Transport (in British English) or transportation (in American English) is the intentional movement of humans, animals, and goods from one location to another. Modes of transport include air, land (rail and road), water, cable, pipelines, and space. The field can be divided into infrastructure, vehicles, and operations. Transport enables human trade, which is essential for the development of civilizations.
Transport infrastructure consists of fixed installations, including roads, railways, airways, waterways, canals, and pipelines, as well as terminals such as airports, railway stations, bus stations, warehouses, trucking terminals, refueling depots (including fuel docks and fuel stations), and seaports. Terminals may be used both for the interchange of passengers and cargo and for maintenance.
Means of transport are any of the different kinds of transport facilities used to carry people or cargo. They may include vehicles, riding animals, and pack animals. Vehicles may include wagons, automobiles, bicycles, buses, trains, trucks, helicopters, watercraft, spacecraft, and aircraft.
Mobility is concerned with the experience around transportation services, including aspects such as availability, information, usability, accessibility, and affordability (as in right to mobility).
Modes A mode of transport is a method or way of travelling, or of transporting people or cargo. The transport of a person or of cargo may involve one mode or several of the modes, with the latter case being called inter-modal or multi-modal transport. Each mode has its own advantages and disadvantages, and will be chosen on the basis of cost, capability, and route. The different modes of transport include air, water, and land transport, which includes rails or railways, road and off-road transport. Other modes of transport also exist, including pipelines, cable transport, and space transport. Human-powered transport and animal-powered transport are sometimes regarded as distinct modes, but they may lie in other categories such as land or water transport. In general, transportation refers to the moving of people, animals, and other goods from one place to another, and means of transport refers to the transport facilities used to carry people or cargo according to the chosen mode. Examples of the means of transport include automobile, airplane, ship, truck, and train. Each mode of transport has a fundamentally different set of technological solutions. Each mode has its own infrastructure, vehicles, transport operators and operations.
Governments regulate the way the vehicles are operated, and the procedures set for this purpose, including financing, legalities, and policies. In the transport industry, operations and ownership of infrastructure can be public, private, or a partnership between the two, depending on the country and mode. Transport modes can be a mix of the two ownership systems, such as privately owned cars and government-owned urban transport in cities. Many international airlines have a mixed public-private ownership.
Passenger transport may be public, where operators provide scheduled services, or private. Freight transport has become focused on containerization, although bulk transport is used for large volumes of durable items. Transport plays an important part in economic growth and globalization, but machine-propelled forms cause air pollution and use large amounts of land. While it is heavily subsidized by governments, good planning of transport is essential to make traffic flow and restrain urban sprawl.
Human-powered
Human-powered transport, a form of sustainable transport, is the transport of people or goods using human muscle-power, in the form of walking, running, and swimming. Technology has allowed machines to improve the energy efficiency of human mobility on relatively smooth terrain. Human-powered transport remains popular for reasons of cost-saving, leisure, physical exercise, and environmentalism; it is sometimes the only type available, especially in underdeveloped or inaccessible regions.
Although humans are able to walk without infrastructure, the accessibility can be enhanced through the use of roads, sidewalks, and shared-use paths, especially when using the human power with vehicles, such as bicycles, inline skates, and wheelchairs. Human-powered vehicles have been developed for difficult environments, such as snow and water, by watercraft rowing and skiing; even the air can be flown through with human-powered aircraft. Personal transporters, a form of hybrid human-electric powered vehicle, have emerged in the 21st century as a form of multi-model urban transport.
Animal-powered
Animal-powered transport is the use of working animals for the movement of people and commodities. Humans may ride some of the animals directly, use them as pack animals for carrying goods, or harness them, alone or in teams, to pull sleds or wheeled vehicles. They remain useful in rough terrain that is not readily accessible by automotive-based transportation.
Air
A fixed-wing aircraft, commonly called an airplane, is a heavier-than-air craft where movement of the air in relation to the wings is used to generate lift. The term is used to distinguish this from rotary-wing aircraft, where the movement of the lift surfaces relative to the air generates lift. For short distances or in places without runways, helicopters can be operable.Cooper et al., 1998: 281 A gyroplane is both fixed-wing and rotary wing. Fixed-wing aircraft range from small trainers and recreational aircraft to large airliners and military cargo aircraft.
Two things necessary for aircraft are air flow over the wings for lift and an apparatus for landing. The majority of aircraft require an airport with the infrastructure for maintenance, restocking, and refueling and for the loading and unloading of crew, cargo, and passengers. Many aerodromes have takeoff and landing restrictions on weight and runway length, and so are not able to handle all types of aircraft. While the vast majority of fixed-wing aircraft land and take off on land, some are capable of take-off and landing on ice, snow, and calm water.
