ABSTRACT
Today there are approximately 700 million passenger cars, trucks and buses and 300 million motorcycles and mopeds (motorized two-wheelers) worldwide. Nobody really knows how many bicycles there are. Of passenger cars 80 per cent are owned by 15 per cent of the world's population living in North America, western Europe and Japan. Along with food, shelter, security and health, individual mobility is a basic human need; one on which our other basic needs are in part dependant. Indeed historically, development has been almost synonymous with improvements in transport from the trans-Asian Silk Route of Marco Polo to the farm-to-market roads in early United States to the trans-European motorway network aiming to link west Europe more firmly to East Europe.
