Transportation and Geography Notes

CHAPTER 1: TRANSPORTATION AND GEOGRAPHY

1. THE PURPOSE OF TRANSPORTATION

• The goal of transportation is to transform geographical attributes of freight, people, and information from origin to destination, adding value.

• Transportability is the convenience with which this is done.

• Transportation fulfills a demand for mobility; it exists only if it moves people, freight, and information.

• Transportation is dominantly the outcome of a derived demand where demand for a good/service in one sector impacts another.

  • Example: Consumer buying a good triggers replacement, generating demands for manufacturing, resource extraction, and transport.

Core Principles of Transport Geography

• Transport geography is understood through eight core principles:

  1. Transportation is the spatial linking of a derived demand.

     • It links spatial components as flows of people, goods, and information due to economic activities.

     • Commuting links labor flows resulting from demand in one location (commercial district) and supply in another (residential district).

     • A market economy requires transportation to link supply and demand for transactions to occur.

  2. Distance is a relative concept involving space, time, and effort.

     • Perception of distance depends on the effort to overcome it, expressed as transport costs.

     • Longer physical distance traveled with ease implies less distance than a shorter distance with delays, congestion, and high costs.

  3. Space acts as a generator, support, and constraint for mobility.

     • Space is the formal context in which mobility takes place, shaping the transport system.

     • Spatial differences in resources, employment and population generate movements.

     • Space can constrain transport; oceans/rivers can restrict land transport but support maritime transport; weather can constrain air transport.

     • Transportation itself is a space where socioeconomic activities occur (modes/terminals).

  4. The relation between space and time can converge or diverge.

     • Transport consumes time in exchange for space (speed measurement).

     • Historically, convergence has occurred, meaning more space is reachable in the same time (or same space in less time).

     • This results from technological improvements and better transport infrastructure.

     • Divergence occurs when congestion increases delays with each additional unit in movement.

  5. A location can be a central or an intermediate element of mobility.

     • Locations are central when they generate (origins) or attract (destinations) movements.

     • Locations are intermediate when movements pass through them en route to other locations.

     • Ports and airports are often intermediate locations acting as gateways/hubs.

  6. To overcome geography, transportation must consume space.

     • Transportation infrastructure (roads, rail lines, terminals) consumes space and forms networks.

     • More extensive transport systems consume more space.

     • In motorized cities, roads/parking can consume up to 50% of land.

     • Globalization involves massive terminal facilities like container ports, airports, and distribution centers.

     • Road infrastructure links local/regional activities, while rail, port, and airport terminals link larger-scale activities.

  7. Transportation seeks massification but is constrained by atomization.

     • Transport systems are most effective with economies of scale in passenger/freight loads.

     • Massification involves higher capacity conveyances and larger terminals.

     • First/last segments may require atomization (consolidation and deconsolidation of loads).

     • Example: Passengers consolidate into a planeload at the airport and deconsolidate at the destination airport.

     • Higher massification increases atomization complexity.

     • Individual modes (cars) are preferred due to point-to-point capabilities despite public transit's cost-efficiency.

  8. Velocity is a modal, intermodal, and managerial effort.

     • Velocity is the time for a passenger/freight unit to move across a transport chain, not just speed.

     • Air transport's speed advantage is undermined by hours spent between connecting flights.

     • Velocity considers mode effectiveness and intermodal operations.

     • Effective management of operations (scheduling, transactions) improves flow velocity.

     • Digitalization aims to increase velocity through better management and exchange platforms.

Additional Considerations of Transportation

• Transport cannot be stored; unused capacity is lost.

  • An unsold seat on a flight cannot be resold later.

  • Opportunity is missed when transport offered exceeds demand.

• Mobility: Ease of passenger/freight movement related to transport costs and attributes (fragility, perishability, price).

• Political factors (laws, regulations, borders, tariffs) influence mobility.

• High mobility means activities are less constrained by distance.

Types of Derived Demand

• Direct derived demand: Movements directly resulting from economic activities.

  • Example: Commuting, where transportation is directly derived from supply of work and demand of labor.

• Indirect derived demand: Movements created by requirements of other movements.

  • Example: Fuel consumption from transport requiring movement from extraction zones to refineries, to stores, and to consumption.

Representing Distance

• Distance is a core attribute of transportation represented in various ways:

  • Euclidean distance: Straight line between two locations, expressed in geographical units (kilometers).

  • Transport distance: Routing exercise considering the shortest path.

    • Includes physical activities like loading, unloading, and transshipment.

    • Example: distance between A and B includes pickup, mode 1 travel, transshipment, mode 2 travel, and delivery.

  • Logistical distance: Includes physical flows and management activities.

    • Example: distance between A and B includes order from B, processing, packing, scheduling pickup.

    • Intermediate transshipment location involves sorting and warehousing.

    • For passengers, logistical distance involves specific array of tasks.

