CBSE Class 12 Geography Transport and Communication Notes

Transport

It is a service or facility for the carriage of people and goods from one place to other with the help of humans, animals and various other kinds of vehicles. Transport can occur over land, water as well as air.

Characteristics of Transport Industry
- It is an organised service industry created to satisfy the basic needs of society.
- Transport industry involves transport arteries (transport routes), vehicles to carry people and goods, and organisations to maintain such routes and handle loading, unloading and delivery of good and services.
- Assured and speedy transportation along with efficient communication systems also promotes cooperation and unity among people living at different places in a country.

Evolution of Transport System
In its earliest forms, humans themselves were carriers, later animals such as mules, horses, camels were used to transport. With the invention of wheels, carts and wagons were used. As the steam engine was invented in the 18th century, it revolutionised the transport system. Railways became the most important and fastest mode of transport in 19th century.
With the invention of the internal combustion engine1, road ransport became important. Later, new developments emerged such as pipelines, ropeways, cableways etc. Sea transport and air transport also became important.

Modes of Transport

The main modes of transportation include land, water, air and pipelines. All these modes are used for inter and intra regional transportation. Land, water and air transport carries both passengers and freight whereas pipeline only transports freight (goods and merchandise). The Great freight carriers include railways, ocean vessels, barges, boats, motor trucks and pipelines.

Significance of Modes of Transport
The significance of a transport depends upon factors such as types of goods and service to be transported, cost of transport and the availability of transport. The significance of modes of transport is
- Ocean freight transport carries international goods.
- Road transport carries goods and people over short distances and provides door to door services. It is cheaper and faster for these type of services.
- Railways are most suitable for large volume of bulky materials over long distances within a country.
- Airways are most suited for high value, light and perishable goods.

Land Transport

Land transport or ground transport is the movement of people, animals, goods and services from one location to another on land. Land transport is mainly through roads and railways.

Roads
Transport by road has become important as it provides door to door services. Road transport plays an important role in trade and commerce and also promote tourism in a country. Roads can be metalled and unmetalled.
Metalled roads have a level surface made of small pieces of stone concretes, cement and used especially for country roads and tracks. These are all weather roads.
Unmetalled roads are made up of soil, sands, etc. These are mainly found in rural areas. During the rainy season, these roads become unmotorable and even the metalled roads are damaged heavily during rains and floods.
The length of roads and their quality differs greatly between the developed as well as the developing countries because road construction and maintainence require heavy expenditures.
In the developed countries, good quality roads are commonly found and they provide long distance links through motorways, autobahns (Germany), and inter state highways which offers speedy movement.

Total Motorable Roads Length in the World
The world’s total motorable road length is only 15 million km, of which North America accounts for 33 per cent. The highest road density2 and the highest number of vehicles are registered in this continent (North America) as compared to Western Europe.

Highways
Highways are metalled roads that connect distant places. These are constructed for unobstructed flow of traffic. These are 80m wide and provide separate traffic lanes, bridges, flyovers and dual carriageways. In developed countries, every city and port town is linked through highways.

Highways in the World
In North America, highway density is high at about 0.65 km per sq km. Every place is within 20 km distance from a highway. Cities located on the Pacific coast (West) and the Atlantic coast (East) are well connected to each other. Similarly, the cities of Canada (North) and Mexico (South) are well connected with each other. The major highways in the continent are
- The Trans-Canadian Highway It links Vancouver in British Columbia (West coast) to St. John’s City in Newfoundland (East coast).
- The Alaskan Highway It links Edmonton (Canada) to Anchorage (Alaska).
-The Pan-American Highway It is considered the world’s longest motorable road. A large portion of this has been constructed and this will connect the countries of South America, Central America, USA and Canada.
- Trans-Continental Stuart Highway It is one of the major highways in Australia which connects Darwin (North coast) and Melbourne via Tennant Creek and Alice Springs in Australia.
Europe has a large number of vehicles and a well developed highway network. But highways face a lot of competition from railways and waterways.
In Russia, due to the vast geographical area, highways in the country are not as important as railways. Still, a dense highway network is developed in the industrialised region West of the Urals (in Europe) with Moscow as the hub. The important Moscow-Vladivostok Highway serves the region to the East (in Asia).
In China, highways connect all the major cities in criss-cross manner across the country. For example, Tsungtso (near Vietnam Boundary), Shanghai (Central China), Guangzhou (South) and Beijing (North). A new highway links Chengdu with Lhasa in Tibet.
In Africa, a major highway joins Algiers in the North to Conakry in Guinea. Another highway joins Cairo to Cape Town.

