50 Fun Facts About Public Transit

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

The Metropolitan Railway opened between Paddington and Farringdon on 10 January 1863, running steam locomotives through cut-and-cover tunnels; it was electrified in 1905.

What was the world's first electric, fully underground rapid transit line, opened in 1890?

The City & South London Railway opened in 1890 between King William Street and Stockwell, with electric locomotives hauling carriages through deep tube tunnels.

Roughly what proportion of the London Underground actually runs underground?

45%: only around 45% of the network's roughly 400 km runs in tunnel; much of the outer network is on the surface, despite the name.

How many stations does the London Underground have?

272 stations are served across 11 lines, handling up to five million passenger journeys a day.

Who designed the schematic London Tube map, later voted a national design icon?

Harry Beck, an Underground draughtsman, drew the diagrammatic map in 1931 and it was first printed in 1933; Edward Johnston designed the typeface in 1916.

In what year was London's contactless Oyster card introduced?

2003: the Oyster card launched on 30 June 2003, following the model of Hong Kong's Octopus card, introduced six years earlier.

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

The circular deep-level tunnels, bored from 1890 onwards, carry small-profile trains and gave the nickname, unlike the older cut-and-cover lines near the surface.

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

The Jubilee line opened on 1 May 1979, named for Elizabeth II's 1977 Silver Jubilee; it took over the Stanmore branch from the Bakerloo line.

On what date did the New York City Subway open?

October 27, 1904: the first IRT line opened from City Hall to 145th Street, and more than 100,000 people rode it that first evening.

How many stations does the New York City Subway have?

472 stations are served by the system; the count drops to 423 if stations linked by transfer passageways are counted once.

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

5 cents bought a ride on opening day in 1904, and the nickel fare survived until 1948, when it rose to a dime.

What percentage of New York City Subway track is actually above ground?

40%: roughly 40% of the system's track is above ground, on elevated structures, embankments or open cuts, mostly in the outer boroughs.

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

Hurricane Sandy's storm surge on 29 October 2012 flooded nine under-river tunnels, including the Montague and Canarsie tubes, which took years to repair.

The Moscow Metro's first line opened in what year?

1935: the first line opened on 15 May 1935, running 11 km from Sokolniki to Park Kultury with 13 stations.

Which Moscow metro station hosted Stalin's 6 November 1941 speech during the Battle of Moscow?

Mayakovskaya, opened in 1938 with stainless-steel arches and Deineka ceiling mosaics, hosted the revolution-anniversary meeting at which Stalin spoke on 6 November 1941; it doubled as an air-raid shelter.

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

The high bank of the Dnipro River forces the line to plunge from the plateau toward the riverside; Arsenalna's 105.5 m was the world's deepest until a Chongqing station surpassed it in the 2020s.

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

The World's Fair of 1900, the Exposition Universelle, set the deadline: Line 1 opened on 19 July 1900 between Porte de Vincennes and Porte Maillot.

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

Hector Guimard designed the cast-iron Art Nouveau entrances from 1900; of 141 built, 86 survive and are protected as historic monuments.

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

14: Line 14, the Météor project, opened on 15 October 1998 as the first driverless line, and the first entirely new line in 63 years.

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's Line M1 opened on 2 May 1896 beneath Andrássy Avenue, inaugurated by Emperor Franz Joseph in Hungary's millennium year, and was the first electric underground railway on the European mainland.

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

Buenos Aires opened Line A of the Subte on 1 December 1913; its original Belgian-built wooden La Brugeoise cars stayed in service until 2013.

Shanghai's airport maglev runs from Pudong International Airport to which city-side station?

Longyang Road is the city-side terminus of the 30 km maglev from Pudong International Airport, which began commercial service in 2004 and originally ran at up to 430 km/h.

As of 2021, which country had the most rapid transit systems in the world, with 40?

China had about 40 metro systems by 2021, more than any other country; most of them opened after 2000 in a building boom centred on provincial capitals.

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

U-Bahn, short for Untergrundbahn, is the underground metro; the S-Bahn is the suburban railway that complements it, as in Berlin, Hamburg and Munich.