The Concept of Flow

• Any movement must consider its geographical setting linked to spatial flows and patterns.

  • Geographical: Each flow has an origin, destination, and degree of separation. High degrees of separation limit flows.

  • Physical: Each flow involves physical characteristics in terms of load units and transport mode (atomized or massified).

  • Transactional: Each flow is negotiated with transport providers (booking a slot). Typically involves monetary exchange.

  • Distribution: Flows are organized in sequences involving different modes/terminals to minimize costs/maximize efficiency.

Spatial Constructs

• Transportation activities occur at various scales:

  • Local:

    • Activity space: Range of origins/destinations individuals undertake within a time frame (daily, weekly).

    • Commuting: Outcome of individual activity space.

    • Deliveries: Activity space of local freight distribution.

    • Fixed spatial constructs: Neighborhoods or terminals with flows of passengers and freight within an urban framework.

  • Regional:

    • Networks and flow become more ambiguous, taking the form of metro areas or urban regions along corridors.

    • Main terminal facilities ports and airports interact with hinterlands (customer locations).

• Hinterlands: Areas surrounding a city, port, or central place that supports it with goods, services, and resources.

  • Global:

    • Landbridge: Long-distance corridor serviced by rail.

    • Trade areas: Common frame of reference articulating markets and transport systems.

    • Global value chains: Complex spatial construct involving manufacturing and freight distribution.

Landbridges

• Areas of land that connect two larger regions, facilitating movement of animals, plants and people.

Operational Differences: Passengers vs. Freight

2. THE IMPORTANCE OF TRANSPORTATION

• Transport connects regions, economic activities, and people. It's composed of core components:

  • Modes: conveyances for passenger/freight mobility (mobile elements).

  • Infrastructures: physical support (routes, terminals) of transport modes (fixed elements).

  • Networks: system of linked locations (nodes); functional and spatial organization.

  • Flows: Movements of people, freight, and information over their network.

Four Essential Components for Transportation

• Modes: Conveyances (vehicles) supporting mobility of passengers/freight.

• Infrastructures:

  • Physical support of transport modes, routes (rail tracks, canals, highways), and terminals (ports, airports).

  • Superstructures: Movable assets with shorter lifespans.

    • Airport infrastructure: Runways.

    • Airport superstructure: Terminals, control equipment.

    • Port infrastructure: Piers, navigation channels.

    • Port superstructure: Cranes, yard equipment.

• Networks: System of linked locations; transport's functional/spatial organization.

  • Indicates connected locations and service levels.

  • Some locations within a network are more accessible (more connections) than others (fewer connections).

• Flows: Movements of people, freight, and information over networks.

  • Flows have origins, intermediary locations, and destinations.

  • Intermediate locations may be required (transit at hub airport).

Transportation's Dimensions

• Historical: Changes from transport technologies (rise of civilizations, modern nation-states, globalization).

• Economic: Transport and economic development (direct & indirect).

  • Factor in production and value of goods/services, facilitates real estate value, contributes to regional specialization.

• Social: Access to healthcare, welfare, and cultural events, shaping social interactions.

• Political: Nation building, national unity, national defense, rules and regulations, subsidizing mobility (public transit, highways).

• Environmental: Impacts (pollution, resource exploitation, climate change).

3. TRANSPORTATION IN GEOGRAPHY

• Geography seeks to understand spatial order and interactions.

• Transportation is relevant due to:

  • Transport infrastructure occupies space and forms a spatial system.

  • Transport networks are the support of spatial interactions.

• New transport geography is based on transportation as a system supporting complex relationships between nodes, networks, and demand.

Transport Network Components

• Node: A point in a network where lines intersect.

• Link: The connection between 2 nodes along which flow occurs.

• Route: A series of connected links.

• Network: A system of nodes and links that consist of several modal types.

• Gateway: A point at which freight in transit from one point to another is interchanged between transport providers.

• Corridor: A bet of land linking two other areas or following a road or river.

• Hub: Where passengers and cargo are exchanged between vehicles and/or transport modes.

Geogrpahical COnsiderations

• Transportation Nodes: Locations linked by transport, serving as access/transshipment points within a network.

  • Serviced by transport terminals where flows start, end, or are transshipped.

  • Transport geography considers places of convergence and transshipment.

• Transportation Networks:

  • Considers spatial structure/organization of transport infrastructure and terminals.

  • Transport geography investigates structures (routes and infrastructures) supporting and shaping movements.

• Transportation Demand:

  • Considers demand for transport services and modes used.

  • When realized, becomes an interaction flowing through a network.

  • Transport geography evaluates factors affecting derived demand function.

4. TRANSPORTATION SYSTEMS

• Transport geography understands spatial relations from transport systems.

  • Understanding helps mitigate transport problems (capacity, transfer, reliability, integration).

• Three geographical considerations:

  • Location: Each location has its own characteristics (supply and demand for resources, products, services, or labor).

