The Missing Middle of Transit | Guadalajara's 'Light Rail'
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- Опубликовано: 30 сен 2024
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In most cities in Europe, metros are relatively short & narrow, and this actually exists in North America in some places. In fact, the city we're discussing today even has trains straight out of Europe!
Special thanks to abrahamtarea for providing footage of Guadalajara used in this video!
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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.
Great video! I've lived in Guadalajara my whole life, I remember when I was a kid that people used to say that the transit in the city was the worst in the world. It took years of effort, led by citizens' demands and accompanied by a compromise of the state and federal authorities, to achieve the goals described in this video! As mentioned, it is still an ongoing effort with new light rail and BRT lines and full renovation of the bus system. Never forget that your city can change if people demand it!
Really nice to hear. You get so much bad news out of Mexico usually, that hearing about citizens working with governmental agencies to implement fantastic infrastructure like this is awesome.
That's why I stan GDL since I was born there and never moved cuz I have faith in the future of Public Transport and we're getting it so well!
@@g00nther Exactly. This is a lesson that needs to be learned badly in the US. Unfortunately, that might be a tall order. I think too many Americans will resent the idea that they could learn ANYTHING from Latin America, least of all Mexico. Not all, probably not even most, but still far too many.
Which is a horrible shame, and is an attitude that will leave the country much poorer. Because with all its problems, there's a lot that Mexico (and Latin America in general) is doing right that the US should be emulating. This is only one of them.
Not a resident there, but San Diego's Blue Line does have a 7.5 minute headway for a good portion of weekdays. Just FYI.
In 2025, Line 3 is expected to be extended 9 kilometers to the northwest, Line 1 extended 10 kilometers to the southwest, Line 4 already has great progress, and a Line 5 was proposed from the airport to the Akron stadium, passing near the center of the city and many neighborhoods with large populations.
. . . And then we have the Los Angeles Metro, which has metro and high-floor light rail lines sized like the builders were thinking of serving Boston.
I think a major part of the problem in the US is that light rail is just about all you can get, no matter how much sense a metro would make, and then likewise it is impossible to get funding for operation at proper service frequencies (and probably also impossible to get the funding for a fully automated system, so you can't even save on labor costs). The bias towards funding primarily road projects is extreme -- the politicians are in the pockets of the oil companies, automakers, tire makers, etc.
Thanks for the shout out to the Mid Coast Trolley. 15 min frequencies are terrible, but SANDAG is instead prioritizing free transit for all. Sad, because the Mid Coast has super bidirectional, all day travel patterns.
On the plus side, the Mid Coast Trolley is already producing TOD like 23 story student apartments and biotech offices.
I still think that infrastructure and services are more important than the vehicle. You can do high frequently medium capacity mass transit with light rails vehicles
This is true if you could accurately estimate future ridership growth. But if there's a sharp increase in future ridership, even operating in minimum intervals will still be insufficient. Take Shanghai and Guangzhou for example. In early 2000s, a bunch of metro lines were constructed to operate with small C/L-class trains with higher frequency to save cost instead of larger A/B trains. But after less than 5 years city development and population increase has dramatically increased following high economic growth, and these lower-standard lines are now moving sardine cans despite having 1-2min. headways.
The vehicles and infrastructure are closely connected, as is the service. They should all be in alignment!
It's not a line that transports people, It's the network!
That's absolutely true! - and it's a truth even more ignored in the bus-world (in the UK, at least) where some of our less intelligent bus combines insist on judging every route by its own usage and takings, and allocating frequencies according to that; they refuse to look at a city's bus (or rail, or tram) network as a whole. Yet (in the UK) the example of the London tube has been going for about a century! - frequent services, a clear map, good signage at transfer points: you only need the map to get around (and at least one is on display at every station); no need for time-schedules or even a journey planner.
@@ricktownend9144 Yeah and its also true for trains. Branch lines bring the people to the mainlines and yet many branchlines have been abandonded in the last decades
@@blackging3rpool251 sometimes it makes sense to replace them with buses, but if that bus has poor frequency or schedule alignment it'll do little good. My local bus serves multiple NJtransit train stations, but only runs hourly. If it ran at least every 20 minutes it'd reduce the needed parking at those stations, and maybe even let households go down to fewer cars
But no, only once an hour.
Nice phrase, permission to use it!
Indeed! Guadalajara's network is so amazing! Besides metro lines 1-3, MiMacro light trains surround the perimeter of the whole metropolitan area, such an enjoyable place to move around. At some point I decided to live there just for that great transportation network!
I majored in Architecture in Guadalajara and some of my classmates ended up working in the construction of Line 3, it truly is the result of a combined effort between citizens and goverment and lots of passion from the people of Guadalajara!
I visited Guadalajara from Toronto in March and it was awesome! The metro was super affordable and took us from the Centro area to Tlaquepaque with ease. Both great walkable pedestrianized areas too
Yeah, the old centre of Guadalajara has a huge pedestrian zone similar to many European cities
L3 Connect with the Metropolitan Area's three downtowns, which is an absolute deal for visitors and tourists visiting Zapopan, Guadalajara and Tlaquepaque.
Maybe in the old important parts, but you won't believe the trafic outside of those areas.
I appreciate you pointing out how weird Seattle's light rail situation is. The 10+ minute headways are brutal for the amount of money being put into the infrastructure. And don't get me started on the rolling stock... so glad our full length trains feature EIGHT separate driver compartments. Great use of limited space there!
It's sad that they didn't go high-floor. That would have given Seattle so many more options for more high-capacity rolling stock.
@@brianalexeu and on typical north American streets, it doesn't even matter
IIRC, Portland's new LRVs are actually permanently coupled in pairs with the cabs in the middle taken out for seating space.