Highways in India
Some of the major highways in India are
l The National Highway No. 7 (NH 7) It connects Varanasi with Kanyakumari. It is the longest highway in India.
- The Golden Quadrilateral (GQ) This Super Expressway3 is under construction and will connect the important metropolitan cities i.e. New Delhi, Mumbai, Bengaluru,Chennai, Kolkata and Hyderabad.

Border Roads
These are the roads which are built along international boundaries. These are mainly built for defence purposes, to connect remote or inaccessible areas with cities and to transport goods to border villages and military camps.

Railways

Railways are an important mode of land transport for bulky goods and passengers over long distances. Railway gauges are generally classified across different countries as broad gauge (more than 1.5 m), standard gauge (1.44 m), metre gauge (1m) and smaller gauges. In UK, standard gauge is used.
The 18th century marks the revolution in rail transport which came about only after the invention of the steam engine. In the nineteenth century, railways became the most popular and fastest form of transport after the opening of the first public railway line in 1825 between Stockton and Darlington in Northern England.
In USA, the development of railways also facilitated commercial grain farming, mining and manufacturing in the continental interiors of the country.

Railway Network in the World

In densely populated countries, commuter or local trains are very popular, e.g. in UK, USA, Japan and India. There are about 13 lakh km of railways in the world which facilitate passenger and goods transport. Some of the major railway networks are

Europe and Russia
Europe has one of the most dense rail networks in the world. The length of its rail network is 4,40,000 km and most of which is double or multiple-tracked.Belgium has the highest density of 1 km of railway for every 6.5 sq kms area. The important rail heads are London, Paris,Brussels, Milan, Berlin and Warsaw. Underground railways are important in London and Paris.

The Euro Tunnel Group of England operates Channel Tunnel, which connects London with Paris.
In Russia, railways alone accounts for about 90 per cent of the country’s total transport with a very dense network to the West of the Urals. Moscow is the most important rail head with major lines extending outwards to different parts of country’s vast geographical area. Underground railways and commuter trains4 are also important in Moscow.

North America and South America
North America accounts for 40 per cent of the world’s total rail network. Unlike many European countries, the railways are used here more for long distance- bulky freight like ores, grains, timber and machinery rather than for passengers. The highly industrialised and urbanised region of East Central USA and adjoining Canada have the most dense rail network. In South America, two regions namely the Pampas of Argentina and Brazil (the coffee growing region) together account for 40 per cent of South America’s total route length. Besides, Chile has a considerable route length linking coastal centres with the mining sites in the interior.

Peru, Bolivia, Euador, Colombia and Venezuela have short single track rail lines from ports to interior with no inter-connecting links. There is only one trans-continental rail route linking Buenos Aires (Argentina) with Valparaiso (Chile) across the Andes mountains through the Uspallatta Pass located at a height of 3,900 m.

Australia and New Zealand
The length of Australia’s rail network is about 40,000 km, of which 25 per cent are found in New South Wales alone. The West-East Australian National Railway line runs across the country from Perth to Sydney.
In New Zealand, the railways are mainly found in the North Island. This network serves mainly the farming areas. Asia Thickly populated areas of Japan, China and India have the most dense rail networks as compared to other countries. Due to the presence of vast deserts and sparsely populated regions, West Asia is the least developed in rail facilities.

