Transport and communication systems are essential to commerce and economic development. Throughout history, improvements in transportation methods - from camel caravans to modern jets - have enabled the greater exchange of goods and people. Efficient transport is necessary for the distribution of mass-produced goods to buyers. Advances in transportation, such as railways and air travel, have brought revolutions by connecting previously isolated areas and allowing for faster movement of exports, imports, and people. While all regions have not developed equally due to factors like population, terrain, and politics, modern economies require complex coordination of transportation networks like roads, rails, and airports to support increasing global trade volumes. Overall, efficient transport and trade systems are vital for countries to compete internationally.

1. THE IMPORTANCE OF TRANSPORT AND
COMMUNICATIONS TO COMMERCE
THE IMPORTANCE OF TRANSPORT AND COMMUNICATIONS TO COMMERCE
Transport is in many ways the life-blood of an nation's economy; without it, no inter-change of goods
or people would be possible. The necessity that such interchange should become as cheap and safe
and quick as possible caused increasingly dramatic developments over centuries in both
transportation methods and routes: from the slow, vulnerable camel caravans crossing the deserts of
Africa and Asia to modern jet planes circling the world in twenty-four hours.
Efficient, up-to-date transport and communications systems are essential for the smooth working
of a modern complex economy. Mass production will have little economic value if the products
cannot be distributed safely and quickly to potential buyers. The improvements in transport and
industrial development have always reacted on one another. The British industrial Revolution in
transport as in industrial techniques. One could not have taken place without the other. The present
complex system of production in http://www.tsa.gov/ highly industrialized nations is only possible
because of the improvement in means of transport which accompanied each stage of industrial
development.
In early times, trade was carried on by means of producers meeting at certain known places-
markets to which they had walked-to exchange their agricultural produce or handmade goods.
Domesticated animals came to be used as pack animals and so greater volumes of goods could be
carried and greater distances covered. Groups of merchants and their animals would travel together
in a caravan for reasons of safety, on ancient well-established routes. But journeys such as crossing
the Sahara desert or the steppes of Central Asia would take months and even years.
The waterways have also been means of transport for people and goods since ancient times: rivers
which penetrated deep into the heart of a country and man made canals have linked the interiors
with the coastal parts. As men ventured farther from their own shares, stables seagoing ships had to
be developed to withstand the rigours of long journeys on the open ocean.
Land transport on wheels developed rapidly, necessitating the building of surfaced roads and
bridges. These were built by highly sophisticated civil engineering companies.
The advent of railways in most parts of the world in the early nineteenth century brought a social
as well as a commercial revolution. For most countries, railways provided an efficient, safe and
speedy means of transport. In Nigeria, for instance, these railway networks enabled exports to be
brought to the coast for shipment, and imports to be distributed to the hinterland cheaply.
In recent times, air transport has brought about a revolution as great as that of the railways
several decades ago. Transport and communications are now possible to previously inaccessible
areas. Where great distances have to be covered speedily in remote and difficult terrain, aeroplanes
are the common means of transport.
All this development has not occurred evenly over the earth's surface, since any transport network
is dependent on three major influences: demand for mobility, the physical nature and climatic
conditions of the land, and political considerations. Obviously, the more densely populated an area,
the greater will be its demand for goods, personal mobility and for the distribution of its local

2. produce. But the physical environment, together with climatic considerations, will put restraints on
the type of system that is economical and practical to develop. The political restraints include the
amount of money a government is prepared to spend, the territorial boundaries and the importance
given to transport as a means of national unification and defence.
Most traffic systems in industrialized as
well as developing nations represent a
highly complex co-ordination of road, rail
and air transport. This means that with
the rapid expansion of world trade over
the last few decades, many problems
have risen, particularly where ports,
roads, and airports were originally built
to accommodate a much smaller volume
of traffic; congestion in the inner cities as
well as in ports and airports is very
common.
As transport is the life-blood of trade,
so trade is the life-force of a modern
nation's economy, and without up-to-date
and efficient systems of both, no country can hope to compete in the market-places of the world.