a $2.08 per gallon tax on distilled alcohol between 1862 and 1864. A gallon of Standard Oil kerosene still cost only 58 cents, so kerosene took over the American fuel market. Of course, after kerosene became the only available fuel, Standard Oil was free to raise prices as it saw fit.

But ethanol still had its advocates. The very first American internal combustion engine, built in 1826 by Samuel Morey, had used grain alcohol because it was inexpensive and readily available. Nearly a century later, Henry Ford’s Model T was designed to be convertible between kerosene, gasoline, and ethanol. General Motors chief engineer Kettering was convinced it was only a matter of time until ethanol became the fuel of choice.

So why aren’t we all driving cars running renewable fuels? Part of the answer, as you have probably already guessed, is that Standard Oil made the auto industry an offer they couldn’t refuse. The oil company used its vast distribution network to make gasoline available everywhere it was needed, and insured that the price was so low that competitors could not profit if they entered the market. Standard Oil pioneered the practice of pricing below their cost of production to run competitors out of the business. The profits of the company’s many other divisions subsidized their short-term losses on gasoline. Predatory pricing was one of the principal charges made against the company in the 1911 antitrust case that resulted in the breakup of the Standard Oil Trust.

evolution of transportation essay

But Standard Oil’s predatory pricing does not tell the whole story of why we do not run cars on ethanol. The rest of the story, if anything, is even more sinister. It has long been known that using gasoline at high compression results in engine knocking. It was also well-known that ethanol did not knock. Charles Kettering at General Motors had argued for years that the “most direct route which we now know for converting energy from its source, the sun, into a material suitable for use as a fuel is through vegetation to alcohol.” The technology was simple and Americans had been distilling alcohol fuels for generations. Unfortunately, Kettering worked for a corporation whose major shareholder was the Du Pont family, who also happened to own the largest corporation in the chemical industry. It would be impossible for DuPont to profit or for General Motors to gain a competitive advantage using alcohol fuels, since the distilling technology was universally available and the product was un-patentable. However, there was an extremely profitable alternative.

evolution of transportation essay

Tetraethyl Lead (TEL) was a lubricating compound that could be added to gasoline to eliminate knocking. General Motors received a patent on its use as an anti-knock agent, and Standard Oil was granted a patent on its manufacture which was later extended to include DuPont. The three companies founded Ethyl Corporation to market TEL and other fuel additives. Unfortunately, lead is a powerful neurotoxin, linked to learning disabilities and dementia. The federal government had misgivings about allowing lead additives, and in 1925 the Surgeon General temporarily suspended TEL’s use and government scientists secretly approached Ford engineers seeking an alternative. In the 1930s, 19 federal bills and 31 state bills were introduced to promote alcohol use or blending. But the American Petroleum Industries Committee lobbied hard against them. Under intense industry pressure, the Federal Trade Commission even issued a restraining order forbidding commercial competitors from criticizing Ethyl gasoline as unsafe. By the mid-1930s, 90 percent of all gasoline contained TEL. Airborne lead pollution increased to over 625 times previous background levels, and the average IQ levels of American children dropped 7 points during the leaded-gas era. By the 1980s, over 50 million American children registered toxic levels of lead absorption and 5,000 Americans died annually of lead-induced heart disease. When public concern continued to increase, the Ethyl Corporation was sold in 1962 in the largest leveraged buyout of its time. In the 1970s the newly-established Environmental Protection Agency finally took the stand other federal agencies had been afraid to take. The EPA declared emphatically that airborne lead posed a serious threat to public health, and the government forced automakers and the fuel industry to gradually eliminate the use of lead. TEL is now illegal in automotive gasoline, although it is still used in aviation and racing fuels. Unleaded gasoline is now used in all new internal combustion cars. But while pure ethanol has powered most automobiles in Brazil since the 1970s, most Americans continue to use a blend containing just 10% ethanol to 90% gasoline.

Global Cargo

Two additional forms of transportation became increasingly important as the twentieth century ended and the twenty-first century began. Commercial airplanes are only a little over a hundred years old and the first air cargo and airmail shipments were flown in 1910 and 1911. Air cargo was considered too expensive for all but the most valuable shipments until express carriers such as UPS and Federal Express revolutionized the shipping business in the 1990s. The global economy now measures air freight volumes in ton-miles. In 2014, the world shipped more than 58 billion ton-miles of goods. Air freight also allows perishable items like fresh fruits and vegetables to be transported across oceans and continents from producers to consumers. This is a big business. Over 75 million tons of fresh produce are air-shipped annually, worth more than $50 billion.

For nonperishable items, container shipping has created a single global market. Standardized containers were invented by a trucker named Malcolm McLean, who realized it would save a lot of time and energy if his trucks didn’t need to be loaded and unloaded at the port, but could just be hoisted on and off a cargo ship. McLean refitted an oil tanker and made his first trip in 1956, carrying fifty-eight containers from Newark to Houston. Current annual shipping now exceeds 200 million semi-trailer sized containers. Containers can be shipped by sea, rail, truck, and even air, allowing just-in-time operators like Wal-Mart to manage a supply chain that relies much less on warehoused inventory, and more on product in transit.

evolution of transportation essay

But just as shifting from horse power to a gasoline truck or tractor a hundred years ago involved economic trade-offs, shopping at Wal-Mart today introduces a new level of dependence. We not only rely on transportation systems and the fuels they run on, but also on supply-chain software, international trade agreements and currency fluctuations, and even on the political situations of faraway nations. As long as the costs of inputs like fuel and infrastructure like ports, highways, and open borders remains low, the global market is a great deal for the consumer and a source of immense profits to businesses and their shareholders. But a company like Wal-Mart is just as dependent on factors it cannot control as its customers are. If any of these factors change, who will bear the cost?

Further Reading

Bill Kovarik, “Henry Ford, Charles Kettering and the Fuel of the Future,” Automotive History Review , Spring, 1998. Available online at www.environmentalhistory.org

Marc Levinson, The Box: How the Shipping Container Made the World Smaller and the World Economy Larger , 2006.

Vaclav Smil, Creating the Twentieth Century: Technical Innovations or 1867-1914 and their Lasting Impact , 2005

George Rogers Taylor, The Transportation Revolution, 1815-1860 , 1977.

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evolution of transportation essay

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  • Evolution of Transportation Term Paper

Evolution Of Transportation Term Paper

Apart from for the Ohio and Tennessee, no main rivers are suitable for east-west transportation (William, 1967). The canal as a cure for this state of affairs was clearly insufficient. Rail transport had got to, for both economic and engineering causes, pursue the geographic paths appropriate for their structure. The railroad map of the United States exemplifies this feature evidently; particularly in the Far West where accessibility of mountain passes was often the restrictive aspect in construction. Logically, transportation routes are proposed to unite the major positions of traffic probable as determined by principal cities. On the other hand, these connections have got to be made over routes that are reasonable and economical in character; and, as a result, they, in turn, gave rise to enlargement in the newly tapped areas (William, 1967). Highways were less restricted in location by geographic and economic factors than railroads are, as well as railroads less than canals or natural waterways. As a result, the highway system of the United States attaches, more or less, every hamlet and village and passes over geographic obstructions that would be unfeasible or unworkable for railroads or waterways. The aircraft, at the same time as it has more or less no geographic limitations, is highly reserved by economic factors (William, 1967). Time has, of course, performed a significant role, so that, by the early 1930's when the airline network was under progress, the economic factors underlying the basic airline net were previously well formed (William, 1967). Location of natural resources logically plays a major part in location of transport lines, particularly rail. Coal and iron areas, as well as other mining sections, are more or less forever rail served, as well as the rail network is thick in the mining areas of the Northeastern United States (William, 1967). The highway network has to a great extent condensed the power of geography, in view of the fact that it has less reliance upon topographic limitations. On the other hand, at the same time as the highway net is more or less universal, the interstate system of highways leans to connect merely the major population centers and will therefore carry the bulk of highway commerce. Commercial airlines similarly connect major cities for the reason that of economic limitations, even though to a minor degree such geographic characteristics such as mountainous terrain may inhibit air traffic (William, 1967). Transportation Benefits To The Individual The Benefits of Automobile: The Automobile Revolution started by way of the appearance of automobile manufacturing, in relation to the year 1890. By that time, Europeans and North Americans possessed the technology necessary to create and fruitfully function a mechanically powered road vehicle. A taste and a demand for such a device could then be shaped, structuring not only on two generations of public receipt of railways, but in addition on the prevalent attention in a more current mechanical device, the bicycle. The opening stages of automobile making and marketing obligated nothing novel in the shape of business organization, plant process, or advertising techniques. Nor did it have need of large sums of resources or large numbers of workers. However, in due course, the growth of this industry has brought astonishing alterations in all these areas. Revolutions more often than not do not proclaim themselves at their first signs (Solomon, 1971). The Benefits of Bicycle: At the same time as bicycles are just one species in the "ecology" of urban transportation, their numerous compensations make them particularly beautiful for short commutes, deliveries, and even some hauling chores. Where cities have understood this, particularly in northern Europe, the bicycle has assumed a significant existence in the urban transportation network. If cities are usual surroundings for bicycles, bikes in turn are excellent for the urban landscape. Bike traffic is pollution free. Each trip made by a bike in its place of a car decreases the environmental load of low-level ozone, nitrous oxides, carbon dioxide, soot and noise. Neither electric cars nor high-mileage gas-powered cars can compete that attainment. And for the reason that bicycles are used for short trips, all through which car engines are characteristically cold and incompetent (Solomon, 1971). The Benefits of Steamboats Commercial steamboats came online soon subsequent to 1808, when the first steam-powered vessel, developed by Robert Fulton, went up the Hudson aligned with the current. By the 1830s, steamboats triumphed on the complete major and a lot of the minor river systems in the country. A traveler could depart New York City in a steamboat, go ashore at Albany to rise up a canal…

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The Future of Transport Between Digitalization and Decarbonization pp 1–28 Cite as

The Evolution of Transport Across World Regions

  • Michel Noussan 4 ,
  • Manfred Hafner 4 &
  • Simone Tagliapietra 4  
  • Open Access
  • First Online: 01 May 2020

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3 Citations

Part of the SpringerBriefs in Energy book series (BRIEFSENERGY)

This chapter aims at providing an overview of the multiple aspects involved in passenger and freight transport, which are the base for the understanding of the energy consumption of the sector, as well as for the current trends and prospects related to digitalization and decarbonization. A brief historical discussion and some trends will be presented, followed by a description of the main modes and technologies, both for passenger and freight transport, and a final focus on the differences across world regions in mobility patterns and behaviors. The evolution of transport systems has led to very different situations worldwide, depending on different strategies related to economic development, geographical limitations and cultural, political and social aspects. Proper sustainable mobility plans need to be based on the specific characteristics of each location, and the integration between different governance levels is of utmost importance to improve the reliability, affordability, and energy performance on the entire transport system.

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1.1 Introduction

Transport has evolved in history, following a wide range of drivers, which changed how, how much, when, and why people moved and transported goods between places. Mobility demand has always been driven by the need to access opportunities, related to work, services, shopping or leisure, depending on the specific historical and cultural context.

1.1.1 A Brief Historical Perspective

The history of transport has seen a significant evolution over the centuries, both on the causes of mobility demand and on the available modes, that in turn had an impact on the distance that people and goods could travel. People travel to access opportunities, and the share of each activity has evolved in time, with significant differences across societies worldwide, as well as between urban and rural contexts.