Africa
In spite of being the second largest continent in the world, it has only 40,000 km of railways. South Africa alone accounts for about 18,000 km route due to the concentration of gold diamond and copper mining activities. The important routes of the continent are
- The Benguela Railway through Angola to Katanga- Zambia Copper Belt.
- The Tanzania Railway from the Zambian Copper Belt to Dar-es-Salaam on the coast.
- The Railway through Botswana and Zimbabwe linking the landlocked states to the South African network.
- The Blue Train from Cape Town to Pretoria in the Republic of South Africa.

Trans-Continental Railways
The main purpose of the construction of trans-continental railways is economic and political reasons. They facilitate long runs in different directions of continents. These railways run across the continent and link its two ends. Some of the important trans-continental railways are

Trans- Siberian Railways
It is a major rail route of Russia. It runs from St. Petersburg in the West to Vladivostok on the Pacific coast in the East. It passes through Moscow, Ufa, Novosibirsk, Irkutsk, Chita and Khabarovsk. In Asia, it is the most important route and the longest (9,332 km) double tracked and electrified trans-continental railway in the world. It made possible to link the Asian region with European markets.
This runs across the Ural mountain, Ob and Yenisei rivers. Two important centres are Chita which is an important agro-centre and Irkutsk, a fur centre. This rail network has connecting links to South, namely, to Odessa, (Ukraine), Baku on the Caspian Coast, Tashkent (Uzbekistan), Ulan Bator (Mongolia), and Shenyang (Mukden) and Beijing in China.

Trans-Canadian Railways
It is 7,050 km long rail line in Canada. It runs from Halifax in East to Vancouver on the Pacific coast passing through Montreal, Ottawa, Winnipeg and Calgary. It was constructed in 1886 to make British Colombia on the West coast join the Federation of States.
Later on, it gained economic significance because it connected the Quebec-Montreal Industrial Region with the wheat belt of the Prairie Region and the Coniferous Forest region in the North. Each of these region became complementary to each other. A loop line from Winnipeg to Thunder Bay (Lake Superior) connects this rail line with one of the important waterways of the world. The important commodities for export through this route are wheat and meat. Thus, this railway line is considered as the economic artery of Canada.

The Union and Pacific Railway
It connects New York on the Atlantic coast to San Francisco on the Pacific coast passing through Cleveland, Chicago, Omaha, Evans, Ogden and Sacramento. The most important commodities for export through this route are ores, grain, paper, chemicals and machinery.

The Australian Trans-Continental Railway
It runs from West to East direction across the Southern part of the continent. It runs from Perth on the West coast, to Sydney on the East coast passing through Kalgoorlie, Broken hill and Port Augusta. Besides, other major North-South line connects Adelaide and Alice Spring and further join the Darwin Birdum line.

The Orient Express
This rail line has reduced the journey time from London to Istanbul to 96 hours as compared to 10 days by the sea route. This line runs from Paris to Istanbul passing through Strasbourg, Munich, Vienna, Budapest and Belgrade. The important commodities for export through this route are cheese, bacon, oats, wine, fruits and machinery.

Water Transport

Water transport is much cheaper than other modes of transport. It has many advantages such as
l It is much cheaper transport system.
l The friction of water is far less than that of land.
l The energy cost of water transportation is also lower.
l It does not require any route construction thus, reduces the cost.
l The oceans are linked with each other and can be travelled with ships of various sizes.
l It only needs port facilities at the two ends of the location.

Sea/Ocean Routes
In comparison to land and air transport, ocean transport is a cheaper means of haulage5 of bulky material over long distance from one continent to another.
Modern passenger liners (ships) and cargo ships are equipped with radar, wireless and other navigation aids. Refrigerated chambers for perishable goods, tankers and specialised ships and use of containers, etc also have improved cargo transport.
Some important sea routes are

The North Atlantic Sea Route
This is the busiest sea route in the world. The trade on this route accounts for one fourth of the world’s foreign trade which is more than trade over the rest of the routes combined. It is also known as Big Trunk Route and links North-Eastern USA and North-Western Europe which are the two industrially developed regions of the world. These two coasts have highly advanced ports and harbour facilities.

