Transport Geography Research Articles

Container barge network development in inland rivers: A comparison between the Yangtze River and the Rhine River

Abstract The formation of barge networks on rivers and associated inland port systems is subject to a complex set of influencing factors and mechanisms. This paper aims to present a comprehensive comparative empirical analysis focusing on the container shipping (barge) network in the Yangtze and the Rhine. This analysis is supported by extensive datasets on both river basins, incorporates the latest development on both rivers and is grounded on concepts and methods coming from transport geography and economic geography. We find that a large diversity might exist in how inland port systems and related gateway seaports are dealing with cargo flows and supply chains. In view of explaining this diversity, we make a distinction between geographical/nautical aspects, macro-economic factors and institutional/governance factors. In particular, we discuss the role of institutional and governance factors in barge network development by using the concepts of selection, retention and variation.

Getting your paper reviewed and finally published in Journal of Transport Geography: The do's and don'ts from the viewpoint of the editor-in-chief

Getting your paper reviewed and finally published in Journal of Transport Geography: The do's and don'ts from the viewpoint of the editor-in-chief

Transport geography: Towards a more people-oriented approach in the last 25 years

Transport geography: Towards a more people-oriented approach in the last 25 years

Twenty-five years of transport geography research through the lens of the American Association of Geographers

Twenty-five years of transport geography research through the lens of the American Association of Geographers

The Journal of Transport Geography's role in closing the African transport research gap

The Journal of Transport Geography's role in closing the African transport research gap

Looking back, to move forward: Celebrating 25 years Journal of Transport Geography

Looking back, to move forward: Celebrating 25 years Journal of Transport Geography

Seaports and maritime transport geography in prospect: More of the same for the next 25 years?

Seaports and maritime transport geography in prospect: More of the same for the next 25 years?

Twenty five years of the Journal of Transport Geography

Twenty five years of the Journal of Transport Geography

Transport imaginations: Passenger experiences between freedom and constraint

This paper highlights the openness and indeterminacy of passenger experiences by exploring the power of passengers' imaginations in the context of urban railway commuting in Tokyo, Japan. Contrasting with much existing research on the figure of the passenger which has often stressed its intensified management and securitisation through spaces of transit, this paper examines how imagination plays an important but under-acknowledged part in transforming passenger experiences. Drawing upon extensive qualitative fieldwork conducted in Tokyo, it describes how the virtuality of these imagined spaces can work in different ways that can both enable and constrain passengers. Rather than seeing imagination as an internal psychological phenomenon, this paper stresses the relational qualities of imagination. Imagination can enable passengers to creatively travel as they gather references from what they see, hear, smell and feel through their bodily registers. In doing so, this paper argues that imagination is a situational process that materializes through passengers' encounters with a range of sensory stimuli in railway spaces. It also spotlights the specificity of the Japanese context for developing our understanding of power dynamics in research on passenger experiences. Supplementing transport geography's longstanding commitment to tracing the politics of enablement and constraint in terms of accessibility and travel time use, our paper highlights how imagination is an important but overlooked political domain.

Modelling growth principles of metropolitan public transport networks

The development of metropolitan public transport networks often involves choosing between investing in extending radial lines or constructing ring connections. While the former enlarges network coverage the latter enhances network connectivity and reduces the need to perform detours. Moreover, investments might be better directed at increasing the capacity of already existing infrastructure. In this study we address the following question: how do transport networks in metropolitan areas evolve over time and how can we effectively model this growth as function of demand and cost function? The goal of this study is to determine the fundamental relations between population distribution, modal costs on the prevailing network structure and its evolution. The approach taken in this study offers a theoretical contribution to the field of transport network growth by combining principles from several research streams: transport geography, economics of network growth and network science. We propose an iterative investment model network analysis framework. The results of the network growth experiments manifest an overall trend in network growth with an early phase of expansion of the network, followed by a period of intensification manifested in capacity increments and finally adding some links that contribute to its densification. Furthermore, our findings suggest that bus networks include more ring-radial connections than Light Rail Train and Metro networks which are more concentrated on radial connections.

A new evolution for transport-related social exclusion research?

This paper provides a brief overview of the transport-related social exclusion (TRSE) literatures and discusses the proliferation of this increasingly active research domain within transport geography over the last twenty years. It then focuses on a rapid evidence review of the implications for TRSE of major future innovations in the transport domain and the new mobility landscapes that will emerge from these technological, behavioural and policy changes. The key findings of the study were that more dedicated research is needed on the differential social and equity impacts of new mobility technologies and future policies to better understand the effects of these changes on already disadvantaged and marginalised groups. Transport geographers and sociologists have a particularly important role to play in the promulgation of these future research enquiries because in-depth socio-spatial research is needed to determine the people and places that will be mobility and accessibility included or excluded by these new innovations, and to help policymakers to determine how best to maximise their benefits and minimise their negative effects on future populations.

