Talk:Public transport

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[edit] Scope

Why is this restrict to ground transportation?

Should ferries be public transport too?

How about conveyer belt type people mover?

Indeed, why? Probably because the original author relied on people adding more unusal forms later on :-) I'll get right on it. Conveyer belt would be fine, but i have never seen an actual transportations system built of them. Though that is not saying that it's non-exsistant.. --Anders Törlind

in Hong Kong, tens of thousands of commuters travel each work day between the Central District (a financial district) and the Mid Level (a residential district hundreds of feet up the hill side) using a long distance conveyer belt + esculator combination. The conveyer belt only goes one way and reverses depending on rush hour traffic direction. Since the sole purpose of the system is to ease road traffic by providing commuters with a different means of travel, it could be classified as a public transport system. Add to the article if you see fit. This thing DOES exist!
Wow! I've gotta haul my behind there to see that thing! Of course it goes on the listing! --Anders Törlind
http://www.gohome.com.hk/District_Photo/23E002.jpg http://www.urban.com.hk/images/psfm2.gif See more pictures at http://hk.yahoo.com/headlines/010726/hongkong/mingpao/goa2txt.html The whole system is 800 meters long, the vertical climb is 135 meters. Total travel time is 20 minutes, but most people walk while the system moves to shorten the travel time. Due to its vertical climb, the same distance is equivalent to several miles of zigzaging roads if travelled by car. It consists of 20 esculators and 3 conveyer belts. Daily traffic exceeds 35000 people. It was put in service since 1993. It cost HK$ 240,000,000 (around $US 30,000,000) to build.
Cool! Theese would be nice on the conveyor belt page :-) --Anders Törlind

Would the experts like to add this information on the conveyor belt page? -olivier 17:49 Oct 26, 2002 (UTC)

[edit] Long distance

Do long-distance (scheduled) trains, buses, and planes count as public transport? Robert Merkel

No quite sure actually...I've always had the impression that public transport is something subsidized by the local government in order to provide taxpayers with cheap (and at least for the city) convenient transport. That would exclude a lot of the long-distance routes, but there are many instances where public transport could extend quite a ways from a city, and infact be a countrywide network of routes with short distances between every stop (as evidenced by the "länstrafik" in Sweden by the way). --Anders Törlind

So far as I know, there is no limit on long-distance a route can be and still be considered public transport. (What else would you call it?)

The only real exception I can think of is that planes rarely seem to be considered public transport - perhaps because they are used even by people who go everywhere else by car? --AdamW

Do long-distance (scheduled) trains, buses, and planes count as public transport?

Of course. Public transport is any form of passenger transport on/in which members of the public can ride (normally against payment - though there are instances of free public transport). Thus my car is not public transport (not just anyone can ride in it); a taxi, though, IS (it's available to any member of the public). A private jet is not public transport (that's why it's called a private jet); a privately owned British Airways jet IS public transport, however, when it flies on a scheduled route to which anyone who can pay the fare has access. -- Picapica 11:18, 7 Jul 2004 (UTC)

As a 35 year veteran of bus transportation of many types in the U.S., I think I can shed some light here. The terminology public transit or public transportation has been increasingly used to define the government-supported services which receive funding from the U.S. federal government, initially under Urban Mass Transit Administration (UMTA) and later under its successor, Federal Transit Administration (FTA). Because the recipient organizations operating with this assistance essentially receive free or almost free capital equipment, (IE 80-100% federal and state funds), they must operate under different rules than the non-subsidized "private" sector, which includes public stock companies such as Greyhound (Laidlaw), Coach U.S.A., and many,.many smaller organziations. The "private" sector providers seem to prefer words other than public transportation to define their services, IE charter service, tours, motorcoach, etc, even though some or most of their services are also available to the public, either as individual passengers, or as groups.
The American Public Transit Association (APTA) primarily represents the first group (dependent upon capitol grant funding) and American Bus Association (ABA) and United Motorcoach Association (UMA) represent the second group.
Vaoverland 07:23, Dec 29, 2004 (UTC)
I'd say it's fairly simple. Literally, public transport is any form of transport that is open to the public, pretty much the way Picapica said it. But in practise it has to come to mean transport for the poor, which means forms other than publicly funded have started using different names, as Vaoverland stipulates. But this not only applies to some private bus companies in the US but also to airplanes and taxis. But I once read that the term applies only to mass transportation, which might exclude taxis, except for shared taxis. DirkvdM 10:15, 5 October 2005 (UTC)