An example of the evolution of passenger transport modes can be seen in Fig.  1.1 , which depicts the average daily distance travelled by the US citizen in the last century. It is interesting to notice how the availability of different technologies has led to a significant and continuous increase of the average distance travelled, and at the same time, new technologies have led to a decrease in the need of walking. Moreover, average daily travel times remain more or less constant, around a total average of one hour per day, leading to the increase of the distance and area to which people have access to in their daily activities. As a result, cities become larger and continue to attract more and more people worldwide, leading to an urbanization trend for which transport will become crucial.

figure 1

Authors’ elaboration from Ausubel, Marchetti, and Meyer ( 1998 )

US travel per capita per day by all modes.

One of the main impacts of transport is related to the energy required to satisfy the mobility demand. The transport sector currently accounts for almost 30% of the world final energy consumption (IEA, 2018b ), reaching 32,494 TWh (2794 Mtoe) in 2017, with a 43% increase from the 22,771 TWh (1958 Mtoe) of 2000. At that time, oil represented almost 97% of the transport energy mix, and today, it slightly decreased to 92% thanks to an increased penetration of electricity (mainly in rail services), biofuels, and natural gas. Still, the transport sector remains today the less diversified, and therefore, there are increasing efforts to try to enhance the use of different low-carbon alternatives to oil products.

A closer look at the evolution of transport energy consumption in the last decades (see Fig.  1.2 ) highlights its continuous increase, with almost a threefold growth from 1971 to 2015, higher than industry consumption (around +80% increase) or residential consumption (roughly +90%). The chart shows also the clear increase of the share of diesel, which is slowly reaching gasoline in the share of consumption by fuel.

figure 2

Authors’ elaboration from IEA ( 2017 )

World energy consumption for transport by fuel.

Transport includes a large variety of subsectors that have peculiar characteristics, as will be described in detail in the following sections. Also, the evolution of transport is tightly related with the urbanization trend worldwide, and mobility planning in cities includes additional aspects related to local pollution, congestions, and safety. It is not trivial to analyze the difference between extra-urban and urban transport, since there are few data specifically related to urban transport at world scale. However, some research has been performed on a limited number of cities, to estimate the transport energy consumption per person in cities related to the population density [see Fig.  1.3 , authors’ elaboration from WHO ( 2011 )]. Although the data refer to some years ago, the hyperbolic relation among these two quantities appears very clearly. An interesting aspect is the strong clustering of the world regions, which in turn can be correlated to multiple factors including political, economic, cultural, and social behaviors. The cities in the US show generally a low density coupled with the highest per capita energy consumption, which is mostly caused by the diffused use of single-passenger large cars and the low use (and often availability) of public transport. Western European cities lay in the middle, while the bottom right part of the chart is showing mainly high-density cities, whose low per capita energy consumption is a result both of relatively low transport needs due to higher density and low income of the citizens leading to lower access to opportunities. At the same time, in densely populated areas, an excessive use of private vehicles would lead to severe congestions, limiting the speed and flexibility of the private car.

figure 3

Authors’ elaboration from WHO ( 2011 )

Urban transport energy per capita versus population density.

1.1.2 Current Situation and Prospects

As discussed above, the evolution of transport demand is related to a number of factors, including the population, the level of GDP, as well as the urbanization. On the other hand, available technologies may unlock additional demand potential, thanks to the availability of mobility solutions at a lower cost for the users or with other advantages, including speed, convenience, and flexibility.

As long as energy consumption is concerned, transport modes can be compared by considering their average specific energy consumption, which can be parameterized on passenger-km (pkm) for passenger transport and on tonnes-km (tkm) for freight transport. Table  1.1 shows some average values for energy consumption of different transport modes, together with their range of variation. These values should be considered with care, since they are affected by a large number of parameters, including type of fuel, vehicle conditions, vehicle load, etc. Moreover, since these figures relate to the final energy consumption of the transport modes, primary energy consumption may differ. For example, transport modes based on electricity show lower specific energy consumption, but the electricity generation may involve additional energy losses in comparison with fossil fuels, depending on the energy source from which it is generated.

Taking in mind these limitations, the values reported in Table  1.1 still provide some interesting evidence: cars and trucks remain among the worst performing transport modes for passenger and freight transport respectively, while the best performing modes are rail and shipping. Large cars have higher specific energy consumption than aviation, which is generally referred to as the transport mode with the highest environmental impacts. The good performance of rail is partially due to its high electrification, while shipping benefits from the larger volumes, the lower speed, and the lower friction in comparison with land transport.

Besides energy consumption, each transport mode has its own advantages and weaknesses, and the choice of a mode over another may be caused by different reasons. Thus, the transport sector is a complex mix of different modes, and multimodal trips are a common solution for both passenger and freight transport.

The future development of transport needs to be contextualized in an increasingly urbanized world, which will be inhabited by 9.2 billion people by 2040, with 43 megacities of more than 10 million people already in 2030, mainly in Asia and Africa (United Nations, 2018 ). At the same time, an increasing share of the world population will have access to more services, including private and shared mobility options.

The IEA’s World Energy Outlook 2018 presents different future scenarios for the world energy consumption (IEA, 2018b ). As far as transport is concerned, its share in final energy consumption by 2040 will still remain similar to the current situation, ranging from 26 to 29%, while the total consumption of the sector will show a higher variation depending on the policies that will be deployed in the future. According to the IEA, while the current policies may lead to an increase of 42% by 2040 compared to the current consumption, with an oil share still locked to 88%, the Sustainable Development Scenario presents a 6% decrease of energy consumption in transport, with oil representing 60% of the 30,703 TWh (2640 Mtoe) estimated for 2040.

The future trends for transport are strongly related to the effectiveness of several policies that may be deployed at different governance levels, as will be better described in Chap.  4 . The efforts required for the decarbonization of transport will likely include multiple technological solutions, since no silver bullet appears to be able to tackle the diversified challenges related to the complexity of this sector.

1.2 Passenger Transport

Passenger transport includes a wide variety of activities that range from work commuting, to business trips, tourism, everyday activities, etc. For most trips, there are different potential alternative modes, which may be chosen by the passengers by considering different aspects including price, travel time, comfort, and safety. Passenger transport demand is usually quantified in passenger-km (pkm), which accounts for the transportation of a passenger over a distance of a km. A reliable estimation of passenger transport demand is crucial to perform proper mobility planning strategies at different levels. Figure  1.4 reports the estimations of the International Transport Forum for passenger transport in the world, by highlighting some categories related to modes and distances, as well as the contribution of OECD and non-OECD countries. Footnote 1 The chart highlights the very strong increase in transport demand, which is expected to almost triple by 2050, with the strongest contribution coming from developing countries (especially in nonurban road and aviation, i.e., on medium and long distances). The main drivers will be the growing population and the increased well-being, allowing a larger number of people to access different mobility options, especially private cars.

figure 4

Authors’ elaboration on ITF ( 2019 )

Estimated future demand for passenger transport by type, billion passenger-km.

However, attention must be paid to the fact that there is no single categorization for passenger transport, leading to the difficulty of comparing scenarios from different sources due to the different aggregation levels that are used.

This section will present the three main groups that are generally considered (road, rail, and aviation) together with a brief description of the aspects related to active transport (i.e., walking and cycling), which are usually not considered in world statistics but they may be more and more important to develop sustainable alternative to private car in urban contexts. Furthermore, last-mile active solutions may be integrated by micro-mobility electricity-based services, including scooter sharing as well as electric bikes.

1.2.1 Road Transport

Road transport includes all the different motorized vehicles that are available for passengers, including cars, buses, and motorcycles/mopeds. Although with some differences related to the world regions, private cars currently remain the most diffused mode, thanks to their high flexibility and reliability, together with their relatively low cost.

The evolution of private vehicles across countries still shows large inequalities, mostly related to the average income of the citizens. The relation between the vehicle ownership and the gross national income across world countries emerges quite clearly in Fig.  1.5 .

figure 5

Authors’ calculation on WHO ( 2018 )

Registered vehicles as a function of gross national income.

It has to be highlighted that the data in the chart are related to the total number of vehicles, including different modes. As a result, for some countries, cars are predominant (in the US, they represent more than 92% of the total registered vehicles), while in other countries, especially in Asia, two- and three-wheelers are the most diffused road transport mode (94% in Vietnam, 73% in India, 54% in Thailand). Similar figures come from research activities based on surveys: Poushter ( 2015 ) compared ownership rates of cars, motorcycles, and bikes in 44 countries worldwide, finding large differences from a country to another, as well as depending on the citizens’ incomes inside countries.

All road transport vehicles are currently heavily relying on oil products, especially gasoline and diesel. While the latter is generally the most diffused option for heavy-duty vehicles (trucks and buses), for light-duty vehicles the competition is more pronounced, especially in European countries (the US cars almost totally run on gasoline). While diesel engines are generally more efficient, they usually have a higher investment cost and are therefore preferred for users that have a high car usage. Alternative fuels, such as natural gas, LPG and biofuels, are being used in some countries, but they are still representing a marginal share of the total energy consumption of the passenger transport.

The energy consumption required for passenger transport on road can show a significant variation based on multiple parameters, including the type of vehicle, the load factor, the average speed, the type of driving, the technology and aging of the vehicle, etc. While average numbers from country statistics are used to estimate the energy consumption of the sector, it has to be noted that the potential variability is significant, especially across countries and in different groups of users inside each country.

There is a significant debate on the road transport total costs considering externalities (Litman & Doherty, 2009 ), since the vehicle ownership and the operational costs paid by the users are only representing a limited share of the total costs. Other aspects, both internal and external, include the risk of accidents, the cost of congestions (related to the cost of the time that is wasted), energy security, GHG emissions, air pollution, noise, impact of infrastructures, etc. The current taxation system hardly compensates for the external costs of road transport, resulting in an inequitable distribution of costs and benefits. Part of these costs are currently compensated by fuel taxes in some countries, but some alternative solutions are being evaluated, mainly to compensate the decrease of revenues due to the improved efficiency of vehicles and the gradual introduction of electric vehicles. Some US states are considering the possibility of taxing the vehicles based on their usage rather than on fuel consumption, although this would not reflect the issues related to congestion, that would require a pricing both location and time based. The development of digital technologies (onboard sensors, GPS, connectivity, etc.) may support in the future the possibility of dynamic taxation for road transport.

While road transport analyses are generally focused on vehicles, both for economic and energy evaluations, another important aspect that needs to be accounted for is the infrastructure. In fact, road transport needs a proper infrastructure, which in turn requires significant investments and a proper maintenance. The road network has seen a significant evolution in the last centuries, especially in developed countries, in parallel with the development of both passenger and freight transport. The possibility of exploiting a very large and distributed network of roads, from local to highways, makes road transport the only solution that can almost always guarantee a door-to-door service without the integration with other modes. This enhanced flexibility is one of the most important aspects that lead to the success of road transport over other modes (notably railways).

1.2.2 Rail Transport

Rail transport is a significant alternative to road for land transport, thanks to the availability of a separate infrastructure that is not affected by the road network congestions, although it needs a careful planning and management for its optimal operation. Additional advantages of rail over road transport include the higher average speed, especially in urban contexts and in high-speed rail networks, the lower fatality risk for passengers, the better energy efficiency, and lower environmental impacts.

Rail services are generally provided to the users by public or private companies, which allow passengers to travel between specific locations. Competition is possible, but there is the need of a third-party management of the infrastructure to avoid potential collisions or congestions and to optimize the operation and scheduling of the trips. The flexibility of the system is lower than for road transport, although in some countries well-developed rail networks ensure a redundancy that enhances the system flexibility, especially over long distances. However, rail transport is generally part of a multimodal trip that includes other modes for the first- and last-miles.

