If you're a kid in Los Angeles, you're probably used to seeing cars, cars, cars, everywhere you go. But that wouldn't be true if you were growing up on the other side of the world, in Venice, Italy.

     In Venice, there aren't any cars! Venice is built on a system of islands and waterways. People ride boats to get around, or walk.

     There aren't many places like Venice, but there are lots of cities in which it's easier to live without a car than in Los Angeles.

     Ask your teacher to help you find London, Paris, Moscow, Tokyo and Hong Kong on a globe. All of these cities are famous for their transit systems.

     In Tokyo and Mosco, the subway carries more than two and a half billion riders every year!

     Public transit works best when the community is designed around it. This doesn't mean everyone has to be jammed together in dirty, crowded buildings.

     Many older communities are already designed for transit; they were built when streetcars were still popular!   >>

     The photo at left shows a "transit village" of homes and offices surrounding the BART train station in Pleasant Hill, California. The train station is the diagonal line in the middle of the picture.

     Do you see how easy it is for the people who live and work here to take the train? Lots of them do; almost half of the people living near this station use BART to go to work!   >>

     A lot of communities also make it much easier to walk or ride bicycles. Using bicycles is very good for the environment!

     In Amsterdam, people can use special credit cards to check out "white bikes" from a computer-controlled bicycle rack. They can put the bikes back into another rack after they ride where they want to go.

     There are many different kinds of public transit. One kind that nearly everyone uses is the airplane. Not very many people have planes of their own!

     Venice isn't the only city that uses boats as public transit. In this picture, a ferry boat takes commuters to San Francisco. Customers can buy sandwiches and drinks, and eat them while they stand on the deck and look at the bay. But they have to be careful not to fall in the water!   >>

     Most of the time, though, public transit means traveling on land. One very popular form of public transit is the bus.

     Buses are much cheaper than trains, and seat fewer people. They're best at serving transit routes that aren't heavily used.

     Some planners think that buses are almost always the best form of transit, because of the savings in money.

     The city of Ottawa, Canada built a famous transit system using buses. Special busways run through the city. These are wide roads like freeways, but only buses can use them. More than 200,000 Ottawans ride the busways every day, and more than seventy percent of the trips downtown during the busiest hours are by public transit!   >>

     There are different kinds of trains used in public transit.

     Light rail trains, or trolleys, usually run over ground. They run on electricity from power lines over the train tracks. They can go as fast as fifty-five miles an hour, although they usually go much slower in the city.

     Light rail lines are more expensive than buses, but cheaper than heavy rail lines. The Muni trains in San Francisco, the Portland MAX and the San Diego Trolley are light rail lines.

     So is the Los Angeles Blue Line, shown in the photo below.

     Some commuter trains run on electricity too. Others are powered by locomotives, just like the trains that transported people and products around the country before cars were invented.   >>

     The locomotive -- the first car in the train -- holds a giant diesel engine. This engine is much, much bigger and more powerful than the engine in any car. It makes three thousand horsepower and can pull a nine hundred thousand pound train over one hundred miles per hour.

     Commuter trains often are nicer inside than most other types of trains. They sometimes have bathrooms, and big, comfortable chairs, and tables, so business people can do work while they're riding to the office.

     Commuter trains often run on train routes built over a hundred years ago.

     Some communities grew up around these routes, long before most people were worried about the environment. Towns like Scarsdale and Bronxville in New York are good examples.

     They're called commuter trains because they run most often in the morning and the afternoon, when people need to go to and from work.   >>

     Heavy rail trains are also called subways, or metros. They usually run under the ground. The "Tube" in London and the Los Angeles Red Line are subways. The longest subway in the world is in New York City. It covers 722 miles and takes over 2.7 million New Yorkers to work every day.

     Heavy rail trains go faster than light rail trains, and cost more to build. They get their power from a "third rail" next to the train tracks.

     Heavy rail can be one of the most nicest forms of public transit. The trains are fast. Cars don't get in the way of the heavy rail trains, and the trains don't get in the way of the cars, either.

     But heavy rail is expensive. Heavy rail systems make the most sense in places where lots of people will ride them ... like through the center of big cities. How many people do you think there are in this crowded subway station in Washington, D.C.?   >>

     Monorails are a special kind of train that run on just one track ... a monorail! Monorails have never gotten very popular, although some people think they should be.

     If you'd like to ride a monorail, ask your parents to take you to Seattle. That's where this picture was taken!

     Not all passenger trains are built to carry people inside a city.

     Some passenger trains carry people much longer distances.

     Amtrak is the name for the national railroad system. If you want to go from San Francisco to Los Angeles, but don't want to fly, you can take an Amtrak train.

     Amtrak trains run all over the United States. They're nice inside, like commuter trains.  >>

     In Europe and Japan, some special trains have been built to carry people much faster than other trains can go.

     The French TGV draws electric power from an overhead wire, like a light rail train, but goes much faster: up to 186 miles an hour.

     The Japanese "bullet train" got its name because of how fast it can go: like a bullet!

     The MagLev is a new type of train. Powerful magnets on the track and on the bottom of the train keep the train floating about four inches over the track. It doesn't touch the track at all when it's running.

     MagLev trains can go over three hundred miles an hour.

     Many people want to build fast trains like this in the United States, too.  >>

     The word ‘paratransit’ is used for shared ride taxis, jitneys, shuttle vans, van pools, and other transit in small vehicles. The drivers often don’t follow fixed routes; they can take you wherever you want, even to your front door!

     Some paratransit services are run by the government; others are run by businesspeople, for a profit. When businesspeople run the services, the government doesn't have to pay anything to make them work. Some experts think much more attention should be paid to paratransit, especially in spread-out cities like Los Angeles.

     People can even use computers to find paratransit rides! Satellites orbiting high above the earth can track vans, taxis and other vehicles as they move around a city.

     Ride seekers can use computers to find the vehicles that are closest.

     (Or at least they can when they're a lot older than these kids!)

     Today, only a few van and taxi companies use GPS or WPS technology to provide rides. If more people used GPS and WPS to match rides and riders, especially with private vehicles, it could change the way we travel.

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