Finding the unexpected in the everyday.
March 13, 2023 A replacement bus station was inaugurated in northwestern England’s town of Ormskirk, which has achieved widespread renown as a producer of gingerbread and is located 13 miles (21 kilometers) north of Liverpool. This town is part of the ceremonial county of Lancashire. The public officials who took part in the Monday opening... Continue Reading →
The Montgomery Bus Boycott, along with being a transportation-oriented protest against racial segregation practices in Alabama’s capital city, was a pivotal chapter in the larger civil rights movement in the United States. At the time of this boycott during the mid-1950s, longstanding Jim Crow laws that enforced segregation throughout the American South were very much... Continue Reading →
February 6, 2017 Following the completion of work on major innovations and upgrades, Doroteo Jose station of the Manila Light Rail Transit System (better known as the LRT) in the Philippines was officially reopened to great fanfare. Doroteo Jose station, which is part of the LRT’s Line 1 (LRT-1), is located on the major thoroughfare... Continue Reading →
December 29, 2021 In the Indonesian province of East Java, a bus transit system (BTS) serving the city of Surabaya and surrounding regencies (administrative divisions) and cities was officially inaugurated. (Surabaya, the capital of East Java, is second only to Jakarta as Indonesia’s largest city.) This BTS owes its name in part to pecel semanggi,... Continue Reading →
December 10, 1910 The Hawthorne Bridge in Portland, Oregon, was officially opened to traffic. This bridge had been designed by Waddell & Harrington and, as part of the inaugural festivities, C.K. Allen from that engineering firm formally recommended acceptance of the new structure to the city. Portland Mayor Joseph Simon responded by declaring, “Let it open!” This... Continue Reading →
December 8, 1984 A Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority (MBTA) transit station was opened in the city of Cambridge in the Greater Boston metropolitan area. This station is located at the intersection of of Massachusetts and Somerville Avenues in Cambridge’s Porter Square neighborhood. Porter station serves the Red Line, one of MBTA’s rapid transit lines; the... Continue Reading →
December 5, 2020 In the Canadian province of Ontario, an intercity bus terminal in the downtown section of Toronto was officially opened. The Union Station Bus Terminal (USBT), which is operated by the government-owned company Metrolinx, is connected via pedestrian walkways to Union Station (a major railway facility and Canada’s busiest transportation hub). USBT serves... Continue Reading →
November 17, 1999 In the state of Western Australia (WA), a bus station built on the Bentley campus of Curtin University of Technology was opened. Bentley, which is a southern suburb of WA’s capital city of Perth, serves as that university’s main campus. (This official name of this educational institution was shortened to Curtin University... Continue Reading →
November 6, 2018 In the city of Bhubaneswar in eastern India’s state of Odisha, a public transport bus service known as Mo Bus (the Hindi phrase for “my bus”) was launched. (Bhubaneswar is the capital of Odisha and also that state’s largest city.) Mo Bus was officially inaugurated by Naveen Patnaik, who has served as... Continue Reading →
October 23, 1980 The first formal intercity air/ground/rail transportation connection in the United States -- and the country’s first rail station built on airport-owned property -- was officially dedicated about 1.5 miles (2.4 kilometers) from the terminal of Baltimore/Washington International Airport. Construction on that rail station serving the airport (now known as Baltimore Washington International... Continue Reading →
Transportation History 