@@panzer_TZ thats a good idea, but future stock should just have longer trains
@@eannamcnamara9338 A common limiting factor is the length of equipment in the workshop. It's why Munich's tram needed to order two and three car tram units when they wanted to start running five car trams, because the workshop can only handle four car units. They intend to couple the two and three car units together, but the regulatory process is very slow and bureaucratic so they can only run them separately.
My hometown! Thank you RM for covering it so accurately, it does work a lot like a Metro although tapatíos (Guadalajara natives) will never stop calling it Tren Ligero (light rail).
Mexican cities outside of CDMX really have to think their transit solutions carefully as budgets are tight and political considerations always get in the way of expansion
line 1 it's actually a light rail, line 2 and 3 are metro
One city you still haven’t talked about: Bilbao. Three metro lines, multiple narrow gauge and broad gauge commuter lines, gorgeous stations, a tram line, it’s card is valid pretty much everywhere in the Basque Country and has 300k people in the city, with its metro area being barely a million and in very rough terrain. The “topo” in San Sebastián and the transit in Vitoria-Gasteiz are also really good for cities of 400.000 and 250.000 inhabitants respectively.
See my video on Bilbao.
@@trainluvr Just subscribed!
Not yet ;)
The small German city (45k people) my Uni is in just changed their buses from large buses to smaller ones in order to improve the headway to a max of 15 minutes and on the Uni to train station route sometimes even 5-3 minutes the system is much more usable now. A frequent service is key for good transit.
What City?
Why did they have to make the buses smaller to improve frequency? Not enough money?
The overall costs with higher frequencies are higher anyways
How many of the Lines get a 15 Minute Service?
We barely get a bus system in cities that size in the US.
In the 80s, when Medellin was around 1.4 million people, there were many planners that opposed to build a metro here. Now, Medellin metro area is almost 4 million and the entire metro system (with BRT, tram and cable cars) moves 1 million people per day. Bogota took another direction to use exclusively BRT and now they are struggling to move the massive amount of people and trying to build finally the first metro line.
You make a good point that I always rant about: LACMTA, stop considering your ground-level commuter rail "light rail"! You carry enough passengers on your trains during rush hour to graduate to something more than just trams!
In a way it's good though that LA at least chose high-floor trains. Because with the removal of grade crossings and new trains they could transform it basically into a real metro. They could use trains like the Flexity Swift 100m fully walk-through light rail trains Frankfurt uses for example.
Light rail is 100% the wrong choice for a metro as sprawling as LA. But the costs are so high I can’t imagine them building actual metro lines. Just look at the purple and red line cost per mile.
@@ficus3929 underground cost per mile. Above ground cost per mile is cheaper. WEST SANTA ANA BRANCH HAD A HEAVY RAIL OPTION. SEPULVEDA PASS COST PER MILE IS CHEAPER WITH ABOVE GROUND HEAVY RAIL.
I feel like lots of stations need to be extended. Especially for the A/Blue and L/Gold lines considering the upcoming merger between the the two lines. LACMTA should invest in proper high capacity trains also. Once they merge, the trains will be way more crowded than necessary.
Yep! They need more metro lines - high speed ones though because LA is big!
Thank you so much for talking about my home city!!
Guadalajara was stuck in the car mentality for many decades but now the entirety of Mexico is seeing a push towards public transportation again!
Line 4 started construction last year and even though the current project only has transfers on the BRT Lines, it's still open to expansion in the future to connect with Line 1!
There is also a project about another BRT Line that will connect the Airport with the heart of the city.
As well as there is right now a dialogue citizens-government on what to do with the avenue with most traffic (Lopez Mateos) and the discussion for a Line 5 is very popular, as well as the expansion of Line 2 to the West of the City!
There is a lot to look forward with transit in Mexico this decade :)
Hola! ¿Qué es lo que se comenta sobre la linea 5? También están considerando expandir la línea 3 hacia Tesistán, no?
@@iNarutosSamaXTNC Hay muchas discusiones sobre el tren ligero, por ejemplo la línea 5 por toda la avenida López Mateos sería una gran propuesta y que resolvería muchos problemas de conectividad en el sur de la ciudad, también está el plan de ampliación hacia Tesistán, otra zona bastante conflictiva, y también está la propuesta de finalmente ampliar la línea 2 hacia periférico y hacia Tonalá
@@iNarutosSamaXTNCCreo que lo único seguro por ahora es la extensión de la linea 1 hasta Santa Anita por Camino Real a Colima y el BRT al aeropuerto.
'ombre, los 2000 fueron una pesadilla con los gobiernos Panistas que solo invirtieron en Infraestructura víal. Claro que han habido aciertos como el Nodo Colón y el Puente Matute Remus, pero la realidad es que... no se ocupaban todavía más "soluciones víales" que han vuelto a GDL una pesadilla urbana para instalar Tren Ligero en el Poniente.
Debemos estar dispuestos para hacer sacrificios con el fin de diversificar la movilidad, y finalmente desde la admin. De Aristóteles vamos por el buen camino en apostar por la Movilidad Integral.
12 años que dejó a una generación enorme enajenados con el automovilismo y el cochismo, aunque esta tendencia empezó desde los 50 con la demolición del Centro, pero no se agravó sino hasta finales del siglo.
@@iNarutosSamaXTNC la línea 3 se va a extender hasta Tesistán
Eso es un hecho, al igual que la ampliación de la línea 1 hacia Santa Anita
Very cool video!
Fun fact: the Guadalajara and Monterrey metro systems are incredibly similar and their rolling stock is almost identical. The CDMX light rail also uses the same rolling stock as well but only a single unit is used.
I really don't get it how a 2-3M city has no PT. I see Vienna, Budapest, Prage all below 2M and has a wide variety of every type of pt, and also a wide variety just inside one mode of transport.
