Section 5 - Public Transport Public Transport Hong Kong has a diverse multi-modal public transport system, comprising a Mass Transit Railway, a tramway, franchised buses, public light buses, taxis, non-franchised buses, a funicular cable tramway and ferry services, extending to almost every part of the territory. Rehabus services are also available for persons with mobility difficulties. Public transport patronage decreased slightly by about 0.9% in 2008 when compared with 2007 to 11.42 million passengers per day. Although there was also a slightly decrease of railway patronage by 0.6% over last year, the railway system, which carried 4.19 million passengers per day in 2008, is still the largest passenger carrying mode. Coming next were the franchised buses, which carried 3.87million passengers per day in 2008, representing an decrease of about 2.3% against 2007. Railways, being the most environmentally friendly form of mass transport, will continue to expand in network. It will form the backbone of Hong Kong's transport system with other modes playing a supplementary but still important role to ensure a choice of services by commuters. There were continuing improvements in the quality of franchised buses. By end 2008, about 97% of the franchised buses were air-conditioned and about 69% were Euro II or above buses with less emission. To ensure more efficient use of bus resources and to provide passengers with more choices of routes, bus-bus interchange schemes were promoted. In 2008, a total of 17 bus-bus interchange schemes were introduced, increasing the total number of schemes to 229 schemes. The market share of ferry remained at 1.3% in 2008 with 147,100 daily passengers. As at end 2008, there were altogether 15 franchised and licensed ferry operators providing 27 regular passenger ferry routes and 2 dangerous goods vehicular ferry routes providing services at the harbour and to the outlying islands.