Rail transport includes different segments that are generally divided into urban railways (i.e., trams and subways), extra-urban conventional railways, and high-speed railways. These segments have different features, targets, and competing transport modes. Urban rail has the potential to support the current urbanization trend by providing an effective alternative to private cars with benefits on local pollution, GHG emissions, congestions, and land use, especially in densely populated districts. High-speed rail, if well planned and operated, can provide an effective substitute for short-haul flights, being aviation one of the most challenging modes to decarbonize.

Globally, around three quarters of conventional passenger rail activity are based on electricity, and the remaining quarter relies on diesel (IEA, 2019c ), while high-speed rail and urban rail are totally powered by electricity. According to (IEA, 2019c ), the total share of passenger rail transport on electrified tracks is expected to rise to 97% by 2050, with the global activity becoming 2.7 times higher than the current levels.

Globally, rail represented 8% of passenger transport in 2016 (IEA, 2019c ), but with an uneven distribution across different world areas. The highest share of passenger transport on extra-urban conventional railways is in Asia, with India accounting for 39% of the total, followed by China with 27% and Japan with 11%. China accounts for about two-thirds of high-speed rail activity, having overtaken both Japan (17%) and the European Union (12%) in the last years. The regional distribution of urban rail activity is more even; China, European Union, and Japan each have around one-fifth of urban passenger rail activity.

While conventional railways have not seen any disruptive improvements in the last century, the evolution of high-speed networks has reached significant penetrations in multiple countries, providing a fast, reliable, and cost-effective alternative for traveling from a city to another. This segment may be further improved in the future by the deployment of alternative technologies that have still a few applications, such as maglev (from “magnetic levitation”), or that are still in a research phase, such as Hyperloop.

Maglev trains are based on a well-known technology that has currently failed in reaching the strong expectations of the past decades, mainly due to the very high capital costs involved. Maglev trains are in commercial operation in six locations in Asia as of 2018 (Maglev.net, 2018 ), but the only application running at higher speed than normal high-speed trains is the one connecting Shanghai airport with the city center, reaching a top speed of 430 km/h over the 30 km of its length. Another project currently under construction in Japan plans to connect Tokyo and Nagoya, but the benefits provided by halving the travel time come at the cost of a four to five times higher energy consumption in comparison with the current high-speed train connecting those cities (Kingsland, 2018 ).

Conversely, Hyperloop technology is a new concept that has been proposed for the first time in 2013 by the CEO of Tesla Motors and SpaceX, Elon Musk (SpaceX, 2013 ). It is based on pressurized capsules that travel in low-pressure tubes at speeds similar or higher than air travel. Different feasibility studies have been developed in recent years, suggesting that this technology could be two to three times more energy efficient per passenger transported than conventional high-speed rail (IEA, 2019c ). However, actual figures may vary, and commercial projects are not expected before the mid-2020s (Hyperloop One, 2019 ).

1.2.3 Air Transport

Aviation is among the most critical transport segments, due to its constantly increasing passenger demand, especially for long-haul flights, and the high energy density that is required. Demand for domestic and international air transport combined is expected to rise from 7 trillion passenger-kilometers in 2015 to 22 trillion in 2050, according to (ITF, 2019 ), especially in developing countries. International air transport passenger demand in China and India alone is expected to increase more than threefold by 2030 and almost sevenfold by 2050.

As for other transport statistics, it is not easy to find reliable and coherent data across world countries with an acceptable historical record. The plot of Fig.  1.6 represents the historical evolution of the average flights per person in some countries, showing the significant differences across developed and developing countries, as well as the growing trend for China and India, which is very similar to the growth at global scale. Unfortunately, there is a caveat: these data are grouped by country based on the nationality of the air carriers rather than on the airports of departure. As a result, while for large countries the values are meaningful, this may not be the case for small countries that are the basis of large international air companies (e.g., the United Arab Emirates, with Etihad and Emirates, or Ireland, with Ryanair). Moreover, while the first decades of air travel were mainly based on national flagship air companies, in the current globalized market air companies may operate flights outside of their home country.

figure 6

Authors’ calculation on World Bank ( 2019 )

Annual flights per person in selected countries.

The aviation sector in 2016 accounted for an energy consumption of 2163 TWh (186 Mtoe) for international travels and 1384 TWh (119 Mtoe) for domestic travels (IEA, 2017 ), all made up of oil products. Aviation accounted for 12% of the total CO 2 emissions of the transport sector in 2016, reaching almost 1 Gt of carbon dioxide (IEA, 2018a ). If it was counted as a country, aviation would be ranked sixth for CO 2 emissions from fuel combustion, between Japan (1.1 Gt) and Germany (0.7 Gt). Footnote 2

The increase of air travel demand has been caused by multiple drivers, including the increasing share of low-cost companies, which showed in the last years a higher growth than the entire sector, carrying in 2018 around 31% of passengers worldwide (ICAO, 2018 ). The competition among different companies ensures lower fares. According to (Kasper & Lee, 2017 ), real domestic price per mile in the US has declined by 40% in the years 1990–2016 (and by 36% including bag and change fees), notwithstanding the 110% increase in jet fuel prices since 1998. However, in the same period, the sector has seen a significant improvement of the energy efficiency.

Globally, the efficiency of the aviation sector improved by 2.9% per year during 2000–2016, thanks to a better aircraft utilization and to the renewal of the fleet. The average load factor of the planes reached a record level of 82% in 2018, with a slight increase from the previous year. The average load factor varies across world regions, ranging from 71.8% for Africa to 84.5% for Europe (ICAO, 2018 ). At the same time, the average fuel burn of new aircraft models fell approximately 45% from 1968 to 2014, or a compounded annual reduction rate of 1.3% (Kharina & Rutherford, 2015 ), but with significant variations across decades. Energy efficiency measures are driven by the significant cost of fuel in airline operation (reaching a share of roughly 20%), which drives investments in better aircraft designs and lighter materials.

1.2.4 Active Modes

Active transport modes include all the modes that do not require an external energy source for passenger transport, primarily walking and cycling. These transport modes have never been considered in the energy statistics, since they are not related to the energy consumption of any fuel, and at the same time, they represent a marginal share when considering passenger-km. However, they make up a non-negligible share of the number of trips in our everyday life, and they have the potential of replacing a significant number of short motorized trips, especially in densely populated cities. Any proper sustainable mobility planning strategy should be defined by maximizing the contribution of active modes, especially in first- and last-mile solutions. Active transport can also help in preventing the deaths attributable to physical inactivity, which have been estimated to reach 3.2 million worldwide on a yearly basis (WHO, 2011 ). Moreover, being affordable by virtually everyone, they are the most equitable of all transport modes (Buehler & Pucher, 2012 ). They also provide advantages related to urban congestion, noise, air pollution, and use of land space.

Due to the lack of a consequential fuel consumption, there is no reliable accounting of the total amount of trips done on foot or by bike on a global level, although some numbers are available on a country basis or for selected cities, calculated with different estimation methods, usually based on surveys. Some researchers have analyzed walking and cycling figures for some countries by considering the most comparable and detailed data, including the US, the United Kingdom, Denmark, France, Germany, and the Netherlands (Buehler & Pucher, 2012 ). Considering the percentage of total trips in the last decades, a generalized decrease of active modes is noticeable, although with marked differences across countries, which is related to a corresponding rise of travels by private car. The most recent data (2008) show a 11% share of walking in the US, with values in European countries but Denmark above 20%. Cycling shows a larger variability, with slight variations over time in each country, but huge differences from high-cycling countries (the Netherlands, Denmark, and Germany with 25%, 18%, and 10%, respectively, in 2008) to low-cycling countries (France, UK, and USA with 3%, 2%, and 1%, respectively).

A data-driven estimation of physical activity patterns in different countries has been performed by analyzing data from smartphones’ accelerometers, to calculate the daily steps performed by the users (Althoff et al., 2017 ). The researchers found that the average user recorded roughly 5000 steps per day over an average span of 14 h, but with significant differences across countries (from a low 3500 steps in Indonesia to a high of 6900 in Hong Kong). The findings highlighted the role of the built environment in helping citizens improving their daily activity, with beneficial consequences on public health. It must be noted that this research, based on smartphone data, included mostly high- and middle-income countries, while low-income countries may result in even higher steps per day, although not resulting from a choice but rather due to necessity. Data from smartphone may also be affected by smartphone ownership distribution within each country that could be biased based on gender, age, or income.

1.3 Freight Transport

Freight transport has become more and more important in the last decades. This is mainly due to its integration in the manufacturing supply chain driven by the increase of trade at global scale, thanks to better information and communication technologies and favorable regulations (Rodrigue, 2017 ). More convenient and cheaper freight transport solutions unleashed the possibility of locating production unites in sites with more favorable conditions, exploiting an increasingly complex distribution of final products as well as input materials. With increasing complexity of final products, supply chains are currently involving multiple intermediate products, shipped from different world regions depending on their market conditions. As a result, freight transport is now the backbone of the industrial system at the base of the world economy, and often transport infrastructures (roads, railways, ports, pipelines) are among the key assets for trade and geopolitics.

The main modes involved in freight transport are water (mainly over sea but also in inland waterways), road, and rail, with a minimum contribution of pipelines and air transport. This latter mode is limited to goods for which speed is a crucial requirement, since the cost is significantly higher than for other competing modes. As reported in Fig.  1.7 , freight transport demand, usually measured in tonnes-km, is largely dominated by sea transport, and the total demand is expected to increase more than threefold by 2050 (ITF, 2019 ). Moreover, sea transport will even increase its share, reaching three quarters of the total demand by 2050, with a decrease of both road and rail shares. These projections are heavily dependent on economic growth estimations, and therefore, in the current context of uncertainty, they may be subject to significant variability. Another key factor is the expansion of trade capacity in countries with a substantial potential, notably in Asia.

figure 7

Authors’ elaboration from ITF ( 2019 )

Estimated future demand for world freight transport by type, billion tkm.

The energy consumption of freight, as discussed for passenger transport, is largely dominated by oil products, mainly diesel oil for trucks, inland waterways and some rail, and mainly heavy oil for international marine transport. Alternative energy solutions for the decarbonization of the different modes will be discussed in deeper detail in Chap.  2 .

In comparison with passenger transport, usually freight transport has less stricter requirements in terms of comfort, speed, and flexibility. Goods can be stored along the trip without significant issues, although in some cases refrigeration is needed to avoid goods deterioration (foods, cold chemicals, etc.). On the other hand, while passengers can face multimodal trips by changing mode by themselves, freight displacement from a mode to another may need longer time and dedicated infrastructure and logistics.

Finally, it is worth noticing that we usually have a more direct knowledge of passenger transport, thanks to our everyday experience, and we are much less familiar with all the aspects involved in freight transport logistics as well as their impacts.

1.3.1 Road Freight

Road freight is the most flexible mode, and it is often used for the last part of the supply chain, although it may cover alone the entire path from production to supply to the final user, especially for short- and medium-distance supply chains. Road freight, thanks to its flexible, convenient, and fast operation, has contributed to the evolution of the goods supply chain from the past, when industries and logistic centers were located near the ports or rivers to allow for maritime transport. The relatively low cost of vehicles and the unrestricted access to road infrastructures make easier for new actors to enter the market, resulting in high competition and low margins in comparison with other modes.

