The Bus of Your Life | An Insight into the Transportation Industry

My best friend and I have a past time that I find perfectly enjoyable. We don’t even have to go out of our way to do it. It’s a pretty low budget activity and will cost you a grand total of $5. My best friend and I both love sightseeing. We also love having big adventures. But during the lockdown, all we could do is have mini-adventures.

Yesterday, I experienced a wondrous mini-adventure. It started at the NUS campus. We had some business to attend to, so our journey started at the extremely large university campus which is impossible to traverse on foot alone.

On the way back, we decided to get onboard a bus. Yes, that’s our mini-adventure. Double-decker buses are our favourite. We would get on and sit on the top, right at the front.

We would sway along with the bus and hold the handrail if need be. Yesterday, I took two buses. The numbers were 151 and 174. I got off 151, alighted at a train station, ate dinner there, and then got on 174. You know what scared me? On these two simple bus routes, I saw a map of my life in Singapore from age 12 right up to adulthood. I saw places where I went to school and places where I once worked.

Imagine if life is no different; we are all on buses that bring us to a destination. We can get off or we can get on. But sometimes when we finally see the scenic route from the top, we realise that we have already departed.

The Transportation Industry

The transportation sector is a key driver in every economy. It is how people and their products move from place to place. From public transportation to maritime shipping, the transportation industry touches everyone and everything that moves. These services are a necessity for successful operations of businesses and governments.

These include companies such as: airlines, buses and trains, railroads, shipping, logistics firms as well as firms that provide transportation infrastructure. Increasingly, this has also come to become the terrain of crowd-sharing services such as Grab, Uber and so on.

Energy costs have a strong relationship to the way that transportation stocks are priced. When the demand for transportation services is high, the impact will be reflected quickly. This information may motivate energy traders to bid up prices for oil and related commodities. If, however, demand for commercial transportation falls, this information could lead to a decrease in oil prices. As the market for electric cars begins to boom, it has been predicted that oil prices will be negatively affected once infrastructure needs are met.

While tracking technologies are not new, they have evolved to become a central pillar of successful transportation companies. Anti-theft GPS, real-time location information are leading to more efficient and effective use of roads, leading to reduced traffic congestion and increased energy efficiency.

Efficient transportation systems contribute immeasurably to businesses. Moreover, they increase residency options for employees because commuters no longer have to live in close proximity to their jobs. The government sector also benefits from the use of efficient transportation networks by enhancing their ability to respond to emergencies.

The economic significance of the transportation industry is further highlighted by its large share and contribution to national output. For instance, transportation’s share of total trade of commercial import services varies from a low of 16.7 percent in North America to a high of 28.6 percent in Asia, according to World Trade Organization statistics published in 2004.