A Companion to the Philosophy of Technology

The Transportation System

The transportation system is a complex set of structures, devices, procedures and institutions. One scholar has called it a complex, large, integrated open system, or CLIOS (Sussman 2000). The transportation system is typically conceived of as consisting of several “modes”: road, rail, water, air and pipeline. However, the shape and size of each mode varies considerably depending on the context, from horse and foot trails in remote areas to multilane limited-access highways in more developed locations.

One characteristic of the transportation system is its division into separate components of vehicles, infrastructure and operating protocols (Gifford and Garrison 1993). The automobile-highway system consists of automobiles and other vehicles, the road infrastructure upon which it travels, and the policies, norms, institutions and practices that govern its use. Similarly, the air transportation system consists of aircraft, airports and operating protocols and institutions. In many cases, the separate components are designed, operated, maintained and retired by well-defined professional groups, with financing provided through links to capital markets and governmental funding programs. Thus, the stakeholders in any single mode or industry are often very numerous.

One indicator of the extent of the transportation system is the quantity of infrastructure per capita, as shown in Table 95.1. The US is by far the best-supplied with roads and motorways, with 23,900 ...