Do Cities Still Need Metros?
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- Опубликовано: 28 сен 2024
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Are cities without subways missing out? In today’s video we talk about city centre suburban rail tunnels, and why subways still matter.
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Ever wondered why your city's transit just doesn't seem quite up to snuff? RMTransit is here to answer that, and help you open your eyes to all of the different public transportation systems around the world!
Reece (the RM in RMTransit) is an urbanist and public transport critic residing in Toronto, Canada, with the goal of helping the world become more connected through metros, trams, buses, high-speed trains, and all other transport modes.
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This reminds me of a debate we had in Warsaw after the first Metro line opened. The M1 runs along one of the city's main N-S street routes, which also happens to host one of primary tram routes. After the metro was opened, a lot of people argued the tram was now redundant in this area and should be scrapped (presumably to make more room for cars).
The city decided against it, based on the premise that a tram serves a different kind of journey from a metro. Should be obvious enough when you take into account that the tram stops about twice as often as the metro on the same route. There's a similar ratio between metro and suburban rail stations.
Tram on road is good for short journey, says within 2 metro station. I am in Hong Kong, lots of people in Island and Kowloon know it is very different with tram or without tram.
Also it is friendly to elderly and disable people that no need to climb up to elevated station /down into deep underground station although may provide elevator for accessibility.
Let me guess, both services are now very busy, most of the time?
@@mdhazeldine that's right
Sadly, we've often made this mistake in Vienna, where a lot of tram lines got replaced by metro lines. Our metro lines are the fullest in sections without any trams parallel to it because people often have to use the metro for only 2 or 3 stops (eg. line U3 between Westbahnhof and Volkstheater, where the tram lines on Mariahilfer Straße got scrapped).
Also, people forget that when considering overall journey times, getting in and out of stations can add a considerable amount of time to your trip.
It's sad when cities ruin their tight tram network to make room for cars
Most uk cities did this : ( Bristol has been trying to get them back for ages
Trams are incredible. We never got rid of them in Melbourne and they're an excellent mode of transport. More flexible than trains, cheap to maintain, provides benefits to commuters, tourists, and local businesses. They work well in conjunction with the train network. But there are a lot of bus corridors that could absolutely be tram corridors, but aren't because of highways, urban sprawl, and awful street design. Buses are lame. Trams are cool.
All Danish cities did this, but all 3 of them have had modern light rail projects in the works, all with different goals and practices.
Aarhus with 350.000 people, whose 2 city centre tram lines closed in 1971 opened its new system in 2017, which is a mix of new median light rail with long stretches into greenfield development, and of 2 old regional railways that got electrified and converted to interurban tram train operation, in the hopes of creating an S-bahn style system using light rail that's currently around 110km long, of which only 12km is newly built.
Odense with 205.000 residents closed their original tram line in 1952 but brought trams back in 2022 with a 14.5km long line. This line mostly takes practice from French light rail systems, with dense stop spacing, heavy use of grassy tracks and signal priority, and high frequencies. Interestingly the Odense light rail already has higher ridership than the whole of the Aarhus system.
And finally Copenhagen is also building a 28km long light rail line, though not through the city centre. Instead their project is an orbital line going through the suburbs on the city's ringway 3, parallel to the city's busiest highway. This line features very wide stop spacing at almost 2 km in some cases, and is heavily focused on speed. It mostly takes design practices from German stadtbahn systems, but with low floor trams, and the role the route will serve is very similar to Stockholms Tvärbanan and the Jokeri light rail that's opening very soon in Helsinki. Copenhagens system will open in 2025 if everything sticks to the current schedule.
and it costs the coffers for the municipality to make too much space for cars.
I can understand that you replace trams by a metro, but only if you do it to provide more space to bicycles/pedestrians
I live in Moscow, Moscow without the metro system would be mayhem, the ongoing expansion of the metro system here is not just a luxury but it is absolutely essential!
i was just about to say. i regularly use both subway and regular train lines in moscow. the metro map became insane in 2023 but it's totally worth it, i hope in the future both systems are gonna get even more intertwined.
Same here, live in Moscow, in new districts. Metro is totally essential, and the second ring line is good. Line interchanges suck very much, though. They are long and inconvenient.
Yes, cities still need metros. But not every city needs a full scale metro, and many can use a intermediate solution.
That said, do not forget to look at other pre existing modes like commuter rail (S Bahn)
Of course, but not needed a metro because you have an S-Bahn was kind of the point of the video!