Different truck sizes are available depending on the quantity of goods that are delivered, and the availability of a large and diversified vehicles fleet allows for a better management of goods distribution. There is a limited potential for increasing the size of the trucks, and the corresponding weight and volume of goods that can be carried. National regulations usually limit the maximum weight of trucks due to safety reasons and to the effect of heavy vehicles on the road infrastructure, which results in increased damages and maintenance costs. Moreover, the energy consumption of the engines increases strongly with the weight, resulting in unsustainable economic operation (Rodrigue, 2017 ).

Currently, road freight transport is totally relying on diesel oil, thanks to the better efficiency of the engines, especially when running at constant speed for long distances. Although it accounts for only 20% of global tkm, road freight consumes more than 70% of energy in freight modes (Teter, 2018 ). The majority of fuel consumption is due to medium and heavy trucks, and although light commercial vehicles represent a marginal share, they are by far the less efficient freight transport mode. The average energy intensity of trucks in 2017 was 0.35 kWh/tkm (30 toe/Mtkm) for medium trucks (but with significant variations depending on the country) and 0.30 kWh/tkm (25 toe/Mtkm) for heavy trucks (IEA, 2019c ). Some alternative fuels are gaining interests thanks to their advantages related to the decarbonization pathways (as it will be better discussed in Chap.  2 ), including biofuels blends, liquified natural gas, hydrogen, or electricity.

The shift to trucks by many transport companies has led to an increase of road freight transport, with consequences on congestions, especially in urban areas. Urban traffic conditions are often reaching the limits of the available infrastructure, especially due to commuting patterns during day hours, and freight transport in cities is competing with the larger number of vehicles for passengers. As a result, congestions lead to delays and lower frequency of delivery, resulting in the need of increasing the vehicles fleet to ensure the same level of service, with even larger consequences on congestion.

The rise of e-commerce is putting additional pressure on last-mile freight transport, due to the increase of the competition and the speed expected by the customers. The increase of last-mile freight services with door-to-door delivery may be compensated by fewer shopping trips by customers, although the trade-off between these two aspects is very context-specific and it is difficult to draw generalized conclusions. However, e-commerce is often causing additional trips that are required also for very small parcels, as well as the more frequent returns of defective or unwanted goods. Advanced algorithms may increase the effectiveness of door-to-door delivery by an optimization of the organization of trips.

1.3.2 Rail Freight

Rail transport has been at the core of the industrial era, supporting the economic development of countries in the US, Western Europe, and Japan. However, in the last decades, it has faced a strong competition from road transport, whose increasing efficiency and flexibility, together with decreasing costs, were the basis for gaining a considerable market share.

Rail is the land transport mode with the highest capacity, since a single wagon can carry up to 100 t, more than the triple of a truck, and multiple wagons are generally connected in the same train, exploiting economies of scale. There is a wide variety of rail vehicles specialized for different purposes. Open wagons (hopper cars) are used for bulk cargo (e.g., minerals or coal), box cars to carry general and refrigerated goods, and tank cars to carry liquids. The development of intermodal transportation has also supported a new class of flat railcars that can carry containers, in combination with trucks or ships. The trend has thus been toward a specialization of freight wagons for different goods, and a single train can often be composed of various types of wagon, although with higher costs for assembling and organizing goods (Rodrigue, 2017 ).

Due to the high investment costs, rail companies are often nationalized and operating in conditions of monopoly, or in some cases of oligopoly. There are significant constraints related to the limited time slots available, which lead to the need of a rigid schedule and organization. This aspect is even more critical if the tracks are shared with passenger rail transport, the latter being often prioritized due to its higher requirements in terms of speed. For this reason, in the last decades, freight rail has seen a larger development in regions with dedicated tracks. However, the recent shift toward high-speed trains that are mostly operated on separate tracks is opening additional time slots for freight transport on conventional passenger railways.

A critical issue for freight transport over long distances is related to the standardization of gauge in railway networks: although the standard gauge (1.435 m) is diffused on 60% of the global mileage (mainly in North America and Western Europe), freight transport over long distances involving different gauge systems requires changing vehicles, with consequent higher times and costs. This is one of the obstacles hindering the development of rail transport between Asia and Europe. Other factors limiting the interoperation across multiple countries are related to signaling and electrification standards, which often limit the operation across country borders.

Rail freight transport is currently powered by diesel or electricity, with variable shares across world regions. At a global scale, electricity-powered trains carried 48% of the total tonnes-kilometers (tkm) in 2016 (IEA, 2019c ), but this share was over 80% for Japan, Russia, and Europe, while North America and South America were heavily relying on diesel. Since electric trains are more efficient, the final energy consumption of freight transport in 2017 (IEA, 2019c ) was 25 Mtoe of diesel (291 TWh) and 130 TWh of electricity (equal to 11 Mtoe), although it is important to notice that the electricity production may involve different amounts of primary energy depending on the region, resulting potentially in higher primary energy consumption. The energy intensity of rail freight transport showed a world average of 0.04 kWh/tkm (3.5 toe/Mtkm) in 2017 (IEA, 2019c ), with lower values for China and Russia thanks to the high loading of the trains and electrification rates. Potential alternative energy sources for non-electrified rail lines include natural gas, biofuels, hydrogen, or electric batteries, although none of them has shown so far economic viability. However, decarbonization policies such as carbon taxes may change the equation, and pilot projects are already being evaluated in different countries.

1.3.3 Maritime Freight

Maritime freight represents by far the most common mode of freight transport worldwide considering volume, final energy consumption, and GHG emissions. In the last decades, international shipping has been the backbone of globalization, allowing the development of complex products supply chain based on manufacturing sites located in different world regions, to fully exploit the advantages of local conditions (e.g., resource availability, low wages, national regulations).

One of the most significant game changers has been the development of containerization, which led to faster and more standardized port operations, with a better integration with other transport modes (trains, trucks, and inland navigation). Containerships have now annual sailing times of around 70%, while previously bulk carrier ships used to transport different goods needed longer port operations, as high as 75% of the time (Rodrigue, 2017 ). Containerization also allowed inter-range services, i.e., a continuous loop involving a sequence of different ports with a flexible frequency based on market conditions, usually including a transoceanic service. The main advantage is the possibility of optimizing the use of the ships by increasing their average load factor, although attention must be paid to avoid the risk of empty trips, particularly in backhauls. Recent trends include intermediate hubs, to avoid the need for large ships to deviate from the main marine shipping routes. Figure  1.8 reports the evolution of world container throughput (i.e., each charge/discharge of containers) measured in twenty-foot equivalent units (TEUs), which are used considering as reference the size of a standard container.

figure 8

Authors’ elaboration from World Bank ( 2019 )

World container throughput, million TEUs.

However, maritime trade is still dominated by bulk carriers, which represented around 60% of total tkm in 2015, including ores, grain, coal, and oil. Oil alone had a share of 25%, much lower than its 60% share of 1970 (Rodrigue, 2017 ). Bulk carriers are the largest vessels currently in operation, and the largest oil tankers can reach up to 500,000 deadweight tons. Crude tankers are among the more dangerous ships for potential environmental impacts, as demonstrated by the oil spilled into the water during several accidents, the worst being Atlantic Empress in 1979, ABT Summer in 1991, Castillo de Bellver in 1983, and Amoco Cadiz in 1978 (ITOPF, 2019 ). Oil spills are consistently decreasing in the last five decades, with 55% occurred in the 1970s, and only 6% after 2000, thanks to increased security standards. However, it is estimated that roughly 5.9 million tonnes have been spilled from tanker accidents since 1970, which is equal to roughly 5% of the total seaborne oil, crude, and gas carried in 2017 (ITOPF, 2019 ), or to less than half of the daily global oil consumption in 2017 (IEA, 2018b ). While this amount appears to be relatively small, it is important to remind that its local environmental impact is significantly larger than for the oil combustion, especially considering the limited area that is affected.

Ships are the less energy-intensive freight transport mode, with a specific energy consumption that is between 5 and 20 times lower than trucks on a country basis, with a world average around 0.03 kWh/tkm (2.5 toe/Mtkm) (IEA, 2019c ). Two key factors impacting the fuel consumption are the ship size and the cruising speed, the latter leading to an exponential increase of energy consumption. The choice of cruising speed is generally a trade-off between the fuel costs and the duration required by the trip, which may also require the use of more ships to maintain the same frequency on port calls on an inter-range service (Rodrigue, 2017 ). On the other hand, the ship size has seen a significant evolution in the last decades, and currently, the maximum sizes are limited by the characteristics of major canals (mainly Panama) and ports, as well as the need of finding paying cargo to fill the ships and justify the additional investment costs.

1.4 Focus on Selected World Regions

The feature of transport systems and mobility patterns across the world shows significant variations, since the historical development of transport infrastructure and the availability of and preference for different transport modes has been driven by several aspects including geography, economy, culture, development, resource availability, geopolitics. For this reason, any future strategy dealing with sustainable mobility planning needs to be carefully designed based on local conditions, since there is no one-size-fit-all solution to deal with the different problems related to passenger and freight transport. Moreover, within each country, strong difference exists between rural and urban areas, although this dichotomy has many similarities across world regions.

Figure  1.9 presents a comparison of some indicators for selected countries, showing that significant regional differences exist both for passenger and freight modal shares. However, such comparisons should be evaluated carefully, since statistical data are often collected and aggregated with different logics, which may lead to non-comparable figures.

figure 9

Authors’ elaboration on European Union ( 2018 )

Annual km travelled per citizen and freight modal share for selected countries.

1.4.1 Europe

Europe includes today more than 50 countries, corresponding to more than 700 million inhabitants. The transport of passengers and goods has continuously increased since the industrial revolution, and European countries have mostly cooperated in developing and maintaining compatible transport networks. Europe is connected through a capillary network of roads, railway lines and inland waterways, as well as through marine ports and airports. The estimated transport activity in the EU-28 in 2016 reached 6.8 trillion pkm for passenger transport on any motorized vehicle (although 71% on cars), and 3.7 trillion tkm of freight transport, of which 49% on road and 32% on inland waterways (European Union, 2018 ).

Thanks to the significant development of multiple transport infrastructures, European countries are very well connected, and citizens can often choose from different modes for any given trip, especially in urban contexts. International trips are relatively easy, especially in the Schengen Area, which enables border control-free travel between 26 European countries. However, there are significant differences across countries, both between Northern and Southern Europe, due to cultural habits and weather conditions, as well as between Western and Eastern Europe, due to a different level of economic development. Although the European Union is developing common regulations and strategies, national policies over the years have supported different mobility paradigms.

Some Nordic countries, especially Netherlands, Denmark, and Germany, have a significant penetration of bicycle usage for commuting and other urban trips, thanks to cultural habits, dedicated policies, and geographical conformation of most cities. The key to achieving high-cycling usage in cities appears to be the provision of separate cycling facilities along heavily travelled roads and at intersections, combined with traffic calming of most residential neighborhoods (Pucher & Buehler, 2008 ). Other significant measures included the development of proper dedicated parking areas, full integration with public transport and promotional and educational events for citizens using bikes and cars. Bike usage in several European cities has also been supported by the development of bike sharing systems throughout the last decade, with the aim of providing the users with a first- and last-mile transport mode to be coupled with public transport to decrease the use of private cars in densely populated cities.

Most European countries have high usage rates of public transport, both at urban level and across cities. Thanks to the diffused road and rail network, trains and buses are a convenient and affordable solution for passengers needing to travel from a city to another, also between different countries. The largest European cities have underground metro lines that have been in operation since decades, and the first system in the world opened in London in 1890. As of 2017, European metro systems are present in 46 cities, carrying 10.8 billion passengers per year (UITP, 2018 ).