Where have we been, how did we get there, who was driving, and what did we see? A quarter century review of the Journal of Transport Geography

Where have we been, how did we get there, who was driving, and what did we see? A quarter century review of the Journal of Transport Geography

Trespassing for mobilities. Operational directions for addressing mobile lives

Transport geography and mobilities studies share the same object of study – mobility - which nonetheless has been differently conceptualized by the two disciplinary fields. This difference impacts their analytical, interpretative and operational approaches as well as their actual contribution to transport planning, so that despite their proximity, mobility studies and transport geography still appear as bordering disciplinary fields. To deal with concerns that affect the way we address urban mobility issues, the paper suggests putting into practice what the heterodox economist Albert Hirschman famously called trespassing, as a tactic to cross disciplinary boundaries and progress with some puzzles through detours and forays into other fields. In doing so, the paper aims at exploring how trespassing enhances the way mobilities studies and transport geography may usefully cross-fertilize each other and enhance operational responses to mobility issues, by analysing the conceptual and operational innovations that could benefit from such a reciprocal interchange. To discuss forms of significant trespassing for mobilities, the paper proposes to detect and address emerging forms of everyday mobility, taking long distance commuters (LDC) in the Milan Urban Region as an example. Here, trespassing allows the merging of quantitative and qualitative datasets to understand the articulated nature of this and other forms of contemporary mobilities. Working on the interpretative and operational challenges posed by these emerging mobilities that question key principles of the traditional ‘utilitarian approach’ to transport planning, the paper discusses the conceptual, analytical and operational directions along which trespassing may be developed.

From infrastructure to digital networks: accessibility and connectivity in transport geography research at Aberdeen

ABSTRACTThis paper considers the contribution made to transport geography research at the University of Aberdeen over the last century. In section one, the earliest work in transport geography emphasised the physical connectivity provided by transport through infrastructure networks. Section 2 discusses the contribution made at Aberdeen to debates around accessibility and connectivity. This work had a strong rural dimension and evidenced a growing recognition of the importance of technology in transport. It provided the springboard for research on digital connectivity with important contributions to the wider domain of transport studies in the fields of flexible transport, rural connectivity, transport and energy and social media and big data as reported in Section 3. Section 4 brings the story of transport research at Aberdeen up to the present. It frames research under the banner of intelligent mobility (IM), which links technology and mobility to the wider societal objective of enabling the smarter, greener and more efficient movement of people and goods. Contributions are reported to the fields of shared mobility, smart rural mobility, transport security and privacy and accessibility. Finally, a return to the theme of infrastructure networks and connectivity is highlighted in work on global production networks in aviation.

Transport geography, climate change and space: opportunity for new thinking

This paper reflects on how Transport Geography has examined the relationships between climate change, transport and space. It identifies four tendencies in engagements so far – uneven attention; separation between climate change mitigation and adaptation; continuity in theory, method and research praxis; and over-reliance on ‘Western’ thinking and worldviews. It develops an agenda for further research that emphasises the importance of considering all modes and forms of transport, moving beyond the mitigation and adaptation distinction, and foregrounding the socio-political nature of the relationships between climate change, transport and space. It also argues that research praxis has to be revised if those relationships are to be understood adequately, suggesting that critical reflexivity on concepts is a useful step in this direction. The paper then introduces and illustrates an approach to the (re)invention of concepts about the relationships between transport, climate change and space. It concludes by urging transport geographers to work with concepts co-produced with a much wider range of constituencies than usually considered and to develop new methods for tracking the events created by new concepts.

The shifting position of the Journal of Transport Geography in ‘transport geography research’: A bibliometric analysis

In its 25 years of existence, the Journal of Transport Geography (JTRG) has emerged as the key outlet for cutting-edge transport geography research. However, in practice the journal is part of a much broader publication landscape of research on the geographical dimensions of transport, travel and mobility. In this paper, we therefore analyse the position of JTRG in the different research agendas at the intersection of the geographical and transport sciences. To this end, we present a bibliometric analysis of relevant research covered in the (Social) Science(s) Citation Index ((S)SCI) bibliographic databases. Our analyses include breakdowns of the major journals; key contributing regions and institutions; and variations in topics as revealed by keyword analysis. Throughout the paper, the main focus is on comparing (evolutions in) the research covered in JTRG with (evolutions in) the research at the intersection of the geographical and transport sciences published in other journals. Results are used to reflect on the position of the journal in the field as well as on relative blind spots in terms of authorship and the nature of the research covered, and can thus inform deliberations about possible directions for the journal.

