Bus

:This article is about the form of transport. See computer bus or electrical bus for the use of the term in computing and electronics respectively, or places like Bus, Pas-de-Calais and Bus-Saint-Rémy.

History: the omnibus

The omnibus, the first organized public transit system, may have been originated in Nantes, France, in 1826, when a retired army officer who had built public baths on the city's edge set up a short stage line between the center of town and his baths. When he discovered that passengers were just as interested in getting off at intermediate points as in patronizing his baths, he shifted his focus. His new voiture omnibus ("carriage for all") combined the functions of the hired hackney carriage with the stagecoach that travelled a predetermined route from inn to inn, carrying passengers and mail. His omnibus featured wooden benches that ran down the sides of the vehicle; entry was from the rear.

Related Topics:
Public transit - Nantes, France - 1826 - Hackney carriage - Stagecoach

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Whether by direct emulation, or because the idea was in the air, by 1832 the idea had been copied in Paris, Bordeaux and Lyons. A London newspaper noted, July 4, 1829, that “the new vehicle, called the omnibus, commenced running this morning from Paddington to the City”. This bus service was operated by George Shillibeer.

Related Topics:
Bus - George Shillibeer

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In New York, omnibus service commenced that same year, when Abraham Brower, an entrepreneur who organized volunteer fire companies, established a route along Broadway starting at Bowling Green; other American cities followed suit: Philadelphia (1831), Boston (1835), and Baltimore (1844). Typically the city governments granted a private company— generally a small stableman already in the livery or freight-hauling business— an exclusive franchise to operate public coaches along a specified route. In return, the company agreed to maintain certain minimum levels of service, which did not include upholstery, however. The New York omnibus moved right into urban consciousness. In 1831, New Yorker Washington Irving could remark of Britain's Reform Bill (finally passed in 1832): "The great reform omnibus moves but slowly”.

Related Topics:
New York - Broadway - Bowling Green - Livery - Washington Irving - Reform Bill

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The omnibus had repercussions both in society and in urbanization. Socially the omnibus put urban people, even if for only half an hour, into unheard-of physical intimacy, squeezed together knee-to-knee in a democratic press that even the most liberal-minded of the middle class had scarcely experienced before (illustration, left). Only the very poor remained excluded. A new division in urban society now came to the fore, dividing those who kept carriages from those who did not. The idea of the "carriage trade," the folk who never set foot in the streets, who had goods brought out from the shops for their appraisal, has its origins in the omnibus crush.

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And the omnibus extended the reach of the North Atlantic post-Georgian, post-Federal city. The walk from the former village of Paddington to the business heart of London in the "City" was a good brisk stiff one for a young man in good condition. The omnibus offered a further availability to the inner city of its nearer suburbs.

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More intense urbanization was to follow. Within a very few years, the New York omnibus had a rival in the streetcar: the first streetcar ran along The Bowery, which offered the very great improvement in amenity of riding on smooth iron rails rather than clattering over granite setts, called "Belgian blocks." The new streetcars were financed by John Mason, a wealthy banker, and built by an Irish contractor, John Stephenson. In urbanization, the streetcars, rather than the omnibus, held the future key.

Related Topics:
Streetcar - The Bowery - Granite

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When motorized transport proved successful after ca 1905, a motorized omnibus was sometimes called an autobus.

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