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Transportation hub
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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Transportation hub is a location where traffic is exchanged across several modes of transport. These modes may include any of railway, tramway, rapid transit, bus, automobile, truck, airplane, spacecraft, ship, ferry, pedestrian or any other kind of transportation. The term is used both for passenger and freight transfers. Some transportation hubs also allow transport to be exchanged between the same kind of transport mode.
The very nature of public transport makes it necessary for people to change transport modes throughout the journey. The first hub a passenger often will come across is a bus stop where one changes from pedestrian to bus. But often public transport is built around a network of different transportation methods, each serving different functions with varying frequencies, distances, speeds and stopping patterns. Typical transportation hubs in public transport include bus stations, railway stations and metro stations.
Airports have a twofold hub function. First of all they make it possible to concentrate a lot of passenger traffic from large areas into one place so the airlines have a good market. This makes it important for airports to be connected to the surrounding transport infrastructure, including roads, bus services and some places also railway and rapid transit systems.
Secondly some airports also function as intra-modular hubs for the airlines, or airline hubs. This is a common strategy among network airlines who fly only from limited number of airports and usually will make their customers change planes at one of their hubs if they want to get between two cities the airline doesn't fly directly between.
One of the most important transportation hubs is freight hubs. There are usually three kinds: sea-road, sea-rail and road-rail, though they can also be sea-road-rail. This is because the three main freight transport modes each have their own separate advantages concerning price, barriers and distribution.