1640 was the first year of hired transport. A certain Mr. Sauvage was the first to introduce transportation by hired car in Paris. At that time, the first carriage was in front of a house called Hôtel Saint Fiacre on rue Saint-Martin. This is why the French came to call St. Fiacre of Meaux the patron saint of fiacre and cab drivers.
Toll passenger transportation in Prague first began in the form of the so-called “taravaschka,” which in 1712 had five stations in the Old Town Square and Charles Square. At that time, customers paid a fee based on the number of steps the porter had to walk from the boarding place to the destination.

The first horse-drawn drožki (from the Russian “drožki”) gradually appeared in Prague in the last decade of the 18th century. Because of Prague\’s convenient transportation system, drojukis operated in alphabetical shifts; in 1828, there were 43 cart owners in the capital. Just as today\’s distinction between luxury and ordinary cabs, carriages were also divided at that time. The wealthy rode in carriages pulled by several horses, while those who did not rode in carriages with only one horse.
Interesting facts:
– The first motorized cabs, which began to be used in large numbers for hired transport in Germany after 1911, were manufactured by the German company Adam Opel in 1898. [From 1829, spring cars pulled by a pair or two of horses, called omnibuses, began to operate in Prague. Each carriage carried up to 20 passengers inside and on the roof.
– In September 1895, the first Czech public transportation system was created. For the first time, the Prague horse-drawn railroad, which ran on rails, began operating. The first railroad was 20 kilometers long. This railroad gradually developed and began to displace smaller capacity railroads from the capital.

– In 1891, František Křižík presented the first motorized vehicle, a streetcar, at the Jubilee Exposition in Prague. The line was initially single track only, and the vehicle ran at 10 km/h.
– In 1908, the first buses appeared in Prague. It operated on three lines, distinguished by letters, until the beginning of World War II.
– At the beginning of the 20th century, the Prague City Council was already contemplating the introduction of “underground trams”. However, it had to wait until 1974, when the first Prague metro line opened.