Public transportation is designed to carry members of the public from one point to another, with there being no need for each individual person to own a method of transportation of their own. The ownership is put on a company that owns a fleet of vehicles that are continuously shared by the public.
There are many types of public transportation, including railroads and passenger trains, subway systems, buses, ferries, rapid transit systems and taxis.
Public transportation is either hired on a one-time basis from private operators, such as taxis, or part of a larger, fare-based system run by bigger organizations such as airline companies and commuter trains.
Many public transportation systems are designed to carry many people at once, while there are a few, like taxis, that carry only a couple of people at a time.
The systems are fare-based. Passengers can pay a fare for a single trip or purchase special daily, weekly or monthly passes for multiple uses. Some public transportation systems, like the London Underground, have technology where you can swipe a refillable card through a reader and have the fare deducted from an account.
Public transportation has been around nearly as long as mankind. It's even mentioned in Greek mythology, when Charon charges passengers to ferry them across the River Styx.
Railways also go back to ancient Greece, with the discovery of the 4-mile Diolkos wagonway, a grooved stone path along which slaves pushed wagons of cargo. Wooden rails first came into use in Medieval times, and were replaced by iron rails only in the late 1700s.
Some historic kinds of public transportation include the stagecoach, the trolley and even gondolas in Venice.
The London Underground began operation in 1863, the same year as the first railroad operations of the New York subway system. The first public airline was a German company, DELAG, which began in 1909 and used zeppelins.
There is a type of public transportation for almost every mode of travel. Land travel has railways, commuter and passenger trains, subway systems, buses, taxis, trolleys and rapid transit systems, which are electricity-based trains with smaller, lighter cars than a train. Water travel has cruise liners, passenger ships, ferries and foot-passenger ferries, also called water buses. Air travel has public airlines that provide services from cargo planes and passenger planes to jets.
Public transportation was designed for a number of reasons, all of which are designed to make daily travel easier and more efficient.
For example, 5 buses carrying 50 people each makes the roads much less crowded than if each of those 50 people were to take their own car to work. The idea is that public transportation is much more reliable; it runs on a schedule, and those who use it know when they are going to get where they need to be without trying to plan on time stuck in traffic.
Public transportation has many supporters because of the lessened impact on the environment. It's been shown that frequent use of public transportation improves air quality and lowers emissions.
It also allows a mode of transportation for those who cannot afford a private vehicle. Maintenance costs, purchase price and the price of gas is replaced by the price of a fare, making travel more accessible to a wider range of people.
