Category Archives: Trends  Mount Transit, Mount Auto, Mount Next
US Transportation Trends               • Price of fuel – higher
energy costs diminish travel
Transportation’s New Wave    The new version of The
Transportation Experience describes the history of
transportation across several five to six decade long waves.
While the periods are straightforward (though somewhat
arbitrary, as would be any periodization of social trends),
there is some subjectivity in the dominant technology with which
to characterize them. Certainly the first period is an age of
Steam, and the second period is the dawning of electrification
(the birth of the streetcar, as well as electric utilities, the
telegraph and telephone), while the third sees the rise of the
Internal Combustion Engine and motorization in all its forms.
The fourth wave does not have as its center a new propulsion
technology, but instead is more about reorganization. In freight
this is the logistics (containerization) revolution. In