>>in practise it has to come to mean transport for the poor<< ...in the US, I take it you mean. I'd hardly call the vast majority of the 300 million+ annual travellers on the Swiss Federal Railways (not to mention the trams, buses, boats, etc.) "poor"... Indeed, you have to be fairly well-off these days to be able to afford to use much of the public transport system in Great Britain! -- Picapica 16:36, 22 March 2007 (UTC)

I agree with the direction of this argument, and that we should include long distance inter-city services as public transport, and by extension I think we have to include long-haul flight destinations, or where else do we draw the line? The definition of public transport that we are using seems to be 'vehicles that are either shared simultaneously or in sequence for personal travel and which are available for use by general members of the public as long as they hold an appropriate ticket/pass/license'.

[edit] What transport modes are 'Cool'?

There has been a discussion in 'Long Distance' about what transport modes are 'cool' in what parts of the world. I am pulling this discussion out into a new section with the sugestion that it needs its own sub-section in 'Social and Cultural'.

  • >>in practise it has to come to mean transport for the poor<< ...in the US, I take it you mean. I'd hardly call the vast majority of the 300 million+ annual travellers on the Swiss Federal Railways (not to mention the trams, buses, boats, etc.) "poor"... Indeed, you have to be fairly well-off these days to be able to afford to use much of the public transport system in Great Britain! -- Picapica 16:36, 22 March 2007 (UTC)
  • I agree with Picapica that many rail routes in the UK are a rich person's transport mode, for example a 'standard open return' from London to Liverpool currently costing £205 working out at 50p per mile! In the UK it is the Coach that is regarded as the 'distress purchase', however in Spain the Coach is a "cool and acceptable" (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/6413839.stm), so it is all very cultural and local, and that is something it might be useful to draw out within the article. The bike is also 'cool' in the UK (http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/article2500754.ece) (PeterIto 09:48, 30 October 2007 (UTC))

[edit] Oldest public transport

This appears under "History"

Since 1876, the Sundbåt ("Harbor Boat") of Norwegian coastal city Kristiansund N has been carrying passengers between the four islands that the city is built on. Still running, the Sundbåt is the world's oldest regular public transport service in continuous operation.

What is the basis of that assertion? I can think of four older services without straining too hard:

  1. Metropolitan Line of London Transport (1863)
  2. Long Island Rail Road Brooklyn to Jamaica (1867)
  3. District line of London Transport (1864)
  4. New York Battery to Staten Island Ferry (probably continuous from about 1817, when steamboats began in use, but certainly from about 1860, when the Staten Island Railroad opened)

Is there some definition of "regular public transport service in continuous operation" that I'm missing? -- Cecropia | explains it all ® 04:49, 29 Dec 2004 (UTC)

I just noticed that and removed it, and was going to ask about it here. --SPUI (talk) 5 July 2005 08:10 (UTC)

--agr 21:55, 15 Mar 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Move intermodal

I'd like to move the intermodal discussion to its own page Intermodal passenger transport, with more catigorization and examples. Any objections? Also anyone know what intermodal facility the South Bend, Indiana link refers to ?--agr 21:55, 15 Mar 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Intermodal facilities

I removed Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport as an example and replaced it with Baltimore-Washington International Airport. DCA is not convenient to any interstate highways and is not served by heavy rail. Newark International Airport might be an even better example as it has more extensive bus service. -choster 19:11, 23 July 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Introductory paragraph

In the introduction I am unhappy with the slant that poor countries (make that poor people) need public transport because they cannot afford cars. Even with cars for everyone one does need public transport. The car uses space rather inefficiently compared to its transport capacity, causing congestion problems once settlements become denser than the average suburban sprawl. At least in Europe one starts to commiserate the poor souls (even those with money) that have to travel by car and cannot whiz into town on a shiny tram. -- Klaus with K 18:00, 13 September 2005 (UTC)

