Transportation

Transportation means moving objects or people from one location to another.

A transportation facility is an urban object designated to facilitating the movement of people, cattle, animals and goods from one location to another. Transportation is facilitated by transport infrastructure.

Description

Transportation is divided into private and public transport. An important distinction in the type of transport is mode of transport. In an urban context, the most relevant modes of transport will typically operate under the following transportation objects:

Transportation network object type	Description	Icon
Road network	A series of roads connecting the constituents parts of the urban environment and its surrounding hinterland, and urban areas with the wider region and country. The road network consists of a range of different hierarchical standards of road (e.g. single street, dual carriageway, highway/motorway, etc).
Rail network	The rail network consists of the infrastructure connecting population nodes through a series of rail corridors. The rail network facilitates public transportation services, including train, metro and tram services.
Hubs	A transport hub is a connection point in the wider transport network where the public can change transport modes. Hubs include stations for train, metro and tram systems, or sea/air ports for water or air transport to change modality.

Transport is important since it enables trade between peoples, which in turn establishes civilizations.

Transport plays an important part in economic growth and globalization, but most types cause air pollution and use large amounts of land. Good planning of transport is essential to make traffic flow, and restrain urban sprawl.

However, transportation is generally very vulnerable for security threats. It is an attractive target because of its importance in society and the presence of large amounts of people or crowds.

Functions

Economic

Economics involves production, distribution and consumption of goods and services. People depend upon the natural resources to satisfy the needs of life. However, due to non uniform surface of earth, and due to difference in local resources, there is a lot of difference in standard of living in different societies. So there is an immense requirement of transport of resources from one particular society to another. These resources can range from material things to knowledge and skills like movement of doctors and technicians to the places where there is need of them (NPTEL May 24, 2006).

Mobility

Mobility enables transportation. It is obvious that mobility is very important for the daily life of humans and as such, the continuity of the traffic should be guaranteed. Mobility is fundamental to economic and social activities. More information can be found on the mobility page.

Safety

Specific safety issues in transportation objects, concerns traffic safety.

Security Issues

Security issues associated with transportation objects, are related with the fact that it can be an attractive object for fanatics. This is related with the fact that many transportation objects government assets have public access areas with a high volume of transiting people and with the public attention an attack to a public transportation node will draw. Also, transportation nodes are places with crowds and distracted people, often with valuable luggage. This makes these kinds of urban objects vulnerable for the following security issues:

• Security issue: Destruction by fanatics
• Security issue: Mass killing
• Security issue: Pickpocketing

Measures

The measures for each type of security issue can be found on the respective pages. There are few measures they are specifically suited or unsuited to this kind of urban object, but some general considerations can be mentioned:

• Transportation objects in general know a very high transitory flow. This makes entry/exit control of visitors often very difficult or even impossible. Airports, which do feature entrance/exit control, can afford to do so due to the relative long boarding times (hours instead of minutes for a metro or bus), and the relative high travel costs (hundreds of euros instead of a few euros per passenger).