by Dave Wetzel

The income from fares is usually insufficient to pay for both the capital costs and operating expenses of a modern mass transit system.

Public transportation managers strive to provide safe, efficient, affordable, reliable, comfortable, clean, and convenient journeys for passengers. The service provided not only enables millions of people to travel but also has wider economic, social, and environmental impacts on urban life.

When planning for new public transportation investments, wider economic benefits are usually cited as an important reason for governments to provide subsidies towards the costs of construction and maintenance.

Taken from The Beacon, Nov 1st, 1893 (Melbourne)

Juggernaut was a god of India, a monsterous idol, whose huge nostrils loved the scent of the blood of human sacrifice.

When his great chariot was rolled through the streets, men and women in adoration flung themselves beneath its wheels and were gloriously crushed to death.

While the victims thought to gain thereby eternal joys and a paradise of indolent repose, their shrieks and groans sounded sweet in the great god’s ears, or, rather, in those of the fat priests who tended him, and who leered horribly at one another, knowing that such mad self-immolation assured them in their bloody offices. For it was the priests that fostered the worship of the beastial image, since to them fell the stripping of the slain and the toil-won offerings of superstitious devotees.