Aquabus water taxi service
Since 2017 the Aquabus does not work!
When he founded his new capital, Peter the Great tried to get all the inhabitants of St. Petersburg to travel round the city by boat, with a view to improving the seafaring skills of the Russian population. His plans proved untenable, but in recent years the city government have been looking in to ways of exploiting St. Petersburg's waterways for transport purposes, in response to growing problems with congestion on the city's roads.
The Aquabus, also referred to as river tram or water taxi, is a public river transport system ferrying passengers along a fixed route to a set timetable. Despite the enormous distance covered by St. Petersburg's rivers and canals, there are currently only one inner-city line in operation. Reaching speeds of up to 80 km/h, the Aquabus really does provide a fast way of getting from A to B, although locals are yet to take it seriously as a transport option, and most passengers - travelling from one end of the line to the other and then back again - are tourists. Navigation begins at the very end of May and finishes in October.
