Transport plays a very important role in the economical sector of every society. Transport entails the movement of people or goods from one place to another. The existence of good modes of transport facilitates trade, sharing of information, and propagation of technology.
Traditionally, the most common modes of transportation include walking, animal transportation, and boat transport. Advance in science and technology has enhanced the traditional modes of transportation greatly. Innovations in other means of transportation have greatly helped to hasten the transportation of goods and people. For instance, the invention of automobile transportation has greatly improved the transportation process across all societies.
Traditionally, walking played a very important role in the transportation process, as it was widely used to help people move from one place to another. Most people used walking as their method of moving from one place to another while looking for greener pasture for their livestock or trading.
Traditionally, walking involved short distances that took about less than one hour. Similarly, it also involved walking for long distances that took a day, a week, or more. For instance, when people were migrating from one area to another area during dry seasons, they walked for many days before locating wet areas that they found conducive for farming and grazing of their animals.
Similarly, people in the old days used to walk for very long distances when they were trading with people from other areas. Although walking is also currently often used as a means of transportation, it is mainly limited to the urban areas or short distances that are not convenient for other means of transportation (Moodubelle 3).
Using animal transport was also common in the olden days. Most people used animals such as oxen, donkeys, camels, and horses to move from one place to another. The animals helped people transport their goods when they were migrating from one place to another when looking for green pastures for their animals or wet areas to farm. In the olden days, trading involved barter trade which comprised the exchange goods for goods.
For example, those people that mined silver and gold could exchange their precious stones for food with those people who cultivated farm produce. Because of the heaviness and bulkiness of some of the goods of trade, many people used animal transport to move their products from their homes to the trading centers. Some people even used boats to move from one place to another. People that used boats were mainly those that resided near water bodies such as rivers and lakes (Moodubelle 5)
The use of animal transport was often considered as a slow means of transportation. This method had various shortcomings. It limited people to the kind and quantity of goods to transport. For instance, this method could not be used to transport perishable goods over long distances, because it was a slow means of transport.
Similarly, transportation of bulky and heavy goods was also a problem. These challenges lead to the need to invent faster and more convenient modes of transportation. The invention of automobile transport has greatly improved the transportation process.
The automobile transport started early in 1769, when the steam engine automobile was invented. This was followed by the invention of another more advanced automobile that was being powered by an internal combustion engine which consumed fuel-gas. It was in 1885 that the current automobile that consumes gasoline and petrol was invented.
The coming of automobile transport greatly helped to improve the transportation. People are nowadays able to move for long destinations faster and with more conveniences. The transportation of heavy and bulky goods was more convenient with automobiles.
Trade has greatly improved thanks to better methods of transport. There are various means of automotive transport that are tailored to meet diverse transportation needs. For example, buses help to transport many people from one destination to another, and particularly busses are mostly used to felly people from their homes to their work places, since they are considered to be cheaper and more convenient. Taxi is also a common means of automobile transport, and it is also used to transport people from one place to another.
People opt to use taxi when they are in a hurry to arrive at their intended destinations or when they want to visit remote areas that are not served by other means of transport, such as buses for example. Taxi is more expensive than buses, but it is considered as more convenient and faster than buses. The invention of automobile transport has greatly helped to enhance the trade process. The automobile companies have designed various automobiles that are suited for transporting various products.
For instance, there are automobiles that have been designed with refrigeration facilities to facilitate the transportation of perishable products such as fruits and vegetables. There are other automobiles that have been designed to transport bulky and heavy products such as transit automobiles. Some automobiles have been designed to transport fluids such as petroleum products, or various acids to be used in industries (Barrow 3).
Most of the current automobiles use petroleum to power them. Due to the high over-reliance on automobile means of transport that consume petroleum products, there has been an increased pollution that has necessitated invention of other automobiles that use alternative forms of energies.
This has prompted the invention of automobiles that use solar and biogas to power them. Therefore, the automobile that will be very common in the future will be running on alternative forms of energies such as solar and biogas, rather than on petrol and gasoline.
Works Cited
Barrow, Mandy. “Types of Transport in Britain.” British Life and Culture. Project British.27 Nov. 2010. Web.
Moodubelle, Eugene. “Modern and Traditional Mode of Transport.” My Metro. Dubai Metro. 6 Apr. 2010. Web.
Appendices
Oxen being used for transport in olden days
Lorries
Most goods are transported by roads in Lorries
Bus for transporting people
