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Atransit district ortransit authority is agovernment agency or apublic-benefit corporation created for the purpose of providingpublic transportation within a specific region.
A transit district may operatebus,rail or other types of transport includingferry service, or may operate other facilities. In some cases, the transit district may be part of a larger organization such as a state Department of Transportation.
With seven transport associations responsible for the nine federal states of Austria, it is the only country in the world that has transport associations for each federal state except for Vienna, Lower Austria and Burgenland which are organised in one association (Verkehrsverbund Ost-Region).
In Canada, transit (or transport or transportation) is mostly of the domain oflocal government, with some coordination by the provinces. MostCanadian cities have a transit authority.
Île-de-France Mobilités supervises transport in theÎle de France region.
As part of the big deregulation package passed by theBundestag in 1993, which mainly merged the two state railways of West and East Germany into one single company governed by private law instead of public law, regional transport and transit had been assigned to theBundesländer (federal states), who had each to pass their own individual law regulating public transit, whereby "regional" was defined as journeys "typically not over distances more than 50 km (30 mi), and not taking longer than one hour".
Providing public transit is the joint responsibility of the local county and municipal governments per The Public Transportation Act (2010:1065). Transit is most often organised on the county level, but in the sparsely populated north, some municipalities opt to run a city bus network separated from the county network.
Some counties opt to run joint commuter train networks In the north, this is also done with coaches which run on lines, sometimes hundreds of kilometres long.
Transport for London, which operates theLondon Underground,London Overground and theDLR, an extensivebus network,tram services,riverboat services, thePublic Carriage Office (responsible forblack cabs),London Dial-a-Ride,streets in London, theLondon congestion charge and alimited coach service. TheOyster card electronic ticketing scheme is also operated by Transport for London, and can be used on the underground, overground, buses, trams and the DLR.
In the United States, a transit district is aspecial-purpose district organized either as a corporation chartered bystatute or as a government agency. A district is usually contained within one state, but in rare circumstances may cover two or more states. The term used depends on which part of the country the agency is created in. Typically, western states will create a "transit district" and eastern states create a "transit authority" but the type of agency is generally the same.
A transit district is created to give it the power of the government in dealing with solving problems related totransit issues. This includes the powers ofeminent domain to obtain space forrights-of-way (e.g. forrailways orbusways), the ability to imposeexcise,income,property, and/orsalestaxes to fund subsidies of operating costs of local transportation, and the ability to operate independently of the cities and counties that the transit district operates within. A transit district may also have its owntransit police force, although in some areas the local police provide a special bureau for this purpose.
Some of the more famous transit districts in the U.S. include:
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