South Atlantic Sea Route
It connects West European and West African countries with Brazil, Argentina, and Uruguay in South America. It runs along the Atlantic ocean. Due to limited populations and less development in South America and Africa, there is far less traffic on this route as compared to other routes.
Only the South-Eastern Brazil and Plata estuary and a few parts of South Africa have large scale industrial centres. There is also very less traffic on the Route between Rio de Janeiro and Cape Town because both South America and Africa have similar products and resources. 

The Mediterranean-Indian Ocean Sea Route
This sea route serves maximum number of countries and people than any other sea route in the world. It passes through the heart of the Old World. The important ports on this route are Port Said, Aden, Mumbai, Colombo and Singapore.
After the construction of Suez canal, the distance and time has reduced comparatively to the earlier route through the Cape of Good Hope. Before the construction of the Suez canal, this route was much longer i.e. 6,400 km.

The Cape of Good Hope Sea Route
Across the Atlantic ocean this sea route connects highly industrialised West European countries to West African countries, South African countries, South-East Asia and commercial agriculture and livestock economies of Australia and New Zealand.

The North Pacific Sea Route
This sea route links the ports on the West coast of North America with those of Asia. The important ports on the West coast of America are Vancouver, Seattle, Portland, San Francisco and Los Angeles. The important ports on the Asian side are Yokohama, Kobe, Shanghai, Hong Kong, Manila and Singapore. Trade across the North Pacific Ocean moves through several routes, converging at Honolulu. The direct route on Great Circle links Vancouver and Yokohama reducing the travelling distance 2,480 km by half.

The South Pacific Sea Route
This sea route links Western Europe and North America with Australia, New Zealand and the scattered islands of Pacific Ocean via the Panama canal. This sea route also reaches the Hong Kong, Philippines, and Indonesia. The distance covered is 12,000 km from Sydney to Panama. Honolulu is an important port on this route.

Coastal Shipping

Coastal shipping is a mode of transportation requiring smaller vessel. It is a convenient mode of transportation in countries like USA, China and India having long coastlines.
The most suitable place for coastal shipping are the Shenzhen States in Europe, where one member’s coast is connected with the other by this transport.

Shipping Canals
Two man-made canals or waterways namely the Panama and the Suez canals, facilitate the world trade by connecting both the Eastern and Western worlds.

The Suez Canal
This navigable canal connects the Mediterranean Sea and the Red Sea. It was constructed in 1869 in Egypt between Port Said in North and Port Suez in the South. After its construction, Europe found a new gateway to the Indian Ocean. It reduced direct sea route distance between Liverpool and Colombo as compared to the Cape of Good Hope route. It is a sea level canal without locks and sea water flows freely through it. It is about 160 km in length and 11 to 15 metre deep. The one disadvantage of this route is the heavy tolls, thus sometimes ships prefer the longer Cape Route wherever the delay is not much importance.

The Panama Canal
It joins the Atlantic Ocean in the East to the Pacific Ocean in the West. It has been constructed by the US Government across the Panama Isthmus between Panama city and Colon. It is about 72 km long and involves a very deep cutting for a length of 12 km.
It has a six-lock system and ships cross the different levels (26 m up and down) through these locks before entering the Gulf of Panama. The main significance of this canal is that it reduces the distance between New York and San Francisco by 13,000 km by sea. Similarly, the distance between Western Europe and the West coast of USA and North- Eastern and Central USA and East and South-East Asia is shortened.

Inland Waterways
It is a network in the form of rivers, canals, backwaters, creeks and lakes, that can be used for water transportation.Boats and steamers are important means of this transport for carrying passengers and cargo.
The development of inland waterways is dependent on the navigability width and depth of channel, continuity in the water flow and transport technology in use. Inland waterways are most suitable to carry very heavy cargo like coal, cement, timber and metallic ores.
To develop this mode of transport, many steps have been taken to modify rivers like (clearing the riverbed) stabilising river banks and building dams and barrages for regulating the flow of water.