The cities you mentioned (and their EU/JP counterparts)mostly have relatively well-developed rail networks built before WWII that can be easily converted to fit commuting services. This is extremely cost-saving for not only having an existing framework to rely on, but also saving the money for land acquisition (which is skyrocketing these days compared with '50s).
Sadly most North American & mainland Chinese cities don't have these basis to rely on. So instead of just carrying out ''improvements'' of the transit network, we're in most cases building a brand new network out of nowhere. And the costs are certainly way higher.
@Zaydan Alfariz plus the main railway station at Tirana is now a highway.
@@terryshi5620 North America seems to have no problem with expensive land acquisition when it comes to constructing highways... It's all a matter of prioritising.
@@rjfaber1991 Well said!
@@rjfaber1991 Exactly! There are always excuses when talking about public transport, but highways will get built no matter what.
Idea for a series: choose a town or city in the world, point out its flaws and propose a hypothetical system which would improve their situation using your own rail routes, metros, bus routes etc.
I’m from Guadalajara!!! I’m so happy to see my city in one of your videos.
Just to correct, the line 1 has originally 60 meters of length, but the line 2 has 150 meters, so the line 2 isn’t get expanded.
It's quite difficult for people to understand that metro is a type of service, not a type of train. Unfortunately, the mobility planers appear to be the ones with most difficulty on getting this, if you have to wait half an hour or more for a train like on L2 of "MetroRio" (the Rio de Janeiro "metro", also known as the most expensive metro service in Brazil) and sometimes on the weekends even on L1, you do not have a metro, just a more expensive train.
This sounds sooo much like the same problem that @NotJustBikes discusses all the time! It’s as though North Americans consciously and willingly decide to waste money by NOT building the middle option and building everything else in a One Size Fits Nobody approach… Sigh…
"See? No-one likes transit. Tear it down and put in another lane, bro!"
A big reason why people in Guadalajara are choosing to ride it's new train is because traffic is becoming unbearable due to how fast the city is growing. If Miami's traffic goes the same route, I can see it's citizens choosing transit.
Were you in Jersey city on the weekend? Usually hblr is packed and runs every few minutes during rush hour
Those 30-minute headways in Miami made me weep blood. Thanks for that.
Hey Reese! I studied near the largest station of the 3rd Guadalajara line, so I regularly bumped into the guys who built the line as we frequented the same café. It's a shame that I moved before it was completed but aside from various problems that the project had related to the construction and the funding process, it was a very sound project, the route is very well planned, connecting several major hubs, I hope the city continues to expand its transport infrastructure as it has been neglected since the line 2 was finished.
30 minutes between trains in Miami?? How far out in the sticks is that branch?
I groan if it is more than 20 minutes to the next one. An example of which is the trains between Skåne (Sweden) and Copenhagen (Denmark) between around midnight and 4 am - only one train every hour (!) Scandalous, isn't it? The rest of the day it leaves at least every 20 minutes. _And that is the international service…_
There are of course lots of additional services that stay on either side of the border. On a normal day, even on the slightly less populated Swedish side, one rarely need to consult a journey planner unless trying to catch a connection. And do note that on that side we are only talking commuter services on heavy rail here. The only light rail/tram system around here is in Lund at the edge of the best served area.
The USA has a very different type of urban setting so metros are just a first step to improve transit on highways. Metro Miami operates every 15 minutes during the day and only every 30 minutes on Sunday when not many people use it as traffic through the city is quite light. Remember that almost 100% of the population in the USA owns a car, with exception in places or cities like Boston, NYC or D.C. and a few others, where dense urban areas are more common. So even if the frecuencies were higher in Miami on off peak hours it is easier to move by car. The metro is just trying to movitate people to use it on peak hours into places like downtown from the south side of the city, same as the Brightline trains are doing for those people on the north side.
So you can get a perspective, the Miami metro area is 150 kms long with just over 6 million people living in an area a little smaller than the state of Qatar. So mass transport is not easy as there not that many high density areas outside of downtown. The only real need for the metro is as said earlier is to motivate drivers to leave their cars in stations and to ride a more efficient system into downtown, avoid parking fees in this area and maybe get home earlier in the afternoon rush hour. Beyond that it simply takes less time to take a car from most places in the city to most other places in the metro area.
I remember twenty odd years ago, people would say you had to have at least three million people before you could build a subway. Imagine how heartbroken that made me, only years later to realize what nonsense that was. It's astonishing how many excuses the US makes for not building transit and how long it's been going on. It's a bummer Miami does so badly, considering it's actually one of the US' denser cities. Those population densities are made for rapid transit!
PERTH IS THE MISSING MIDDLE
My cities (metro manila) rail network is just american light rail but all elavated. It hit capacity years ago haha. just ignore the PNR and how its just the typical south/southeast asian street running trains lol.
Pretty please talk about Manila? Me and my fellow filipinos really love hearing foreigners talk about our country for some reason.
i want to ask as a Jakartan, is there an attempt at making a proper “City bus network” in Manila?
Great Video Reece. Tunnelling in the urban core and elevated into the suburbs sounds like a great proven formula for success. Cheers.
It has to be stated (repeatedly) that US cities built a lot of rubbish-tier (which I'm not saying the Seattle LR is) light rail because that was the most bang-for-the-buck when they had use-it-or-lose-it funding. Build 80 miles of light rail or build 10 miles of metro, the cities all picked the cheapest light rail options because they were being subsized for it. However the realities of the situation is that they were often the wrong choice, because people just don't want to use the bus-on-steel-wheels when it just adds another transfer to their trip, or they could drive instead.
The right choice should always be "fast, frequent, grade-separated, accessible," even if that means you can't build as much. What good is a slow, infrequent system that has to stop for car traffic? You may as well take the car and get the same travel time. The only people using those systems are people who can't afford to, or can not drive at all.
