Although the transportation needs of cities and nations around the world may differ in detail there is much that is common. The benefit to be derived by sharing research findings and practical experience is therefore vast. Transportation lends itself to that vital process of information exchange by publishing carefully selected papers which advance the international fund of knowledge. Transportation focuses on issues of direct relevance to those concerned with the formulation of policy the preparation and evaluation of plans and the day-to-day operational management of transport systems. It concerns itself with the policies and systems themselves as well as with their impacts on and relationships with other aspects of the social economic and physical environment. Transportation is relevant to all parts of the world: industrialized newly industrialized or developing. The journal has no model bias and is totally apolitical. Its mission is simply to help improve the transportation of people and goods by bringing an improved understanding of the subject to the theorists practitioners and policy makers who study it.