ABSTRACT
An historical perspective on the evolution of transport systems underlines the impacts of technological innovations and how improvements in transportation were interdependent with economic, social and spatial changes. In the real world, however, geography can be a significant constraint to transport since it trades space for time and money and can only be partially circumscribed. Transportation supports a range of spatial constructs which are associated with several scales of interaction investigated by transport geography. Transport represents one of the most important human activities worldwide, as it allows us to mitigate the constraint of geography. In the 1960s, transport costs were formalized as key factors in location theories and transport geography began to rely increasingly on quantitative methods, particularly over network and spatial interactions analysis. Commercial geography looks at trade and transactions in terms of what they involve, how they are generated and their outcomes. Transportation is a key factor for competitiveness, since it provides accessibility to markets, labor and resources..