This is why I’m concerned about the Irish approach to transport. I feel the LUAS (Dublin’s tram system) was never the right choice for a growing city like Dublin that’s also plagued with old streets and a legacy of poor planning and sprawl. I don’t understand why they didn’t just build a normal metro system that’s totally grade sept
A light metro system is being planned right now and may start construction soon.
Ah yes, peak North American station design isn't even in the states of America. How ironic
Cities grow. So, the example of a line that starts as a short at grade line in the city center, then gets extended grade separated in the outer areas, is understandable, if possibly no longer optimal.
Once cities start with light rail, how do they change to full metro? Calgary deliberately built its light rail at grade, in order to afford a larger network. Edmonton, using the same amount of money from the province at the same time, built a grade separated short line just from downtown to the university, I understand, and got vastly less ridership. So to that point, a right move by Calgary it would seem. But now how does Calgary take the next step? Rip out an entire system to build a metro? Or just bury the light rail underground where it goes through downtown? A brand new metro line like Guadalajara can sound nice, but the alignment either replaces a light rail line, or runs in a less propitious corridor than the light rail lines, which were sited where use was expected to be highest. And increasing frequency of an at grade tramline causes conflict with, well, everything. Dealing with growth, which can't always be predicted, is part of the issue. Miami can be criticized for an excessive line, but if it grew, it could later be criticized for an inadequate line.
A video on how cities can deal with this would be interesting, perhaps using some cities as examples.
Another great video! You mentioned Sacramento and it would be great to get a video on it at some point. The city itself has only about 500,000 people but the metro area has expanded to almost 2.5 million. It seems like the perfect time to improve our bus and light rail system, especially as the administrative center of CA, but I would love to see what your take on it is.
Seattle made the mistake of learning the wrong lessons from Portland. They wanted to imitate the success of MAX, without the population or line locations that actually serve residents. When they expanded the Seattle sections of Link, they moved into places where people actually were, which necessitated dealing with the uneven terrain of Seattle, meaning tunnels and viaducts were needed. There was talk about Subways in Seattle, but NIMBYs didn't want to deal with deep tunnels for places like Capital Hill, so they got streetcars. They haven't learned anything though, as service to downtown Bellevue will also be in-street running with grade crossings in may places.
Seattle was a great candidate for 3+ tier transit. Busses, Monorail (something that is easily justified with the terrain), subway/metro, and commuter rail. But since so much infrastructure was converted to pedestrianization in the 90s and 00s, most of the options for that were lost, or costs were greatly inflated, to the point that a single service model was chosen to be the "backbone" of the system. And the Link is going to be a regional rail system here, as it is going to connect Everett to Seattle to Bellevue to Tacoma and beyond, using Light Rail. When the best solution would be to use the regional Sounder rail all-day everyday, with even 1-hour headways, would make much more sense... if only Railroads (BNSF) were actually run properly.
Oh Boy he estado esperando este video, i'm from Guadalajara and your videos have inspire me to understand this city's god forsaken transit
same
The thing with US cities that makes them so ‘small’ compared to even Canadian cities is that they’re not properly proportioned due to sprawling suburban car culture. The cities themselves have small populations living in them but are the only commercial and business center for miles around them. They’re not built to house people anymore, they were bulldozed to employ people and have them live somewhere else. An example would be how Atlanta has less than 500k residents in the city proper but has over 6mil in the metro region that rely on it as their principle city. Due to this I would argue that US cities largely necessitate full heavy rail metro systems and vast commuter or S-Bahn systems as their metro populations are more reflective of the population occupying the city on a daily basis
The focus is on light rail rather than busses because many transit planners, I think rightly assume, that people would abandon their cars for rail more than busses because rail is seen as more comfortable as a ride and classier. I can't explain the low frequencies. One problem that many places have is that the job market isn't focused downtown. Lots of commutes are suburb to suburb. With multiple job districts in a metro area, creating a good transit system seems difficult. You also need a relatively centralized entertainment area.
Considering the suburban sprawl of the US, an Australian style high frequency commuter rail network might be the best option.
Would you consider Dublin's Luas trams as a large light rail? They're 55 metres long!
Tram!
I agree with the idea that transit should be right-sized, but I visited Guadalajara last summer and I think its transit is actually quite under-built. As a dense city with over 5 million people in its greater metropolitan area, Guadalajara could absolutely support a heavy metro system. At the very least, if you’re going to build light metro in a city as big and dense as Guadalajara, you should run the trains every 90 seconds or less. Line 3, despite having very nice and modern trains and stations, has 7 minute peak headways and 10 minute off-peak headways. Lines 1 & 2 respectively have 5 and 3 minute peak frequencies and 10 and 7 minute off-peak frequencies. While that might seem frequent compared to many US cities (like Miami, for example), these frequencies combined with small trains lead to very bad crowding in Guadalajara. This makes the experience of taking transit uncomfortable and can lead to some people not feeling safe on transit. And because of this, many people in Guadalajara save up to buy cars and/or take taxis/Ubers to get around (I know there are criticisms of the idea that there are “choice riders” and “captive riders”, but in this case I really got the impression that potential “choice riders” just avoid transit). This of course leads to there being a lot of cars on the road, with all of the consequences that cars bring.
That said, it is obviously quite impressive that Guadalajara, a city in a middle-income country with a limited budget, has built a much better transit system than many cities in the US. In order to make the system really excellent, I feel like they just need to buy more trains in order to run them more frequently and/or run larger trains. I honestly wonder whether all the money that’s being spent to build line 4 would have been better spent by buying more trains for lines 1, 2 & 3, whereas they could have cheaply extended the Macrobús BRT line all the way to Tlajomulco (instead of building line 4). That way, people in Tlajomulco wouldn’t have to make a linear transfer from a train to a BRT in order to get to the centre of Guadalajara.
