What is Transportation? - In Depth Vocabulary Study

Being able to understand the focus area of Transportation as a generalized term and the system that is set up is important to being able to understand the core values and structure of transport systems. The Geography of Transport Systems by Jean-Paul Radrigue is a book that I will be using to synthesize the meaning and goals of transportation within the modern world. The book offers a great framework for establishing the types of transport systems, the policy, the goals, and the urbanization of these systems. To begin my in depth research into the future of these transport systems, it is important to be able to understand and explain the systems that are in place today and the ‘why’ behind them.

Transportation in general comes about based on a systems core values: 1) Transportation is the spatial linking 2) Distance is based on space , time, and effort 3) Space is the generator, support, and constraint to transport systems 4) Space and time can converge and diverge (all transport takes up space and an amount of time) 5) Location can be central (origin) , intermediate, or an attracter (destination) 6)To overcome geography transportation must consume space 7) Transportation seeks massification (more extensive) but is limited by automization (complexity) and 8) Velocity is a modal, intermodal, and managerial efffort (the time it takes to go through the transport chain). From the core values of transport systems, the primary goal is to increase mobility within a system. Mobility is described as “The ease of movement of a passenger or freight” and this begin to change the other core values. As mobility increase, the activities are less constrained by distance and time. Transportation is in existence to meet the demand of mobility.

In order to understand the method of transportation that I plan on using, I first began to look into the methods of transportation made up that of the road networks. These methods included: Car, Taxi, Van/Bus, Motorcycle, and Bicycle. These methods of transport are important to understand because they all share the same network, the road, in the same way that helicopters and airplanes both share the sky as their form of transport network. The road networks are quite extensive, but really focus down to local and regional networks, rather than looking at the road networks from a national view. Within these road networks is a systematic hierarchy. Freeways are the primary route of travel with no intersections and a relatively constantly flowing traffic. Arterials are larger local roads with traffic signals and intersections, and then there are Connectors/ Local Roads which are much smaller in scale and primarily connect origin and destination within the system with few traffic signals. It is apparent that road networks are moderately expensive to build and implement within the urban fabric, thus the most efficient way to improve mobility on the road is to use systems of technology advancement in order to use the existing roadway infrastructure.

Within the overall scheme of systematic road networks are two very different types of transportation: urban and rural. Urban transportation is highly complex, in regards to its counterpart, based on three primary factors: 1) Modes of transport involved 2) the multitude of origins and destination 3) amount and variety of traffic. The urban transport systems are intrinsically tied to urban form and spatial structure of a city. To break this down even more, urban form is the spatial imprint of an urban transport system and the adjacent physical structures and the spatial structure is a set of relationships arising out of the urban form and its underlying mobility of passengers.

Urban transport systems are comprised of two primary spatial structures: Nodes and Linkages. nodes are reflected in the centrality of urban environment (usually are origins or destinations of travel). Linkages are the systems of infrastructure supporting ‘From’, ‘To’, and ‘Between’ nodes within the urban form. These nodes are important because the success and connection of transport systems allows urbanization to expand. As roads continue to move outward, buildings and space begin to follow outward to extend the system of nodes and linkages that a city has.