- published: 23 Feb 2012
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A transport hub (also transport interchange) is a place where passengers and cargo are exchanged between vehicles or between transport modes. Public transport hubs include train stations, rapid transit stations, bus stops, tram stop, airports and ferry slips. Freight hubs include classification yards, seaports and truck terminals, or combinations of these. For private transport the parking lot functions as a hub.
Delta Air Lines pioneered the hub and spoke system for aviation in 1955 from its hub in Atlanta, Georgia, in an effort to compete with Eastern Air Lines. FedEx adopted the hub and spoke model for overnight package delivery during the 1970s. When the airline industry was deregulated in 1978, Delta's hub and spoke paradigm was annexed by several airlines. Hubs make out the center of spoke-hub distribution paradigms, allowing passengers and cargo to be transported from one place to another without a direct service.
The nature of public transport makes it necessary for people to change transport modes throughout the journey. The first hub a passenger often will come across is a bus stop where one changes from pedestrian to bus. But often public transport is built around a network of different transportation methods, each serving different functions with varying frequencies, distances, speeds and stopping patterns, so-called intermodal passenger transport. Typical transport hubs in public transport include bus stations, railway stations and metro stations, while a major transport hub, often multimodal (bus and rail), may be referred to in American English as a transport center or transit center. Sections of city streets that are devoted to functioning as transit hubs are referred to as transit malls.