Transportation

Transportation involves the methods by which players move around the world or between worlds. This includes walking, sprinting, swimming, flying, riding saddled pigs, using minecarts, boats, and portals, and even using TNT cannons.

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 that the time taken by a boat to reach maximum speed is 9.4 seconds—the difference in time between a running start and not, is half that, or 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.
 * The swimming speeds assume still water, and are not affected by Swiftness potions.

Potions
Using potions of swiftness, walking and sprinting speeds become competitive with other methods of transportation. Using a 100m level track, the following times and speeds were obtained:

Each additional level of Speed allowed the player to walk at nearly the sprinting speed of the previous level, and sprinting with Speed II allowed the player to keep pace with a minecart on fully powered rail. With adequate food and potion supplies, sprinting may be more cost-effective than building high-speed transportation systems.

Vertical speeds
Some vertical times are also known:
 * Using any method of elevating yourself that relies purely on jumping, including climbing a slope without stairs and pillar jumping, you cannot rise faster than about 2.0 m/s.
 * Walking up stairs, you will ascend by about 3.2 m/s. Walking down is slightly faster at 3.6 m/s
 * On ladders, you go up at about 2.3 m/s and down at 3.0 m/s. (From experiment)
 * In creative mode, flying vertically is slower than horizontal flight: 7.5 m/s (from experiment)
 * Falling down a waterfall, you drop at 2.0 m/s. Swimming up is only slightly slower, 1.9 m/s.
 * Going up or down a lavafall (in the Overworld, and assuming you can survive) moves at 0.8 m/s. (from experiment)
 * Falling speed is more complex: Every tick (1/20 second), non-flying players and mobs have their vertical speed decremented (less upward motion, more downward motion) by 0.08 blocks per tick (1.6 m/s), then multiplied by 0.98.  This would produce a terminal velocity of 3.92 blocks per tick, or 78.4 m/s.  However, the sky isn't quite high enough for that:  Falling from layer 256 to bedrock takes about 5.5 seconds, with impact at 3.5 blocks per tick (70 m/s).  (In creative mode, you can fly higher, and could potentially reach terminal velocity falling from "above the sky".)

Other modes of transportation
The player can only use portals to travel between dimensions such as the Nether or the End. Yet, if the player creates a portal in the Nether and re-enters the overworld, any distance covered in the Nether is multiplied by 8, effectively making the Nether a fast travel zone that allows for greater distances to be covered in a short amount of time in the normal world (in the Xbox 360 edition, this factor is 3 instead of 8, probably because of the world size limit).

Players are also able to use pistons for transport.

Players can pillar to reach high locations; this type of movement is commonly attributed to new players.

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. This also works with saddled pigs, provided they stay in position (placed on posts).

Throwing Ender Pearls will teleport the player to the spot where the Pearl lands, at the cost of two and a half hearts in fall damage.

The player may also utilize waterfalls to move vertically up or down. This can be useful when attempting to build below a platform with no conventional means of getting down. Also, players can repeatedly place and remove water above themselves while swimming upwards in order to reach high locations when ladders and other forms of vertical transportation are unavailable.