Autonomous or remotely-piloted airplanes are known as unmanned aerial vehicles, or UAV. These drones can range in size from less than a metre across to a full-sized airplane. They are capable of carrying a payload, and are being used for package delivery.
The aircraft is the second fastest method of transport, after the rocket. Commercial jets reach speeds of up to and a considerably higher ground speed if there is a jet stream tailwind, while piston-powered general aviation aircraft may reach up to or more. This celerity comes with higher cost and energy use,Swine flu prompts EU warning on travel to the US. The Guardian. April 28, 2009. and aviation's impacts to the environment and particularly the global climate require consideration when comparing modes of transportation.The Future of Air Transport White Paper (2009), HMSO "The aviation industry is encouraged to take account of, and where appropriate reduce, its contribution to global warming...The impact of aviation on climate change is increased over that of direct CO2 emissions alone by some of the other emissions released and their specific effects at altitude". The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) estimates a commercial jet's flight to have some 2-4 times the effect on the climate than if the same CO2 emissions were made at ground level, because of different atmospheric chemistry and radiative forcing effects at the higher altitude.IPCC, Aviation and the Global Atmosphere: A Special Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (2000), Cambridge University Press U.S. airlines alone burned about 16.2 billion gallons of fuel during the twelve months between October 2013 and September 2014.Why airfare keeps rising despite lower oil prices , by Scott Mayerowitz, Assoc. Press Airlines Writer. Houston Chron., November 17, 2014. WHO estimates that globally as many as 500,000 people at a time are on planes. The global trend has been for increasing numbers of people to travel by air, and individually to do so with increasing frequency and over longer distances, a dilemma that has the attention of climate scientists and other researchers, along with the press.Jenkins S. (2009). Hypermobility is now the opium of the people, an obsession that wrecks communities and planet. The Guardian. 22 Dec. 2009.Rosenthal E. (2010). Can we kick our addiction to flying? Guardian, UK. 24 May 2010. The issue of impacts from frequent travel, particularly by air because of the long distances that are easily covered in one or a few days, is called hypermobility and has been a topic of research and governmental concern for many years.
An aerostat is a class of lighter-than-air aircraft that gains its lift by containing a volume of gas that has a lower density than the surrounding atmosphere. These include balloons and rigid, semi-rigid, or non-rigid airships; the last is called a blimp. The lifting gas is typically helium, as hydrogen is highly flammable. Alternatively, heated air is used in hot air balloons and thermal airships. Aerostats can transport passengers and a payload over long distances. For example, zeppelins were used on long-ranged bombing raids during World War I.
Land
Land transport covers all land-based transport systems that provide for the movement of people, goods, and services. Land transport plays a vital role in linking communities to each other. Land transport is a key factor in urban planning. It consists of two kinds, rail and road.
Rail
Rail transport consists of wheeled vehicles running on tracks, which usually consist of two parallel steel rails, known as a railway or railroad. The rails are anchored perpendicular to ties (or sleepers) of timber, concrete, or steel, to maintain a consistent distance apart, or gauge. The rails and perpendicular beams are placed on a foundation made of concrete or compressed earth and gravel in a bed of ballast. Alternative methods include monorail, maglev, and hyperloop. Dual gauge railways have three or four rails, allowing use by trains with two or three track gauges. For steep grades, a railway can use an additional toothed rack rail for traction.
A train consists of one or more connected vehicles that operate on the rails, known as rolling stock. Propulsion is commonly provided by a locomotive, which hauls a series of unpowered cars that carry passengers or freight. The locomotive can be powered by steam, diesel, gas turbine, or else electricity supplied by trackside systems. Some or all the cars can be powered, known as a multiple unit. A tram is similar to a train, but is generally smaller, travels shorter distances, and runs on rails that are integrated into the streets. Typically a tram is electric-powered, but they have also been propelled by horses, cables, gravity, or pneumatics. Railed vehicles move with much less friction than rubber tires on paved roads, making trains more energy efficient, though not as efficient as ships.
Intercity trains are long-haul services connecting cities; modern high-speed rail is capable of speeds up to , but this requires specially built track. Commercial maglev transport in Shanghai runs at . Regional and commuter trains feed cities from suburbs and surrounding areas, while intra-urban transport is performed by high-capacity tramways and rapid transits, in many cases making up the backbone of a city's public transport. Freight trains traditionally used box cars, requiring manual loading and unloading of the cargo. Since the 1980s, container trains have become the dominant solution for general freight, while large quantities of bulk are transported by dedicated rolling stock. An example of the latter are specially designed tank cars for the transport of hazardous materials.
Road