Funny, in America it's the other way around. Often the poor people riding light rail can only look out grimly in desperation as their aging, frequently vandalized trams rumble along at 45 mph (with frequent scheduled stops and poor temperature control), while middle class and upper class people race by at 65 mph (or even faster) in their spacious air-conditioned vehicles with high-quality sound systems and leather seats. Of course, most of our infrastructure is more car-friendly. --Coolcaesar 03:55, 30 September 2005 (UTC)
I suppose Klaus meant that potentially public transportation is much more efficient than an overload of private cars (causing traffic jams). If there were only public transportation, the way it's done in the third world, with mini-buses, then there would only be about a third of the amount of cars in the streets (on average 5 people per car in stead of 1 1/2), thus eliminating the traffic jams. And that's to start with. Because of this trips are twice as fast, halving the amount of cars again (etc ?). And the lack of parked cars would mean more space and possibly more efficiency (read: speed).
This is a problem I run into again and again when I say public transportation should be improved. The counterargument is then that's it's so horrible. But that's my argument! If only it were done properly then people would see how efficient it can be. And not something for poor people, but better for everyone. This can be seen at work in poor countries. But of course rich countries could do that much better, if only people wouldn't be addicted to their own car and the notion that it's more efficient.
By the way, the speeds you mention aren't too impressive. Private cars would then be only 40% faster than trams. And that's when they're driving. I don't know your situation, but often private cars make more stops (traffic lights) and are therefore slower on average. If there is public transportation in the first place. I've been to the US and it's a whole lot worse than in Europe, which in turn is a whole lot worse than 3rd world countries (with the Dutch trains being one exception). DirkvdM 10:26, 30 September 2005 (UTC)
Well, as for the issue of parked cars, that does contribute to congestion in urban areas. That's why most California suburbs have broad boulevards with bike lanes but no curb parking, so that vehicles can fly along at high speed without having to slow for vehicles attempting parallel parking.
As for the "more stops" argument, that may be true for cars in high-density areas, but not in areas where streets are constructed so that they feed into an arterial road network where traffic lights are reserved only for intersections between major arterial roads and for where arterial roads meet streets that feed into local neighborhoods. In such areas, when traffic lights are properly synchronized and kept about a mile apart, cars can move for several miles through several consecutive intersections without stopping. If there is a freeway or expressway, the speed advantage is even more obvious. In contrast, a light rail trolley along the same route may have to make three or four scheduled stops within the same distance.
Furthermore, it is rare that a single light rail line happens to be a perfect match between any given person's home and workplace (that is, within a reasonable half-mile walk of the station), necessitating one or more time-consuming transfers. In contrast, a driver can simply turn at an intersection or race through the ramps at an interchange. --Coolcaesar 05:08, 6 October 2005 (UTC)
A problem I was faced with in my last edit was keeping it general. You live in a specific situation. And so do I. Here in Amsterdam the canals are lined with trees, so having no cars parked between them would create no extra lanes (often not even for pedestrians, really). But on non-canal streets it would. And I suppose that is the most common situation. Most countries don't have the space the US have and city streets are fixed by history - broad boulevards are the exception. And all the rest of the central planning that makes modern cities (ie cities without a substantial pre-20th century history) so well suited to cars is not the norm. Having highways is a city is not 'normal'. And synchronised traffic lights are rare in my experience (and I've traveled around the world).
Also, you compare private cars with metrorail (or trams or whatever), which is not fair. These are indeed troubled by the few stations (although in Amsterdam it is not normal that you can park your car right in front of the destination - there just isn't enough room for enough parking spaces in most old cities). What would be fair would be a comparison between an all-out private car system (something which most places come pretty close to) and an all-out public transport system, without any private cars getting in the way (which no place I know of comes even close to). In that comparison public transport would win hands down. Just look at the minibus-system in third world countries. Because of the lack of private cars and their flexibility they're very efficient (especially if you have the money to make a bus leave straight away and drop you off at the destination - no parking problem either). And what they can do we rich westerners can surely do better, right? If only there would be the political will, which in a democracy is determined by the will of the people, who, for lack of knowledge of the potential efficiency of public transport, will not vote for it. Compare the Singapore bus system - one of the most efficient ones I've ever experienced (though I would certainly not want to live there, but that's a different matter - despite the disadvantages of democracy I wouldn't want to do without it). DirkvdM 09:25, 7 October 2005 (UTC)
I think we both understand each other's positions at this point, and there's probably no middle ground---we are coming at the subject of transportation with fundamentally different assumptions about human psychology (that is, what people want). I'm not sure we need to take this discussion any further.
Anyway, to get an idea of the kind of transportation development pattern I am referring to, you might want to look at a photo I took for the Traffic light article, at [1]. --Coolcaesar 00:29, 10 October 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Transit Planning or Public Transport Planning

