ABSTRACT
The Oxford English Dictionary offers a very restrictive definition of ‘transport’:
To take or carry (people or goods) from one place to another by means of a vehicle, aircraft, or ship.
This definition is restricted in two undesirable ways:Walking, the fundamental means of transport, would be excluded if movement were confined to mechanical means of transport, be they vehicles, aircraft or ships. Although escalators, conveyor belts, lifts and a panoply of mechanical handling equipment are not seen as ‘vehicles’, they transport people and goods for important, if not lengthy, distances. Transport should be defined to include all movement by all means.
The definition should not be restricted to the movement of people or goods. In Victorian times the source of domestic energy was carried by train and coal carts but is now brought to most homes by gas pipes and electricity cables: an obvious means of transport has been replaced by the less obvious. Similarly, most information now surges electronically through a global web of wires and cables, leaving a minority to be carried from place to place by messengers, postmen and commercial travellers. The definition of transport therefore needs to include the movement of:
people;
commodities (including raw materials, part-finished goods and liquids);
information;
energy;
waste.
The essence of transport is movement to a more desirable location.