Transportation is the moving of people or goods from place to place. The whole business of getting things about.
American English uses it as the ordinary word for what Britain calls transport, so a Department of Transportation and public transportation are both standard there. British English keeps transportation mostly for a grim historical sense, since transportation was the punishment of shipping convicts to Australia, and it was in use into the 1860s. That history is why the two countries diverge on such an everyday word.
1nountransportationThe movement of people or goods, or the system that provides it.
“The city has spent heavily on public transportation.”
Also accepted in games: transport
Old French
transporter
Middle English
transporten
English
transport
English, today
transportation
From transport + -ation. transport comes from Middle English transporten, from Old French transporter. Middle English transporten, a borrowing from Old French transporter (“carry or convey across”), from Latin trānsportō (“to carry over, take across, carry, convey, remove, transport”), from trāns- + portō. by surface analysis, trans- + port.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA