GEOG 80 – Transport Geography
Professor: Dr. Jean-Paul Rodrigue
A.
A Diversity of Modes
B.
Intermodal Transportation
C.
Passengers or Freight?

1. Transportation Modes
■ Transport modes:
• Vehicles:
• Mobile segment.
• Supporting the mobility of passengers, freight and information.
• Infrastructures:
• Fixed segment.
• Supporting movements.
• Three basic types:
• Land (road, rail and pipelines).
• Water (shipping).
• Air.
• Each mode had a set of technical, operational and commercial characteristics.

Performance Comparison for Selected Freight Modes
Vehicle
Barge
15 barges on tow
Hopper car
100 car train unit
Semi-trailer truck
Capacity
1500 Tons
52,500 Bushels
453,600 Gallons
22,500 Tons
787,500 Bushels
6,804,000 Gallons
100 Tons
3,500 Bushels
30,240 Gallons
10,000 Tons
350,000 Bushels
3,024,000 Gallons
26 Tons
910 Bushels
7,865 Gallons
1 Barge Equivalency
1
0.06
15
0.15
57.7

B – A Diversity of Modes
■ 1. Road Transportation
■ 2. Rail Transportation
■ 3. Pipelines
■ 4. Water Transportation
■ 5. Air Transportation
■ 6. Modal Competition

1. Road Transportation
■ Overview
• Large consumers of space.
• Lowest level of physical constraints among transportation modes.
• Environmental constrains are significant in road construction.
• Average operational flexibility (vehicles can serve several purposes).
• High maintenance costs, both for the vehicles and infrastructures.
• Linked to light industries (rapid movements of freight in small batches).

1. Road Transportation
■ History
• The first land roads were trails (hunting).
• With the first nation-states trails started to be used for commercial purposes.
• Domestification of animals such as horses, mules and camels.
• Wheeled vehicles encouraged construction of better roads.
• Requires a level of labor organization and administrative control:
• Provided by a central government offering a level of military protection over trade routes.
• 3,000 BC the first road systems in Mesopotamia.
• Roman Empire 300 BC built the first comprehensive road network.

Roman Road (Appian Way)

1. Road Transportation
■ Modern road networks
• Creation of modern nation-states (17th century):
• National road transportation systems were formally established.
• France: Royal Roads system spanning 24,000 km.
• Great Britain: 32,000 km system of private toll turnpikes.
• United States: 3 million km of roads, most unpaved, was in operation by the early 20 th century.
■ Road engineering
• Construction of reliable and low cost hard surface roads.
• Scottish engineer McAdam developed a process:
• Hard and waterproof road surfaces made by cemented crushed stone, bound together either with water or with bitumen.
• Improved the reliability and the travel speed on roads.

Macadam Road Construction, Maryland 1823

1. Road Transportation
■ National highway systems
• Road development accelerated in after WWII.
• American Interstate highway system:
• Initiated in 1956.
• About 56,000 km was built from the 1950s to the 1970s.
• Additional 9,000 km between 1975 and 1998.
• Overall, about 70,000 km of four-lane and six-lane highways were constructed.
• Linking all major American cities, coast to coast.
• Trans-Canada highway completed in 1962.
• By the 1970s, every modern nation has constructed a national highway system.

Length of the Interstate Highway System (in miles)
50,000
45,000
40,000
35,000
30,000
25,000
20,000
15,000
10,000
5,000
0
1955 1960 1965 1970 1975 1980 1985 1990 1995 2000 2005

World Automobile Production and Fleet, 1965-2002
600
550
500
450
400
350
300
250
200
150
Fleet
Production
100
19
65
19
67
19
69
19
71
19
73
19
75
19
77
19
79
19
81
19
83
19
85
19
87
19
89
19
91
19
93
19
95
19
97
19
99
20
01
30
28
26
24
22
20
18
16
44
42
40
38
36
34
32

1. Road Transportation
■ Public sector
• Main supplier of road transport infrastructures.
• Unpractical to use a similar pricing system than a commercial enterprise.
• Most roads are not economically profitable but must be socially present as they are essential to service populations.
• Only possible on specific trunks that have an important and stable traffic.
• Toll roads:
• Highways linking large cities.
• Bridge and tunnels.
• Can expropriate the necessary land for road construction.
• Economies of scale and their indivisibility.

