Transport

Abstract

The obvious definition of ‘transportation’ is the movement of goods or people over space. But conventionally we do not include short trips inside the household or office or warehouse or factory as part of transport; such activities of movement are reckoned to be part of the household chore or industrial process. Only movements outside the home or factory are normally reckoned to require the services of the transport sector, as normally defined. In many definitions of ‘transport’, particularly in Western industrialized countries, non-motorized forms of carriage are excluded. Walking trips or manually hauled freight, bicycle journeys and even animal-powered journeys are usually excluded – except in those cases where walking may play a ubiquitous role, or in cities such as Amsterdam and Cambridge, where bicycles are a common form of transit. In third world countries, however, such manual or animal-powered operations still play a significant, perhaps a major role in the sector. Even in the mid-1980s it is very likely that, considering only passenger trips of over one kilometre in length, the vast majority in the third world are walked (World Bank 1985).