A road is an identifiable route of travel, usually surfaced with gravel, asphalt or concrete, and supporting land passage by foot or by a number of vehicles.
The most common road vehicle is the automobile; a wheeled passenger vehicle that carries its own motor. Other users of roads include buses, trucks, motorcycles, bicycles and pedestrians. As of 2010, there were 1.015 billion automobiles worldwide. Road transport offers complete freedom to road users to transfer the vehicle from one lane to the other and from one road to another according to the need and convenience. This flexibility of changes in location, direction, speed, and timings of travel is not available to other modes of transport. It is possible to provide door-to-door service only by road transport.
Automobiles provide high flexibility with low capacity, but require high energy and area use, and are the main source of harmful noise and air pollution in cities;[8] buses allow for more efficient travel at the cost of reduced flexibility.
Road transport by truck is often the initial and final stage of freight transport.