
We travel with ease and often at high velocity (providing you are not in the big cities). Ease of movement is another one of those things that we take for granted, but think just for a minute about how important it is to the quality of your life and how the American way of life has been transformed by the automobile. Wal-Mart for example, would not exist unless we had our own cars, and although the bulk of this lecture is about personal transportation, think also about all the goods and services that have to move around the expanse of the United States of America and beyond!

We have already discussed some transportation issues such as how we move coal around: train, barge, and truck mostly and some natural gas and oil pipelines, tankers, and trucks. As my colleagues in the Mining Program (in the Energy & Geo-Environmental Engineering Department) like to remind us: if it does not grow then it is mined! (We do extract oil and gas without mining.) The metals in this computer, silicon in the glass, hydrocarbons that are the bulk of the plastics, building materials were all once in the ground (unless you are in a log cabin!) All this material is transported around the country, sometimes across the oceans. Thus, if you did not get the hint: TRANSPORTATION IS IMPORTANT TO THE QUALITY OF OUR LIFE. Unfortunately, our transportation system is not very efficient (I am thinking mostly of personal transportation for that remark), and contributes to some of the environmental challenges.
Public Transportation (Planes, Trains, and Buses)

For those of you who have not flown, it can be a lot of fun. For example, on the way to India I saw an entire Game of Thrones season. Other times it can be a nightmare, the screaming kids, cramped surroundings, and that is just the drive to the airport! The advantage of flying is speed. Transatlantic flights across the "pond" take about 6 hours flying time. Most passenger jets fly at around 300 to 500 mph. To do this they fly at high altitudes where the air is less dense (thinner would be the popular term but think about it, how can air be thinner?) The lower resistance allows the plane to fly faster. As the flight is more efficient at the higher altitudes (32,000 feet or so) the plane can travel further. As you might guess moving people around via the airplane is not very efficient on an energy basis alone.
Noise pollution comes in many forms, and varies depending on whose definition you go by. Almost everyone would agree that airplane takeoffs (text version) are a type of noise pollution.
Aircraft weight also influences the quantity of goods the plane can carry. (text version)
Boats
When my grandfather was a small boy, an orange or a banana was considered a fantastic Christmas present (bad behavior meant he would get coal!) We don't have the weather to grow oranges in the U. K., so his Orange would have come from somewhere else in the British Commonwealth, probably the British Virgin Islands (named after Queen Victoria, not the chaste locals), or perhaps Spain. Either way, about the only way of getting the fruit to the UK was via boat (you can fly more expensive foods in such as Lobster, but fruit is heavy as it contains a lot of water!) The trip is long, and expensive which is why a fruit was considered a treat. Listen to this example of the value of salt.
Text Version: Value of Salt
Dr. Mathews: Did you ever hear the expression, worth his weight in salt? Salt used to be a very valuable commodity. In fact, if you were Portuguese, at times, that's how you would be paid. That would be your currency, salt. And in the slave trade, a slave could actually buy his own freedom if they had enough salt. A very valuable commodity. Think about it, it has to come from quite far away, even though the salt water is surrounding us, energy is expensive. And to boil off the water to leave salt, which is what they do in Saudi Arabia to create drinking water, all require a lot of energy. So instead you need to transport salt over large distances. The salt trade, think about Lawrence of Arabia, think about trekking in the desert, looking for an old sea where the water is evaporated, like salt lake. In the UK spitting salt is considered to be unlucky. In fact you need to take a little pinch and throw it over your left shoulder to break the bad luck. So transportation of this salt would have cost an immense amount of money. Wars are fought over it. The whole salt trade, the whole spice trade has affected the shape of nations. It has affected national trade. It has affected war. The passage of religion. It has had a very major impact on the country and world we now know.
Most boats will use diesel as a fuel. It has a number of advantages over gasoline, the most important of those being its higher energy content. The downside, however, is that Diesel has emission problems with particulate matter and NOx, and traditionally there have been few environmental controls to control emissions on the trucks and boats that use Diesel. This is now changing, along with the development of cleaner diesel fuels (lower sulphur and lower soot-forming precursors), so cleaner diesel vehicles are beginning to be produced. Diesel also has a much higher energy content in a gallon than gasoline (so less filling up!)
The Icelandic fishing fleet is converting to fuel cells for their fuel of choice. An environmentally driven choice of fuel. More on Fuel Cells in a bit.
Trains

Ahhhh......the romance of steam trains...... (Text Version)
Steam trains have long evoked feelings of romance and adventure, and these opportunities were long powered by, of course, coal. Diesel later replaced coal, and now in many locations, trains run off of electric.
If you fly into Orlando, the monorail you see at left will take you from the terminal (a terrible name for the place you board an airplane) to the baggage claim. You can see small sized trains like this in other exotic locations such as Morgantown, West Virginia.