@RMTransit so you don't need a metro with an s bahn or you do
Good video for describing the differences between modes and that Metros have a unique purpose and set of benefits. The natural segue to this is how to decide what type of rail system to build for any given city, and at what point to build it (or those) as it grows. Should you build suburban rail first, and then add Metro later or just go straight to Metro first, and then add suburban rail later? Or maybe you should build LRT first, and then convert to Metro? So many variables at play. Maybe the best way to do it would be to take a couple of example small cities and imagine how they might grow/develop and postulate about how you'd grow it out (and most importantly WHY you'd do it that way), sort of Cities Skylines style.
Yeah good idea, I'll make a note to eventually do that video
Subways would never be obsolete, because 1. They isolate the noise to the passengers (Elevated). 2. They don't compete with other traffic modes (like Light Rail). 3. They are generally faster because of the above.
4. The chances are you will be in a climate control environment. This is important for limiting delays (waiting or incremental weather like snow or flooding).
There advantages out weigh there disadvantages, so certain cities makes the investment.
*Their, not there.
Trams aren't very good at doing fast high volume mid distance trips. Hell they're not that good at doing mid distance trips at all. Trams should stop regularly and ferry you to Metro, suburban, and regional stations. Metros / suburban / regional trains have what they do in the name. They only have modest overlap, as is evidenced in Melbourne where the trains try to be metros but fail.
Bilbao has an interesting mix of Metro and Suburban rail with their Euskotren lines. While the 7.5 minute headways are uninspiring, they manage pretty good reliability and importantly do a very good job as a metro within the city, with close stop spacing and well located stations. It is perhaps also partly enabled by the use of metre gauge and generally smaller sized trains, but I think it's quite a good concept for smaller cities.
Bilbao is quite big though and sorely lacks a faster rail links that span its length.
Needs an explainer at some point
Maybe
Subways don't disrupt the surface roads and buildings. You would not build an above ground train downtown.
It depends on the travel distances, less on required capacity. If you have no usable heavy rail infrastructure laying aroung going for a metro can be helpful. For example, the Ruhr region is not super densely populated in many places but would greatly benifit from having a proper (light) metro system because the distances within the region are large and many corridors simply will never have a S-Bahn serving them because the infrastructure does not exist
And here is MFG using Frankfurt as his personal example again:
- A full sized S-Bahn train is around 200 metres long, a full sized U-Bahn train around 100 metres, though it's more common to see 75m trains (the U3 and U5 even are limited to 75m thanks to their legal loading gauge). On top of that, the S-Bahn trains have standard train width (around 3m), the U-Bahn more that of a tramway (2.65m).
- The S-Bahn has nine separate services of which eight go into the tunnel (though that too can be split into two separate metalines, the north-south S3-S6 lines and the east-west S1, S2, S8 and S9 lines) while the U-Bahn has three metalines (named A, B and C) of which the A has four branches while the other two have only two each.
- You can see the difference in accelleration on the shared C-line-S-Bahn tunnel below Zeil yourself.
- The U-Bahn has some pretty tight curves at Marbachweg though ideally, they would have been softened out if it were properly grade separated, and the remaining curves are still tighter than that you will see on the S-Bahn.
- Though the S-Bahn has some stops only 500 metres apart in the trunks (most notably Lokalbahnhof), once the trains are outside, the distances are closer to that of your average (German) regional line even within the city border while the U-Bahn only has higher stop distances if geometry (e.g. there are buildings or a river above the line) and population (very prominent in the north) makes a stop impractical.
- Thanks to taking over existing rail corridors, the S-Bahn tends to serve more places outside the city than inside so outside the centre, only Nied, Griesheim and Höchst have tracks right through their centre while neighbourhoods like Eschersheim, Dornbusch and Bornheim are better served by the U-Bahn. It also makes the S-Bahn network heavily skewed towards the west so the U-Bahn also is more prominent in the east than the west.
- Related to the above, A-Line and the north-south S-Bahn lines intersect quite often (Südbahnhof, Hauptwache, A-S6 in Eschersheim, U3-S5 in Oberursel, nearly the U2-S5 in Bad Homburg and planned U1-S6 at Niddapark), though other lines also are planned to intersect the S-Bahn including the U5 extension to Frankfurter Berg (interchange with the S6), Nordmain'sche S-Bahn (U6 at Ostbahnhof) and Regionaltangente West (Höchst and Eschborn Süd).
