Overland Transportation Networks: History of Development and Future Prospects

The basic technologies for overland transportation are symbolized by their infrastructures: canals, railways, roads, and airways. They integrate spatially distinct locations into mutually interrelated entities and are structured as networks. Nodes are different locations with interaction potential, such as urban and industrial centers. Links are individual transport infrastructures such as canals, railways, and roads and the related modes e.g., ships, trains, and automobiles. In time, they gradually replace one another; old system are substituted by the new ones. Each individual infrastructure evolves according to a particular scheme, the so-called technology “life cycle.” It starts with an early development phase marked with a high degree of experimentation, develops through a phase of growth characterized by standardization and pervasive diffusion, and eventually enters the last phase of saturation where the technical and economic potentials and thus, further growth prospects are exhausted. This leads to a structural change and transition to the next generation of transport systems.