These photos reveal a colorful view of urban transportation networks.
Transit networks keep our cities humming. They’re incredibly complex, and often we only notice them when they’re failing. As our cities expand, transportation networks will adapt with them, to cover more ground and carry more people. Transit stations are being reimagined too; commuters encounter unexpected art spaces, libraries, gardens, and smartphone charging stations.
The future of urban transport looks to be more green—many cities are replacing gas-guzzling vehicles with electric buses and cars with bike-sharing networks—and may see a touch of science fiction made real, with advances like Jetsons-style flying cars and the Hyperloop potentially around the corner.
On National Geographic’s Your Shot community, we asked members to show us how they get around their cities. The assignment drew more than 3,000 image submissions. Photographers responded to the hashtag #urbantransit with a range of modes, from ferries and bikes to gondolas, rickshaws, and footprints in snow—and even a tongue-in-cheek bumper car.
To participate in a future assignment, check out Your Shot, where you can share photos and connect with fellow photographers from around the globe.
An iconic double-decker bus carries people through London’s streets at night. The city's public transportation system started with horse-drawn omnibuses in 1829 and has since become one of the largest, most efficient networks on the planet. Officials intend to further green the city’s various transit modes, with the goal of reducing greenhouse gas emissions by 60 percent by 2020; electric buses, zero-emission taxis, and improved paths for cycling and walking are on the horizon.
A ferry departs Messina, a major port city on the Italian island of Sicily. Messina is separated from the mainland cities of Villa San Giovanni and Reggio Calabria by a five-kilometer-wide strait, but ferry and hydrofoil transportation has made travel between them simple and efficient. Citizens cross the strait daily, often living on one side and working on the other.
A long exposure captures the bustle of central London’s Waterloo Station. When it opened in 1848, the station saw just a handful of trains come and go each day. Now it’s the busiest in the U.K., serving over 100 million passengers a year.
A snapshot taken at a busy intersection in Beijing shows a city in motion. The world’s third most populous city, Beijing has almost six million cars on its streets. To combat congested traffic, Chinese officials are limiting the number of new cars being produced and have ramped up expansion of the city’s subway network, with the goal of building the world’s largest fully autonomous (driverless) system.
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