Of course, to immediately mention the elephant in the room, the U-Bahn is not a proper metro due to the lack of grade separation so a lot of portions are still at grade and even street running in case of the U5 (incidentally, they tend to happen more on the branches except on the A line) but it still has a lot of potential which makes it IMO still a good anecdote. Another notable deviation on is the lack of interchanges within the U-Bahn except the triange in the centre as well as the B-C interchange at Bockenheimer Warte. The north also resembles more of a traditional railway so even if it were fully grade separated, most of the tracks would still be at grade or at most on embankments (it _is_ a former railway except within Riedberg). On top of that, the S-Bahn trains have a higher door density compared to the U-Bahn trains (per 100m, 18 pairs of doors on the S-Bahn, 16 on the U-Bahn).
Good transfers… the NYC subway is still missing some of those. In addition to no connect between most of the boroughs (other than the G train) there’s also no good connection from Queens to the upper west side and central Harlem, it’s either go downtown to cross over, or hope that the BDE stop at 7th avenue is good enough (unless you need the A, C or 1, then you will have to transfer again, or just go down to 42nd street and do a lot of walking.) The 2 and 3? Either go down to 42nd and walk, or transfer multiple times to get to 72nd street.
the difficult thing is with places like the US where at its heart suburban rail would be the best for a lot of the more sprawling cities, but there aren't easy rail rights of way so we're stuck having to build big suburban metros or run partly on the street with subpar long distance light rail
And now bus rapid transit which is even worse given how poorly it's executed within the United States. I can't think of a single BRT lines in the US that wouldn't be considered a complete joke in Curitiba and Bogotá where the concept originated (although Pittsburgh and L.A. did build exclusive busways first).
never seems to be a problem to build a highway...and highways take much more space
Thats where looking at systems like the REM and RRTS makes sense!
1:16 The “g” in “S Tog” is silent in Danish. So it sounds more like “S Toe”.
come to Liverpool , check out our new 777 class trains, the only city that has a subway fully grade separated system that's not actually classed as a subway system due to political reasons (you can't have a small city like Liverpool have a subway system and it's much larger neighbour Manchester only have trams haha)
I’d really like to see a video on unbuilt subway/metro projects
Yes like Cincinnati
Omsk metro video?
Reese you seem quite well connected to current build outs on transit. I would be curious to know what the North American cost per KM is for various types of transit. It seems there are often debates on why we don't cap cover, elevate, etc... on new projects but I always assumed the costs were astronomical to at grade construction. Anyway, a hierarchy of build techniques would be nice to see.
I've shared the transit costs project a lot which has lots of data on this
Thank you SO much! This is exactly what I needed. Will tell you at some other point via email. All the best from Berlin!
Some subway systems use mainline track for part of their journey. One example is the PATH Train, NYC to New Jersey
For the expansion of metro systems in cities, a good example would be Oslo Metro’s expansion to Bærum’s Sandvika for Line 3.
As an ex Montrealer who moved to South East Asia 15 years ago, I've witnessed firsthand the horrors of not being proactive with creating efficient public transportation. City was quiet and had 5-6 traffic lights when I arrived (that has certainly changed!), but now with vehicle increases in the hundreds of percent since then (and people all wanting Ford Raptors despite many streets being 4m wide) and zero public transportation, it's an urban disaster that decreases quality of life by A LOT. Now it feels like too little too late.
Traffic mayhem and you can't go anywhere during rush hour. If people think traffic is bad in YUL, they haven't seen how bad it can really get with poor urban planning and lack of foresight when it comes to subways, buses, trams, and so on. It's truly shocking.
High frequency of metro is so convenient. But the need to go underground is a bit annoying. On the other hand, it's always comfortable there - newer too hot or cold (except maybe when you're dressed for very cold)
I think that the highest potential comes from the use of Single Bore Large Diameter Tunnels (e.g Barcelona Metro Line 9/10, as you did a video about) to put the regional and even broader national rail networks underground when approaching the central areas of cities and large towns.
The unrestricted potential platform length would make the Elizabeth Line or RER the norm for regional transit, rather than the exception.
For relatively little cumulative tunnelling to join up the scattered lines including dismantled ones, dozens of cities would suddenly become more convenient to reach by public transit.
Birmingham, Manchester, Leeds, Bristol, even Leicester, Nottingham and Derby...they would not need many miles of single bore large diameter of tunnel each to transform their entire regional networks!
In London itself, multiple suburban corridor groups going into Victoria and London Bridge could be joined together via both the West End, Kings Cross and the City in one or two such tunnels.