1. Road Transportation
■ Costs
• Rights of passage.
• Development costs (planning).
• Construction and expropriation costs.
• Maintenance and administration costs.
• Losses in land taxes (urban environment).
• External costs (accidents and pollution).
■ Income
• Registration.
• Gas (taxes)
• Purchases of vehicles (taxes).
• Tolls, parking, and insurance fees.

2. Rail Transportation
■ Overview
• Composed of a traced path on which are bound vehicles.
• Average level of physical constrains:
• Linked to the types of locomotives.
• Affected by the gradient.
• Heavy industries are traditionally linked with rail transport systems.
• Containerization:
• Improved the flexibility of rail transportation.
• Linking it with road and maritime modes.

2. Rail Transportation
■ Geographical setting
• Established differently because different goals were to be achieved.
• Access to resources.
• Servicing regional economies.
• Territorial control.
■ Rail monopolies
• High level of economic and territorial control.
• Monopoly in Europe and oligopoly in North America.
• Regular (scheduled), but rigid, services.
• Transport mode the most constrained by the physiography.

Geographical Settings of Rail Lines
Penetration Lines Local / Regional Networks Transcontinental Lines
Nation A
Nation B

2. Rail Transportation
■ Technical issues
• Space consumption:
• Small along lines.
• Important at terminals.
• Gradient and turns.
• Vehicles:
• Very flexible in terms of vehicles and there is a wide variety of them filling different purposes.
• Bulk, liquids, grain, containers, passengers, cattle, cars, coal.
• Gauge:
• Standard gauge of 1.4351 meters for North America and for most Western
Europe.

Domestic Rail Passenger Travel and Freight Activity, G7
Countries, 1996
United States
United Kingdom
Japan
Italy
Germany
France
Canada
0
1979.7
50 100 150 200 250
Passenger-kms (billions) Ton-kms (billions)
300

Rail Track Mileage and Number of Class I Rail Carriers,
United States, 1840-2003
300,000
250,000
200,000
150,000
100,000
50,000
0
1840
Rail Track Mileage
Class I Rail Carriers
1860 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000
200
180
160
140
120
100
80
60
40
20
0

2. Rail Transportation
■ Economic rationale
• Market area and capacity:
• Transport raw materials over long distances.
• Move passengers and freight (cars, agricultural equipment, etc.)
• The average length was 1,300 km compared with 700 km for trucks.
• Intermodal integration favored segmentation and specialization.
• Costs:
• High construction and maintenance costs.
• Shipping costs decrease with distance and load.
• Transshipments and train assembly increase costs.
• Rail operating costs: labor (up to 60%), locomotives (16%) and wagons, fuel, maintenance and equipment (24%).

2. Rail Transportation
• Benefits:
• Accelerated the industrialization process.
• Accelerated economic development and human settlements.
• Multiplier effects on industrial activities.
• Safety; after air transportation, the safest mode.
• Regulation:
• Highly dependent from government subsidies.
• Governments financing, mainly for the sake of national economic imperatives.

2. Rail Transportation
■ High speed train networks
• Require special lines, but can also use the existing lines at a lower speed
• Speed of about 300 km/h.
• Separation between passenger and freight traffic.
• By-passing several centers of less importance.
• Over average distances, they have proved to be able to compete effectively with air transportation.

Travel Times before and after the Introduction of a High
Speed Train Service
Seoul - Busan
Tokyo - Osaka
Paris - Marseille
Madrid - Seville
London - Paris
Paris - Bruxelles
Berlin - Hannover
Hannover - Wurzburg
Firenze - Rome
0 1 2 3 4 5 6
After
Before
7

3. Pipelines
■ Overview
• Single purpose: carry one commodity from a location to another.
• Built largely with private capital:
• Has to be in place before any revenues are generated; significant capital commitment.
• Large quantities of products where no other feasible means of transport (usually water) is available.
• Two main products dominate pipeline traffic:
• Oil and gas.
• 17% of all tons-km in the US.
• Locally pipelines are significant for the transport of water.
• Low physical constraints:
• The landscape and pergelisol in arctic / subarctic environments.

