Today in History—March 18: The Debut of the World’s First Public Transit System

In the early 1660s, French mathematician and philosopher Blaise Pascal knew he didn’t have much time left. He decided to spend some of it inventing public transit.

The world’s first fixed-route public transit system grew out of a petition to King Louis XIV. A group of Parisian entrepreneurs wanted the exclusive right to operate a fixed transportation system in the city. When the petition was granted, it fell to Pascal to design the service, despite him not being part of the original group (it did include Pascal’s sister Gilberte and his friend Duc de Roannez).

Pascal, ill since childhood and worsening in his 30s, drew up plans for a network of horse-drawn carriages to ferry people to and from designated stops throughout the city. They would charge a small fixed fee and come at set intervals (between 7.5 and 15 minutes). It was basically a bus schedule.

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On this day in 1662, the first line of Pascal’s carrosses à cinq sols (“five-penny carriages”) began running. By July the network of five carriage lines was in full swing.

Four of those lines crisscrossed the city, intersecting to allow for passengers to transfer. The fifth line circled the city and charged zoned fares. Each eight-passenger coach had a driver and footman and was pulled by a team of horses. The service ran from six or seven in the morning to eight or nine at night.

But it was plagued with problems from the beginning. The service was popular with wealthier Parisians, but many of the city’s inhabitants found it unaffordable, and they sometimes heckled and threw stones at carriage drivers passing by, leading to a law prohibiting violence against carriages.

The experiment lasted only a few years, with the carrosses à cinq sols shutting down in 1667. Some laid the blame on pickpocketing along the routes or overcrowding and the related tendency of carriages to pass up stops. Others suspect that the service couldn’t survive the loss of its developer and champion, Pascal himself, who died on August 19, less than six months after the first line started running.

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