GEOG 80 – Transport Geography
Professor: Dr. Jean-Paul Rodrigue
Topic 3 – Transportation Modes
A. A Diversity of Modes
B. Intermodal Transportation
C. Passengers or Freight?
5. Air Transport
■ Context
• Air routes are practically unlimited:
•
•
•
•
North Atlantic.
Inside North America and Europe.
Over the North Pacific.
Inside Asia.
• Multidimensional constraints:
• Site (a commercial plane needs about 3,300 meters of track for landing
and take off).
• Climate, fog and aerial currents.
• Air activities are linked to the tertiary and quaternary sectors:
• Finance and tourism that require movements of people.
• Accommodating growing quantities of high value freight.
5. Air Transport
■ Air Space
• Segment of the atmosphere that is under the jurisdiction of a
nation or under an international agreement for its use.
• Two major components:
• Land-based; takeoffs and landings.
• Air-based; composed of air corridors.
• Air corridors can superimpose themselves to altitudes up to
22,500 meters.
• Limited to the use of predetermined corridors.
■ Air space use
• Air space exclusively belongs to the country under it.
• Access to the land and air-based components is dependent on
agreements between nations and airline companies.
• Air freedom rights.
Air Freedom Rights
First
Home
Second
Third
Fourth
Fifth
Sixth
Seventh
Eight
Ninth
Country B
Country A
5. Air Transport
■ Development of air transportation
• Technical improvements:
• Jet engine considerably reduced distances, namely because of greater
speeds and improved ranges.
• Almost every part of the world can be serviced in less than 24 hours.
• Rising affluence:
• Linked with income and economic output growth.
• Disposable income available for leisure.
• International tourism and air transportation are mutually interdependent.
• Globalization:
• Trade networks established by multinational corporations.
• About 40% of the value of global manufactured exports.
• About 50% of the value of American overseas - non-NAFTA - exports.
Main Commercial Passenger Aircraft, 1935-2006
Aircraft
Year of First
Commercial
Service
Speed
(km/hr)
Maximum Range
at Full Payload
(km)
Seating
Capacity
Douglas DC-3
1935
346
563
30
Douglas DC-7
1953
555
5,810
52
Boeing 707-100
1958
897
6,820
110
Boeing 727-100
1963
917
5,000
94
Boeing 747-100
1970
907
9,045
385
McDonnell Douglas DC-10 1971
908
7,415
260
Airbus A300
1974
847
3,420
269
Boeing 767-200
1982
954
5,855
216
Boeing 747-400
1989
939
13,444
416
Boeing 777-200ER
1995
905
13,420
305
Airbus A340-500
2003
886
15,800
313
Airbus A380
2006
930
14,800
555
Early Intercontinental Air Routes, 1930s
Eyeries
London
Amsterdam
Paris
Toulouse
Lisbon
Marseilles
Botwood
New York
Azores
Alexandria
Cairo
Gaza
Wadi Halfa
Khartoum
Juba
Nairobi
Mbeya
Harare
Johannesburg
Cape Town
Imperial Airways African Route (c1933)
Imperial Airways/Quantas Australian Route (c1934)
Aeropostale (1930)
KLM Amsterdam – Jakarta (1935)
Pan American Transatlantic Route (1939)
Flight Times by Piston and Jet Engines from Chicago
Piston Engine
10 hours
15 hours
20 hours
24 hours
30 hours
Jet Engine
10 hours
Average Airfare (roundtrip) between New York and
London, 1946-2004
$7,000
$6,000
$6,500
$5,000
$4,100
$4,000
$3,000
$2,600
$2,000
$1,000
$0
1940
$600
1950
1960
1970
1980
1990
2000
2010
Range from New York of Different Modern Commercial
Jet Planes
World Air Travel and World Air Freight Carried, 19502002
Passengers
Freight
2500
100
80
2000
60
1500
1000
500
0
40
20
0
Billions of tons-km
3000
120
19
50
19
53
19
56
19
59
19
62
19
65
19
68
19
71
19
74
19
77
19
80
19
83
19
86
19
89
19
92
19
95
19
98
20
01
Billions of passengers-km
3500
5. Air Transport
■ Airline companies
• Highly capital intensive segment of transport services.
• Labor intensive, with limited room to lessen those labor
requirements.
• Around 900 airlines operating 11,600 commercial aircrafts.
