History
The Public light bus service started as a result of the 1967 Hong Kong riots. Workers of China Motor Bus and Kowloon Motor Bus were incited to go on strike. During the riot, buses and trams were not available and the territory was ground to a halt.
The buses can also be traced back to a local minibus system (黑牌車) used in the New Territories prior to 1960s. They were allowed to operate in the urban areas of Hong Kong after 1967 to ease commuter chaos.
At the time people with mini-vans provided transport to the public for a small charge. The government turned a blind eye even though it was against traffic laws to carry passengers without a passenger service licence. The 1969 legislation legalising the service making some 5,000 licences available for drivers caused some controversy. Some believed it was wrong of the government to issue licences to people who had been profiting from an illegal activity.
The first generation light buses were vans carrying nine passengers. The buses had a black and white checkered stripe and was colloquially referred to as the zebra car (斑馬車). This design later gave way to the red striped vans (colloquially as "red bus" or "14 seat") of today. Seating increased over the years to 14 and finally to 16 seats. Earlier minibuses featured a door on the front passenger side. The destination signage at the top front of minibuses did not appear until 1977 and the rear bench seat disappeared altogether following the installation of air conditioning.
Read more about this topic: Public Light Bus
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“Jesus Christ belonged to the true race of the prophets. He saw with an open eye the mystery of the soul. Drawn by its severe harmony, ravished with its beauty, he lived in it, and had his being there. Alone in all history he estimated the greatness of man.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“So in accepting the leading of the sentiments, it is not what we believe concerning the immortality of the soul, or the like, but the universal impulse to believe, that is the material circumstance, and is the principal fact in this history of the globe.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“In history the great moment is, when the savage is just ceasing to be a savage, with all his hairy Pelasgic strength directed on his opening sense of beauty;—and you have Pericles and Phidias,—and not yet passed over into the Corinthian civility. Everything good in nature and in the world is in that moment of transition, when the swarthy juices still flow plentifully from nature, but their astrigency or acridity is got out by ethics and humanity.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)