Yeah the connection to Line 4 is SUPER weird!
I am always amazed and shocked when comparing cities in Europe and North America. Especially when I check my favourite website about urban rails, and read how many people live in these cities and how many public rail transport is offered there.
I don't know by heart, how many inhabitants for example New Orleans has. I guess it's perhaps 500k to 1 million. Maybe more maybe less. There are some tram lines in the city, right? Heritage trams, if I'm not mistaken. These for sure are not built or preserved for normal people, but for tourists, who want to feel the vibes of the old days.
I was living in a city in northern Germany, Hannover, with a population of 500 k people and more than a million outside of the city borders. It has a wonderful Stadtbahn system, with partly tram character but mostly light rail feeling. In the city center the light rail runs in tunnels.
About 100 or 150 km west of it there's the city of Bielefeld, with only 300k people but a similar rail network with tunnels in the center.
The trains run every 10 to 20 minutes in Hannover, some lines sharing the tunnel sections. So the frequency is of course higher in the tunnels.
The people will use the vehicles that are useful for them. In the USA, the suburbs have often don't have any shops or restaurants, just family homes. And the freeways, interstates and others with lot of lanes carry the people almost to the city center. In Germany you'll almost never find multi lane freeways in the city centres, there are very few dishonorable mentions, .. exceptions. But theres always a choice. You also can use a proper rail system in the very most of 200k, 300k cities, if it's heavy or light or metro like.
And in smaller cities, like I live presently, with 40k people, there's a nice bus service, or you just walk a few 100 meters to the next bakery, hair dresser, clothing shop, or whatever.
Yeah, I have a car too, for bigger grocery shopping, when I have to carry lot if drinking water or other stuff.
Thanks for the video. Your videos (and those of others) always let me think about how different my life would be living in North America. There are also cities that do it better similar to Europe, New York, Boston, Toronto, but these are the honorable ones.
Have a nice day 🖐👴
Yeah, the metropolitan area of New Orleans is over 1,250,000. They are now planning a bus rapid transit, at least. It seems like BRT is the only politically viable higher order transit in many areas of North America.
Side note: I live in Toronto now, but I grew up in a city of 75k in Canada and the bus service there was atrocious. I will never live there again (so help me god) and that's one of the big reasons. That city also removed the crosswalk at the end of the street I grew up on for no apparent reason so you had to sprint across 4 lanes of traffic or take a detour if you were walking. Wretched town.
Try Boise Idaho with a metro pop of 750K with no real bus rapid transit (only discussions) or even an intercity Amtrak train!
Bielefeld does not exist
@@jesusizquierdo3831
Hahaha
This did spead around the whole world, right?
I visited it years ago. I hope it didn't dissipate since then. 🖐😁
Eyy Guadalajara got a video, hell yeah
Finally you make a video about my local city and transit system: Guadalajara, its weird and actually very good but buses are bad, its the only real way to move here btw
If you ever want to talk about Santo Domingo's metro let me know, I can get you a lot of data and info. As you noted, we have the same Alstom Metropolis 9000 trainsets used in Guadalajara, Barcelona and others.
Riddle Me This: Have you seen a light rail with trains 8 CARS LONG? You can find them in Frankfurt!
This issue really makes me wonder what the transit systems in Edmonton and Calgary would look like if they had been planned in the last 10 years rather than 40 years ago when they were initially implemented with the high floor LRV cars with a higher capacity than trams. I wonder if Edmonton would even have underground stations in the downtown if that were the case.
They could be more metrolike for sure, but they aren't bad!
Thanks for covering this city!. The system is still saturated, we would benefit a lot by having more trains and lines!
I WAS WAITING SO MUCH FOR THIS VIDEO. I love how the world looks at my city as a great example of a Massive Transport System. Guadalajara has an incredible light train service... except when the service fails at least two times per week at Line 1 (at the most), but not a big failure like accidents that only happened once ten years ago and never happened again... And yeah, half of the issues are made by dumb car drivers in crossing rails and avenues.
I used CDMX Metro so many times and nothing of this Bigger system is compared to the EFFICIENCY AND QUALITY of GDL Light Train, that's what we call QUALITY over QUANTITY. 12 Metro Lines that aren't that good vs 3 Light Train Lines that work So well. Now they're building the 4th one, so we finally got the people that are interested to make an investment for better growth.
Videos like this always make me wonder about Ottawa's LRT and whether we will be okay with the tramtrain light metro thing we built or whether long term it will become necessary to somehow retrofit it for proper light metro trains. Would the platforms need to be raised? Is that even a thing? Seems like Ottawa screwed up the train portion by going with tram trains and we'll be paying for it forever now.
I'm sure retrofitting it would be costly, but they already have the tunnels dug and the line separated from traffic unlike a streetcar so it wouldn't be too hard
Of course you can retrofit but it will be expensive. That's not the issue though. The main issue is there will significant periods of service down time because there's no way to transition slowly from the current rolling stock to the new one. Basically it's not only expensive, but also highly impractical and disruptive. This is why you have to get it right the first time.
This American and Canadian style of building of trams reminds me of Vienna's U6 which is built on part of the old Statbahn network which mean that it has tram like track. This meant that Vienna had to get specialised rolling stock separate form the other U-bahn lines.
I remember the 80s in Vienna, when the U-Bahn was in its infancy and there was a mess of separate carriers with their own individual ticketing... that Stadtbahn line was particularly annoying...
