All exercise questions (and the in-text questions asked within the chapter) from the NCERT textbook Fundamentals of Human Geography, Chapter 7, “Transport and Communication”, exactly as the English edition prints them, with a full model answer for each. Try your own answer first, then check it against this one.
1 Choose the right answer from the four alternatives given below
Q. The Trans-Continental Stuart Highway runs between
(a) Darwin and Melbourne (b) Edmonton and Anchorage (c) Vancouver and St. John’s City (d) Chengdu and Lhasa
Answer: (a) Darwin and Melbourne. The chapter states the Trans-Continental Stuart Highway connects Darwin (north coast) and Melbourne via Tennant Creek and Alice Springs in Australia. Edmonton-Anchorage is the Alaska Highway, Vancouver-St. John’s City is the Trans-Canadian Highway, and Chengdu-Lhasa is a highway named under China, not this route.
Q. Which country has the highest density of railway network?
(a) Brazil (b) U.S.A (c) Canada (d) Russia
Answer: (b) U.S.A. The chapter states that North America has one of the most extensive rail networks, accounting for nearly 40 per cent of the world’s total, and that the most dense rail network is found in the highly industrialised and urbanised region of East Central U.S.A. and adjoining Canada. By contrast, in Canada the railways are distributed all over sparsely populated areas, in South America the network is dense only in two small regions (the Pampas of Argentina and the coffee-growing region of Brazil), and in Russia the dense network is confined to the region west of the Urals across a vast geographical area.
Q. The Big Trunk Route runs through
(a) The Mediterranean – Indian ocean (b) The North Atlantic Ocean (c) The South Atlantic Ocean (d) The North Pacific Ocean
Answer: (b) The North Atlantic Ocean. The chapter names the Northern Atlantic Sea Route as the one that is “otherwise called the Big Trunk Route”, carrying one-fourth of the world’s foreign trade and busier than any other route.
Q. The Big Inch pipeline transports
(a) Milk (b) Liquid petroleum gas (LGP) (c) Water (d) Petroleum
Answer: (d) Petroleum. The chapter states “Big Inch is one such famous pipeline, which carries petroleum from the oil wells of the Gulf of Mexico to the North-eastern States.” Milk-by-pipeline is the chapter’s New Zealand example, not Big Inch.
Q. Which one pair of the following places is linked by Channel Tunnel?
(a) London – Berlin (b) Paris – London (c) Berlin – Paris (d) Barcelona – Berlin
Answer: (b) Paris – London. The chapter states the Channel Tunnel, operated by Euro Tunnel Group through England, “connects London with Paris”.
2 Answer the following questions in about 30 words
Q. What are the problems of road transport in mountainous, desert and flood prone regions?
Answer: Mountainous regions: steep slopes are often not suitable for building roads (ropeways and cableways are used there instead), and in regions like the Himalayas routes are often obstructed by landslides, avalanches or heavy snowfall. Deserts: inhospitable desert terrain and vast, sparsely populated areas make roads costly to build and maintain, so animals such as camels are still used for caravan movement. Flood-prone regions: unmetalled roads become unmotorable in the rainy season, and even metalled roads are seriously handicapped during heavy rains and floods.
Q. What is a trans-continental railway?
Answer: Trans-continental railways run across a continent and link its two ends. They were constructed for economic and political reasons, to facilitate long runs in different directions, and examples include the Trans-Siberian, Trans-Canadian and Australian Trans-Continental railways.
Q. What are the advantages of water transport?
Answer: Water transportation does not require route construction, only port facilities at the two ends. It is much cheaper because the friction of water is far less than that of land, so its energy cost is lower, and it is well suited for carrying bulky material over long distances.
3 Answer the following questions in not more than 150 words
Q. Elucidate the statement – “In a well managed transport system, various modes complement each other”.
Answer: Every mode of transport is best suited to a particular kind of movement, and a well-managed system uses each mode where it works best rather than relying on only one. International movement of goods is handled by ocean freighters, which are the cheapest way of carrying bulky material over long distances between continents. Road transport is cheaper and faster over short distances and offers door-to-door service, so it is important for local and last-mile movement. Railways are most suited for carrying large volumes of bulky materials over long distances within a country, since they combine capacity with reasonable cost. High-value, light and perishable goods, where speed matters more than cost, are best moved by airways, the fastest but costliest mode. Pipelines, meanwhile, carry liquids and gases such as water, petroleum and natural gas continuously, a job no other mode can do efficiently. Because no single mode can economically serve every kind of good, every distance and every terrain, an efficient transport network deliberately combines roads, railways, waterways, airways and pipelines, each carrying the traffic it is best suited for, so that together they complement rather than duplicate one another.
Q. Which are the major regions of the world having a dense network of airways.
Answer: In the Northern Hemisphere there is a distinct east-west belt of inter-continental air routes, and the chapter names a dense network in three regions: Eastern U.S.A., Western Europe and Southeast Asia. The U.S.A. alone accounts for 60 per cent of the airways of the world. New York, London, Paris, Amsterdam, Frankfurt, Rome, Moscow, Karachi, New Delhi, Mumbai, Bangkok, Singapore, Tokyo, San Francisco, Los Angeles and Chicago are the nodal points where these air routes converge or radiate to all continents. By contrast, Africa, the Asiatic part of Russia and South America lack air services, and there are only limited air services between 10-35 degrees latitude in the Southern hemisphere, because of sparser population, limited landmass and lower economic development in those regions.
Q. What are the modes by which cyber space will expand the contemporary economic and social space of humans.
Answer: As billions of people use the Internet each year, cyberspace, the electronic digital world encompassed by the Internet and the World Wide Web, will expand the contemporary economic and social space of humans through e-mail, e-commerce, e-learning and e-governance. The Internet, together with fax, television and radio, will be accessible to more and more people, cutting across place and time. It is these modern communication systems, more than transportation, that have made the concept of the global village a reality, since cyberspace exists everywhere, in an office, a sailing boat, a flying plane and virtually anywhere, letting people communicate or access information over computer networks without any physical movement of the sender and the receiver.
4 In-text questions (asked within the chapter)
Q. Find out some of the important ports on the coast of U.S.A. and Western Europe in your atlas.
Answer: These are the two ends of the Northern Atlantic Sea Route (the Big Trunk Route). Important ports on the (north-eastern) coast of the U.S.A.: New York, Boston, Philadelphia and Baltimore. Important ports of Western Europe: London, Liverpool, Rotterdam, Antwerp, Hamburg and Le Havre. (Locate each of them in your atlas.)
Q. Can you think of the impact on traffic in Panama canal after the Nicaraguan canal opens up?
Answer: A canal across Nicaragua would be a second short-cut between the Atlantic and the Pacific Oceans, so part of the shipping that now uses the Panama Canal would shift to it. Traffic through the Panama Canal, and the tolls it earns, would therefore fall, and competition between the two canals could lower tolls and waiting time for ships. Ships for which the Nicaraguan route is shorter, or which are too large for the Panama Canal’s locks, would be the first to shift.