What is land transport and transport via pipelines in ISIC Rev. 5?

Land transport and transport via pipelines in ISIC Rev. 5, published by the UN Statistics Division, covers moving people and goods over land by rail, road and pipeline. It includes passenger and freight rail, bus and coach services, taxi and other road passenger transport, road freight, and the transport of liquids and gases through pipelines. The mode is the organising idea: land based movement, whatever the vehicle or the cargo, sits together, while water and air movement sit in their own groups. Any code for a particular operator must be confirmed with the national statistical institute or business register that holds the record.

Which land journeys count here, and which nearby jobs do not?

Land transport and transport via pipelines in ISIC Rev. 5, published by the UN Statistics Division, covers moving people and goods over land by rail, road and pipeline. The organising idea is the land mode itself. Passenger and freight rail, bus and coach services, taxi and other road passenger transport, road freight, and the transport of liquids and gases through pipelines all sit together here, whatever the vehicle or the cargo, while water and air movement sit in their own groups.

The activities below on land transport and transport via pipelines are described in ISIC Rev. 5, published by the UN Statistics Division, as part of this grouping. Read the list as a set of examples of the kind of work included, not as a complete code list, since the full publication gives the authoritative detail.

Activity	Note
Rail transport of passengers and freight	Described in this grouping in ISIC Rev. 5
Road passenger transport including buses, coaches and taxis	Described in this grouping in ISIC Rev. 5
Road freight transport	Described in this grouping in ISIC Rev. 5
Transport via pipelines	Described in this grouping in ISIC Rev. 5
Other land passenger and freight services where described in Rev. 5	Described in this grouping in ISIC Rev. 5

A list or a table cannot capture every case, so an activity that is not listed here may still belong in the grouping if the full class description covers it, and a listed activity may need closer checking in a mixed business.

What do a lorry run and a pipeline run have in common?

A freight firm that moves containers by lorry from a port to inland warehouses illustrates road freight at its most ordinary. Lorries are loaded at the quayside, driven along roads to warehouses inland, and unloaded for storage or onward distribution. The cargo, the lorry, and the road all change from job to job, but the service stays the same: goods are carried over land from one place to another by a road operator.

A pipeline operator that moves gas through a cross country pipeline illustrates the same grouping from a very different angle. Nothing is driven, loaded by hand, or timetabled like a lorry run. Gas enters the pipeline at one point, travels under pressure through fixed pipe, and leaves at another point for distribution or use. The vehicle is the pipeline itself, and the journey is continuous rather than trip by trip. Yet the service is still land transport, because the mode is land based and the work is movement, not production of the gas or construction of the pipe.

Road freight is visible, varied, and made of separate trips. Pipeline transport is fixed, continuous, and almost invisible to the public. Both move things over land, and both are therefore described here, while a ship or an aircraft carrying the same load would be described by mode elsewhere.

Where do stations, depots and pipeline upkeep sit?

Operating a railway station, running a bus depot and maintaining a pipeline are support activities that sit near, but not inside, the core transport operation in every case. The full Rev. 5 text should be checked to see whether a support function is grouped with transport or with support activities for transportation. A station provides a place to board, a depot provides a base for vehicles, and pipeline upkeep keeps the pipe in working order, but none of those jobs is itself the carrying of passengers or goods along a route.

That distinction bites in mixed firms: a rail company that both runs trains and operates stations performs both a transport activity and a support activity, and the descriptions for each must be read separately.

How does this grouping sit inside the wider Rev. 5 tree?

The revision contains 22 sections from A to V, 87 divisions, 258 groups and 463 classes, and each grouping sits inside that tree. A broad section tells you the field, while the levels below it tell you the market, the service type and the precise activity.

Use this guide only as orientation to a statistical grouping, and leave any formal decision to the body that holds the record. It does not fix any reader’s code, principal activity, or registration, and it is not a licence, a permission, or a transport authorisation. For a code that will appear on a formal record, confirm it with the national statistical institute or business register that holds that record.