Analyse the impact of the transport revolution on Victorian London

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Analyse the impact of the transport revolution on Victorian London

In the centuries before the 19th century there had been little change or improvement in the ways which people travelled around. However, 19th century Britain – in particular London – witnessed a period of huge social, economic and political change and also an unprecedented explosion in the population of London – a population which would grow seven-fold from one million by the end of the century. It quickly became apparent that new forms of public transport were necessary in order to accommodate the vast physical expansion of London which accompanied the population growth. The transport revolution hugely affected the capital and helped determine the growth, shape and status of the city as we know it today.

        At the turn of the 19th century, there was no recognised public transport system. There was the horse and carriage and ferry boats but these were reserved for the rich and the rest had to get around by foot. People had to live within walking distance to their workplace and since many of the poor were directly dependent on the better off for their employment, the upper and lower classes often lived side by side on the same streets and districts. In the rapidly growing city, space became cramped and scarce. People realised that there had to be some sort of transport system that enabled them to live elsewhere and still be able to get to work on time.

The first important public transport appeared in 1829 and took the form of a horse-drawn coach – otherwise known as the omnibus. Introduced by George Shillibeer, the vehicles were drawn by three horses and could carry up to 20 passengers. It operated between Paddington and the City and the “cheap” fares cost a mere 6d (sixpence) at the most. It was so-called the “omnibus” because it originated from Paris where the omnibus meant “for all people”. But even a sixpence was well beyond the means of ordinary Londoners and so although the omnibus and its subsequent imitators became vastly popular; it was still the preserve of the upper classes. The number of omnibuses grew, but cheap fares and the huge costs of running the businesses forced most operators to be taken over by the London General Omnibus Company (the LGOC, which was backed by the French). By 1875, the company carried up to fifty million passengers a year. They proved surprising resilient with the competition from the arrival of the railways and later, trams, and remained an important form of transport in London throughout the century. This was namely because they could carry passengers over short journeys and they could reach narrow streets and parts of the city where the rails and trams cannot.

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Railways and steam trains were, however, the most important symbol of the transport revolution. The earliest steam-powered passenger railway in London was the London and Greenwich service, which opened in 1836, some eleven years after the first railway that was Stockton and Darlington. This led to the start of the Railway Mania where in the next couple of decades the framework of a national railway system would be built. There was little Government control over the building of new tracks, and railway companies motivated only by the commercial gains of the rails, simply proposed the laying of new tracks to ...

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