I WISH we had a rapid transit grid and standard vehicle design in the Boston area. Here, it's almost all hub-and-spoke (the major lines make 1 very small grid square downtown, covering just enough area to make transfers inconvenient), and EVERY LINE (not counting branches) has its own type of equipment that is incompatible with the rest (and then the T is moving to having a monoculture of vehicles on each one, thereby giving the worst of both worlds).
I think the key thing for a metro is being a separate ecosystem from mainline rail. For example in the UK TfL owns and operates their own infrastructure and trains in London, it means they are not constricted by rules and regulations of the national rail network which are by the whole not designed for metro style services. Yes for the average user who changes from a TfL branded Overground service to the tube wont necessarily know, but there is a huge difference in the way those railways are run.
For winter conditions like we get in Ottawa, we would had been better off with LRT in tunnels than this surface system that suffers in snow and cold.
Works for hot climates too - as long as you're not gonna have flooding issues.
A good follow up on this video might be doing one on the transit system of Hamburg, which has a fairly odd situation, where its metro at times takes you futher to the edges of the metropolitan area than the S Bahn
Reece already made a Hamburg video very recently
Hamburg and Berlin S-Bahn are mostly just another metro, which is not true for every other S-Bahn
@@jan-lukas except for Copenhagen, that is also much more of a Metro. It's entirely separated from the mainline network and there are even plans for GoA4 automation. It's already upgraded to GoA2 thanks to CBTC systemwide.
I did one! ruclips.net/video/m8kMVtw8-so/видео.htmlsi=SMIqVHONb3yp76m4
Absolutely, cities, at least high populated ones, need them. I can't imagine New York City without its subway system. And the nightmarish traffic in many cities in Africa, like Lagon, Nigeria, shows how much so.
Well, maybe the short answer is BOGOTÁ, you can’t run a city over 10 million without a metro.
As someone who lives in Melbourne where we have a suburban train that doesn't quite do the job of a metro, and trams that also don't quite do the job of a metro - yes, you want a Metro in your city.
None of these classifications are right, at least for India.
Because, Suburban trains in Mumbai run at Max frequency their signaling would allow (90 or 180 sec I am not sure). And the number of doors is irrelevant when you are hanging outside the train.
Also trains on Delhi metro are wide broadgauge trains but with transverse seating.
Not to mention Kolkata runs Suburban trains in tunnels and calls them Metro.
The only way to classify is the distance between stops. Metro is usually between 1km and 1 mile.
If you use any other method, I can give you an exception from India.
It's a cluster of features. Classifications are usually blurry around the edges. Though what you might have here is just some services that aren't designed properly.
In Melbourne we have a Suburban rail that comes every 20-30 minutes (in practice sometimes longer) but closer to the city stop distance is more like 1km. It's DEFINITELY not a Metro though, even though it pretends to be: It's heavy, runs on lines that carry some freight, lots of seating, 2-3 doors, and as it goes out to the edge of the suburbs. The 1km stop distance doesn't make it a Metro, it makes it a poorly designed Suburban rail.
Awesome! Love this channel, thanks for the detailed video.
Absolutely loved the video.
If I may and it's not criticism just feedback. It would be nice if you took it a little slow and explained some of the concepts slowly and more in depth and slowly. It felt like it was going quite fast..
Again terrific content. I love trains. Subbed.
The Helsinki suburban rail does also not have any crossings, and the "heart"-line also goes underground for some bits.
Of course the station you pull up when you talk about good transfer at 6:59 is Snowdon, which is a terrible transfer station compared to Lionel Groulx with cross platform. Another good video; I wish suburban rail around Montreal was improved.
I mean its still cross platform, just without the blue line extending further west
That's like asking "do people need water?".
Hey I think you should make a video on the Lagos metro that just opened earlier this month.
Sadly have No footage
@@RMTransit Really? Because I found a bunch of footage on RUclips.
Israel Railways is about 98% above-ground, and is almost entirely grade-separated, with the final few grade separations under construction or approved right now. In the city of Tel Aviv, trains run with a frequency of under 5 minutes between the 4 stations. However, it's still nothing like a metro. The layout of the stations and trains is fundamentally not geared toward short journeys, so it's rarely useful for such journeys. Suburban rail is also more expensive to operate, so there's always a push to make the tickets more expensive, defeating the point of transfer cards and other simple forms of payment/validation. Having said that, I'm glad that underground city-center suburban trains are getting more popular. They are very useful for medium-distance journeys like 15-50 km, which can be entirely inside one big city.