The Rhine Waterways
This waterway connects the industrial areas of Switzerland, Germany, France, Belgium and the Netherlands with the North Atlantic Sea Route. This river flows through Germany and the Netherlands. It is navigable for 700 km from Rotterdam, at its mouth in the Netherlands to Basel in Switzerland.
The Ruhr river joins the Rhine from the East. It flows through a rich coalfield and the whole basin has become a prosperous manufacturing area. Dusseldorf is the important port in this region. A large tonnage of goods moves along the stretch South of the Ruhr. This waterway is the most heavily used in the world through which more than 20,000 ocean going ships and 2,00,000 inland vessels exchange their cargoes each year. 

The Danube Waterway
This waterway rises in the Black Forest and flows Eastwards through many countries. This waterway serves Eastern Europe and is navigable up to Taurna Severin. The important commodities for export are wheat, maize, timber and machinery.

The Volga Waterway
It is one of the most important waterways in Russia. It is navigable up to 11,200 km and drains into the Caspian sea. It is connected to Moscow region and the Black sea through the Volga-Moscow Canal and the Volga-Don Canal, respectively.

The Great Lakes - St. Lawrence Seaway
The Soo Canal and Welland Canal are connected to the Great Lakes of North America, namely Superior, Huron, Erie and Ontario to form an inland waterway. A unique commercial waterway in the Northern part of North America is formed by estuary of St. Lawrence River, along with the Great Lakes.
Duluth and Buffalo are important ports of this waterway equipped with all facilities of ocean ports. Thus, large ocean going vessels navigate-up the river deep inside the continent to Montreal. But due to the presence of rapids, the goods need to be trans-shipped to smaller vessels. To avoid this situation canals have been constructed-up to 3.5 m in depth.

The Mississippi-Ohio Waterway
It links the interior parts of USA with the Gulf of Mexico in the South. Large steamers navigate through this route upto Minneapolis.

Air Transport

The movement of human and goods by air through aeroplanes, helicopters, etc, is called air transport. It is the fastest mode of transport which is preferred by passengers for long distance travel.

Advantages of Air Transport
- Valuable cargo and perishable goods can be moved rapidly on a worldwide scale.
- The inaccessible areas have become accessible through this mode of transport. For example, the airplane brings varied articles to the Eskimos in Northern Canada unhindered (freely) by the frozen ground. Another example, is from the Himalayan region, where the routes are often obstructed due to landslides, avalanches or heavy snowfall. At such times, air travel is the only alternative to reach a place.
- Air transport has brought about a connectivity revolution in the world. Because of air transport, the travelling time is reduced to hours and minutes from years and months.
- Air transport has great strategic advantage as it can be used for military and tactical operations. The air strikes by US and British forces in Iraq proves this fact. UK was the first to use the commercial jet transport and USA developed international civil aviation mainly after the World War.
More than 250 commercial airlines offer tansport services to different regions of the world.
New developments such as supersonic aircrafts can cover distance between London and New York in as soon as three and a half hours.

Limitations of Air Transport
- It is very costly mode of transport which is out of reach of most of the middle and lower classes of society.
- The manufacturing of aircrafts and their operations require elaborate infrastructure like hangars, landing, fuelling and maintenance facilities for the aircrafts.
- It is also very expensive to construct airports and hence it is developed more in highly industrialised countries having large volume of traffic.

Inter-Continental Air Routes
A distinct East-West belt of inter-continental air routes is found in the Northern Hemisphere. Eastern USA, Western Europe and South-East Asia have a dense network of air routes. USA alone accounts for 60 per cent of the airways of the world.
The important nodal points where air routes converge or radiate to all continents are New York, London, Paris,Amsterdam, Frankfurt, Rome, Moscow, Karachi, New Delhi, Mumbai, Bangkok, Singapore, Tokyo, San Francisco, Los Angeles and Chicago.

