ABSTRACT
A transport network ‘provides a facility for the movement of goods and people’. The effects of a particular form of transport on market structures depends upon a complex of factors: the characteristics of the technology applied, the efficiency with which it is employed and decisions taken about freight rates, which reflect operating costs, levels of competition and desired levels of profitability. This chapter considers both the density and quality of transport networks and their constant evolution; the relationship between the various techniques used – rail, road and water; and the character of the reciprocal influences between evolving transport systems and regional and national economies. The major new variable in the economy from the 1840s was, of course, the development of a railway network. In considering the effects of railway development on the evolution of markets, operating efficiency is clearly a crucially important question.
