May 20, 2026
Wheel tea on aisle 5
The Invention of Buses
Turns out buses were a radical idea, and the comments are obsessed with why we waited so long
TLDR: The big surprise is that buses were deliberately invented in 1662, not born automatically from carriages, and early rules helping the rich helped kill the idea. Commenters were hooked by the weird timeline, the street-design debate, and one wildly dramatic stagecoach elegy.
Plot twist: the bus was not some obvious next step after the wheel. According to the article, the first true bus service showed up in Paris in 1662 thanks to Blaise Pascal, who basically sketched out the modern formula: set route, set fare, set stops. And then, in the most painfully familiar twist imaginable, officials stepped in, restricted who could ride, and the whole thing spiraled into backlash, protests, and collapse. Yes, the comments immediately seized on that detail like it was a 17th-century version of transit discourse on today’s internet.
The strongest reaction was a mix of "wait, buses came after taxis?" and "wow, city design really decides everything". One commenter was fascinated that shared rides and hire cabs existed long before buses, spinning it into a bigger question about when fixed-route flying started and whether economics, not engineering, is the real kingmaker. Another zeroed in on narrow streets in Damascus and basically launched a mini urban-planning detective story: if roads are too tight for carriages to pass, was a bus ever even possible?
And then came the unexpectedly emotional moment: a commenter dropped a haunting song lyric about the last stagecoach driver over the Swiss Alps, turning a transport-history thread into full-on period-drama energy. So yes, the article is about buses — but the real show is the comment section treating public transit like a crossover between infrastructure nerding, class-war outrage, and sad cowboy poetry.
Key Points
- •The article argues that buses were a distinct transport invention, not an automatic result of having wheels and large carriages.
- •Wheels were used for transport long before buses existed, while early carts remained limited by poor roads and modest practical utility.
- •Before buses, cities had hire cabs and intercity stagecoaches, but stagecoaches did not operate like buses because they were intercity, book-in-advance services.
- •Blaise Pascal is identified as the inventor of the first true bus system, which began operating in Paris on 18 March 1662.
- •Pascal’s bus service failed after restrictive regulations by the Parlement of Paris excluded laborers and artisans, and the service ended by 1677.