The U6 is not a metro system as the other metro lines in Vienna, it is a light metro with light-rail cars (classified in the tram classification as type T1) fully capable to drive on the streets. The old Stadtbahn had from the beginning four wheel trams (N1-n2) coupled in multiple. They were later replaced by the E6-e6 trams now replaced by the T-type, today you can find the E6 trams in the tramways of Krakow in Poland. You got the same type of light-rail cars on the Badner-bahn which indeed traverse the streets and tram tracks in Vienna from it's terminal at the Wiener Staatsoper in the city center. Further cousins are the K4000 in Cologne, The trams on the Croydon tramlink and A32 light rail cars in Stockholm, all capable to be driven on the streets.
The main reason not to rebuild the line to full metro standards was that the high line along the Gürtel was to narrow since it had been used by the narrower trams: N1-n2 and E6-e6 2,3 m width; T1 2,65 m width. The metro cars are 2,8 m wide and high floor. The cost to rebuild the high line would have been to costly. It would probably had been cheaper to tear it down it and built a new viaduct.
@@christerj7138 but its still a metro system with high capacity high frequency services like you find on a metro as well as being classified in the Vienna transport plan as an U-bahn
Just to push back on that comment about Atlanta's metro ought to be for a city of several million, worth remembering that our metro population is very close to Toronto's! Granted, spread over about 4 times more land area. But to be fair, MARTA only directly serves 3 counties out of that (Fulton, Dekalb, and Clayton) and 2 with the trains. Those 3 counties have ~2 million people putting it in the same league as Vancouver (with the density of those 3 counties not being that far from the density of metro Vancouver). So I'd contend it's not really that our system is too big, it's that we put too many of the train cars together per train and too slow of headways (maxing out every 7 minutes at peak hours in the city center). And we don't have to put that many cars together, the green line (a branch off the east-west line) uses fewer. Which leads me to the conclusion that Atlanta's problem is less the infrastructure that got built and more how we decide to use it.
Miami metro rail. It's not about frequency but instead it's about coverage. Poor area, poor frecuency.
It doesn't really have either!
Nice !
This new subway line looks great and seems to be the right choice.
Hey Reece, have a look on Montpellier's current developments, I've just discovered them yesterday : a new 5th tram line and 5 new BRT lines acting as peripheral lines, including a partial loop one.
They're also turning the full network to free use in a few months, no more fares !
And also the 5 elements of SNCF's project of "train léger" which literally translates to "light train" but is different than what we usually call light train.
It's a project to revive dead lines or to convert very low ridership lines in rural or hard to reach areas.
You're probably already aware of those but if you're not, have a look, it's really interesting.
Could you please speak about the trams in Zurich or in generall in Switzerland, because I think they are really good. With Geneva, Bern, Basel, Zurich and under construction in Lugano and Lausanne. Nice topic today!
Thats my plan for 2023!
Yeah, it seems like they're trying to get away with a system type for a much smaller city in Seattle. I have to say I do like the image of an elevated trolley though.
Edit: Seattle really isn't that big, I was sort of surprised that the city proper is only 750k in about 150 sm.
Seattle proper has really grown a lot in the past 10 years, adding 150,000 new inhabitants. And the crazy thing is, there's still lots of neighborhoods with just single family homes, with most dense development in just a few smaller areas because of zoning.
Also, their choice of light rail made sense for the original segment, but for future segments that are in planning or under construction, they're pretty much all grade separated. So really they should have built the whole thing as a metro. Also there are plans to extend it to other cities located roughly 30 miles north and south of Seattle, however, due to the fact that those stretches of the line will pass through mostly suburban low density areas with a stop spacing of several miles, those sections would have made more sense to build as regional rail. But no, they're trying to do the whole thing as light rail. But hey, I guess that means the interurban line that once connected the major cities in the Seattle metro area will be brought back! 😀
And more extension is coming with line 1 extension and new BRT lines to complement the network
Would love a video on Mumbai’s suburban rail network (referred to as the “local” network). It’s a far from ideal system with many obvious flaws but has crazy ridership, especially at rush hour
Ridership really gets irrelevant in one of the most populated countries in the world… it is like Shanghai metro can casually get 2.4 billion riderships in the entire year of 2021…
How are you pumping out so much content?? I feel like there’s a new video every day.
Lol last night in Atlanta I had to wait 25 minutes to transfer since the red line doesn't go into the city at 9pm (otherwise I wouldn't have had to transfer). Like 40 people were waiting at the station in the cold at 11:30pm last night confused. A family left and decided to Uber home. The signage didn't even say when the next train would come so other people were thinking of leaving too. How do we fix this? Surely leaders know how shitty this is?
Hannover has an excellent tram system which almost feels like a metro in the centre
Its really quite interesting!
Excellent video! I'm from the UK and am currently in Guadalajara. I'm very impressed by the Metro system here. The best I've seen in North America (others I've used are Toronto, NYC, LA, San Francisco and San Diego). Certainly compares with some European cities and is better than many due to its reasonable pricing and modernity of the trains themselves
I would absolutely love for you to do a day trip or 2 down to London Ontario, and make a scathing video talking about how much of a joke our system is for a city of 400k+. I would 100% send the video to city council members and some people who work at the LTC who thinks their system is the cats meow. Maybe even team up with NotJustBikes, as he's from here too, and together you guys can roast the designs and city planners here lol. I get laughed at when I say we should be considering an LRT system shortly considering how long installation takes around here, if we don't get started soon, then by the time we REALLY need it, we'll be a decade late to the party. The problem with this suburban hellscape, is that there is VERY little high density and only a decent amount of medium density, so people who live on the outskirts of town which are generally the cheapest in some places, have MASSIVE bus trips to even basic needs like groceries. Their "solution" is a "bus rapid transit" lane with spread out stops. All it does it add to congestion and the "rapid" busses are literally only 5 minutes faster. It's a complete embarrassment. Also with our close proximity to Toronto and it's estimated growth rate, London is ALREADY suffering big time from people leaving there en mass and taking all our housing, so we're rapidly putting up buildings with no plans to help move all these people around. Ugh it's soo frustrating living here.
