Public Transit Trivia
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50 free Public Transit trivia questions with answers — geography quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
Public transit is full of firsts, records and oddities, and this quiz collects the best of them. It starts with the world's first underground railway in 1863 London and the five-cent opening day of the New York Subway, then heads through Moscow's palatial stations, Kyiv's absurdly deep Arsenalna, Paris's Art Nouveau entrances, Budapest's UNESCO-listed line and Shanghai's 13-million-rider days. Above ground it covers the Shinkansen, Tokyo's white-gloved pushers, the origin of the word 'bus', London's Routemaster, San Francisco's cable cars and the referendum that saved them, Melbourne's trams, Wuppertal's hanging railway and the elephant that jumped out of it, and the bus rapid transit systems of Curitiba and Jakarta. Every answer was checked against Wikipedia's articles on the individual systems, so the dates, depths and ridership figures are reliable enough for a transit-nerd showdown or a general knowledge round.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01The world's first underground passenger line, opened in London in 1863, was called what?
The Metropolitan Railway
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.
Q 02Why did London's first electric underground carriages, in 1890, have almost no windows?
Nothing to see in tunnels
Nothing to see in tunnels was the designers' reasoning, so the cramped cars, with their high-backed cushioned seats, were soon nicknamed 'padded cells'.
Q 03Which Tube line, opened by Elizabeth II in 1969, runs entirely below ground?
Victoria
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.
Q 04Where in London are Tube stations scarcest?
South London
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.
Q 05Who designed the diagram-style London Tube map introduced in 1933?
Harry Beck
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.
Q 06Which smartcard did London introduce for public transport in 2003?
Oyster
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.
Q 07Where does the nickname 'Tube' for the London Underground come from?
The circular deep-level tunnels
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.
Q 08Which London Underground line opened in 1979, taking over the Bakerloo's Stanmore branch?
Jubilee
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.
Q 09Who took the controls of the New York City Subway's first train in 1904?
The mayor
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.
Q 10Unlike most metros, the New York City Subway offers what?
All-night service
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.
Q 11What was the fare on the New York City Subway on its opening day in 1904?
5 cents
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.
Q 12Which is the only New York City borough that the Subway does not reach?
Staten Island
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.
Q 13Which 2012 storm flooded several of New York's underwater subway tunnels?
Hurricane Sandy
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.
Q 21Which city opened the European mainland's first electric underground railway, in 1896?
Budapest
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.
Q 22Which city opened the first stretch of underground urban railway in Latin America, in 1913?
Buenos Aires
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.
Q 23Which city's airport link, opened to the public in 2004, was the world's first commercial high-speed maglev line?
Shanghai
Q 14Which future Soviet leader supervised building the Moscow Metro?
Nikita Khrushchev
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.
Q 15Where did Stalin address Moscow's revolution-anniversary rally on 6 November 1941?
A metro station
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.
Q 16Why is Kyiv's Arsenalna station, 105.5 metres down, so deep?
The high bank of the Dnipro River
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.
Q 17The Paris Métro's first line opened in July 1900 during which event?
The World's Fair
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.
Q 18Which architect designed the Art Nouveau entrances of the Paris Métro?
Hector Guimard
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.
Q 19Which numbered Paris Métro route, opened in 1998, was the network's first fully automatic one?
14
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.
Q 20Rubber-tyred metro trains, pioneered in Paris in the 1950s, were exported to which cities?
Montreal, Mexico City and Santiago
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.
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.
Q 24As of 2021, which country had the most rapid transit systems in the world?
China
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.
Q 25In Germany and Austria, what is a city's underground rapid transit system called?
U-Bahn
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'.
Q 26In most of Britain, what does the word 'subway' mean?
A pedestrian underpass
A pedestrian underpass is what 'subway' means in British usage; Glasgow is the exception, since its circular underground railway is officially the Subway.
Q 27What can passengers on Hong Kong's Airport Express do at its city stations before reaching the airport?
Check in for their flight
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.
Q 28Which Hong Kong smartcard, launched in 1997 for transport fares, has grown into a way to pay in shops?
Octopus
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.
Q 29Japan's first Shinkansen line opened in 1964 shortly before which event?
The Tokyo Summer Olympics
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.
Q 30What does the Japanese name 'Shinkansen' literally mean?
New trunk line
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.