The European Union is developing climate and energy policies aiming at decreasing the carbon emissions, as well as supporting primary energy savings and the use of renewable energy. EU Directives have also set specific targets for the use of renewable fuels in transport, particularly biofuels but also electricity from renewable energy sources. In last years, the adoption of electric vehicles (EVs) is rising, although with a strong variability from a country to another. Norway is becoming the world leader for EVs, with a market share of electric cars that peaked to 46% in 2018 (IEA, 2019a ), driven by the generous incentives provided by national regulations. Europe is the second marked of EVs worldwide, after China and before the USA, but with a market share that remained below 3% in 2018.

1.4.2 North America

North America is a very large continent with a relatively low population, with consequences on both passenger and freight transport modes. The USA and Canada have a large network of highways connecting the major cities, but some large rural areas are still equipped with poor-quality gravel or unpaved roads. As a result of the more recent development of this continent in comparison with Europe or Asia, many city plans have been developed based on the use of private car as the primary mobility mode, leading to lower densities and very large cities. Due to the significant distances between cities, domestic aviation has gained a strong importance in the last decades for passenger transport, especially thanks to the development of low-cost air carriers that led to an increase of air transport demand. The extended railway network is currently used almost only for freight transport, with some limited exceptions in regional areas where passenger transport is used for commuting, especially on the East Coast of the USA.

The dominance of car in the last century shaped both the society and the current US infrastructure, which would require significant investments to shift toward alternative modes such as public transport or active modes. Road transport has also been strongly supported by federal and state regulations, as well as to lower taxes on transport fuels in comparison with other developed countries. The federal support for highway projects in the US is higher than for public transit, and for passenger rail, no funding is given to the single state, resulting in significant consequences on modal competition (Rodrigue, 2017 ).

However, in the last years, many cities are testing innovative solutions to address the rising problems related to congestion, local pollution, and land space use in city centers. Digital technologies including sharing mobility, Mobility-as-a-Service, and autonomous vehicles are being the object of multiple startups, especially in California and other major cities across the country (see Chap.  3 ). The USA has seen the rise of Uber and Lyft, two ridesharing companies that reached tens of billions of market capitalization, and delivered 5 billion and 620 million of trips in 2018, respectively (Trefis Team, 2019 ).

Another significant trend, although with strong difference across US states, is the rise of EVs, especially in California, Hawaii, and Washington, with the USA being the second country worldwide for EVs sales in 2018, reaching 360 thousands units, 17% of the global sales (IEA, 2019a ). Moreover, the US company Tesla, one of the companies at the origin of the current EVs hype, became the top selling EVs manufacturer in the world in 2018, with 245 thousand units (Demandt, 2019 ), mainly sold in the domestic market. However, Tesla has not yet generated a full-year profit over its 15-year history, although its performance has been getting better in recent years.

1.4.3 China and East Asia

International transport has played a crucial role in supporting the strong economic development of Asian countries in last decades, and especially in China, the construction of seaports and transport infrastructures has made possible the development of manufacturing supply chains producing goods for the global market. However, the increasing well-being and urbanization rates resulted in massive mobility demand for commuting and access to services, and since the deployment of mass transit systems has not kept the pace with the increasing demand, private cars and other motorized vehicles are creating increasing congestions and local pollution in large cities. Asian countries, especially in Southeast Asia, are also characterized by a massive use of two-wheelers and three-wheelers in cities, with significant impacts on congestions and road safety.

At a regional level, the challenge of developing transport programs that ensure inclusiveness and safety is still a major hurdle, especially for rural areas that are still lacking connections with social and economic networks (Rakhmatov et al., 2017 ). An improvement of rural transport is necessary to address multiple aspects including economic development, employment, access to health and education facilities, as well as poverty reduction by connecting producers and consumers. Significant differences exist from a country to another, depending on the level of development and on cultural, historical, and political issues.

As in other sectors, transport programs in China have a significant impact at a global scale, given its large population, its strong economic development as well as very large and growing urban areas. The unacceptable levels of local pollution in last years have led the government to push for electrification of passenger transport, with the largest cities deploying draconian policies to support the use of both electric cars and electric buses. Some cities are even limiting the number of fossil-powered new cars that can be sold each year, by auctioning a limited number of license plates. However, the development of EVs is also seen as a strategic action to develop the national industry, to compete with other countries that have a stronger know-how on traditional automotive based on internal combustion engines.

Similar pollution and congestion problems are being faced by other Asian countries, including India, whose population is likely to exceed the one of China, thus making India the most populated country in the world. Both road and rail networks are significantly developed and public transport remain the only option for most citizens, although private cars and two- and three-wheelers are increasing, with negative consequences on road safety. In large cities, web-based ridesharing apps are providing cheap solutions in alternative to traditional taxi cabs, providing to a larger number of citizens the possibility of moving by car on demand. However, the current infrastructure is unable to meet the strong rise in demand, and the lack of investments is slowing economic growth, especially in rural areas. Rail activity in India is expected to grow more than in any other country, with passenger movements in India reaching 40% of global activity. Rail remains the primary transport mode connecting numerous cities and regions, and passenger transport is currently second only to China (IEA, 2019c ).

Transport demand in Asia is expected to show a strong increase in the following decades, both for passenger and freight, and it must face the constraints related to the international agreements on decarbonization. In particular, freight transport is supporting the increased wealth of the continent’s population, but a significant share is also related to global trade. As a result, a crucial aspect in international agreements will be the shift from a production-based allocation of impacts toward a consumption-based logic, for a deployment of effective decarbonization policies (Golinucci, Rocco, & Colombo, 2019 ).

1.4.4 Latin America

Central and South America is characterized by a large variety of environments, with the largest cities being concentrated nearby the Eastern and Western coasts, with large rural regions in the hinterland. An efficient and integrated system of transportation is essential to foster the development of the region and the trade and passengers’ movement between the different countries. The main roads network is interconnecting the largest cities of the continent, but there are huge disparities with the road conditions in rural areas, where roads are often unpaved and with a lower quality. Different projects have been developed in the past to ensure a good interconnection of the national highways, including bridges connecting Argentina, Uruguay, Paraguay, and Brazil.

The strong development of roads has caused railways to lose their dominant position after the 1960s, resulting in a decrease of the quality of the service, caused by operational problems and equipment aging. Moreover, most lines are single track, discouraging the passenger transport due to the delays, and the presence of different gauge standards is hindering an efficient interconnection between the different rail networks. The privatization of rail systems performed in the 1980s in different countries in the region has further led to a huge decrease of both passenger routed and rail freight transport (Knapp et al., 2019 ).

Sea transportation has been significant in the history of most South American countries, since the majority of imports and exports in the continent are relying on shipping. There are some major inland waterways, but the freight traffic is generally limited and with low potential for expansion in future years. On the contrary, domestic air transport has strongly developed in the last decades, due to the significant advantages for passenger mobility between distant cities with long and often uncomfortable roads connecting them.

Considering urban transport, South America has seen a strong development of Bus Rapid Transit (BRT), which is now present in 55 cities in Central and South America carrying more than 20.5 million passengers per day, which corresponds to a 60% share at global level (BRT Data, 2019 ). BRT is a system designed to improve, reliability, capacity, and speed in comparison with conventional bus systems in cities. Its main features are the use of dedicated lanes and priority at intersections, to prevent the impact of congestions on the bus speed. Other aspects to speed up the boarding times include the use of off-board fare collection, platform-level boarding, and the use of high-capacity buses.

The main rationale of BRT systems is to combine the advantages of high capacity and speed generally provided by rapid transit, with the flexibility and the lower capital cost of the bus systems. This does come at a cost, since there are usually higher operational costs and a lower lifetime of the vehicles. Moreover, although more efficient than private cars, in comparison with an electricity-powered rail transit, BRT shows higher environmental impacts both for local pollution and GHG emissions issues. Moreover, overcrowding and poor service quality are major concerns in many cities, including Santiago and Bogotà, whose TransMilenio is among the largest in the world. People are complaining about the long waiting times and the low comfort of the trips, resulting in a modal shift of a large number of users toward private cars and motorcycles in the last decade. To reverse this trend, it is important that bus operators develop new financial plans that go beyond the simple fare collection, by following the example of other cities in Europe and Asia.

The mobility demand in the region has rapidly increased since the 1970s, following a rise of the population, together with one of the highest urbanization rates in the world. Poor urban planning and the lack of good public transport have driven an increase of car usage, also supported by rising incomes in some areas. However, rural areas and urban citizens with lower incomes are still using nonmotorized vehicles or overcrowded minibuses (The Economist, 2016 ), with increasing inequality concerns in some countries.

The dramatic increase of private cars, also favored by cheap fuel prices in oil-producing countries, has not been supported by an adequate planning and deployment of infrastructures, resulting in major congestions, especially in large cities. Together with road safety issues, traffic is also significantly impacting the GDP of some countries, due to the lack of access to opportunities for the citizens and the limitations caused to trade. Moreover, the difficulties of commuting further pushe toward urbanization, leading in some cases to strong problems in providing services to the citizens in highly populated areas (The Economist, 2016 ).

However, congestion problems are leading to an interest in developing public transport systems in larger and richer cities, starting from the mass transit system opened in Dubai in 2009, among the longest fully automated systems in the world (Hashem, 2016 ). New subway systems, including the huge rapid transit system being deployed in Riyad, are exploiting the most recent technology developments to face the harsh weather conditions in the region, both for the potential intrusion of sand in the vehicles and the extreme temperatures requiring dedicated cooling systems.

Moreover, thanks to the availability of financing, cities in UAE are becoming test sites of multiple innovations in transport. In particular, Dubai aims at providing one quarter of all vehicle trips by autonomous cars by 2030, and driverless cabs are already being tested in the city. Furthermore, innovation is being pushed even farther, since autonomous electric-powered flying taxis are being considered for testing in the city. However, the innovations are not limited to urban mobility, since the connection between Dubai and Abu Dhabi is being chosen for one of the first potential applications for Hyperloop, which would allow transporting 10,000 passengers per hour between the two cities in only 12 min (Red Herring, 2018 ).

However, it must be kept in mind that all of these projects are still at very early stage. And while innovation is being put at the center of the transport planning agendas in few cities, much still needs to be done in smaller cities and rural areas, as well as in the poorer countries of the region. National mobility strategies should clearly aim at decreasing inequalities and promote a sustainable development for all their citizens, for which a reliable and affordable transport system is unavoidable.

1.4.6 Sub-Saharan Africa

The history of transport infrastructures in Sub-Saharan Africa had been strongly affected by the European colonial powers. While there had been highly developed transport networks in many parts of Africa in pre-colonial time, during the colonial era these infrastructures were adopted to connect seaports to the internal areas that were rich of resources, with the sole aim of serving the interests of the external powers (Kröner et al., 2019 ). This happened both to roads and to railways, the latter being also affected from an uncoordinated development of different gauges, hindering interconnections between different countries. All of this was further complicated by the vast unpopulated areas lying between the main centers.

This is the single region with the highest expected population increase in the following decades, which together with high urbanization rates will require reliable and effective transport systems to improve the access to opportunities and services required for higher standards of living in comparison with the current situation in the continent. While the issues of energy access and access to clean cooking are being at the center of multiple discussions, the access to opportunities supported by sustainable mobility is often underestimated. In comparison with other continents, in Africa, walking is still the most common mode of transport in most countries. And yet nonmotorized transport is not receiving the necessary attention, especially in large cities, that should become more pedestrian-friendly.