If the people on the outskirts have massive bus trips to basic needs, it seems the easiest solution is to add a "sprinkling" of comercial around the outskirts to help satisfy these basic needs. (Granted you will always need some connection to the city core, but groceries should always be a sub 15min trip 1 way for atleast 1 mode of transportation. If its above that you probably live in the middle of nowhere and the closest town is over 15min away.)
I've wondered what the effect would be to simply force every street in the suburbs to have a sidewalk on both sides and zone a street every mile or so to match Mainstreets in small towns. And then add the missing Middle right next to each "Mainstreet". Then every only has a halfmile walk to an enjoyable place to be. (Also every Mainstreet needs a public park thats allows infinite loitering for everyone, and doubles as a place for farmers markets, city party events & parades, ect)
@@jasonreed7522 That would help I'm sure, and London already basically has a ring of industry and commercial surrounding much of the city, with only really the north and west free to expand without running into it. The east and south is starting to approach the 401 series highway, and in some places even crossing it slightly, which is the busiest highway in North America, so the congestion around it gets crazy at times. I would say lack of mix used land and the ridiculous amount of strip malls with massive parking lots and separated stores dotting those lots is a huge problem. This city seems to refuse to build up, because we have farmland around us to the west and north. Not to mention most people here are EXTREMELY car-centric and trying to change opinions here is similar to bashing your head on a wall repeatedly. Even trying to get them to understand the idea of induced demand or zipper merging seems impossible sometimes. The construction sites (our roads are either in winter or construction) even have zipper merging signs and people just don't lol.
We also do have some MAJOR arterial roads that run north/south and east/west that could probably QUITE easily have an elevated LRT line tossed overhead. In some places they might have to bridge the road, but in some places there's already gaps with like gardens and stuff there, so it'd be easy to install pillars on top of them. We also struggle from a completely decimated downtown. It's basically an empty shell, filled with empty buildings (thanks Farhi.) and vagrancy, and it's very tragic. The city keeps trying to revitalize the area but people aren't willing to take their cars down there and risk it being broken into and stuff. The idea of taking a bus is simply beneath MANY here, so having a train line down there people can use to go to the arena, or the giant Covent Garden Market, or to the various bars etc, without needing a car could be a BIG way to revitalize the area. People could go there and actually enjoy themselves and get tipsy instead of staying sober to drive home, or worse driving drunk. Ugh sorry I'm rambling, just passionate about how much this city has failed us in recent years. After moving out west and living in Calgary for half a decade coming back here and seeing the change - for the worse, was culture shock.
Columbus, OH is in the same situation except that they are just now planning a BRT that no one will use so they can make it even harder to get around town.
London is actually pretty good. In comparison, Ottawa is even worse. I've lived in both cities.
London is not a city really, it's a town with suburbs surrounding it. The core is like 80k max
Meanwhile, when I spent time in Wenzhou China with a population of about 7 million (in 2010) most locals would laugh and say Wenzhou is too small for a metro.
Quick tidbit I need to say:
The automated rubber tyred VAL system used extensively in France has some *insane* potential for frequency. In Toulouse, where I use the service, during the peak hours, we have trains coming less than a minute apart!
I’m interested to hear what you think about expansion to Baltimore’s Transit Network, both the Red Line proposal and your own recommendations.
The Governor-elect seems very committed to pushing an east-west rail line through, and it would be valuable for us to know your thoughts!
Another great video as usual Reece. I think it might be useful if you made a future video discussing what I think is one of the biggest problems with transit in the United States, which is that there is a kind of embedded classism. While transit is perceived as being for everyone in countries in Europe and Asia, in North America it seems like the perception is that transit is for the poor, which has a really negative effect on every aspect of the system from funding to placement of stations and such.
Where I am, it’s specifically for the poor *and disabled* (able-bodied poor are assumed to ride bikes, and well off folks have cars-indeed probably have multiple cars. So there’s also some ablism in there. Also racism, with transit potentially providing a way out of the prison-neighborhoods that minorities are forced into, and thus something that must not be allowed to exist.
The problem isn't missing grade separation for a city around 500k but missing branches and grade seperation at the wrong places. A Stadtbahn/Premetro is meant to be grade seperated in the core section and be more tramlike the further you go to the suburbs. This way it gets cheaper to build when density gets lower while providing better coverage further out and higher frequency in the core section.
Even without the branches a city can get higher frequency in the core by intermediate termini but if it inverts the approach and build the core section tramlike the system simply cant use it's potential.
The issue is that roads are much larger in NA so grade separation is more important, you also have to provide for higher speed because cities are much larger.
@@RMTransit With wider roads it should get easier to take away 2 lanes in the middle for dedicated but not elevated right of way.
The speed can be improved with priority circuits at traffic lights and wider station spacing the further you go out.
The problem are nimbys who oppose this style of building light rail and politicans who try to appease them in fear of right parties getting more votes.
You make an excellent point about scaling transit. Part of me says any transit is a step in the right direction, but at the same time I get frustrated when I can't use transit due to how inconvenient the times are, not to mention how hard it can be to get to the stops.
“I think what Guadalajara shows so well is that you don't need a city the size of New York or Osaka or Barcelona to have a proper metro system.”
Barcelona is actually just as big as Guadalajara, with about 5 million people in the urban area.
“...that a big subway also probably didn't make sense for Seattle. It's not that big of a city.”
I mean, with 4 million people Seattle is not too far off from Barcelona or Guadalajara. Barcelona has 12 metro lines, two tram systems, and as far as I'm aware, no problems with low ridership. Another example would be Berlin - 4 million people and S-Bahn, U-Bahn, tram networks all over. A city of that size is big enough for pretty much anything.
