Sustainable transportation

The history of sustainable transportation is also the history of unsustainable transportation—especially in the modern era. Transportation is about the movement of people, goods, and information. It is necessary to understand sustainable transportation in terms of: less polluting and more renewable energy sources for all modes, including their production; accessibility to key services and activities, especially employment, health, and sustenance; and enhancement of human safety, security, and social equity. Walking is foundational to sustainable transportation. The history of transportation begins with feet and only much later proceeded to ways in which humans learned to use other techniques and technologies that, in their earliest forms, constituted environmentally sustainable ways of facilitating mobility. The bicycle, an invention of the 19th century, illustrates the complex relationship between modal innovation, competition and succession, infrastructure, transportation politics, and how a culture of mobility can develop.