Transportation by Medz Cajanding

Transportation refers to movement using road, air, water, railroad, pipeline so that people, goods and animals can get from one place to another.  The oldest modes of public transportation were through water – raft, ferries, canoes, boats, clippers, ships.  Even Greek mythology speaks of the ferryman taking people to Hades. In olden times, people walked on land to get to far places as chronicled in various old writings, or rode on the back of animals like donkeys, asses or horses. 

Ancient people as far back as the 4^th millennium BC were found to be using the wheel to transport heavy loads over land.  The first forms of public transportation in recorded history were the stagecoach, with coaching inns as stops for the night along a fixed route.  The omnibus first appeared in Paris, France in 1662 when a French inventor named Blaise Pascal with financing from the Duc de Ronanes came up with seven carriages that can carry eight passengers each.  People paid a small fare for the rides which became very popular but because the passengers were mainly riding for amusement and its founder died soon after its introduction, the scheme did not work out for long.

The next recorded appearance of the omnibus for public transportation was in 1826 in Nantes, France.  In July of 1829, the omnibus appeared in London, England.  In 1849, the Williams Omnibus Bus Lines was established in the City of Toronto as the city’s first mass transport system composed of four 6-passenger buses.  They were horse-drawn stagecoaches.

It was in 1806 when the first horse-drawn railway was opened between Swansea and Mumbles.   In 1861, the Toronto Street Railways in Canada was built as a horse car line.  Before the advent of railway transportation systems in major world cities, Central Europe had been using wooden railways in its mines for centuries.  The wood rails took minerals and coals from the mines to the riverside or wharf for shipping. The horse-driver wagon was replaced in 1825 by a steam train named Locomotion.  It proved that a speed of 10 to 15 miles per hour can be maintained by a steam locomotive travelling uphill. These developments led to the opening of the Liverpool and Manchester Railway in September 1830.  It was the start of a new epoch in transportation. 

Even with the developments in air and land transportation, water transportation still retained its important role in carrying various goods across continents and nations.  Even in the modern world of aviation, water transportation still remains the most popular type of transportation for cargo and heavy loads and is the most cost-efficient.  Shipping meets the needs of clients around the world for various goods and large items, including vehicles and liquid cargo.