• Average number of 200 seats per plane.
• Dominant share of the traffic is assumed by large passengers
and freight carriers.
■ Strategic alliances
• Joint booking systems, exchange of shares, and a reorganization
of their services in order to minimize redundancy.
• Increased market dominance but also increased competition
between major markets.
World’s 10 Largest Passengers Airlines, 2000 (in 1,000
passengers)
British Airways
Air France
All Nippon Airways
Continental Airlines
Lufthansa
US Airways
Northwest Airlines
United Airlines
American Airlines
Delta Air Lines
0
20,000
40,000
60,000
80,000
100,000
120,000
World’s 10 Largest Freight Airlines, 2000 (in 1,000 tons)
Air France
British Airways
Northwest Airlines
Cathay Pacific
Singapore Airlines
Japan Airlines
Lufthansa
Korean Air Lines
United Parcel Service
Federal Express
0
1,000
2,000
3,000
4,000
5,000
Market Share of World Airline Traffic, 2003
Oneworld
American Airlines, British Airways, Aer
Lingus, Cathay Pacific, Finnair, Iberia,
LanChile, Quantas
SkyTeam
21%
Star
United Airlines, Lufthansa, Air Canada, Air
New Zealand, ANA, Asiana, Austrian, bmi
british midland, LOT Polish Airlines,
Mexicana, SAS, Singapore, Spanair, Thai
Airways, Varig, US Airways, TAM
Others
38%
Star
24%
SkyTeam
Air France, Delta Airlines, Aeromexico,
Alitalia, CSA Czech Airlines, Korean Air,
Northwest, Continental, KLM
Oneworld
17%
5. Air Transport
■ Flows
•
•
•
•
•
1.4 billion passengers traveled by air transport (2000).
2.8 billion departures and arrivals supported by airports.
Equivalent of 23% of the global population.
30 million tons of freight were transported.
Air traffic is globally highly imbalanced:
• Distribution of the population.
• Unequal levels of development.
• Concentration of traffic in a limited number of hubs.
• 80% of the global population lives in the Northern Hemisphere:
• Air traffic is much denser north of the equator.
• North America and Europe accounted for 70.4% of all passenger
movements in 2000.
Major Air Traffic Flows Between Regions, 2000 (% of IATA
Scheduled Passengers)
North America
1.7
3.9
Europe
23.2
35.5
1.8
15.9
1.3
1.5
Middle East
Central America
1.3
South America
1.7
1.7
1.9
Asia
1.1
Africa
Southwest Pacific
3.2
2.6
6. Modal Competition
■ Integrated transportation systems
• Requires maximum flexibility.
• Modal competition exists at various degrees and takes several
dimensions.
• Modes can compete or complement each other:
• Cost, speed, accessibility, frequency, safety, comfort, etc.
• Intermodal transportation:
• Opened many opportunities for complementarity.
• Intense competition over many modes in the transport chain.
Four Travel Options between New York and Boston, 2004
Mode
Price (one way)
Time
LimoLiner (luxury
bus)
$69
4 hours
Acela (Amtrak
train)
$99
3 hours
Greyhound bus
$30
4 hours
Air Shuttle
$128
1 hour (plus check
in)
6. Modal Competition
■ Three dimensions of modal competition
• Modal usage:
•
•
•
•
Comparative advantage of using a specific or a combination of modes.
Distance remains one of the basic determinant of modal usage.
The basic determinants of modal usage for passengers transportation.
For a similar distance, costs, speed and comfort can be significant factors.
• Infrastructure usage:
• Competition resulting from the presence of freight and passenger traffic
on the same itineraries linking the same nodes.
• Market area:
• Competition being experienced between transport terminals for allocating
new space or capturing new markets.
Modal Competition
Infrastructure / Route
Mode
B
1
B
2
B
B
B
A
A
5
4
3
Market Area
6
A
A
A
Passenger Transport by Mode, Japan, 1950-1999
1400
Billions of Passenger Kilometers
1200
1000
Airline
Railway
Bus
Auto
800
600
400
200
0
1950
1955
1960
1965
1970
1975
1980
1985
1990
1995
1999
B – Intermodal Transportation
■ 1. Intermodalism
■ 2. Containerization
■ 3. Modal Choice and Intermodal Transport Costs
1. Intermodalism
■ Integrated transport systems
• Use of at least two different modes in a trip from origin to
destination through an intermodal transport chain.
