An Integrated Public Transport System
Industrialization and the agglomeration of population in urban, metropolitan areas over the course of the last several hundred years has created a number of infrastructure issues of enormous significance. Among those issues, geographers such as De Blij and Muller (15) identify the development of adequate integrated public transportation system that are capable of efficiently and economically moving individuals from home to work sites to recreational venues and shopping centers. Whereas countries, regions, and states must grapple with the challenges inherent in creating an efficient road network that is capable of linking core areas to suburbs and to the periphery, or linking production and economic nodes to key distribution points, municipal planners must deal with establishing and maintaining a public transportation system that meets the needs of communities of various sizes.
Driving the development of public transportation facilities and systems are the twin phenomena of urbanization and industrialization (Knox and Marston, 401). Urban systems consist of an interdependent set of urban settlements within a specified region which create urbanism, a way of life, attitude, value, and patterns of behavior fostered by urban settings. As significantly, urbanization results in a concentration of both people and economic activities in a relatively small geographic region, a region that tends to expand over time and to incorporate industrial as well as residential areas within its borders. While urbanization as described by Knox and Marston (416) has resulted in the placement of some 47.4 percent of the world's total population in urban areas, this particular phenomena varies from one continent to another. Leading the way in urbanization (and as one might anticipate, in the development of public transportation systems) are North America, Europe, and Latin America. In Oceana, urb...