50 Fun Facts About Public Transit

The world's first underground passenger line, opened in London in 1863, was called what?

The Metropolitan Railway was built to link the main-line termini at Paddington, Euston and King's Cross with the City; despite the fumes from its steam engines, it was a success from the day it opened.

Why did London's first electric underground carriages, in 1890, have almost no windows?

Nothing to see in tunnels was the designers' reasoning, so the cramped cars, with their high-backed cushioned seats, were soon nicknamed 'padded cells'.

Which Tube line, opened by Elizabeth II in 1969, runs entirely below ground?

Victoria is one of only two lines that never surface, on a network where just 45% of the track is underground; by riding it at the opening the Queen became the first reigning monarch to take the Tube.

Where in London are Tube stations scarcest?

South London has few Tube stations, and six boroughs south of the Thames have none at all, largely because surface railways got there first and the ground was harder to tunnel.

Who designed the diagram-style London Tube map introduced in 1933?

Harry Beck, an Underground draughtsman, drew it in 1931; the publicity office first rejected it as too radical, then a trial printing proved an instant hit.

Which smartcard did London introduce for public transport in 2003?

Oyster was designed to cut ticket-office transactions and paper tickets; within a decade it carried more than 80% of London's public transport journeys, and since 2014 the buses have taken no cash at all.

Where does the nickname 'Tube' for the London Underground come from?

The circular deep-level tunnels gave the name: in 1900 the new Central London Railway, with its flat twopenny fare, was dubbed the 'Twopenny Tube', and the nickname stuck.

Which London Underground line opened in 1979, taking over the Bakerloo's Stanmore branch?

Jubilee was a late change of name: the line was planned as the Fleet line and renamed for Elizabeth II's 1977 Silver Jubilee, yet it opened two years after the celebrations.

Who took the controls of the New York City Subway's first train in 1904?

The mayor, George McClellan, was meant only to start the train and hand over to a motorman, but he enjoyed himself so much that he drove it all the way from City Hall to 103rd Street.

Unlike most metros, the New York City Subway offers what?

All-night service: 470 of the 472 stations are served around the clock, so repairs must be done while trains run, which is why routes so often change overnight and at weekends.

What was the fare on the New York City Subway on its opening day in 1904?

5 cents was guaranteed in the contract to run the first subway, and the nickel fare then held for 44 years, until 1948, when it doubled to a dime.

Which is the only New York City borough that the Subway does not reach?

Staten Island has its own separate railway instead; a subway tunnel to Brooklyn under the Narrows was begun in 1923 and abandoned two years later.

Which 2012 storm flooded several of New York's underwater subway tunnels?

Hurricane Sandy's storm surge hit on 29 October 2012, flooding subway lines and every road tunnel into Manhattan except the Lincoln Tunnel, and cutting power across the city.

Which future Soviet leader supervised building the Moscow Metro?

Nikita Khrushchev, then a senior Moscow party official, spent much of his time down in the tunnels and won the Order of Lenin for the work, though the line missed its announced November 1934 opening.

Where did Stalin address Moscow's revolution-anniversary rally on 6 November 1941?

A metro station: Stalin spoke in the central hall of Mayakovskaya, built deep enough to double as an air-raid shelter, while German forces closed on Moscow.

Why is Kyiv's Arsenalna station, 105.5 metres down, so deep?

The high bank of the Dnipro River towers over the water, so the line runs deep under the hill and then bursts out onto a bridge: the very next station, Dnipro, stands above ground.

The Paris Métro's first line opened in July 1900 during which event?

The World's Fair of 1900 was already under way when Line 1 opened without ceremony on 19 July, after barely twenty months of digging made quick by the city's wide streets.

Which architect designed the Art Nouveau entrances of the Paris Métro?

Hector Guimard's cast-iron entrances fell from fashion along with Art Nouveau and many were demolished; the survivors are now protected as historic monuments.

Which numbered Paris Métro route, opened in 1998, was the network's first fully automatic one?

14: Line 14 has run without drivers since it opened in 1998, and its example led to Line 1, the network's oldest, being converted to driverless trains from 2011 without shutting down.

Rubber-tyred metro trains, pioneered in Paris in the 1950s, were exported to which cities?

Montreal, Mexico City and Santiago all adopted the Paris rubber-tyred system, opening in 1966, 1969 and 1975 respectively; the tyres give quieter running and better grip on gradients.

Which city opened the European mainland's first electric underground railway, in 1896?

Budapest built it to carry crowds to the City Park in Hungary's millennium year without spoiling elegant Andrássy Avenue with surface tracks; Emperor Franz Joseph opened it in May 1896.

Which city opened the first stretch of underground urban railway in Latin America, in 1913?

Buenos Aires had the Anglo-Argentine Tramways Company, which ran most of the city's trams, build Line A; its original wooden Belgian cars then stayed in service for almost a century, until 2013.

Which city's airport link, opened to the public in 2004, was the world's first commercial high-speed maglev line?

Shanghai's maglev covers the 30 km from Pudong airport in about eight minutes, yet it ends at Longyang Road on the outskirts, and in 2021 its top speed was cut from 431 to 300 km/h.

As of 2021, which country had the most rapid transit systems in the world?

China had about 40 metro systems by 2021, though its first, in Beijing, dates only from 1969; most of the world's new subway mileage in recent years has been built there.

In Germany and Austria, what is a city's underground rapid transit system called?

U-Bahn is short for Untergrundbahn, 'underground railway', yet most of Hamburg's U-Bahn track runs above ground, and its operator is still called the Hochbahn, the 'elevated railway'.