• Brought about in part by technology.
• Techniques for transferring freight from one mode to another
have facilitated intermodal transfers.
• The container has been the major development:
• Becoming a privileged mode of shipping for rail and maritime
transportation.
Intermodal Transport Chain
Interchange
Composition
Connection
Local / Regional Distribution
National / International Distribution
Transport Terminal
Decomposition
40-Foot Containers Doublestacked on a Rail Car
Multimodal and Intermodal Transportation
Multimodal Point-to-Point Network
Intermodal Integrated Network
C
A
C
A
B
B
Transshipment
Rail
Road
D
D
Transshipment
F
E
F
E
2. Containerization
■ Container
•
•
•
•
•
•
Load unit that can be used by several transport modes.
Usable by maritime, railway and road modes.
Foremost expression on intermodal transportation.
Rectangular shape that can easily be handled.
Reference size is the Twenty-foot Equivalent Unit (TEU).
The most common container is the 40 footer (12 meters)
2. Containerization
■ Advantages of containers
• Standard transport product:
• Can be manipulated anywhere in the world (ISO standard).
• All segments of the industry have access to the standard.
• Specialized ships, trucks and wagons.
• Flexibility of usage:
•
•
•
•
Transport a wide variety of goods ranging.
Raw materials, manufactured goods, cars to frozen products.
Liquids (oil and chemical products).
Perishable food products (“reefers”; 50% of all refrigerated cargo).
• Management:
• Unique identification number and a size type code.
• Transport management no not in terms of loads, but in terms of unit.
2. Containerization
• Costs:
• Low transport costs,
• Speed:
• Transshipment operations are minimal and rapid.
• Containerships are on average 35% (19 knots versus 14 knots) faster
than regular freighter ships.
• Warehousing:
• Its own warehouse.
• Simpler and less expensive packaging.
• Stacking capacity on ships, trains (doublestacking) and on the ground.
• Security:
• Contents of the container is unknown to shippers.
• Can only be opened at the origin, at customs and at the destination.
• Spoilage and losses (theft), especially those of valued commodities, are
therefore reduced.
Five Generations of Containerships
First Generation (1956-1970)
Length Draft
135 m
Converted Cargo Vessel
Converted Tanker
TEU
500
<9m
800
200 m
Second Generation (1970-1980)
Cellular Containership
215 m
10 m
1,000 –
2,500
Third Generation (1980-1988)
3,000
250 m
11-12 m
Panamax Class
4,000
290 m
Fourth Generation (1988-2000)
Post Panamax
275 –
305 m
4,000 –
11-13 m 5,000
335 m
13-14 m
Fifth Generation (2000-?)
Post Panamax Plus
5,000 –
8,000
Stacked 40-Foot Containers
20-Foot Container on Truck
20-Foot Tank Containers
40’ Reefer
“Kegger”
4th Generation Containership
2. Containerization
■ Disadvantages
• Consumption of space.
• Infrastructure costs:
• Container handling infrastructures, such as giant cranes, warehousing
facilities and inland road and rail access, represent important investments
for port authorities and load centers.
• Stacking.
• Management logistics:
• Requires management and tracking of every container.
• Empty travel.
• Illicit trade:
• Common instrument used in the illicit trade of drug and weapons, as well
as for illegal immigration.
• Worries about the usage of containers for terrorism.
3. Modal Choice and Intermodal Transport Costs
■ Modal choice
• Relationship between transport costs, distance and modal
choice:
• Road transport is usually used for short distances (from 500 to 750 km).
• Railway transport for average distances.
• Maritime transport for long distances (about 750 km).
• Intermodalism:
• The opportunity to combine modes.
• Find a less costly alternative than an unimodal solution.
• Efficiency of contemporary transport systems:
• Capacity to route freight.
• Capacity to transship it.
Transport costs per unit
Distance, Modal Choice and Transport Costs
C1
Road
C2
C3
Rail
D1
Maritime
D2
Distance
Intermodal Transportation Cost Function
C(T)
Local / Regional Distribution Cost
Decomposition
C(dc)
Connection
C(cn)
Costs
National / International Distribution Cost
C(I)
Interchange
C(cn)
Connection
Composition C(cp)
Origin
Transshipment
Destination