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Book review
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‘Introduction to Transportation Systems’ offers a
comprehensive conceptual overview to transportation
science, mainly from an engineering perspective. It targets a graduate audience being exposed to the field for
the first time, but the book is also quite suitable for
undergraduate levels. Since the scope of the book is
educational, this review focuses mainly on its pedagological intentions. The approach undertaken by the
author is divided into three major parts; the first one
being conceptual, the second concerning freight and the
third concerning passengers.
In the first part, the authors develop 30 key points
that are fundamental in understanding the principles of
transportation systems. Each of these points is sequentially introduced, with each point leading to its logical
extension into further concepts. These include the concepts of service, competition, flow, volume, infrastructure, costs, demand, peak period, network and
performance, just to name a few. This approach, combined with the example of elevators servicing a skyscraper, contributes significantly to the usefulness of the
book as a pedagogical guide. The author then concludes
the first part with a very good overview of models and
their utility for representing and analyzing transportation systems. This is the part of the book that I enjoyed
the most.
The second part deals with freight transportation
systems. It begins with concepts pertaining to logistics
where key issues are introduced within the problematic
of a store selling umbrellas. As in the first part, this
example has a sound pedagological relevance. Each
freight mode is then presented, mainly from an operational perspective. This part is highly imbalanced with
six chapters (78 pages) dealing with rail transportation
and only one chapter dealing with trucking and maritime transportation, respectively (24 pages). Considering
the relative importance of each of these modes for
freight transportation (especially in the US, the main
intended audience), this imbalance is empirically unjustified and reflects a bias imposed by the author’s research interests. No consideration was given to air
freight, which is difficult to justify in a globalized
economy that has seen a remarkable growth in traffic
handled by this transport mode.
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The third part addresses passengers transportation
systems. It is rather disorganized and at some points
confusing because it is difficult to grasp the logic behind
the choice in the sequence of chapters. Some chapters
are very general and encompassing while others are excessively specific. For instance, one chapter is titled
‘‘Commuting, Non-work Travel and Safety, and Some
Transportation History’’ while another one is titled
‘‘Deterministic Queuing’’. I failed to understand why the
chapter concerning intelligent transportation systems
has been placed in the third part, especially when this
issue concerns surface transportation; freight and passengers alike. This chapter would have had more relevance concluding the first part of the book or could have
acted as the book’s absent conclusion, especially considering the author’s solid involvement on this issue. The
chapters concerning public transit and inter-city rail
provided a very good introductory perspective for each
of these issues from an operational point of view.
The book is grounded in an effective pedagogy of
introducing transportation systems and is clearly the
result of a pragmatic teaching experience and the compilation of teaching notes that comes with it. What can
be perceived as disappointing is the overall simplistic
narrative tone accompanied with a high level of fragmentation of the material. It is not uncommon to have
sections that have four or five lines and chapters that
have four or five pages, hinting that parts of the book
may have been hastily assembled. The graphic quality of
the figures leaves much to be desired, if not excessively
poor, although they are always clear and to the point.
On the relatively rare occasions where data tables are
presented, nothing more recent than 1994 is offered,
which is surprising considering the wide availability of
transportation-related information in the US (e.g. Bureau of Transport Statistics website). These issues undermine the pedagological value of the book.
Imbalances are also a drawback, notably when dealing
with freight transportation, but also in methodological
developments. For instance, it is difficult to understand
why mathematical formulations were only used for the
passengers transportation part, while they are virtually
absent in other parts of the book.
A good indicator of the relevance of a book is its
actual intended use. As far as this reviewer is concerned,
the book will act as a useful teaching reference, never far
from one’s desk. It will also be part of the list of recommended readings for transport-related courses. Fur-
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3 Introduction to Transport Systems, Joseph Sussmann;
4 Artech House Publishers, Boston, 2001, 470 pp, £61.00,
5 ISBN 1 58053 141 5
0966-6923/02/$ - see front matter Ó 2002 Published by Elsevier Science Ltd.
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book forbids a specialized usage and it was clearly not
the author’s intention to pretend otherwise.
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Jean-Paul Rodrigue
Department of Economics and Geography
Hofstra University
Hempstead, NY 11550-1090, USA
E-mail address: ecojpr@hofstra.edu
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98 ther, each time a student or a colleague asks for a basic
99 guide to transportation science, this book will certainly
100 be part of the suggestions. However, the scope of the