Theoretical aspects of transport cartography

Abstract

The purpose of the article is to justify transport cartography as a special scientific field. The versatility of transport as an object of research leads to its socio-economic and technical aspects being studied by various sciences. The history of this field of knowledge is considered briefly in order to understand the place transport cartography occupies in the system of sciences, and its periodization has been carried out from the 1830s to today. When determining the position of transport cartography in the system of sciences, the core of this scientific direction is identified – it is the condominium of transport geography and the general theory of cartography, as well as its environment – a set of sciences attracted by transport cartography for studying reality. The disciplines allied to transport geography – such as population geography and general economic geography, as well as transport statistics, space researches, the ecology of transport, mathematics, general systems theory and the history of transport are taken as the environment. The boundaries of transport cartography as a scientific direction are delineated; its subject of study and eight major tasks are defined.