Regions Lacking in Air Services
Air services have not flourished well in Africa, Asiatic part of Russia and South America. Regions lying between 10°-35° latitutes in the Southern hemisphere have limited air services. This is due to presence of sparser population, limited landmass and lesser economic development.

Pipelines

Pipeline transport is the transportation of goods or material through pipes. Pipelines have immense importance to uninterruptedly transport liquids and gases like water petroleum, natural gas, liquified coal, cooking gas or LPG, etc. In New Zealand, pipelines are also used to supply milk from farms to factories.

USA has a dense network of oil pipelines which runs from producing areas to the consuming areas. In USA about 17 per cent of all freight per tonne-km is carried through pipelines. For example, Big Inch is a pipeline which carries petroleum from the oil wells of the Gulf of Mexico to the North-Eastern states. In many parts of the world like Europe, Russia, West Asia and India, pipelines are used to connect oil wells to refineries and to ports or domestic markets. Pipelines are expanding very fast, for example, Turkmenistan in Central Asia has extended pipelines to Iran and also to parts of China. The proposed Iran-India via Pakistan international oil and natural gas pipeline will be the longest in the world.

Communication

Communication is the exchanging of information by speaking, writing or using some other means, e.g. telephone, television, satellites, internet, etc. There were different phases of communication development in the world which are

Early Phase of Communication Development
For long distance communications human beings have used different means like telegraph and telephone system. In the period of the colonisation of the American West, telegraph became a supporting tool in transmitting informations. In the early and mid twentieth century, the American Telegraph and Telephone Company (AT & T) enjoyed a monopoly over USA’s telephone industry. During this period, the telephone has become a crucial factor for the development of urbanisation in America.

New Phase of Communication Development
The telephone has an important place even in the current phase of communication development. In developing countries the use of cell phones (made possible by satellites) is important for rural connectivity. Today, communication system is becoming more advanced due to modern technological inventions. For example, the first major change is the use of Optic Fibre Cables (OFC) which revolutionised the communication world. The OFC system transmit large quantities of data rapidly, securely and virtually error free.
In the 1990s with the digitisation6 of information, telecommunication slowly merged with computers to form integrated networks termed as Internet. In the new phase of communication world, internet has become the largest electronic network on the planet connecting about 1000 million people in more than 100 countries.

Satellite Communication
Satellite communication is the result of the space research done by USA and former USSR since 1970s. Artificial satellites are successfully installed in the earth’s orbit and they can connect even the remote corners of the globe with limited on-site verification.
This technology has made the unit cost and time of communication invariant (unchanging) in terms of distance.
For example, it costs the same to communicate over 500 km as it does over 5,000 km via satellite.

Satellite Communication in India
- ndia has also a significant place in the satellite communication development. Some of the important satellites of India are
- Aryabhatt It was launched on 19th April 1979.
- Bhaskar-I It was launched in 1979.
- Rohini It was launched in 1980.
- APPLE Arian Passenger Payload Experiment (APPLE) was launched on 18th June, 1981 through Arian rocket.
- Bhaskar, Challenger and INSAT I-B These satellites have made long distance communication, television and radio very effective. e.g. Weather forecasting through television.

Cyberspace or Internet

Cyberspace or internet is the electronic digital world for communicating or accessing data information over computer networks without physical movement of the sender and receiver. It is encompassed by the World Wide Web (www). We can use cyberspace anywhere, for example, in office, sailing boats, aeroplanes, etc.
In the last few years, there has been a shift among global users from USA to the developing countries. There is a decline in percentage share in USA from 66 in 1995 to only 25 in 2005. At present the majority of the world’s internet users are in USA, UK, Germany, Japan, China and India. There were less than 50 million internet users in 1995, about 400 million in 2000 AD and over 2 billion users in 2010.
As many people add in the cyberspace world each year, it will expand the contemporary economic and social space of humans through e-mail, e-commerce, e-learning and e-governance. Despite obstacles like place and time, internet together with fax, television and radio will be accessible to more and more people. These communication systems have made the concept of global village a reality.