🇵🇸
It's quite an interesting system
The Melbourne Suburban Rail Loop is going to be a metro - grade-separated, smaller more frequent automated trains, non-radial route.
Melbourne is broke ..good luck finishing projects
Your presentation of the substance is excellent, so I'm not quite sure why you don't end on the obvious conclusion: metros and light commuter rails are different, complementary applications and for any sufficiently large urban area, the ideal is having both. That said, don't do the DC Metro thing of having both in the same solution, i.e. a low-density network with low frequency and few overlaps between lines that runs metro infrastructure but spreads out all the way into some of the more remote burbs. That's combining the worst of both systems.
Depending on the day I commute on both, suburban rail, as well as the Metro. Fun fact is that I need less time with the train, than with the Metro. To be precise, 1h 10 minutes vs around 50 minutes. But the train runs only twice per hour... As the Metro runs every 10 minutes (even though I need to take a bus before which only comes every 20 minutes so...). Depending on when my work starts and a suburban train is arriving in time, I will use whatever brings me there in time. So... Nothing is perfect.
I mean, honestly? The Metro is great... Firstly: No noise if it's underground. If you have lived to any kind of railway going next to your house... It sucks. Moving it underground is fine. The closer grid makes it also possible to cover a bigger area of relevance for customers. I mean, I am not going to walk the 3km to my Metro station every day. But that's pretty common with a suburban train. That's also what makes it so fast, if it doesn't have a lot of stops in between. Here in Berlin e.g. it slows down a lot the moment it enters main-city-borders. From Spandau to Charlottenburg which are almost 9km it only needs 7 minutes. And from there it creeps trough the city. From Charlottenburg to Zoologischer Garten, 6 minutes for a distance of only 2,4 km... As you said, big trains take time accelerate. They are not made for this kind of use. This is also the only reason that me using that train is still so slow. If it would run to Hauptbahnhof, or Friedrichstr. without stopping, my whole commute would probably be more in the area of 35-40 minutes.
We also have the S-Bahn, which is kind of interchangeable with the Metro-System... As it's running on it's separate tracks all the time. That one btw. only needs 4 minutes for the distance from Charlottenburg to Zoologischer Garten, with one stop in between... Downside is: 20 Minutes from Spandau to Charlottenburg.... In the end, of those two... I still prefer the "most of the time"-Underground U-Bahn to the "most of the time"-above ground S-Bahn. Also as the stops for the U-Bahn are more frequent. You get closer to your destination, which is always good.
I’ve been living for 10 years in The Hague and the Rotterdam metro system makes me jealous every time I visit Rotterdam. The Hague cannot have a metro system because of the type of soil beneath the city. The Hague’s public system compensates metro with trams and it works well enough but it doesn’t reach to many places. And the busses in The Hague are horrible, notoriously late and unreliable in the morning rush hours.
I thought this was going to be about tram light rail systems being used in place of Metros. I'd love to see a video comparing those modes (because I think there are some really important differences, but then I've only visited Metros, never lived with one in my city).
In Baltimore there is currently a single metro line, going from the central city to the northwest, which doesn't have a lot of riders as it's not part of a meaningful system. Now that there's political support for expanding transit again, the idea of an east to west line has been revived, but it feels like public involvement is trying to sell the idea of trams or BRT instead by preemptively declaring a metro too expensive. My feeling is that cost, or at least perception of cost, is the main problem working against these trains, despite their benefits.
Major info download! Just packed.
Im from mexico city, out metro system mover 2-6million passengers everyday, the real question should be, can a city whitnat least 1million pepole can workbwhit at least a metro line?
What about climate? In addition to temperature tempering not dealing with snow can be a significant factor.
Trains go between cities, while Metros go within cities. They're about as interchangeable as Helicopters and planes. Each have their own optimal use case, and we actually need both, but not everywhere. A metro makes no sense in a rural town, but a train station might work.
hi rm! have u ever played nimby rails?
It's so weird to see an ad for Quebec City in English, lol. (I live in Quebec and there are laws here that require ads to be in French.)
That Rennes has a subway, but Zurich doesn't strikes me as odd. Why is that? A quick look at Wikipedia tells me Zurich is twice the size and a little bit denser than Rennes.
I'd actually be on the fence on this one. For how often trains get stalled, and can't get working in time, the metro system is pretty much garbage. If something happens on the rail, all trains get stopped until it's fixed. You can't say that about buses. I find myself taking buses more than trains when I'm in Europe because it's more sure that I'll arrive, and sometimes they're even faster because of express routes and less stops.