3. Pipelines
■ Pipeline systems
• Construction costs vary according to the diameter:
• Increase proportionally with the distance and with the viscosity of fluids.
• Longest pipelines:
• Gas pipeline: Alberta to Sarnia (Canada); 2,911 km.
• Oil pipeline: Transiberian; 9,344 km in length.
• Trans Alaskan pipeline:
• 1,300 km long.
• Built under difficult conditions.
• Above the ground for most of its path.
• System has very little flexibility:
• Cannot respond well to geographical fluctuations of the supply or demand.

Trans-Alaska Pipeline

Oil and Gas Pipelines Mileage in the United States, 1960-
2003
1,600,000
1,400,000
1,200,000
1,000,000
800,000
Oil pipeline
Gas pipeline
600,000
400,000
200,000
0
1960 1965 1970 1975 1980 1985 1990 1995 2000 2005

4. Water Transport
■ Issues
• Dominant support of global trade:
• International and seaborne trade are interrelated.
• 96% of the world trade is carried by maritime transportation (mass).
• International trade and maritime transportation:
• Interrelated.
• 25,000 billion tons-km are on average transported annually.
• 7,000 by rail and 3,000 by road.
• 71% of all freight shipped globally.
• For every $1,000 of exports, there is one ton of freight being shipped by maritime transportation.

International Seaborne Trade and Exports of Goods,
1955-2001
7.0
6.0
5.0
Seaborne Trade (billions of tons of goods loaded)
Exports of Goods (trillions of $US)
4.0
3.0
2.0
1.0
0.0
19
55
19
57
19
59
19
61
19
63
19
65
19
67
19
69
19
71
19
73
19
75
19
77
19
79
19
81
19
83
19
85
19
87
19
89
19
91
19
93
19
95
19
97
19
99
20
01

4. Water Transport
■ Domains of maritime circulation
• Geographical by its physical attributes:
• 71% of the terrestrial surface.
• Strategic by its control.
• Commercial by its usage.
■ Maritime routes
• Corridors of a few kilometers in width.
• Trying to avoid the discontinuities of land transport.
• Function:
• Obligatory points of passage, which are strategic places.
• Physical constraints (coasts, winds, marine currents, depth, reefs, ice).
• Political borders.
• The majority of maritime circulation takes place along coastlines.

Domains of Maritime Circulation
St. Lawrence / Great Lakes
Mississippi
Panama
Amazon
Magellan
Rhine / Ruhr / Danube
Gibraltar
Bosporus
Suez
Hormuz
Nile
Yangtze
Chang Jiang
Perl
Bab el-Mandab
Mekong
Malacca
Good Hope

4. Water Transport
■ Maritime enclaves
• Countries that have difficulties to undertake maritime trade:
• Not part of an oceanic domain of maritime circulation.
• Requires agreements with neighboring countries:
• Access to a port facility through a road, a rail line or through a river.
• Not necessarily imply an exclusion from international trade:
• Substantially higher transport costs.
• On average 50% higher than countries that are not landlocked.
• Less than 40% of the trade volume of the median coastal country.
• May impair economic development.

Maritime Enclaves and Accessibility
Less than 700 km
More than 700 km
Maritime Enclave

4. Water Transport
■ Global fleet
• About 85,000 ships of more than 100 tons.
• Half of them performing transport functions and the other half performing service functions (e.g. tugs).
• Growth of the number of ships as well as their average size.
• Oceanic maritime traffic dominantly concerns freight.

