Every morning, 540 trolleybuses and buses set off across Vilnius, carrying around 520,000 passengers from 1,300 stops. Each vehicle clocks up approximately 300 kilometres daily, and the whole fleet travels 39 million kilometres a year – the equivalent of circling the Earth 373 times. To keep going, the city’s public transport system uses 25 million kWh of electricity, 9 million litres of diesel, and 5 million cubic metres of gas annually.
Public transport can be defined as passenger services open to all, operating to a set schedule and along fixed routes. In cities, this includes buses, minibuses, trolleybuses and various rail vehicles – trams, metro systems and funiculars. It can consist of trains, ships and planes between cities and across countries.
Like many other European cities, although perhaps not quite as quickly as some, Vilnius caught the urbanisation wave ushered in by the industrial revolution. The shift from a modest town to a growing city was accelerated by the arrival of the St Petersburg–Warsaw railway and the optical telegraph line that crossed the city. These advances in long-distance communication and travel brought industrial growth, rising professional classes (lawyers, engineers, doctors, architects), and the expansion of residential development beyond the historic centre.
