Transportation

Transportation is the method by which players move around the map. This includes walking, sprinting, swimming, minecarts (as of the 24th of June 2010), and boats (as of the 16th of July 2010).

Speed
The speed of travel varies depending on method and conditions. The fastest methods seem to be either a minecart or boat down a slope (unless you count the sprinting bug), both of which travel at approximately 7 meters per second (m/s). However, there are some sprinting bugs that can make the player travel faster, detailed below. The speed of any form of travel can be approximated simply by measuring the time taken to travel some known distance. In the below experiment, the speeds of various methods and conditions were calculated based upon the time taken to travel 100 meters along the ramp shown below.


 * Average is given by the arithmetic mean, sum(x1, x2, ..., xn)/n
 * Speed is given by the definition of speed, &Delta;distance/&Delta;time

From this data, we can infer the time taken by a boat to reach maximum speed as the difference in time between having a running start and not while on flat water: 20.93 - 16.23 = 4.7 seconds.

One noteworthy point is that a boat does not seem to be significantly faster when going down rapids rather than traveling at top speed on flat water.

Other transportation
Players are also able to use pistons for transport.

Besides boats and minecarts, players can also ride pigs which have been saddled. However, the player has no control over the pig's wandering, and so this is not a practical form of long-distance transportation.

Players are able to fly in Creative mode.

In addition, there are two bugs when a player is Sprinting that can be exploited to create very high speeds:

Sprinting and jumping while in a 2 block high tunnel or house will cause a speed almost twice as high as regular sprinting speed. This is rather inefficient however, as this can easily drain food at a rate of about 1 unit per second.

Doing the same as above, except above Ice allows the player to move at an astonishing 16 blocks per second. That is twice as fast as a full speed minecart on powered rails.

It is possible to mount minecarts and boats as long as they are within 32 blocks (inclusive) from the player. Placing minecarts in a straight line allows for extremely fast transport, with speeds upwards of 100 blocks per second.

Another method of emergency transport would be the enderpearls. By throwing them, the player will be teleported to the place where the enderpearl fell. this comes with a downside, though, as fall damage of 2.5 hearts. It is not suggested that one uses it if health is low. Do note that there is a chance that a player teleports in the vicinity of more mobs when escaping from mobs if the pearl is thrown randomly.

On October 11, 2011 Jeb tweeted that Dragon Riding is a possibility. That would add a way of transportation by air. It's not yet confirmed.

History
In the Seecret Friday Update 1, Minecarts were added. Boats were added later in the Seecret Friday Update 5. Sprinting was then added in the 1.8 Beta update.