The construction of channels, locks, and dredging are attempting to facilitate maritime circulation by reducing its discontinuity, but such endeavors are highly expensive. However, due to the location of economic activities, maritime circulation takes place on specific parts of the maritime space, particularly over the North Atlantic and the North Pacific. Main maritime routes are composed of oceans, coasts, seas, lakes, rivers, and channels. With physical properties such as buoyancy and limited friction, maritime transportation is the most effective mode to move large quantities of cargo over long distances. Major Gauges of the Global Rail Systems.Pipeline terminals are essential since they correspond to refineries and harbors. The Trans Alaskan pipeline, which is 1,300 km long, was built under challenging conditions and had to be above ground for most of its path. Pipeline construction costs vary according to the diameter and increase proportionally with the distance and with the viscosity of fluids (from low viscosity gas to high viscosity oil). Physical constraints are low and include the landscape and pergelisol in arctic environments. The longest oil pipeline is the Transiberian, extending over 9,344 km from the Russian arctic oilfields in eastern Siberia to Western Europe. The longest gas pipeline links Alberta to Sarnia (Canada), which is 2,911 km in length. Their purpose is to move liquids such as petroleum products over long distances in a cost-effective fashion.
Pipeline routes are practically unlimited as they can be laid on land or underwater.
Gauges, however, vary around the world, often challenging the integration of rail systems. Rail is by far the land transportation mode offering the highest capacity with a 23,000 tons fully loaded coal unit train being the heaviest load ever carried. Heavy industries are traditionally linked with rail transport systems, although containerization has improved the flexibility of rail transportation by linking it with road and maritime modes. They have an average level of physical constraints, and a low gradient is required, particularly for freight. In light of recent technological developments, rail transportation also includes monorails and maglev. Railways are composed of a traced path on which wheeled vehicles are bound. With containerization, road transportation has become a crucial link in freight distribution between ports and commercial hinterlands. They are mainly linked to light industries and freight distribution, where rapid movements of freight in small batches are the norm.
Road transport systems have high maintenance costs, both for the vehicles and infrastructures, which are related to low life spans. Road transportation has average operational flexibility as vehicles can serve several purposes but can rarely operate outside roads. While historically road transportation was developed to support non-motorized forms of transportation (walking, domestic animals, and cycling at the end of the 19th century), it is motorization that has shaped most of its development since the beginning of the 20th century. However, physiographical constraints are significant in road construction with substantial additional costs to overcome features such as rivers or rugged terrain. Road infrastructures are large consumers of space with the lowest level of physical constraints among transportation modes.
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