Shanghai's commercial maglev outruns even the fastest high-speed trains
Specially built high-speed rail lines let trains reach about 350 kilometres an hour. Shanghai's commercial maglev, floating on magnets, runs at 460. Only aircraft and rockets are faster, with airliners cruising up to 955 kilometres an hour, and every step up in speed costs more money and energy.
Transport, or transportation in American usage, is the deliberate movement of people, animals and goods from place to place, and it underpins the trade on which civilisations grew. Its modes include air, road, rail, water, cable, pipelines and even space. The field breaks into infrastructure, such as roads, canals, ports, stations and fuel depots; vehicles, from bicycles and wagons to spacecraft; and operations. Journeys combining several modes are called intermodal, and each mode is chosen for cost, capability and route.
Muscle power remains the most sustainable option. Walking, running and swimming need no infrastructure, though paths help bicycles, skates and wheelchairs, and people have built human-powered boats, skis and even aircraft. In rough terrain where engines struggle, animals still carry riders and packs or pull sleds and carts. Electric personal transporters have joined the urban mix this century.
In the air, heavier-than-air planes get lift from air flowing over fixed wings, while helicopters spin their lifting surfaces, and gyroplanes mix both. Most need airports, and runway length limits which aircraft can use a given field. Remotely piloted drones range from under a metre across to full size and now deliver packages. Aerostats such as balloons and airships float on gas lighter than air, usually helium since hydrogen burns so readily, or on heated air.
On land, rails are fixed to sleepers of wood, concrete or steel that hold them at a constant gauge on a bed of ballast. Roads, by contrast, were for much of history simply recognisable routes with no formal building at all. Ownership mixes public and private, as with private cars on state-run city networks and part-state airlines. Freight has largely shifted into standard containers, and while transport fuels economic growth and globalisation, powered vehicles pollute the air and consume large amounts of land.
Source: Transport