Most African cities are on a development trajectory of increasing private car usage and informal public transit, which will evolve toward unsustainable mobility patterns without a proper policy development. The demand for efficient and affordable transport systems is very high, because a large part of people’s income and time is spent on their daily commute. African cities should look for leapfrog opportunities by exploiting the best practices and technology development that are being deployed in other world cities. Sustainable urban transport solutions are crucial to mitigating the growing congestion, road safety issues, and pollution in the region’s sprawling urban centers (SSATP, 2018 ).

The region is facing a strong urbanization, with large cities all over Africa affected by congestion problems leading to higher costs. Moreover, there are still significant social, political, economic, and physical barriers to mobility that are hindering social inclusiveness. New technologies supported by an effective use of big data may play a crucial role in helping dynamic traffic management and the coordination of other resources on the road. However, the comprehensive, consistent strategies needed at the national and subnational level to tackle these challenges are lacking. Better planning, better institutional coordination, and more appropriate and sustainable financing are clearly needed (SSATP, 2018 ).

1.5 Conclusions and Key Take-Aways

This chapter described the main aspects related to transport, highlighting the complexity of the sector and the high variability of mobility demand and supply with respect to multiple dimensions, including geography, demography, sectors, technologies, and transport modes. Both passenger and freight transport are at the basis of an effective development of countries and societies, and the sustainability of transport is becoming more and more necessary, due to the rising concerns related to climate change, local pollution, congestions, and safety, especially in large cities all over the world. However, significant differences exist among world regions, since cultural, economic, historical, political, and geographical aspects are crucial in the development of transport modes and infrastructures.

The evolution of mobility is being shaped by two main trends, digitalization and decarbonization, which will be further discussed in Chaps.  2 and 3 . Both trends are tightly related with the development of international, national, and local policies, as will be described in Chap.  4 . Policy priorities may vary from an area to another, with strong effects on the support of specific transport modes and technologies, which may lead to different transport mixes in comparison with the current situation, especially due to the huge increase of demand that is expected in the following decades.

Huge differences are expected between developed and developing countries, since the lack of well-developed transport infrastructures, which is currently seen as a burden, may become an opportunity of leapfrogging toward better transport systems. Learning from the current issues of multiple transport systems in large cities worldwide, avoiding the lock-in of oversized road networks supporting mobility models solely based on non-shared private cars will be crucial, especially in urban areas.

The Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) was established in 1961 as a forum for governments to share experiences and seek solutions to common economic and social problems. As of 2019, the OECD is composed by 36 member countries ( https://www.oecd.org/about/members-and-partners/ ).

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Noussan, M., Hafner, M., Tagliapietra, S. (2020). The Evolution of Transport Across World Regions. In: The Future of Transport Between Digitalization and Decarbonization. SpringerBriefs in Energy. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-37966-7_1

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  • Transportation History

History of Transportation

Introduction.

The history of transportation begins from the human era and continued to change over a period of time. The first means of transportation was the human foot. People used to walk large distances to reach places. The first improvement made to this kind of transportation was adapting to different surfaces. For example, people living in areas with snow and ice wore spike-like attachments so that they didn’t slip on the ground.

People knew that trees and logs float on water and so they dug out the middle portion of logs to form a kind of seating. This helped people use water bodies as a means of transport.

Watch the video and learn about the history of transportation

evolution of transportation essay

Around 3500 BC, the first wheeled vehicles were used. As a means of transporting small loads, wheels were attached to carts and chariots. Around the same time constituting to transportation history, people developed simple logs into controllable riverboats with oars to direct the vehicle.

From here people went on to tame animals like horses as a means of transportation. Domesticating animals to use them as a means of transporting people and small goods then started following a trend.

evolution of transportation essay

Change in Transportation History with the Discovery of Wheel

Transportation history took a drastic change with the introduction of wheels. Because of the discovery of the wheel and axle other smaller devices like wheelbarrows came into use. Existing means of transportation were continuously improved thereafter. For example, the use of iron horseshoes became a common practice. Clubbing different modes of transportation was then a possibility. For example, horse-drawn vehicles (carts or carriages).

From here, the progress related to transportation started gaining large momentum. Submarines came into existence around 1620 and in the 1660s properly functioning modes of public transportation were available. Carriages, steamboats, cycles and even hot air balloons became functioning vehicles which were used on a large scale.

The first gas engine vehicle was made by Jean Lenoir in the year 1862 and after this, in the year 1867, the first motorcycle was invented. Finally, in the year 1903, the Wright brothers designed the first manned aeroplane with an engine. In the year 1926, the first liquid propelled rocket was launched successfully! Other vehicles like the helicopter, jets and hovercrafts came after this.

Existing means of transport were continuously being improved upon. The steam engines lead to the invention of bullet trains. The manned flight created by the Wright brothers lead to a Jumbo Jet! From travelling on foot we have come a long way and different means of travelling have to lead to a vast network. The types of transportation in existence now are given below.

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Transportation

The history of transport is said to largely be one of technological innovation. The advances in technology have allowed people to travel farther distances and explore more territory. Along with that, people can expand their influence over larger and larger areas as well. 

Even in ancient times, there were new tools such as foot coverings, skis and snowshoes that lengthened the distances that could be travelled from one place to another. Here, we are going to discover some more information about transportation. 

Innovation generally continues as transport researchers are working to find different and some new ways to reduce costs and increase transport efficiency.

Evolution of Transportation

                                                             

  (Image will be uploaded soon)              

The history of transportation generally begins from the human era and continues to change over a period of time. The first means of transportation was the foot of human beings. People used to walk very large distances to reach places earlier. The first improvement that was made to this kind of transportation was adapting to different surfaces as well. For example, we can say that the people who are living in areas with snow and ice, wore spike-like attachments which were there so that they didn’t slip on the ground.

There are people who knew that the logs and the trees float on water and so they dug out the portion that is in the middle of logs to form a kind of seating. This helped people a lot and allowed for water bodies to be used as a means of transport.

It was around 3500 BC that the first vehicle wheels were used. As a means of transporting the loads which were too small, the wheels were attached to carts and chariots. From here people usually went on to tame animals like horses and all as a means of transportation. The animals which are domesticated were used as means of transporting people and small goods.

International trade was the driving motivator behind advancements in global transportation in the Pre Modern world. Then there was a single global world of the economy with a worldwide division of labour and multilateral trade from 1500 onward. The transportation and the sale of textile, silver and gold and spices, slaves and luxury goods throughout Afro-Eurasia and later the New World saw an evolution in overland and sea trade routes.

Introduction of Transport

The history of transportation has taken a very drastic change with the introduction of wheels. This is because of the discovery of the axel and the wheel in other smaller devices like wheelbarrows that came into use. The existing means of transportation were continuously improved thereafter. For example, we can say that the use of iron horseshoes became a common practice. The clubbing of different modes of transportation was then a possibility if we look at it keenly. For example, horse-drawn vehicles as cars or carriages.

From here we see the progress which is related to transportation that started gaining large momentum. The submarines came into existence around 1620 and in the 1660s mode of properly functioning public transportation were available. The carriages and the steamboats, along with the cycles and even hot air balloons became functioning vehicles that were used on a large scale.

The vehicle that was the first gas engine was made by Jean Lenoir in the year 1862 and after this in the year 1867 that is the first motorcycle was invented. Finally, in the year 1903, the Wright brothers designed the first manned aeroplane with an engine. In 1926, there was the first liquid rocket propellant launched successfully! Other vehicles like the helicopter, jets and hovercrafts came after this.

Existing means of transport were said to be continuously being improved upon. The steam engines generally lead to the invention of bullet trains as well. The flight that was manned which was created by the Wright brothers led to a Jumbo Jet! From travelling on foot we have come a long way and different means of travelling have led to a vast network in the external world.

History of Transportation In India

The transport in India generally consists of transport by land, and water and air. Public transport is said to be the primary mode of road transport for most Indian citizens, and India's public transport systems as well are among the most heavily used in the world.

The network of India's roads is the second-largest and one of the busiest ones in the world. The transporting passengers were 8.225 billion and over 980 million tonnes of cargo was transported annually as of 2015. Indian aviation is broadly divided into military and civil aviation which is the fastest-growing market aviation in the world as per IATA data and Bangalore with a 65% national share is the largest aviation manufacturing hub of India. 

History of transportation has undergone drastic changes when humans invented the wheels. This was only because of the discovery of the wheel and axle in the smaller devices like the wheelbarrow which were in use. The transportation that was already present was vigorously improved overtime. We can consider the example of the iron horse-shoes which came into practice. Clubbing of transportation modes was a possibility where humans looked keenly. For example, the horse carts and carriages that were in use.  Eventually, the transportation area started gaining momentum largely. The submarines were invented and came into use around the year of 1620 and in the 1660s, the public transportation means were available. The carriages and steamboats were already present and thus came the cycles and even hot air balloons. All of these came in function and were used on a large scale.

Jean Lenoir in 1862 contributed to the invention of the first gas engine in a vehicle. Later, in the year 1867, the first motorcycle was also invented. We all must have heard about the Wright brothers. They made the airplane in 1903 and it was one of the greatest human inventions. Then in 1926, the first liquid rocket propellant was also launched successfully. And gradually, the jets, helicopter and hovercrafts also came into use.  This led to many improvements of all the existing transportation. The steam engines that were in use eventually led to the discovery of bullet trains that we see around us. The airplane which was invented by the Wright brothers then led to the invention of the Jumbo jet. This made travelling around the world easier and convenient. In the past, it took months to travel long distances which can now be covered in some hours or days.

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FAQs on History of Transportation

1. Explain What the History of Transport is ?

Before every other form of transportation there were humans who travelled on foot. Initially, a canoe-like structure was used for water transportation. This was built by burning logs and digging out the burned wood. In 3100BC there was the sailing boat which was invented by Egyptians while the Romans built roads across the country of Europe.

2. When Did Transportation Start in India?

The railway of Mumbai Suburban is the first rail system in India which began services in Mumbai in 1853 and the transports had 6.3 million passengers daily and has the passengers with the highest density in the world. The railway of Kolkata Suburban was established in Kolkata in 1854.

3. What Was the First Public Transportation?

The first form of public transport was multiple people riding animals. The animal-drawn ferries are thought to be the earliest form of public transit. The wheel was invented in 3,500 BC but it wasn't until 1,600 BC that it was used for a chariot as well. This is when the idea of travel for longer travel was possible by road.

4. What are the means of transportation?

Means of transportation can be defined as the transport facilities which are used for moving goods or people from one location to many other locations. This term ‘means of transportation’ can be interchanged with the usage of the term ‘mode of transport’. These means of transportation can be the transportation means that are used in water forms, landforms and even air forms. Examples of these transportation means are : ship, car, airplane etc. 

Such means have made travelling and import/export of goods easier and accessible. 

5. Why do we need transportation?

here are plenty of reasons why transportation is important. They are as follows:

Transportation enables commerce, trade and most importantly communication which are a crucial part in today’s rapid urbanization. Here, the traffic flows without being disturbed and moves at a steady phase from one location to another location.

It acts as a link between the manufacturing industries and the consumer industries. Without it, there won’t be import and export of essential goods across states, countries and even continents. It has become an important time of our life. 

Transportation has played a major role in the development of all the nations across the planet. It is an indicator of civilization in the world. If the current transportation wouldn’t have existed then there wouldn’t have been any development. 

