Transport systems: Global

Look in your local store and you might see bananas from Brazil, or another product that has travelled a long way to reach you. Have you ever wondered how those products arrived in your local store? In the case of the bananas, they are first grown on large plantations in regions with tropical climates. They are hand-picked and transported to a packing facility. Once the bananas are packed, they are then transported to the nearest container terminal and loaded on a cargo ship.

After days at sea, the bananas arrive at your local port. Then, they’re loaded into a truck and transported to the store. So to reach the shelves of your supermarket, these bananas rely on several different forms of transportation. Using two or more modes of transportation together to move goods is called intermodal transportation. Intermodal transportation is useful not just for moving goods, but for moving humans, too!

Maybe you’ve taken a car to reach the airport... or ridden a bicycle to a ferry terminal. All of this movement of cargo and people around the world is part of globalisation. Globalisation connects the economies of different countries. Many countries rely heavily on the exchange of raw materials and finished goods with other countries around the world.

This leads to a constantly growing transport sector. Cheap, fast, and well-organised transport systems are vital in our globalised world. But what happens when these transport systems don’t work as they should? When trains, planes, and ships are delayed, it’s not only an annoyance. It also costs lots of money for society as a whole.

In 2021, one of the world’s largest container ships got stuck in Egypt’s Suez Canal, blocking it completely. The Suez Canal is one of the world's busiest trade routes, with about 12% of all the trade in the world passing through the canal each day. The blockade lasted six days and delayed more than 400 ships. This had a significant negative impact on global trade. In this example, it’s not the transport system that failed… it was just one stuck ship!

But even so, the situation led to major disruptions. Delayed oil tankers couldn’t deliver gasoline and diesel. This led to delays and shortages for other transportation that relies on this fuel: automobiles, trains, airplanes… Global transport systems are closely connected, or interrelated, with other systems. They are sensitive to the changes happening in our world, be it natural disasters, wars, global pandemics, or anything else. Global transport relies on other systems… and it impacts other systems, too.

Perhaps most importantly, transport has a heavy impact on the environment. Long flights, sea journeys, and drives all result in the emission of carbon dioxide and other toxic fumes into the atmosphere. Globally, transportation accounts for between 15 and 20 percent of carbon dioxide emissions each year. Ensuring global transportation is environmentally sustainable is an important task, both now and into the future.