That Montreal Metro map behind you is clearly taken from the metro cars.
Would you like an updated one with the new REM Line?
Metros are better because they don't need to share with cargo. Less issue with snow and leafs.
Funny, as a Melbournian, I was always confused by the role that Subways had until I started talking a lot about it with other people.
It turns out most cities don't have to run trains that both fulfill both heavy frequency in inner suburbs and running 115km/h out to the boonies.
The end result is that a lot of lines have short stopping trains to maintain the higher frequencies closer to the city. Meanwhile the outer rim very much doesn't get those higher frequencies.
It was always odd for me to learn most cities didn't do that!
Also I'm pretty sure the trams completely ate the role subway vehicles would traditionally fill anyway. :D
But thats the thing, the trams can't replace a subway, they are slower and lower capacity - they fit a different niche!
@@RMTransit Of course. The subway's own niche just seemed to be eliminated by accident in Melbourne with how the tram and heavy rail networks meshed.
Then again, the various metro tunnel proposals are proposing a subway-esque conversion of the existing system anyway. Interesting times for the city. :D
I wouldn't worry too much fellas ..Melbourne is nearly 3rd world now. Broke as .doubt you're getting anything in the foreseeable future..you see ,you need money to make stuff happen
I think subways are cool and they are necessary. They will provide people shelter during a war even if you discard all other factors. It is more efficient to build subways then shelters.
what is with the san diego stuff in the backround
Comparing the use of trams and subways is like comparing bicycles to airplanes, they serve an entirely different purpose. Subways get you from one large area of a city to another, while trams are better at shorter distances within the same or neighboring city area, even if they cover the same route. I'd never use a tram or a bus from one end of a city to the other, since it would take decades along with being more crowded, with less space and bumpier, while I'd also not take a subway just for one or two stations. As for the infrastructure itself, there is always space underground, but if you want to limit the mobility of the cars in order to make some frankenstein urban rail traintramtrolley hybrids that are more cramped and slower, then you aren't doing anyone favours, especially to the people living in the suburbs that depend on cars to bring them to the city center, since no progressive armchair urbanists give a rats bottom about the suburbs and only care about public transport within the imminent central area.
The audio on this video seemed a bit murky. Have you changed anything in your setup? (Or is it just me who had this problem?)
We’re in a new space and still working out our audio setup! Turns out echo is a problem when you’ve just moved 😅
Can you make another video on Auckland's City Rail Link. Your old ones is private.
Only a person from Australia or USA would even discuss such a topic :D
I love your videos.
4:32 where exactly?
Can a metro have power lines above instead of a third rail and still being called a metro?
I love to see the grade crossing on the el in Chicago. But honestly the metro/subways are better on traffic especially if a city relies on buses taxis etc.
I Wish we can have 1 in my country
What kind of a question is that?? It is evident we need it, especially for increasingly densly populated Cosmopolitan cities. I think title should have been "are metros used efficiently by city planners?", instead of whether it is needed or not...
You just presented the best topic that railfans and railroad buffs would want to learn about. I would prefer subway structures [that are underground] over trestles [called els], as in New York City and Chicago. Subways do not require much maintenance as do trestles. Also, I like the viaducts and the bridged sections that have concrete roadbeds, or surface sections that are raised above the street surface or parallel where slippers (concrete rail ties) may be installed.
Don't underestimate the upkeep of tunnels, just keeping the dust at bay (fire hazard) is an arduous task. They are also a lot more expensive to build, and while the old viaducts tended to be quite loud, that's not as much the case anymore today. Sure, there are reasons to build underground, especially in hyper-dense neighbourhoods, but there are also arguments for elevated railways in more suburban and industrial areas.
@@barvdw You have a [valid] point. When I looked at the Washington Metrorail subway stations or the modern subway stations in New York, the state in which I live, water leaks on to the station and tunnel walls. I am reminded of the fact that the railcars in many rapid transit systems do produce steel dust during the braking process, thus causing the steel dust to appear on subway station and tunnel walls: Friction from the steel wheels against the steel rails and fires on subway tracks can cause track fires when there is litter on the roadbed. To everything that man has made, there are advantages and disadvantages. This is a lesson to be remembered. Thank you for typing to me.
@@barvdw much harder to maintain tunnels too, especially as they get older. Very hard to replace the way the RPM is replacing El sections in Chicago
8:49 is that a tram?
Yes, cities still need metros. Prime case in point: Delhi.
what is the metro at 2:14?