6. What does air transport mean?

Transport means occur in land forms, air forms and water forms. Air transport is the transportation that occurs in the air. An aircraft or an airplane is a heavy flying vehicle which is designed properly so as to carry lift and carry the vehicle as a whole. There are wide ranges of aircrafts which are used for domestic purposes as well as for military purposes. For travelling shorter distances or places where there are no runways, helicopters are operated and used. Other air transportation means are airships and autogyros. This means of transport is considered the fastest mode of transportation. Commercial jets are quite fast and travel a distance covering 955 kilometres per hour and at a considerable higher ground speed. However, they require high energy use and are quite expensive. Aviation has many impacts on the environment which is a growing concern for the environment. 

7. What is rail transport?

Rail transport is a means of land transport. It is convenient for travelling passengers and carrying goods. It is a wheeled vehicle that runs on a track called the railway track or railroad or railway. The rails are connected perpendicularly to the railway. This consists of more than one connected vehicle which runs on it. The propulsion is provided by something called a locomotive which powers the rails and then carries freight or passengers. This is powered by steam, electricity or diesel which is supplied by systems. Some other rails are powered by multiple units. Other sources of power are cables, gravity, gas turbines and pneumatics. The railways are very efficient means of transportation however, less efficient when compared to ships.

8. Can I get notes on the topic of transportation on Vedantu?

yes, you can get notes on the topic of transportation. You have to log in or sign-up to any of the Vedantu platforms, that is, the Vedantu website or app. You can then simply download the study materials you require. They are given in a PDF file which has been prepared by our subject experts and they have made sure to add the important points that will help you understand the concepts better and get good scores in the examinations. This is free of cost and you can start learning simply by logging in to Vedantu.

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Transportation in the past and present essay

Transportation in the past and present essay 16 models

Last updated Monday , 13-11-2023 on 09:55 am

Transportation in the past and present essay, through which we learn a lot of information about the means of transportation and how it evolved from horse-drawn vehicles until we reached the latest types of transport. All this will be learned here in Transportation in the past and present essay.

Transportation in the past and present essay

Transportation is one of the most important things that every day has a tremendous development. Here we will know how transportation developed and how it was in the past and how it has become in the present. All of this we will know here through Transportation in the past and present essay.

Transportation

Transport and communication are considered the cornerstones of many human civilizations because of their importance in linking neighboring cities and villages to each other.

Therefore, man has been seeking innovation and discovery for thousands of years to develop and improve these means.

Without transportation there is no Interconnection and communication between people. In this paragraph we will talk about transportation in the past and present.

Transportation in the past  

The development of transport during the stages of history was very slow and difficult, as people were carrying their goods on their heads or on their backs or run on the ground.

In about 5000 BC, people began to use animals to transport loads and goods like mules and donkeys. After 3000 BC, the vehicles were invented. They were made up of four wheels without a motor.

Boats were also invented, and humans began using animals, vehicles and boats to carry loads to many places  faster and easier than before.

In the late 18th century inventors produced the first vehicles, and then the inventions in the means of transport until the fifteenth century AD,  Where improvements have been made in the construction of large vessels; to make long journeys possible across the various seas and oceans.

In the 18th century steam engines were invented, leading to the emergence of steam-powered vehicles and trains. In the late 19th century, oil and natural gas were discovered and harnessed to serve and develop various means of transport by building vessels and vehicles powered by gas and oil engines.

Transportation in the present  

Today’s transportation has seen a significant leap forward, transforming the world into a small village,  These include:

Cars: The development of the world of cars has been a great speed, we are now witnessing many different shapes, types and designs of them, and the car companies are more competitive; to manufacture the latest cars and the fastest and most comfortable and safe.

Trains: trains are one of the most modern means of transport, through which thousands of people are transported through long distances and vast inside or outside their countries, and through which we transfer many different materials and goods, and at a lower price compared to other means.

Buses and trucks: Buses are one of the most important modes of mass transport, transporting many people to and from their workplaces. Buses are used as a public transport.  It is cheap and saves time and effort to move around.

How transportation has changed from past to present

When I wonder about how transportation has changed from the past to the present, I find there is a very wide difference in speed and comfort.

I find that the speed is relative to the person and the extent of his interest in arriving early. Because I see that there is always a lesson that we learn when we travel long distances and time does not go in vain. But there are always interesting events happening around us.

As for convenience, I can say that it has become very different between the past and the present. The old means of transportation were more difficult to move or rest periods in places that were not qualified for that.

Therefore, I find that the current amenities, such as comfortable chairs designed to suit your sitting for a long time, using the best and finest fabrics and materials, is very wonderful. Amenities vary according to the means of transportation, whether it is a plane, train, car, or steamer.

There is a vast difference that helps you spend a safe and comfortable travel. Therefore, it is great that we are living in this present time and enjoy all these convenient means of transportation.

Transportation in the past

In the past, transportation depended on a lot of hard work. Whether to prepare for it since a great time earlier. Preparing many items of food and clothing. And provide plenty of money so that a person can move. This is because of the distances and the presence of large areas that are not qualified for the population, which makes moving from one area to another difficult and fraught with many natural and abnormal risks.

One of the most famous ancient means of transportation was the horse or carts that were drawn by horses. Come later after that car or train.

And certainly cars were not made to carry heavy weights or travel long distances. Also, the roads were not qualified in all countries for movement.

Which makes us feel grateful that we live in a time of more development in the means of transportation and also more grateful for the rehabilitation of all countries of the appropriate infrastructure to facilitate transportation.

Paragraph about transportation

There is no doubt that the means of transportation are of great importance in the growth of the economy of countries.

Man has known the importance of transportation since ancient times and used it to move from one place to another, in addition to using it to transport products and merchandise to the markets.

Transportation has witnessed a great development, as it has become more comfortable and faster than before, and has used clean fuels such as gas and electricity to maintain a clean environment and reduce diseases that were spread due to air pollution with car exhaust.

Car exhaust was causing chest and respiratory diseases as a result of emitting large amounts of carbon dioxide. In addition, car exhaust contains high levels of lead, which is very harmful to health.

Transportation in the past and present

Undoubtedly, the history of transportation development indicates the extent of technological development that occurred during the past few decades. A series of successive inventions have occurred that revolutionized the world of transportation.

Example of transportation in the past

About fifty years ago, my grandfather and my father used the steam train to travel, and its speed was slow as it covered a distance of 100 kilometers in several hours, and the seats were made of wood and uncomfortable, and this train was very noisy as it went, in addition to the smoke coming from it which pollutes the air

An example of transportation in the present

Today, we ride an electric express train, it runs 100 km in several minutes, and its seats are leather, which is very comfortable, and it does not pollute the environment because it uses clean energy, and it does not make noise while it is running.

Compare transportation in the past and present

Undoubtedly, we saw in the old films some of the means of transportation that our ancestors used, and we noticed the great difference between them and modern transportation.

The benefits of technological development in transportation

The technological development in the means of transportation has provided several benefits that have brought all countries economic progress and growth, such as:

  • Increasing the speed of transportation, which saved a lot of time, in addition to encouraging many people to travel and move from one place to another.
  • Transportation has become more comfortable, in terms of the quality of seats, in addition to providing places on long roads for passengers to rest for some time.
  • Transportation is now able to transport heavier loads than in the past.

transportation before and now

Every day scientists and engineers work to improve the properties of transportation. Almost sixty years ago, the steam engine was used in all means of transportation, such as cars, buses, trains, and ships.

This was considered a huge development in the transportation industry. Coal continued to be used to power the steam engine until the discovery of petroleum.

They used gasoline and gas as fuel to obtain the energy needed for the various means of transportation. Then another progress occurred, where gas was used instead of gasoline in many means of transportation.

Transportation past and present

Reduce costs and increase efficiency

The most important concern of scientists specialized in the development of transportation means is to reduce costs and increase efficiency.

Because the most important goal is to improve the transportation service, while maintaining the reduction of transportation costs.

Because this is one of the reasons for the recovery of trade between countries, where the prices of goods do not increase by a high rate as a result of the high cost of transportation.

And the cost reduction leads to a boom in tourism as well, as the cost of transportation is within the reach of many categories of people.

Means of transportation in the past

What is the motivation behind the development of transportation

Global trade is the most powerful driver of transportation development. This trade began since ancient times, when commercial trips were to India to buy spices and fabrics, and transport them to the countries of the Middle East or to Europe. As well as trips to Africa to transport gold and slaves to Europe and America. The means of transportation used in the past depended on animals.

Till the invention of ships, cars and planes, and as a result exports and imports increased. The development of means of transportation had the greatest role in trade exchange between countries.

Transportation then and now essay

Roads and transportation

We cannot talk about transportation without talking about roads. Where there is a close link between road construction and transportation development.

Would it be useful to develop means of transportation without creating roads that allow transportation to move easily?.

Therefore, it has become necessary to establish new roads commensurate with the speed of transportation, as well as with the increasing number of vehicles.

Gas stations are also set up at suitable distances, especially on long roads. Some maintenance centers are also being established, and services are provided to travelers

Transportation today compared to the past

The first modern highway was designed in 1756-1836 by John Loudon Mack, using soil and gravel as paving. And when the means of transportation developed, especially in Germany in 1886 AD and the United States in 1908 AD, the need for the construction of asphalt roads increased accordingly.

The Red Cliffy Nottingham Road became the world’s first paved road. Iron bars were also used to construct the railways on which the trains travel.

Thus, the road and railways were expanded, which revolutionized the travel of people and the transport of goods.

Describe the evolution of transportation and travel essay

What are the benefits of the development of means of transportation and what are its harms?

Undoubtedly, we are benefiting from the tremendous development that has occurred in the means of transportation. It saves us time and becomes more comfortable.

We do not feel the trouble of traveling as our ancestors did in the past. Where travel has become an enjoyable journey, we can watch a movie or enjoy reading a book.

However, there are risks to our lives due to transportation, such as:

  • Frequent traffic accidents, which claim the lives of many people.
  • Severe congestion, the streets became crowded with public and private cars.
  • An increase in the level of pollution in the environment.

A comparison of past and present transportation methods

To compare the means of transportation in the past and the present, we can compare speed, effort, cost and risks.

Comparison in terms of speed

Transportation in the present has become very fast compared to transportation in the past.

Comparison in terms of effort

The current means of transportation provide us with comfort and enjoyment of travel.

Cost comparison

Despite the advantages of modern means of transportation, it is considered less expensive.

Comparison in terms of risk

Modern means of transportation have become more dangerous due to the huge number of means of transportation that are on the road.

Transportation changes from past to present

In the past, humans relied on animals to move from one place to another. Man used donkeys, horses, camels, and mules to move him or carry his goods. Also, some peoples were able to use elephants to move and carry goods.

Then the means of transportation developed little by little, until we reached the modern means of transportation with better quality and lower cost.

Also, we can transport thousands of tons of goods from one country to another with ease. This development had a significant impact on the flourishing of trade and the exchange of goods, whether at the local or international levels.

What is the difference between transportation then and now

The difference between the means of transportation in the past and the present is very big. Scientists will continue to work on the development of means of transportation in the future. As it is the most important reason for economic progress.

You find that local and international trade depends on the development of the transportation network, whether land, sea or air.

In addition to the movement of individuals from one country to another, whether for tourism, work or study. The lower the cost of transportation, the more people will travel and move from one place to another.

The best day of my life speech

The most beautiful day of my life is the day when I turned 18, so I can get a driver’s license, my father promised me that he would buy me a car when I turned 18, I love to drive and I learned to drive last year in preparation for getting the license, today I will I go with my father to the car show, in order to choose the right car for me. I am still confused and did not decide what kind of car to choose, so I will take my older brother with me, to give me advice, I trust him completely.

