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Public transport (North American English: public transportation or mass transit) is a shared passenger transport service which is available for use by the general public, as distinct from modes such as taxicab, carpooling or hired buses which are not shared by strangers without private arrangement. Public transport modes include city buses, trolleybuses, trams (or light rail) and passenger trains, rapid transit (metro/subways/undergrounds etc) and ferries. Public transport between cities is dominated by airlines, coaches, and intercity rail. High-speed rail networks are being developed in many parts of the world. Most public transport runs to a scheduled timetable with the most frequent services running to a headway (e.g.: "every 5 minutes" as opposed to being scheduled for any specific time of the day). Share taxis offer on-demand services in many parts of the world, and some services will wait until the vehicle is full before it starts. Paratransit is sometimes used in areas of low-demand and for people who need a door-to-door service.〔http://wayback.archive.org/web/20120314123639/http://www.publictransportation.org/aboutus/default.asp〕 There are distinct differences in urban public transit between Asia, North America, and Europe. In Asia, mass transit operations are predominantly run by profit-driven privately owned and publicly traded mass transit and real estate conglomerates.〔(【引用サイトリンク】title=Rail integrated communities in Tokyo )〕〔(【引用サイトリンク】title=Lessons from Japanese Experiences of Roles of Public and Private Sectors in Urban Transport )〕 In North America, mass transit operations are predominantly run by municipal transit authorities. In Europe, mass transit operations are predominantly run by state-owned companies. Public transport services can be profit-driven by use of pay-by-the-distance fares or funded by government subsidies in which flat rate fares are charged to each passenger. Services can be fully profitable through high ridership numbers and high farebox recovery ratios, or can be regulated and possibly subsidized from local or national tax revenue. Fully subsidized, zero-fare (free) services operate in some towns and cities. For historical and economic reasons, there are differences internationally regarding use and extent of public transport. While countries in the Old World tend to have extensive and frequent systems serving their old and dense cities, many cities of the New World have more sprawl and much less comprehensive public transport. The International Association of Public Transport (UITP) is the international network for public transport authorities and operators, policy decision-makers, scientific institutes and the public transport supply and service industry. It has 3,400 members from 92 countries. ==History== Conveyances designed for public hire are as old as the first ferries, and the earliest public transport was water transport: on land people walked (sometimes in groups and on pilgrimages, as noted in sources such as the Bible and ''The Canterbury Tales'') or (at least in the Old World) rode an animal.〔In the New World, beasts of burden were generally not as large as those in the Old, although the Incas did use llamas as pack animals. See (Pre Columbian Wheels ).〕 Ferries appear in Greek mythology—corpses in ancient Greece were buried with a coin underneath their tongue to pay the ferryman Charon to take them to Hades.〔(Gods, Goddesses, and Mythology, Volume 5. )〕 Some historical forms of public transport include the stagecoach, traveling a fixed route from coaching inn to coaching inn, and the horse-drawn boat carrying paying passengers, which was a feature of European canals from their 17th-century origins. (The canal itself as a form of infrastructure dates back to antiquity – ancient Egyptians certainly used a canal for freight transportation to bypass the Aswan cataract – and the Chinese also built canals for water transportation as far back as the Warring States period〔Needham, Joseph. (1986). ''Science and Civilization in China: Volume 4, Physics and Physical Technology, Part 3, Civil Engineering and Nautics''. Taipei: Caves Books, Ltd. ISBN 0-521-07060-0〕 which began in the 5th century BCE. Whether or not those canals were used for for-hire public transport remains unknown; the Grand Canal in China (begun in 486 BCE) served primarily for shipping grain.) The omnibus, the first organized public transit system within a city, appears to have originated in Paris, France, in 1662,〔web-page (in French) at http://www.herodote.net/histoire/evenement.php?jour=18260810. Retrieved 13 June 2008.〕 although the service in question failed a few months after its founder, Blaise Pascal, died in August 1662; omnibuses are next known to have appeared in Nantes, France, in 1826. The omnibus was introduced to London in July 1829.〔(【引用サイトリンク】title=The London Omnibus )〕 The first passenger horse-drawn railway opened in 1806: it ran between Swansea and Mumbles in southwest Wales in the United Kingdom.〔 〕 In 1825 George Stephenson built the ''Locomotion'' for the Stockton and Darlington Railway in northeast England, the first public steam railway in the world. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Public transport」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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