For transportation to be more effective, any mode needs to be able to overcome the obstacles. They need to make greater use of the natural forces, which will help in their advancement. And this is how anything develops, turning obstacles into opportunities. Whether it is a track on the jungle or the modern-day railway systems, changes have been made as per the needs of natural conditions and interaction with the physical environment. Therefore, when India receives designs for locomotives from different countries, it has to modify them according to the Indian Terrain.
For any invention to take place, it has to be appropriately defined. Without getting a complementing natural condition, the invention will not develop. Say, the invention of wheels was a significant achievement. However, it came into use for transportation only after roads were designed.
If we consider the railways, the vehicles need to fit in the tracks, the tracks need to fit with the vehicles, and all of these need to be coordinated with the motive power. Thus, they cannot function or develop independently. To some extent, land and water transport are mutually dependent.
Another interesting fact is that the older one loses its superiority and gets limited whenever a newer or better technology is developed. However, it’s also true that all the varieties that have ever been grown and flourished are still available in some parts and can’t be parted.
Now let’s talk about water transportation. No human being exactly lives inside water. So, it is basically a form of connecting land to land. Water transport, unlike land transport, has no permanent roads upon them. Thus there can’t be any marked tendency to take indirect routes because they have already been used. Moreover, water transportation is more economical between itself and land transport. Yes, the speed and duration might not be better, but it certainly takes less effort to transport something on the water than on land.
Thus, Land transport is swift and carries goods with higher value. And water transport is cheap and has goods with higher quantity.
However, the social efficiency of transportation is what truly matters. It is believed that water transportation near the coastal areas was an essential aspect for trading and economic reasons. However, during the early period, people travelled by land, with their carriages carried by animals and river transport. That was all within the country itself. When favourable conditions, such as international communication and migration between countries, those coastal areas were developed, commerce arose.
After discovering America and the passage to India around the cape, maritime transportation became the chief agent, while land transport became subordinate. However, in the present-day world, there has been a relative increase in inland transportation.
Before the advent of the railways, canals were significant. They overcame the natural obstacles, shortened old water routes and created new ones, making water movement inland cheaper.
So, as change takes place, things around it start developing and start modifying themselves according to them. Thus, changes help our transportation to evolve constructively.
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