It is the Copenhagen metro
All the cities here are everywhere else but the metros in China. You should include Chinese metros in this discussion, albeit their cities work differently from the ones that you visited (mainly western cities like Melbourne, Toronto, Munich, London, except.. Singapore). I am telling you all of those stations, trains and system in the video looks very much outdated compared to China's.
I think remote work will become the norm once the current generation of business leaders completes their careers. Any job that can be done well remotely, will be. This will reduce infrastructure burden and maintenance costs in cities, both road and transit.
8:07 Of course there are exceptions. Like if you are a subway enthusiast wanting to visit every station in a day
My opinion has always been that there should be no more than ONE transfer per direction. So if you commute from home and work 20 minutes away, the only transfer you should be making is the last mile from the train to the workplace, or from your home to the train. If you have to make two transfers to get to work, then the transit system is not being time competitive with driving.
That said, "1 transfer, 20 minutes door to door" is the upper limit only for commute. If your commute is 30+ minutes, you should actually move or demand your employer pay for your commute time. A 20 minute commute is usually the equivalent of driving to the next city, and no further. And a 20 minute drive, in traffic is even shorter.
It boggles the mind why anyone would choose a 1, or even 2 hour commute time unless they could actually "do something productive" during that commute, but assuming an 8 hour work day, a 2 hour commute leaves you with no free time. An 8 hour sleep and a 1 hour breakfast/shower + 1 hour dinner, leaves you with 2 hours to do anything interesting.
This is where the commuter rail has one advantage over a Metro, since it has seats, you could just sit down and watch television/read comics/listen to music during your commute on your cell phone (which is how it's done in Japan), but realistically, if you are spending more than 20 minutes commuting, you need to reconsider how far you live from the job.
With how big the USA is, 40 to 50 minute commutes are very common. For two years, I worked a job where my commute was one hour.
I live in mumbai and to live at such places.. it'll cost me 500usd and above just for a room kitchen apartment per month to live nearby.
Though travelling in transit has the advantage of being free and a lot of the people here who even travel 2 or whopping 3 hours a day one direction..
Suburban rails are quite fast and amazing. Though it's a part of our life and we do watch some Netflix or vibe in our commute as we can sit and not worry about the traffic!
Megacities cannot have the requirement even with dense housing to leave near the city center.
In most such cities the pay is already compensated with and high to begin with to justify that.
Still calculates taking a 2hr one side, to maxing at 4hrs round.
There's still many cities who have way more commute, especially in the US.
The advantage with Public transport is, you can do a lot of stuff as you're not busy behind the wheels trying to concentrate and drive! The cities (other than US) also have amazing mixed zoning and are quite more active. Improving access to stuff hence taking way less time and still improving QOL through variety of services and producets available.
The weekends where we have complete free days and can enjoy much more. It isn't as draconian tbh, but yes we do have quite a fast life here!
(Remember these long commutes are possible due to the extensive public transport of lengths around 100kms of the city.)
Changing lines at longer distance is not much of a hassle tbh, unless it's too many, like say 3 or 4.. but one line change coming from 30km travelled so far, would not really feel much.
Especially where my commute for example is 1hr 15m, a car through traffic will take me 3hrs..
At longer travels, line transfers becomes more viable, especially even smoother when your frequencies is around 6 minutes or below
The link to your sub stack isn’t right! 4:04
Still didn’t start watching the video but the answer is yes always yes ( if there’s enough density )
It's pretty simple - if it's possible to build overground build overground. If not, build underground lol
I don't really agree, there are cities than can build overground that can and should still build metro
Excelente
Good
Subways should cut perpendicular to to suburban teains
Subways are horrible and hurt the economy in the US.
- hurt the driving ability of commuters who would love to be stuck in highway traffic
- will hurt Oil and Gas companies who help keep greenhouse gasses on track for climate change
- devastate markets for car companies that help individuals to be driving as sole occupants;
- hurt societal peace by forcing people to build connections during the commute;
- clash with local customs and traditions of laying concrete rivers all through the country;
- slash transit deserts by enabling disadvantaged communities to get out of their communities; heck why allow such folks to get out of their prisons.
So in summary;
Subways and public transportation is the bane of society and does irreparable harm to US cities and its economy
You need Metros if the City is so dense that you cant fit in more rails overground.
