What is "rapid transit"

n. A commuter rail system that combines aspects of an interurban railway with those of a subway, using a menagerie of pathways such as viaduct, tunnel, beam, cut and cover, trench, at grade, and others.

n. an urban public transit system using underground or elevated trains [syn: mass rapid transit]

A rapid transit is a public transport system in an urban area with high capacity, high frequency not needing timetables, is fast and is segregated from other traffic.

Rapid transit may also refer to:

• Bus rapid transit, a term applied to a variety of public transportation systems using buses
• Bombardier Advanced Rapid Transit, a rapid transit system manufactured by Bombardier Transportation

Rapid transit, also known as metro, subway, heavy rail, or underground, is a type of high-capacity public transport generally found in urban areas. Unlike buses or trams, rapid transit systems are electric railways that operate on an exclusive right-of-way, which cannot be accessed by pedestrians or other vehicles of any sort, and which is often grade separated in tunnels or on elevated railways.

Modern services on rapid transit systems are provided on designated lines between stations typically using electric multiple units on rail tracks, although some systems use guided rubber tyres, magnetic levitation, or monorail. The stations typically have high platforms, without steps inside the trains, requiring custom-made trains in order to avoid gaps. They are typically integrated with other public transport and often operated by the same public transport authorities. However, some rapid transit systems have at-grade intersections between a rapid transit line and a road or between two rapid transit lines. It is unchallenged in its ability to transport large numbers of people quickly over short distances with little use of land. Variations of rapid transit include people movers, small-scale light metro, and the commuter rail hybrid S-Bahn.

The world's first rapid-transit system was the partially underground Metropolitan Railway which opened as a conventional railway in 1863, and now forms part of the London Underground. In 1868, New York opened the elevated West Side and Yonkers Patent Railway, initially a cable-hauled line using static steam engines.

The world's largest single rapid transit service provider by both length of track (, including non-revenue track) and number of stations (469 stations in total) is the New York City Subway. By length of passenger route, the world's longest single-operator rapid transit system is the Shanghai Metro. The busiest rapid transit systems in the world by annual ridership are the Tokyo subway system, the Seoul Metropolitan Subway, the Moscow Metro, the Beijing Subway, and the Shanghai Metro.

Rapid Transit was a play by Lajos Egri that premiered at the Provincetown Playhouse, New York, in April 1927 and closed before the end of the month after 20 performances. Horace Liveright had bought and produced this work. Egri's expressionist play was translated from his original Hungarian by Gustav Davidson and Francis Edwards Faragoh, and adapted by Charles Recht.

Casting about for some adequate means of conveying a sense of the hectic pace of this machine age, Egri pictured a world in which all of life is compressed into twenty-four hours. Children grow to maturity in a few minutes; meals are eaten in split seconds; tabloid newspapers are issued at intervals of a second or two, and the loss of half a minute is a serious matter.

Realizing that this notion alone was not quite sufficient to carry a play, Egri broadened his vision to afford a comprehensive view of the world's front page. Wars and justice, taxes and public opinion: all of these Egri incorporated in a manner that was a hallmark of expressionistic drama. Rapid Transit had a prologue and six scenes. There were almost seventy cast members. The sets conveyed an impression of cogwheels, greasy steel pistons, chains, derricks, clanking, rumbling, thumping. The tempo was blinding.

The New York Times described the play as "chaotic at times, but sporadically interesting".