I think this new section needs to be cleaned up and made a separate article. --agr 00:47, 30 September 2005 (UTC)

From the article:
Other topics Wiki contributors are invited to comment on include:
  • Demand Forecasting
  • Fleet Forecasting
  • Time Transfer Systems
  • Nodes
  • Transportation Modelling
  • Pedestrian Oriented Development
  • History of Transit Planing including influential planners from history (note Blaise Pascal http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blaise_Pascal] is often credited with planning the first bus route, in Paris)
  • Bus Stations and Exchanges
  • Intermodal Terminals
  • Urban Form
  • Bus Rapid Transit [2]
  • Service Levels
  • Demand Service
  • Policy Service Levels
  • Training
  • Relationship with Transit Scheduling
  • Density
  • Reliability
  • Transit Priority
  • This whole area of transport modeling, planning and operations is still completely missing from the article. I would suggest it is worthy of a short paragraph in the many article, and the its own separate article. I am sure suppliers of the equipment could be encouraged to contribute content. The subject of publicity (timetables, journey planning etc) is also still missing. Possibly again this needs a short paragraph and a separate article and examples of publicity taken from around the world in this fast changing area. (PeterIto 09:55, 30 October 2007 (UTC))

[edit] principle of economy of scale

This should at least be mentioned. That is one of the major reasons why public transport is adopted, after all. In the context of pollution, there is a reduced amount of pollution per passenger as the amount of passengers increases, reduced amount of fuel, - which basically is just an economy of scale in a different context. Should this not be mentioned? -- Elle vécut heureusement toujours dorénavant (Be eudaimonic!) 09:21, 3 January 2006 (UTC)

Fine by me, but I would not reduce it to fuel consumption, space considerations IMHO are even more important, in particular in city centres. --Klaus with K 22:04, 5 January 2006 (UTC)
More specifically fewer driving and parked cars, which creates more room, which facilitates faster throughput, which makes fewer vehicles necessary, etc. Not ad infinitum, of course, it will stabilise at some point, but the more public transport is used, the stronger this effect is. I've been thinking about this a few years ago and concluded that if all transportation of people in a city were to be done with public transportation that would reduce the traffic by about 90%. Not just because of this, but also because traffic flow can be centrally coordinated and traffic lights are no longer needed. Which will have a big effect.
Ultimately, traffic jams are a cumulative effect. Once you start countering that, the effect of that will also be cumulative. Which is the reason for the enormous effect. I once used statistics of commuters in Amsterdam to calculate that only a few thousand mini-vans are needed to transport all those people within one or two hours (can't remember precisely now). And that's the busiest tome of the day, meaning only a fraction would be needed for the rest of the day (the rest can then be parked outside the city). Amsterdam is about 200 km2 big, so 2000 vans would mean 10 vans per km2. Is that light traffic or what? Of course, that presents a problem; there has to be a van available (for the direction you're going in) within a reasonable amount of time. So probably more vans are needed, but even then.... And since it's centrally coordinated, we can use the information age technology. People can call in where and when they need transport to where and a computer system can then figure out the best routes (but this could in principle also be done with private cars).
But this constitutes original research, so I didn't dare add it to this extent until I found another source, which I haven't yet (because I haven't been searching yet, basically). DirkvdM 07:06, 6 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] False etymology?

I'm removing "The former usage stems from tradition, while the latter is intended to avoid confusion because a "transport" is generally a vehicle in the modern vernacular." This derivation does not seem likely to me. The word "transport" is primarily a verb in the U.S. The article on American English cites transport/transportation as an example of British-American differences with a differing explaination, and suggests transportation may well be the older usage. --agr 03:31, 22 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Is it just me or this article needs sources?