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Essay on Transport

Students are often asked to write an essay on Transport in their schools and colleges. And if you’re also looking for the same, we have created 100-word, 250-word, and 500-word essays on the topic.

Let’s take a look…

100 Words Essay on Transport

Importance of transport.

Transport is crucial in our lives. It helps us move from one place to another, enabling trade, travel, and communication. Without transport, our lives would be very different.

Types of Transport

Transport can be land, water, or air-based. Land transport includes cars, buses, and trains. Water transport includes ships and boats, while air transport includes airplanes and helicopters.

Future of Transport

With technology advancing, the future of transport looks exciting. We may soon see self-driving cars, hyperloop trains, and more eco-friendly options, making our journeys faster, safer, and greener.

Also check:

  • 10 Lines on Transport

250 Words Essay on Transport

The evolution of transport.

Transportation has evolved significantly, from the primitive methods of walking and animal riding to today’s sophisticated network of planes, trains, and automobiles. This transformation has been driven by technological advancements, societal needs, and economic forces, shaping our globalized world.

Impact of Transport on Society and Economy

The transportation system is the backbone of any economy. It facilitates the movement of goods and people, fostering economic growth and social interaction. The development of transport infrastructures like highways, airports, and railways has directly impacted the industrialization process, facilitating trade and commerce.

Modern Transportation and Environmental Concerns

While transportation has brought numerous benefits, it is also a significant contributor to environmental degradation. Greenhouse gas emissions from vehicles contribute to climate change, while noise and air pollution affect urban living conditions. Hence, sustainable transport solutions are crucial for the future.

The Future of Transportation

The future of transportation lies in sustainability and technological innovation. Concepts like electric vehicles, autonomous driving, and hyperloop transportation promise a future where transport is efficient, safe, and environmentally friendly. However, these innovations require significant investment and policy support to become mainstream.

Transportation is a critical aspect of our lives, shaping economic growth, societal interaction, and environmental health. As we move forward, the challenge lies in balancing the benefits of transportation with its environmental impact, and embracing innovative technologies to create a sustainable future.

500 Words Essay on Transport

Introduction.

Transportation, a critical aspect of human civilization, has developed significantly over the centuries, evolving from primitive means to advanced technology-driven systems. It plays a pivotal role in the social, economic, and political spheres of society, facilitating the movement of people, goods, and services across various geographical locations.

The history of transportation is a testament to human ingenuity and the relentless pursuit of efficiency. Early humans relied on their physical strength and animals for movement. The invention of the wheel marked a significant milestone, leading to the development of carts and chariots. The advent of industrialization brought about steam engines, revolutionizing land and sea transport. In the 20th century, the invention of the internal combustion engine led to the widespread use of automobiles and aircraft, drastically reducing travel times. Today, we stand at the cusp of another revolution with the development of autonomous vehicles and hyperloop technology.

Transportation systems can be broadly categorized into land, water, air, and space transport. Land transport includes road, rail, and pipeline transport, with automobiles, trains, and trucks as the primary means. Water transport, the oldest form, relies on ships and boats, critical for international trade. Air transport, though expensive, provides the fastest means of travel, essential for global connectivity. Space transport, though still in its infancy, has the potential to redefine our understanding of transportation.

Impact of Transport on Society

Transportation has a profound impact on society, shaping our lifestyles, economies, and cultures. It facilitates trade and commerce, enabling the distribution of goods and services across regions, thus driving economic growth. It fosters cultural exchange and social interaction by connecting different communities. However, transportation also has its drawbacks, notably its environmental impact. The transport sector is a significant contributor to global greenhouse gas emissions, leading to climate change.

The Future of Transport

The future of transportation lies in sustainability and technological innovation. Electric vehicles (EVs), autonomous driving, and shared mobility are some of the trends shaping the future. EVs, powered by renewable energy, offer a solution to the environmental challenges posed by conventional vehicles. Autonomous driving promises to improve safety and efficiency, while shared mobility can reduce the number of vehicles on the road, alleviating traffic congestion.

Transportation, a cornerstone of human civilization, has evolved in tandem with our advancement. While it has brought numerous benefits, it also poses significant challenges, especially in terms of environmental sustainability. As we move forward, the focus should be on harnessing technological advancements to create a transportation system that is efficient, safe, and sustainable. The future of transport is not just about moving from one place to another; it’s about doing so in a way that benefits us all.

That’s it! I hope the essay helped you.

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Computer Science > Digital Libraries

Title: structure and temporal evolution of transportation literature.

Abstract: Fifty years of evolution of the transportation field is revisited at a macro scale using scientometric analysis of all publications in all 39 journals indexed in the category of Transportation by the Web of Science. The size of the literature is estimated to have reached 50,000 documents. At the highest level of aggregation, four major divisions of the literature are differentiated through these analyses, namely (i) network analysis and traffic flow, (ii) economics of transportation and logistics, (iii) travel behaviour, and (iv) road safety. Influential and emerging authors of each division are identified. Temporal trends in transportation research are also investigated via document co-citation analysis. This analysis identifies various major streams of transportation research while determining their approximate time of emergence and duration of activity. It documents topics that have been most trendy at any period of time during the last fifty years. Three clusters associated with the travel behaviour division (collectively embodying topics of land-use, active transportation, residential self-selection, traveller experience/satisfaction, social exclusion and transport/spatial equity), one cluster of statistical modelling of road accidents, and a cluster of network modelling linked predominantly to the notion of macroscopic fundamental diagram demonstrate characteristics of being current hot topics of the field. Three smaller clusters linked predominantly to electric mobility and autonomous/automated vehicles show characteristics of being emerging hot topics. A cluster labelled shared mobility is the youngest emerging cluster. Influential articles within each cluster of references are identified. Additional outcomes are the determination the influential outsiders of the transportation field.

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    Land transportation has evolved throughout the human history. It started from simple strides, taming wild horses and invention of the wheel. History puts it that the initial invention of man-made transportation occurred in the Mesopotamia or Asia.

  2. The Brief History of Transportation

    The evolution of transportation has brought us from simple canoes to space travel, and there's no telling where we could go next and how we will get there. The following is a brief history of transportation, dating from the first vehicles 900,000 years ago to modern-day times. Early Boats

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    Evolution Of Transportation Essay 939 Words4 Pages Imagine to wake up at the morning and drinking a cup of coffee and then enter your car and leave it to take you to your destination. Or imagine that you go with your family on a trip and let the car manage the wheel and you can watch a movie or play card with your family.

  4. Essay on The History of Transportation

    Transportation has evolved significantly over the course of history, from the primitive body part known as the "foot", to the molecular transporters we hope to have in the distant future. The idea of moving ourselves from one place to another has always been a prominent concept in our dinky little brains.

  5. Transportation Revolution

    But it is clear that improvements in transportation technology have been among the most powerful drivers of change in our history. And the transportation revolution has certainly changed our relationship with the American environment. Virginia State Quarter commemorates the technology that allowed the establishment of the Jamestown colony in 1607.

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    Road Bronocice pot with the earliest known image of a wheeled vehicle in the world. Modes of road transport in Dublin, 1929 The first earth tracks were created by humans carrying goods and often followed trails. Tracks would be naturally created at points of high traffic density.

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    Other articles where history of transportation is discussed: history of Europe: Economic effects: …production heightened demands on the transportation system to move raw materials and finished products. Massive road and canal building programs were one response, but steam engines also were directly applied as a result of inventions in Britain and the United States. Steam shipping plied major ...

  8. Evolution of transportation

    View Full Essay Evolution of Transportation Transportation is one of the tools obligatory by civilized man to get order out of disorder. It arrives into each segment and facet of our continuation. Considered as of every point-of-view, economic, political and military, it is indisputably the most significant industry in the world.

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    Introductory Essay: Transportation and the Evolution of the American Economic Republic ALBRO MARTIN Transportation, especially inland transportation, has played more important role in the economic development of the United States than that of any other nation. After a long, slow start in which it

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    Until the problem of inland transportation began to be solved following the War of 1812, America remained just another of the important maritime nations of the world, tied to a coastline and the few miles of coastal plain that bordered it.

  11. Evolution of Transport Technology since the 18th Century

    In the 21st century, the automation of transport systems is unfolding, including its terminals. This improves their reliability and performance while reducing their operating costs. Self-driving vehicles and drones are being introduced.

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    Exams Prep Master | Updated On - Nov 10, 2023 History of transportation dates back to the time when locomotives were invented. Transportation has always been a crucial aspect to widen the scope of living, communication, knowledge, innovation, culture, language, commerce, etc.

  13. The Evolution of Transport Across World Regions

    A closer look at the evolution of transport energy consumption in the last decades (see Fig. 1.2) highlights its continuous increase, with almost a threefold growth from 1971 to 2015, higher than industry consumption (around +80% increase) or residential consumption (roughly +90%).

  14. History Of Transportation

    Introduction. The history of transportation begins from the human era and continued to change over a period of time. The first means of transportation was the human foot. People used to walk large distances to reach places. The first improvement made to this kind of transportation was adapting to different surfaces.

  15. Evolution of Transportation Essay Example For FREE

    Evolution of Transportation Transportation is a very important part of history, today and the future. Transportation is what his world runs on. Because of transportation many people and businesses are able to survive. But transportation does not just involve business; it can also be for personal means.

  16. History of Transportation

    The history of transportation generally begins from the human era and continues to change over a period of time. The first means of transportation was the foot of human beings. People used to walk very large distances to reach places earlier. The first improvement that was made to this kind of transportation was adapting to different surfaces ...

  17. Transportation in the past and present essay 16 models

    Transportation in the past and present essay, through which we learn a lot of information about the means of transportation and how it evolved from horse-drawn vehicles until we reached the latest types of transport. All this will be learned here in Transportation in the past and present essay. Transportation in the past and present essay

  18. Evolution of Transportation

    5 Pages Decent Essays Read More The Pros And Cons Of The American Civil War The railroad construction started as soon as possible. The Baltimore and Ohio Railroad was founded in 1828 and its first section of rails was open in 1830. At its peak, The B&O Railroad spread from the east coast all the way to the Illinois, and was over 5,550 miles long!

  19. Essay on Transport

    The Evolution of Transport Transportation has evolved significantly, from the primitive methods of walking and animal riding to today's sophisticated network of planes, trains, and automobiles. This transformation has been driven by technological advancements, societal needs, and economic forces, shaping our globalized world.

  20. Structure and temporal evolution of transportation literature

    Fifty years of evolution of the transportation field is revisited at a macro scale using scientometric analysis of all publications in all 39 journals indexed in the category of Transportation by the Web of Science. The size of the literature is estimated to have reached 50,000 documents. At the highest level of aggregation, four major divisions of the literature are differentiated through ...

  21. Essay about Transportation

    Land transportation has evolved throughout human history. It started with simple strides, taming wild horses, and the invention of the wheel. History puts it that the initial invention of man-made transportation occurred in Mesopotamia or Asia. This was the time when man invented the wheel at around 4000-3500 BC (Bardou, Jean-Pierre, et al, 1982).

  22. Visualizing the Intellectual Structure and Evolution of ...

    According to the United Nations, 70% of the world's population will live in cities by 2050. This growth will be reflected in the demand for better services that should be adjusted to the collective and individual needs of the population. Governments and organizations are working on defining and implementing strategies that will enable them to respond to these challenges. The main challenges ...