  • Complementarity: Some locations have supply, others have deficit.

    • Equilibrium is reached through movements between supply/demand locations.

    • Example: Store (supply of goods) and its customers (demand of goods).

  • Scale: Movements occur at different scales based on the activity.

    • Home-to-work - Local/regional.

    • MNC Networks - Global.

CONCEPT 2 – TRANSPORTATION AND SPACE

• Transport geography concerns movements over space; physical features impose constraints:

  • Mode to use, extent of service, costs, capacity, and reliability.

1 PHYSICAL CONSTRAINTS

• Topography: Can complicate, postpone, or prevent transport.

  • Physical constraints act as absolute/relative barriers.

  • Absolute barrier: Prevents movement entirely.

  • Relative barrier: Imposes additional costs/delays.

  • Land transportation networks are influenced by topography.

• Hydrology: water distribution and circulation for transport.

  • Maritime transport is affected by navigable channels in oceans, rivers, lakes, and shallow seas.

• Climate: Temperature, wind, and precipitation affecting transport modes and infrastructure.

  • Impacts range from negligible to severe.

  • Climate influences construction and maintenance costs.

2 OVERCOMING THE PHYSICAL ENVIRONMENT

• Each segment and network has a physical capacity related to the volume it can support under normal conditions.
  Traffic > Capacity = Congestion

3. TRANSPORTATION AND THE SPATIAL STRUCTURE

• New technologies revolutionize transport (speed, capacity, efficiency), but network structure changes minimally because:

  • Physical attributes of nature can be adapted to suit human uses, but they act as constraints notably for land transportation.

  • Historical circumstances reinforce exchange patterns, with urban street patterns inheriting older structures.

• Site: Geographical characteristics of a location.

• Situation: Location's relationships with other locations.

  • Costs are minimised and location decisions are taken, often related to transportation.

  • Accessibility means All locations have a level of accessibility, but some are more accessible than others which are perceived to be more valuable.

• Tendency for activities to agglomerate to take advantage of the value of specific locations.

New Transport Tech and Infra

• The introduction of new transport technology or the addition of new transport infrastructure may lead to a transformation of existing networks Intensified global interactions and modified the relative location of places and their impact is:

  • Specialization: Linked to efficient transport systems.

    • Economic globalization underlines specialization: specialization occurs as long as the $savings \geq additional transport costs$

  • Concentration: Due to transportations tech it brings things like businesses closer for benifets.

Global Trade Integraion via Convergence of Space/Time

• Five major factors:

  • Speed: The increased speed of many transport modes has decreased, as most modes are not going much faster.

  • Economies of scale: Improve capacity/efficiency by transporting more at lower costs, more for a given quantity

  • Expansion of transport infrastructure: Expansion of transport infrastructure has enabled distribution systems to grow, it also increased the average distance over which passengers and freight are being carried

  • Efficiency of transport terminals: Better management of flows have helped reduce transport time.

  • Information technologies (IT): Bypassed spatial constraints, improved traffic flows, and better management of transport assets.

CONCEPT 5 - TRANSPORTATION AND COMMERCIAL GEOGRAPHY

• GTS Sphere:

• Economic Geography - Space

• Transport Geography - Circulation

• Commercial Geography - Transactions

Three Interdependent Fields of Geography

• Economic geography: Location, distribution, and spatial organization of economic activities.

• Transport geography: Circulation of passengers and freight.

• Commercial geography: Investigates spatial characteristics of trade and transactions.

Trade Requirements

• Several fundamental conditions must be met for trade:

  • Availability: Commodities must be available for trade with surplus at one location and demand in another.

  • Transferability: Transport infrastructures support the transferability of goods.
    Regulatory, geographical, or transportation barriers (capacity) can be impediments to transferability

  • Transactional capacity: Legally possible to make a transaction, recognition of currency and legislation.

Flows Characteristics

• Flow's characteristics include:

  • Value: Flows have a negotiated value and settled in currency;

  • Volume: Measured through weight.

  • Scale: (Local, Regional, Global).

Contemporary Commercial Trends

• Globalization drives added value through:

  • Research and development: Incentives to innovate.

  • Input costs: Opportunities to reduce costs (labor, raw materials, capital, or regulations).

  • Transportation: Capacity to move materials across large distances allows wider distribution.

  • Sustainability: Improve material and energy use as well as environmental externalities.

Transportation and Competitiveness

• Four phases of extension and functional integration:

  • Introduction: Transport system introduced for a specific opportunity often incompatible with other transport systems.

  • Expansion and interconnection: Expansion and interconnection occurs and the size of the market increases, connections are subject to transshipment between the two incompatible transport systems.

  • Standardization and integration: System services vast national markets, standardization of modes, intermodal integration, rationalization and market expansion.

  • Integrated demand: Answering mobility needs with global reach as if transport supply is tuned with the demand. Is further expanded by the digitalisation of transportation.