Stop at the Museum of Public Transport of Wallonia for Jean-Pol Hecq. He receives Lara Feguenne, assistant to the management of this institution, and Olivier Jortay, guide-animator.
The history of public transport is a wonderful reflection of society and, above all, of the way in which we have always had to solve the problem of urban mobility. In the countryside, before the arrival of the railway and local trams, the stagecoach served for a very long time as a unique link between towns and cities.
But in the city and in the big industrial conurbations, the need to be able to circulate comfortably and at an affordable cost began to become a real problem towards the end of the 19th century. If the first urban trams were pulled by horses, electricity will quickly impose itself as the most efficient source of energy. At the beginning of the 20th century, the electric tram reigned supreme until the advent of the bus in the 1950s. Sometimes, as in Liège, which was the city in Western Europe where this curious hybrid vehicle experienced its greatest development , the trolleybus will resist.
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