In most of Britain, what does the word 'subway' mean?

A pedestrian underpass is what 'subway' means in British usage; Glasgow is the exception, since its circular underground railway is officially the Subway.

What can passengers on Hong Kong's Airport Express do at its city stations before reaching the airport?

Check in for their flight: at Hong Kong and Kowloon stations, travellers on some airlines can hand over their bags before they board the train; the line opened in July 1998 on the same day as the new airport.

Which Hong Kong smartcard, launched in 1997 for transport fares, has grown into a way to pay in shops?

Octopus renders the card's Cantonese name, 'eight-arrived pass', a phrase that suggests reaching everywhere; it was chosen in a naming competition the year before the launch.

Japan's first Shinkansen line opened in 1964 shortly before which event?

The Tokyo Summer Olympics opened nine days after the first bullet trains ran on 1 October 1964, cutting the fastest journey between Tokyo and Osaka to four hours.

What does the Japanese name 'Shinkansen' literally mean?

New trunk line is the literal meaning: the Shinkansen runs on its own standard-gauge tracks, built apart from Japan's older narrow-gauge railways rather than by upgrading them.

What do Tokyo's white-gloved 'oshiya' do at rush hour?

Push passengers aboard: 'oshiya' comes from the verb for push, and the first ones were mostly students working part-time, though station staff now often do the shoving themselves.

Which station holds the Guinness World Record as the busiest railway station on Earth?

Shinjuku handles well over two million passengers a day, yet when it opened in 1885 it was a little-used stop in what was then a quiet community.

The word 'bus' is short for a Latin word meaning what?

For all is the meaning of Latin omnibus, the name French 'carriages for all' took in the 1820s; English soon clipped it to 'bus', keeping only the word's grammatical ending.

Which three-word warning has been played to London Underground passengers stepping off trains since the late 1960s?

Mind the gap was recorded around 1968 as an automated message once drivers and station staff could no longer warn everyone themselves; sound engineer Peter Lodge's own voice is still heard at some stations.

Which 1950s London bus design remains an icon of London's streets?

The AEC Routemaster entered service in 1956 and ran on regular routes until 2005; its open rear platform let passengers hop on and off between stops.

What did Andrew Hallidie manufacture before his Clay Street line brought cable cars to San Francisco?

Wire rope was the family trade: Hallidie's father held a patent for it, and he had used his own cable to haul ore from mines and hang bridges before turning it on San Francisco's hills.

What is the driver of a San Francisco cable car called?

Gripman: the driver works a lever-operated grip that clamps onto a cable running beneath the street at a steady 9.5 mph, and releases it to coast or brake.

How did Friedel Klussmann's committee save San Francisco's cable cars in 1947?

A ballot measure forced the city to keep running the Powell Street lines; it passed in a landslide after City Hall had argued that buses would be cheaper.

Which Australian city has the largest urban tram network in the world?

Melbourne's network of about 250 km of double track is the world's largest; many cities scrapped their trams for buses in the mid-20th century, but Melbourne kept and modernised its network.

What do most North Americans call the vehicle that Britons and Australians call a tram?

A streetcar or trolley: 'trolley' is the name of the wheeled pole that draws current from the overhead wire, and the car took its name from the device.

The Wuppertal Schwebebahn in Germany is the world's oldest example of what?

An electric elevated railway with hanging cars since 1901, the Schwebebahn was turned down by Berlin, Munich and Breslau before the towns along the River Wupper took a chance on it.

What kind of animal famously jumped from a Wuppertal Schwebebahn car into the river in 1950?

An elephant named Tuffi, four years old and on a circus publicity stunt, leapt into the Wupper on 21 July 1950 and suffered only minor injuries.

Which Brazilian city is credited with opening the world's first full bus rapid transit system, in 1974?

Curitiba's mayor Jaime Lerner judged a subway far too costly, so he gave express buses their own lanes and ran them like an above-ground metro, a model since copied by cities worldwide.

Which Southeast Asian capital's bus rapid transit network, opened in 2004, is the world's longest?

Jakarta's Transjakarta, the first bus rapid transit system in Southeast Asia, was built to ease rush-hour traffic and now runs on more than 250 km of dedicated busway.

At the busiest times, roughly how far apart do trains on the Moscow Metro run?

90 seconds is the peak-hour gap on several Moscow Metro lines, a pace that lets the network carry millions of passengers every day.

Platform screen doors are installed on some metro systems mainly to prevent what?

People falling onto the tracks are the main worry today, but the first screen doors, in 1960s Leningrad, were set in solid walls that hid the trains from the platform altogether.

Which mathematician and philosopher developed Paris's 'five-sol coaches', the first city bus service, in 1662?

Blaise Pascal's coaches began running in March 1662, months before he died; the service faded within about fifteen years, after the Paris parlement barred soldiers, servants and labourers from riding.

The world's first fare-paying rail passengers rode horse-drawn cars to Mumbles from which Welsh city in 1807?

Swansea's seaside line was built to haul limestone from the Mumbles quarries, but from 1807 it sold seats too; it later ran steam and then giant electric trams before closing in 1960.

Volk's Electric Railway, the oldest electric line still running anywhere, follows the seafront of which English resort?

Brighton's seafront line opened in August 1883; its builder Magnus Volk later ran a second railway through the shallow sea itself, on a tall-legged car that locals called Daddy Long-Legs.

Frank J. Sprague's pioneering electric streetcar system of 1888 opened in which US city?

Richmond, Virginia, got Sprague's 12-mile, 40-car system in 1888; he went on to develop multiple-unit control, letting one motorman drive several coupled cars.