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.

Which Hong Kong MTR line, opened in 1998, links Central to the airport?

Airport Express opened in July 1998 together with the new airport at Chek Lap Kok, running from Hong Kong station in Central to the terminal in about 24 minutes.

Which contactless transit card, launched in 1996, preceded Hong Kong's Octopus as the world's first?

Korea's Upass, introduced on Seoul buses in 1996, was the first contactless transit smart card; Hong Kong's Octopus followed in September 1997.

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

The Tokyo Summer Olympics opened on 10 October 1964, nine days after the Tokaido Shinkansen began running between Tokyo and Shin-Osaka.

From 2013, the fastest Shinkansen services ran at what maximum operating speed?

320 km/h became the top operating speed in March 2013, when E5 trains reached it on the Tohoku Shinkansen between Utsunomiya and Morioka; the 300X test train hit 443 km/h in 1996.

What are the white-gloved staff who pack passengers into Tokyo rush-hour trains called?

Oshiya comes from osu, 'to push'; the first pushers, hired at a major Tokyo terminal in the 1950s, were part-time students.

Which station, used by about 3.59 million people a day, holds the Guinness record as the world's busiest?

Shinjuku station, hub of JR, Odakyu, Keio and Tokyo Metro lines, has more than 200 exits and was certified by Guinness World Records as the world's busiest.

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

For all: Latin omnibus, the dative plural of omnis, was the name adopted for Stanislas Baudry's horse-drawn services in the 1820s.

Stanislas Baudry, who ran the first omnibus service, owned a mill near which French city?

Nantes: Baudry's flour mill outside the city heated a bathhouse, and the carriages he ran to it grew into the omnibus service of 1826; he launched a Paris service in April 1828.

Which 1950s London bus design remains an icon of the city?

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.

The first successful cable car line, San Francisco's Clay Street Hill Railroad, opened in what year?

1873: the Clay Street Hill Railroad began running in August 1873, after Andrew Smith Hallidie conceived it watching horses struggle on a wet cobbled hill.

At what constant speed does the cable beneath San Francisco's cable car streets run?

9.5 mph: the cables loop beneath the streets at that constant speed and the gripman clamps onto them; only three of the original 23 lines survive.

Who led the 1947 citizens' campaign that saved San Francisco's cable cars from being scrapped?

Friedel Klussmann founded the Citizens' Committee to Save the Cable Cars in 1947; their ballot measure passed by 166,989 votes to 51,457.

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' comes from the trolley pole that draws current from the overhead wire, a system Frank Sprague perfected in 1888.

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

An electric elevated railway with hanging cars since 1901, the Schwebebahn runs 13.3 km, mostly about 12 m above the River Wupper.

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.

The world's first bus rapid transit system opened in 1974 in which Brazilian city?

Curitiba opened the first dedicated busway in 1974 under mayor Jaime Lerner, adding its tube-shaped boarding stations with off-board fare payment in 1991.

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

Jakarta's TransJakarta, opened in 2004, runs on more than 250 km of dedicated busway corridors with off-board fare payment, the longest BRT network in the world.

What is the typical minimum headway, or gap between trains, on a busy metro line?

90 seconds is about the tightest headway busy lines achieve, as on the Moscow Metro at peak; many systems settle on 120 seconds to leave room to recover from delays.

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

People falling onto the tracks, whether by accident, in a crush or deliberately, are what the doors prevent; Singapore's MRT fitted them in its underground stations from opening in 1987.

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

Blaise Pascal launched the carrosses à cinq sols in Paris in March 1662, months before his death; the service lasted about fifteen years.

The world's first passenger railway, horse-drawn from 1807, ran from Swansea to which seaside village?

Mumbles: the Oystermouth Railway carried fare-paying passengers from 1807, switched to steam in 1877 and to 106-seat electric tramcars in 1929, and closed in 1960.

Volk's Electric Railway, the world's oldest operating electric tramway, runs along the seafront of which town?

Brighton's Volk's Electric Railway opened along the seafront in August 1883 and was re-gauged the following year; its builder Magnus Volk was the son of a German clockmaker.

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.