Transportation is the act of moving people or things from one place to another. When you ride a bike to school, take a bus downtown, or watch a delivery truck bring packages to your neighborhood, you're seeing transportation in action.

Throughout history, improvements in transportation have transformed how people live. For thousands of years, humans could only travel as fast as horses could run or ships could sail. Then came steam engines, railroads, automobiles, and airplanes. Each invention shrank the world, making distant places suddenly reachable. A journey that took your great-great-grandparents three months by wagon might take you three hours by car today.

Transportation shapes cities and communities. Schools, stores, and hospitals are built where people can reach them. Farms grow food that gets transported to your grocery store. Letters and packages travel through transportation networks of trucks, trains, and planes.

When you transport something, you carry it from here to there. People also use transport to describe being carried away by emotion or imagination: a beautiful song might transport you to another time and place, at least in your mind.