Registered World Fleet, 1914-2000
600,000
500,000
400,000
Number of ships
Total gross tonnage (1,000s)
Average tonnage
300,000
200,000
100,000
0
1910 1920 1930 1940 1950 1960 1970 1980 1990 2000
0
3
2
1
7
6
5
4

4. Water Transport
■ Passenger vessels
• Passenger ferries:
• People are carried across relatively short bodies of water in a shuttle-type service.
• Tend to be small and fast vessels.
• Cruise ships:
• Passengers are taken on trips of various durations, usually over several days.
• Usually very large capacity ships.
• Before air transportation, serviced by liner passenger ships, dominantly over the North Atlantic.
■ Roll on-Roll off (RORO) vessels
• Allow cars, trucks and trains to be loaded directly on board.
• The largest are the car carriers that transport vehicles from assembly plants to the main markets.

Cruise Ship

Channel Ferry Ship Entering the Port of Le Havre, France

RO-RO Cargo Ship

4. Water Transport
■ Bulk cargo
• Freight, both dry or liquid, that is not packaged.
• Minerals (oil, coal, iron ore) and grains.
• Requires the use of specialized ships such as oil tankers as well as specialized transshipment and storage facilities.
• Single origin, destination and client.
• Prone to economies of scale.
■ Break-bulk cargo
• General cargo that has been packaged in some way with the use of bags, boxes or drums.
• Numerous origins, destinations and clients.
• Before containerization, economies of scale were difficult to achieve.

World’s Largest Dry-Bulk Carrier, the Berge Stalh

The Regina Maersk

4. Water Transport
■ Growth of maritime traffic
• Increase in energy and mineral cargoes:
• Growing demand from developed economies.
• Many developing countries, such as China, are also increasingly involved in importing raw materials.
• Globalization:
• International division of the production and trade liberalization.
• Technical improvements in ship and maritime terminals.
• Economies of scale:
• Remain a low cost mode.
• Strengthened by containerization

Tons Shipped by Maritime Transportation, 1981-2000 (in millions)
6000
5000
4000
3000
2000
Other
Grain
Ore/coal/minerals
Oil
1000
0
19
81
19
82
19
83
19
84
19
85
19
86
19
87
19
88
19
89
19
90
19
91
19
92
19
93
19
94
19
95
19
96
19
97
19
98
19
99
20
00

4. Water Transport
■ Technical innovations
• Size:
• Expresses type as well as capacity.
• Each time the size of a ship is doubled, its capacity is cubed.
• The largest tankers (ULCC) are around 500,000 dwt
• The largest dry bulk carriers are around 350,000 dwt.
• Remaining constraints in ship size are the capacity of ports and canals.
• Speed
• Average speed of ships is about 15 knots (1 knot = 1 marine mile = 1,853 meters), which is 28 km per hour.
• A ship can travel about 575 km per day.
• Recent ships can travel at speeds between 25 to 30 knots (45 to 55 km per hour).
• Reaching higher maritime speeds remains a challenge which is excessively costly to overcome.

4. Water Transport
• Specialization of ships:
• General cargo ships, tankers, grain carriers, barges, mineral carriers, bulk carriers, methane carriers and container ships.
• Ship design:
• The hulls are the result of considerable efforts to minimize energy consumption, construction costs and improve safety.
• A ship can take between 4 months (container and crude carriers) and 1 year to build (cruise ship).
• Automation:
• Self-unloading ships
• Computer assisted navigation (crew needs are reduced and safety is increased) and global positioning systems.
• Smaller crews being required to operate larger ships.

4. Water Transport
■ Flags of convenience
• 46% of the ships and about 62% of the global tonnage (1998).
• Regulation:
• Under maritime law, the owner is bound to the rules and regulations of the country of registration.
• Registry costs:
• Registry costs are on average between 30 to 50% lower than those of
North America and Western Europe.
• Operating costs:
• From 12 to 27% lower than traditional registry fleets.
• Savings are coming from lower manning expenses.
• Lower standards in terms of salary and benefits.

Tonnage by Country of Registry, 2003
China
Hong Kong
Norway (NIS)
Singapore
Cyprus
Malta
Bahamas
Greece
Liberia
Panama
0
Tanker
Dry Bulk
Container
Other
20,000 40,000 60,000 80,000 100,000 120,000 140,000 160,000 180,000 200,000