Funny how there is a lot of information here but no sources (other than the citation to the Nicole Achs article which I added more than a year ago). I guess most public transit fans are stuck on the bus or train too often to get over to the public library and look up some more sources! (I'm more of a freeway person, by the way.) --Coolcaesar 01:23, 24 March 2006 (UTC)

Wow. Over a year has gone by and three of the four sources cited in this article are ones that I looked up. I guess my hypothesis about public transit fans being stuck on the bus or train may be right. (Hint hint -- I'm trying to challenge you guys to add some sources here!) --Coolcaesar 08:49, 15 May 2007 (UTC)
Perhaps the sources (other than those already cited) simply don't exist. The advantages and desirability of mass-transit may yet turn out to be overrated. 71.142.73.145 (talk) 21:53, 7 January 2008 (UTC)

[edit] public?

When I think of "public" transport I think of government funded. Pellaken 15:53, 24 March 2006 (UTC)

That is the case in many countries, but it is not always the case. In Britain, almost all public transport operators (including both bus lines and railways) are privately-owned companies, and some operate without government subsidy, or even pay the government a dividend. David Arthur 17:11, 24 March 2006 (UTC)
That's funny. In the United States, we used to have many privately-owned public transportation firms but nearly all of them went out of business in the 1950s and 1960s. Subsidized government agencies took over most of their operations. There still are a few private companies in the business, but they are rare. For example, some of the bus lines in Los Angeles are operated by small private companies under the supervision of government agencies. And the Las Vegas Monorail is organized as a nonprofit charity that is independent of the Nevada government. --Coolcaesar 20:35, 24 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Free Systems

I started on this the other day with the idea of completing the list of services shown here, asking my colleagues from the new mobility group to have a look and do the same. We have started to do this, but then began to discuss that there are two very different kinds of services in this group. If you click over there today, you will see how I have tried to add clarification. I will be asking my colleagues to come in and have a look and perhaps a whack at both the text and the list. Once we have this a bit clearer, we will end u with two lists: the first of which will identify a couple of handfuls of these semi-commercial free services, and the latter and more importantly the real stuff. ericbritton 10:45, 16 August 2006 (UTC)

See new main article zero-fare public transport. I suggest the content here be summarised and the long lists deleted, and I will do so in a couple of weeks if nobody objects.Nankai 02:54, 11 May 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Public Transport Maps and about the article

I actually have a whole collection of Public Transport maps of the cities, towns and counties of United States (Mostly) the UK and Canada. the Most Transit maps I have is New York, USA, Merseyside, UK, Los Angeles,USA, and Toronto, Canada

the article is good.

Keenrich 21:40, 24 September 2006 (UTC)


[edit] Economic Impact

Few localities have the ability to assign development rights to a private transit operator, as communist Hong Kong has done, though their success illustrates the potential of this idea.

I don't mean to nitpick, but since when is Hong Kong's economy communist?

142.150.49.113 16:01, 6 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] This article still needs sources

It's been nine months since my critique (see above) and this article still needs sources. Three of the four references at the bottom of the page were provided by me. I guess that proves my point that public transport people waste too much time stuck in line, or on the bus or train. Anyway, I'm still busy digging up sources for Lawyer and Expressway. --Coolcaesar 20:46, 21 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] I have re-structured this article

I have taken a look at the overall structure of the article. I have not removed anything, but it may well be in a new place!

I have tried to combine related issues more logically (ticketing/funding/economic) (cultural and social issues).

I have promoted the general description of what public transport is to the top, followed by a summary of the situation by continent, followed by the financial issues.

I have pushed the 'emerging trends' to the end (I wasn't too sure about that, but thought it best to put 'the future' at the end rather than having it lost in the middle of the article).

One remaining problem is that the article is possibly getting over-long and many issues, for example the whole discussion of how public transport is managed is missing. Could the details of ticketing be bumped to a separate article? Anything else? —Preceding unsigned comment added by PeterIto (talk • contribs) 17:38, 28 October 2007 (UTC)