Transportation

C

11

Motorboats and Personal Craft

Smaller motorboats have been used for many years for recreational purposes. Such boats have either outboard motors, which are attached to the outside of the boat, or inboard motors, which are located within the hull itself. In 1999 there were about 17 million recreational boats in the United States.

C

12

Pipelines

Pipelines are a unique form of transportation used to move liquids, gases, or solid/liquid mixtures over great distances. Pipelines consist of two major components: pipes and pumping stations. A piston in a pump forces liquid out of the pump and into the pipe. A vacuum created by the departing liquid forces more liquid to enter the pump, and that liquid in turn is forced out as the liquid before it was. With pumping stations placed appropriately along a pipeline, liquid can be moved great distances.

Pipelines are commonly used to transport crude oil (see Petroleum). Oil pipelines have been constructed in all parts of the world, primarily in oil-producing regions such as the Middle East, the North Sea, southern Russia, the South China Sea, Texas, Oklahoma, and Alaska. In 1999 there were approximately 248,000 km (154,000 mi) of pipelines for crude oil or petroleum products. Also in 1996, the latest year for which figures are available, there were 2,054,029 km (1,276,315 mi) of pipelines for natural gas in the United States. Pipelines are also used to transport solids suspended in liquids, such as coal slurry, which consists of powdered coal suspended in water.

III

Transportation Service Providers

The many companies and government agencies that provide transportation to the public and to businesses are known as service providers. They are classified into two major groups: freight and passenger. Freight service providers transport cargo, such as manufactured products, raw materials, and food, and are generally hired by businesses. Passenger service providers move people from place to place and are usually hired by individuals. Both freight and passenger service providers often operate out of a facility known as a terminal. Terminals are centralized meeting points where service providers can manage the flow of transportation vehicles, serve customers, and efficiently load and unload freight and passengers.

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A

Freight Service

Freight transportation companies specialize in moving large amounts of cargo quickly and efficiently. Some companies use their own fleets of vehicles to transport their goods, whereas other companies hire service providers to ship their goods.

The for-hire service providers are owned by individuals, partnerships, or corporations as part of the private sector of the economy, particularly in the United States. In many other countries, the government holds partial or total ownership of the for-hire transportation industry.

Service providers compete with one another for freight business on the basis of such standards as the cost of shipment, delivery time, frequency of service, and reliability in meeting schedules. When carriers move freight, they are legally taking possession of the goods and are under obligation to deliver them for a reasonable price. In a free market, competition among carriers to provide this service theoretically helps keep transportation costs reasonable. A contract for service, known as a bill of lading, is used to specify the terms and conditions under which the cargo is to be delivered.

Service providers differ in the amount of freight they can transport and the distance they can transport it. Depending on the size and weight of the cargo, local freight within a city may be moved by courier service, delivery van, or truck. For movement from city to city, freight may travel by truck, barge, rail, bus (for small packages), or airplane. In many cases, freight is carried in large vehicles from city to city and then transferred to smaller vehicles for local delivery.

A major development in long-distance freight transportation since the 1950s has been the use of intermodal transportation carriers. Intermodal transportation is the combination of two or more transportation modes used to move freight from origin to destination. Intermodal transportation improves the transfer of freight from intercity movement to local distribution. An example of this is the combined use of trucks and trains to move cargo over longer distances. Truck trailers are loaded with goods, driven to a rail yard, and transferred to a rail flatcar. They are then moved a long distance by train, unloaded at the destination rail yard, and driven to a market or a supply warehouse. Such a freight trip is called trailer-on-flatcar (TOFC) or container-on-flatcar (COFC). Today almost 20 percent of all truck trailer loads traveling over 800 km (500 mi) in the United States are transported this way.

Intermodal transportation requires cooperation and agreements relating to prices and delivery arrangements among the different carriers. Similar agreements apply in the transportation of international freight. One way that shippers use technology to exchange information is by using electronic tracking devices and software. These tools allow shippers to monitor the progress of freight movement. Automatic equipment identification tags similar to bar codes are placed on containers and truck trailers for identification as they go through different stages of their trip.

B

Passenger Service

Passenger service providers include airlines, bus companies, railroads, taxis, and other companies that transport people from place to place for a fee. Even though many people use personal transportation such as automobiles and bicycles, the for-hire passenger industry is an important part of the transportation system of many countries. In the United States, air travel is responsible for transporting the most passengers, with bus travel second and rail travel a distant third. This ratio is different for many other countries. In most European countries, for instance, passenger rail and intercity bus ridership are much greater than that of air travel.

Passenger service transportation within a city itself is commonly referred to as public transportation. The responsibility for providing public transportation is often shared between government and private companies. As cities grew in the 1800s, governments and businesses developed a form of shared transportation that would connect all parts of a city, creating the first public transportation systems. The first such service began in 1812 in Paris, France, with horse-drawn wagons called omnibuses. Although many of the early shared-transportation services were operated by private companies, these companies faced serious competition from other transportation modes. Many of these companies soon came under public control. In 1894 the first public transit commission was formed in Boston, Massachusetts. The first public takeover of a private transit company occurred in 1905, when New York City took over the Staten Island Ferry.