Traditionally transport is thought of in two - or if you are really progressive, perhaps three - groups: private transport (cars), public transport (trains, trams, buses, ferries, taxis), and sometimes "unmotorised" or "slow" modes (walking, cycling) as well.

This is a person-focussed view: the movement of goods and services does not fit into this framework at all and is usually considered as a component of private road transport. Rail freight is usually considered as a separate issue altogether.

A different framework is suggested here, prompted by the observation that the functional requirements of goods movement, service delivery and personal movement are quite different and further subdivide depending on whether they are being served by independent transport (the main requirement arguably will be restraining its growing energy use, since it is already widely available), commercial transport (the main requirement arguably is economy in the broadest sense) or public transport (the main requirement arguably being reliability). So scheduled transort will only be preferred over independent and commercial transport for some trips if it is reliable; commercial transport will be preferred over independent transport if it saves enough money; otherwise, if it is available, independent transport will tend to be preferred. The different functional requirements of the three user sectors are shown in Figure 1.

Figure 1: Functional definition of transport

Even Figure 1 is not quite adequate, and it is suggested now that a more appropriate division would be into independent transport, hire-and-reward transport and scheduled transport. The use of these three categories by each transport sector is shown in Figure 2.

Figure 2: Relation between transport demand and supply

On this basis, independent transport includes cars, bicycles and walking for person movement, businesses with their own cars, vans or trucks, and a variety of standard or specialised vehicles in public or private ownership for service movement (from plumbers' vans through paramedical transport to fire engines). "Hire and reward" services cover taxis for person movement, commercial road haulage and rail freight, now predominantly operated by the private sector, and charter services (coaches, vessels, aircraft). Scheduled services seem confined to conventional urban public transport for person movement - trains, trams, buses, ferries - and domestic aviation for longer journeys.

It can be appreciated that both the degree of freedom and the cost of use increase from bottom to top of Figure 2. However this perspective does not fit too well with the way in which we control our transport systems.

• Person movement, goods movement and service movement are rarely considered as part of the same system.

• Consideration of cars is usually confined to their role in personal movement. Some car use is actually in service delivery, for which scheduled services (public transport) are not an alternative.

• Taxis are not public transport and would be much cheaper to use if they were only subject to quality licencing. Attempts by governments to control the quantity of taxis have created a market in these licences: a substantial proportion of the fare paid by users is determined by the cost to the owner of the vehicle of the licence rather than the marginal cost (depreciation, driver's wage, fuel etc) of using the vehicle.

• The main competitor for independent personal travel could be bicycles, offering the same type of service for shorter trips, rather than scheduled public transport which offers a different type of service. Most urban journeys are short, and there may be other technologies suitable for this market which are not currently used in Australia (eg low-energy motorised vehicles). This has major implications for the supporters of urban rail schemes in particular.

• The battle to move freight by road or rail is essentially being fought within the "hire and reward" sector, where the whole logistics chain is important and not just the point-to-point movement of goods. While some enterprises have the volume to organise their own logistics chain, others tend to use specialist companies to do this.

• The ability of the emergency services to defuse potential emergencies is seldom considered as a transport problem.

• For the movement of goods, exporting is a different function from importing.

• "Road safety" would be seen as a safety issue, not a road issue, with the same strict standards as apply to workplace safety, aviation safety etc. This would appear to imply stronger accreditation control for "hire and reward" organisations and operators of scheduled bus services, and more rigorous licensing control for independent users.

• Travel time (which planners of new transport systems tend to focus on) are not very important for distinguishing between the categories; they are much more important for competing services within a category.

• The peakiness problem does not affect goods or service transport. It may be that by trying to engineer a mode shift to public transport governments are perpetuating a structural feature they should instead be trying to reduce.

If this view of transport is taken, what would be the implications? It would remove the distinction between road and rail, and suggest that the controlling authority should be something like a State Transport Authority whose main administrative divisions would control independent transport, hire-and-reward transport and scheduled transport.

Control of land use planning, infrastructure funding, energy supply and transport safety could be assigned to separate agencies, as environmental performance already is. Subsidiary tasks within transport would call for relatively specialised agencies to manage the road system, the rail system and to plan the public transport services. It is assumed that these would be State bodies, because the Australian constitution currently considers transport mostly a State responsibility, but this is not strictly necessary.

Of the three basic elements affecting transport (infrastructure, vehicles and land use), the Transport Authority - and its specialised road and rail arms - would be most concerned with infrastructure, while also defining standards for vehicles licensed to use it. Land use planning would have little transport input apart from accessibility considerations (as below).

Of the three basic two-way interactions affecting transport, the Transport Authority would need the skills to manage traffic (matching infrastructure and vehicles) and land use/transport integration (matching infrastructure and land use). Constraints on funding, safety, the environment and energy could be managed by other agencies. The provision of services (matching vehicles and land use) would be a commercial matter for service providers.

The pricing regime is where all three elements are brought together, and the Transport Authority would need the expertise and the political support to manage it.

A transport strategy to match this framework would seek to increase the reliability of scheduled services; to decrease the cost of hire-and-reward services; and probably to reduce the energy consumption of independent movement (assuming that it would be generally available in some form to those who want it). Pricing would be a major policy tool for the second and third of these strands.