Blaise Pascal, the mathematician, helped launch the first city bus in 1662
The first organised public transit within a city seems to have run in Paris in 1662, and one of the minds behind it was Blaise Pascal, better known for probability and his calculating machine. His carriages cost five sols a ride and followed set routes. The service folded in 1677, and Paris waited a long time for another.
Paying to be carried is far older than Pascal. Water came first: ferries appear even in Greek myth, where Charon demanded a fee before rowing souls to Hades. Later came stagecoaches running fixed routes between coaching inns and, from the 17th century, horse-drawn boats taking fare-paying passengers along European canals. Buses reappeared in Nantes by 1826 and reached London in July 1829.
Rails changed the scale. A horse-drawn passenger service began on the Swansea and Mumbles Railway in 1806. George Stephenson's Locomotion No 1 pulled trains on the Stockton and Darlington, the first public steam railway, from 1825, and London opened a steam-hauled underground line in 1863. Electric streetcars, first made to work well in 1888, carried heavier loads, which lowered fares and drew more riders; two years after a pioneering system in Richmond, over 32,000 were running in America. Nobody fancied smoky steam tunnels, so electricity also made subways appealing, and in 1894 Boston put a streetcar line into a 1.5-mile tunnel under Tremont Street, the first American subway.
How people judge a trip comes down to a handful of qualities: speed including transfers, comfort, safety, cost, how close the stop is, how long the wait lasts and how directly the route runs. Predictable, comfortable travel makes the time itself feel less important, while waiting and changing vehicles feel worst. Ownership varies widely. Many Japanese urban lines belong to profit-making private companies tied to property development, North American transit is usually run by public authorities, and Europe mixes state and contracted private operators.
In March 2020 Luxembourg scrapped fares on its trains, trams and buses, becoming the first country with entirely free public transport.
Source: Public transport