Between geography and transport: A scientometric analysis of port studies in Journal of Transport Geography

Created in 1993, the particularity of Journal of Transport Geography (JTRG) is to put ‘transport’ at center stage in human geography, long after similar initiatives about cultural, tourism, political, urban, and rural geographies. The goal of this research is to estimate JTRG's relative importance of (and interplay between) ‘transport specialization’ and ‘human geography’, focusing on port-related research as a case study. Constituting a database of 864 port articles published in JTRG and other selected geography and (non-geography) transport journals between 2009 and 2018 constitutes the backbone of our analysis. We particularly examine the thematic focus and the geographic scale of the corpus articles, which we complement by an analysis of their references. Main results reveal a stable preference for global-level studies and operational research, but compared with other journals, our corpus is marked by a stronger affinity with regional/national spatial scales and the locational (i.e., space-related) perspective. We conclude that JTRG publications (about ports) are more multidisciplinary than in other geography and transport journals. The paper contributes to a better understanding of the disciplinary evolution of academic research in the field of spatial studies, transport studies, and beyond.

Mzabalazo On the Move: Organising on a South African Commuter Train

The existing literature on labour movements notes how trade unions have been weakened in recent years. This observable pattern is not unique to South Africa; arguably, this decline represents a global phenomenon characterised by the disintegration of erstwhile militant labour movements. In the case of South Africa, the post-apartheid neoliberal labour regime has fragmented the militant social-movement unionism (SMU) of the 1980s almost to the point of extinction. Despite this trend, various studies have detailed pockets of revival and resistance by workers spread across a variety of sectors and continents. My article seeks to contribute to this literature by drawing on the case study of Mamelodi Train Sector (MTS). MTS was formed in 2001 as a ‘mobilising structure’, aligned to the African National Congress (ANC) and its alliance partners. Using the notion of space as a theoretical tool, I attempt to understand MTS and the space it organises – the train. MTS utilises the travel time spent going to and from work to offer legislative education to largely unorganised/non-unionised workers. In addition to legislative education, MTS members (self-styled comrades) discuss community issues and matters pertaining to the ANC’s tripartite alliance as an attempt to foster a particular kind of identity politics. The data collected reveals that, among other contributions, MTS offers hope and a sense of solidarity to those workers without workplace representation. The comradely sense of belonging, buttressed by a common identity, potentially mitigates the impact of workplace fragmentation – experienced by the majority of workers in South Africa. Organising on the train points to one missing link in our current efforts to understand workers’ agency – the geography of transport in South Africa and its related possibilities as a site of revival. With a specific focus on the MTS as a case study, I suggest that the train, as a by-product of apartheid spatiality, represents a strategic location for worker organisation in South Africa.

The transport geography of electric and autonomous vehicles in road freight networks

The purpose of this paper is to elaborate the transport geography of electric and autonomous vehicles for road freight transport and establish a research agenda by identifying many unresolved issues already beginning to emerge. While regulatory approval for full coverage on all roads remains some years away, autonomous vehicles are already operating intermodal-style main hauls on major highways, interchanging at highway junctions with the first and last mile performed by regular trucks. Meanwhile, electric trucks capable of medium distances on a single charge are now entering the market. The two technologies of electric propulsion and autonomy are mutually reinforcing, particularly from the network perspective, and purpose-built electric autonomous vehicles (EAVs) are starting to enter commercial service.This paper utilises an analytical framework of intermodal transport to map against the emerging geography of EAVs and determine how our knowledge of the features, challenges, business models and policy implications of intermodal transport can help decision makers plan for a better development of the emerging EAV network. The paper provides recommendations for policymakers dealing with arising challenges and identifies a list of research questions regarding this rapidly evolving new form of transport.

A visual ethnographic pilot study of school travel for families living with childhood disability

ABSTRACTChildren’s school transport has become a major research focus over the past 20 years, particularly within the fields of planning, transport geography, and children’s geographies. However, this work has rarely considered children living with disability. This article presents the pilot component of a visual ethnographic study about school transport within families living with childhood disability. It explains why we piloted the study, details the pilot process, and presents lessons learned from piloting the study with two families of children living with different mobility needs. The lessons largely concern the design of interview guides and the interviewing process, as well as the development of an adaptive photo kit to enable children’s independent participation. The article shows how piloting qualitative studies, particularly those involving disabled children, can be invaluable in terms of improving data collection technologies and logistics, as well as enabling inclusive participation.