Large cities of course need metros, India is build 1.5k or something completed or in progress. Of course that is needed for such a massive population, the alt is what? Cars? The issue I think is the US, you can't do metros there anymore because of cost and crime. Regular ppl dont want to take public transport in US because certain groups commit lots of crime. Hence the car culture
My city went all in on commuter blimps. Best decision we ever made
Exelente
If they were obsolete, why would they be growing everywhere around the world?
Como
subways are cool though
instead of building a metro system in Melbourne, what should and is being done is upgrading our existing train lines to metro standard, which is already being done on the Sunbury, Cranbourne and Pakenham lines with the metro tunnel, as well as grade separations, high capacity trains and high capacity signalling which is being installed and all of this will be complete by 2025, giving Melbourne its first metro system. as well as this, upgrading and extending our tram lines with more separation from traffic and traffic light priority should be done. the suburban rail loop is a project already underway to provide a rapid transit link between suburban centres and universities. There are many cities which need a conventional metro system, and by all means advocate for those, but the design you made for Melbourne is unrealistic, unnecessary and not the kind of transit Melbourne needs.
Melbourne’s network is very radial though, it needs infrastructure for cross city journeys that bypass the CBD. Trams are good for short to medium distances, the suburban trains are good for long distances. There’s a gap for medium distance journeys.
@@stuartb2493 the suburban rail loop is fixing the radiality problem. the suburban trains in Melbourne can also work well for medium distance journeys with better frequency (every 10 minutes network wide) as the stations are already easily accessible
The trains in Melbourne can't fill the role of metro, you have to give something up if you try and run both long distance suburban and dense urban services! Metro Tunnel and more frequency does not make an actual metro, its just another S-Bahn type system. Metro would have higher frequency, less branching, smaller more flexible trains.
@@RMTransit Just what exactly is being given up? Melbourne is a very sprawling city, and the inner, denser parts are already well served by inner train lines and trams and most of the population lives in the area dominated by urban sprawl. Most European cities have much denser populations, allowing for the kinds of metro systems you see in places like Germany, France and Spain. while more transit is never a bad thing, we need to be focusing on the outer regions of the network and improve service frequencies. the reason for the branching and radiality is because for all its history melbourne has centred jobs and development around the cbd and any non radial train lines failed and closed down due to this, as almost all ridership was to get to the city. Obviously this doesn't work today and the government is attempting to densify and develop suburban centres like box hill and glen waverley - this is where SRL comes into play, a very long term project that intends to help solve the issue of the sprawl by allowing better connections between these places so that these densification and development projects actually work unlike previous attempts (ahem dandenong). a traditional metro such as you suggested would only cover the inner suburbs - the part of the city that already has the highest transport ridership and use - instead of the outer suburbs in need of better transport
Melbourne is broke as ..good luck getting anything done now ..thanks Danny
china makes building metro seem cheap and easy :) but with compromise....
Are subways obsolete? NO
Do cities still need metros? YES
NEXT
The city having a large and dense urban center needs metro systems
Sure, but having a metro is also how you get a large and dense urban centre!
tell metro is obsolete to the people of Kyiv and kharkiv. It still does the job in all possible ways
yes because metros are cool and i like them
ATHENS METRO PLEASE!!!!!!!
if you have to check a schedule, it's a train. if you just rock up to the station whenever, it's a subway.
Elizabeth Line
It's a RER@@HesterClapp
S-Bahnen (suburban trains) in Vienna have a 3 minute interval during rush hour, which is shorter than some of its metro lines
I introduce you to the Baltimore Metro
@@pikom0 What's the difference between S-Bahn and RER?
Como
It's also sad that the United States had over 100 different suburban and intercity rail options and just left it into disrepair or all together removed it to make way for their interstate system.
Or turned them into jogging trails
I think a video on Gothenburg (Göteborg), Sweden's tram and suburban rail network could be really interesting. It's the 2nd biggest city in Sweden, but relatively small compared to most cities featured on the channel (600,000 urban, 1,000,000 metro) and yet it has a lot of transit. Your Rennes video made me think of it.
The example you showed of Wood Lane on the Hammersmith & City / Circle Line started out life as a branch of the Great Western Line, much like the Greenford Branch still is.
In London, the disdiction between train and tube is mostly about which budget it is funded from. The Waterloo and City Line for example, was considered a train line until very recently. The East London Line, now part of the Overground, used to be part of the Underground, even though, at Whitechapel, the Overground is in a tunnel and the Underground crosses over it just below street level, with an open view of the sky.
Basically, when the first Metropolitan Railway tunnel was dug (between Paddington and Faringdon, later extending further east, they envisaged something more like what the Elizabeth line Line does now.