Long US trams with very low headways seem like a consequence of US politics!
Many representatives want a train in their district
But none of them will actually ride the train, so they don't care about how good it is.
So instead of a short subway in the city center with 4 min headways, you'll get a subway that's twice as long, with 1/4 the trains (because they spent the budget on a longer line), and 16 min headways.
I think Guadalajara is already bigger than Barcelona, it's only mid-size compared to the megacity of CDMX
more appropriate for this point would have been cities like Rennes, Toulouse, Lausanne, Oslo, Málaga, Newcastle..
Your analysis neglects history. Those cities you mention that have a variety of transit options are older. They all inherited older rail lines that could be re-used for various uses. Cities that have grown over the last 50 years, especially in North America, have to contend with the vehicular culture and longer distances that people travel to work. Take Pennsylvania for instance. 250,000 people commute from Pennsylvania and 200,000 people commute to Pennsylvania. Almost 1/2 million people. This is the car culture of the US. Those numbers rise when it comes to NY State, New England in general and most of the midwestern and southern states. Mass transit can't accommodate these people. I grew up in NYC and I'm a big fan of rail, but a bilateral approach to transit is what most growing cities in the US take.
This seems to be an western anglopshere thing with a lack of willingness to invest in decent transit. In the UK, the Birmingham metropolitan area (aka the "West Midlands urban conurbation") has almost 3 million people, and it's mass transit consists of 1 solitary tram line, that runs on the street in the city centre, where it inevitably crawls along at a snails pace. That's about the same population as the greater Barcelona region, which has eight metro lines, three stadtbahn like lines, and god knows how many commuter lines. It's also about the same as Hamburg, which has four metro lines, another one under construction, and a strong stadtbahn system as well.
Why Latin America is able to build better transit system than the US? Latin America is much poorer and corrupt. I lived in Curitiba, Brazil I didn't have mobility problem like in the DMV area.
Do a video on cities of around 100k population: which is the best and what options are there?
i think you should talk about Jakarta and it's disasterous mass transportation system. A metro area of 30 million with 1 MRT line...
I live in gdl and the rail system is under-build, I wouldn't say it's "right-sized" thats why if they do a metro line it will a success, because the buses are on their limit and avenues are starting to crash, gdl had 18 years where no transit infraestructure where build, that line 3 was planned since 1998
Honestly, from European perspective, all these cities are ultra big. Here in Sofia we might be grumbling that the current major has been dismantling the light rail system, instead depending entirely on the metro, but Sofia is a town of just a million and something, with not much more in the metropolitan area. Yet nevertheless there's plenty of space for a combination of suburban s-bahn, metro, light rail, AND buses.
Really, 30 minutes headway during the day is unheard of even on the neglected light rail system, much less on the metro. We have it good, I guess.
I was shocked when I came across the Seattle Link Light Rail and discovered their services were mostly run with multiple individually operable tram cars coupled together, making them as lengthy as an ordinary metro.
yeah they are bigger than everyone else at 4 car LRVs, even LA doesnt run 4 cars
@@chromebomb This reminds me of Frankfurt where a single train can also be made out of four cars for a length of 100 metres and to my knowledge is the only German city with a premetro which runs such long trains. The only line which can't run four cars is the U5 due to legal (street running which limits a tram to 75 m) and physical (length of station) limitations. The difference is that the trains are high floor throughout and the newer cars can have a gangway instead of a cab on one or both sides.
You should look into the Nuremberg U-Bahn system (the smallest german city with a u-Bahn,, with about 500 000 inhabitants), it has 3 lines, one of them is currently being extended to connect future city planning projects with the city center. It also has a connection to the airport.
"Designed better than in North America and would look at home in Europe or Asia."
Not to rank them or anything, but...
You should make a video about Dallas sorry light rail
It should be pointed out that the Miami situation was temporary during a two-month weekend single-tracking project. Service went back to normal the last Sunday in October with 15 minute headways on the Palmetto and Airport branches and 7.5 minute service on the majority of the route to South Dad.
Please, I love your videos, but that T shirt needs a washing machine, dryer and an iron… especially iron. Please
Oslo doesn’t have a smaller population than 1 million, It has 1.5 million.
Are you going to cover Manchester’s high floor Metrolink, the first modern tram system in Britain? At the time when it started in the 1980s, there were only the very old Blackpool trams, then all heritage I believe. I visited Manchester in the 1990s when the system was smaller than now, and it combines street running with quite high speed on former main line railways.
And of course I could hardly have missed the videos about San Francisco’s new (so-called) Muni Metro Central Subway. It is currently a very short disconnected stretch with three deep level stations and one on the street. It has long platforms, I believe because of abandoned plans to extend the technically very different BART system. During the trial period it only runs at weekends and is free of charge. It seems to be rather infrequent. I don’t know if this will be improved in the future.
It will, this is a trial phase, there is already a direct connection to the 3rd street line, and T 3rd will be routed into the new central subway soon, after operation and safety checks are fully completed. It’s a weird way to open a line, but they weren’t that short sighted, thankfully
Yes! Possibly in person . . .
Reece, make a video about Salt Lake City please. It has a reasonable statement, and you’ve mentioned us multiple times.
Miami is the worst possible deployment of a transit system in North American history, but that requires a whole video in itself.
Explain more please? What make’s Miami so bad when it comes to transit?
Some comments from Seattle:
- Our population exploded just after the initial segment opened. It was designed for a smaller city.
- Sound Transit wanted to build the Rainier Valley segment elevated, but neighborhood activists complained it would be ugly. The wealthy suburbs of Bellevue and Redmond have accepted elevated segments.
- We have to cross the lake on a pontoon bridge - it's way too deep for a tunnel. Water can wash over the bridge during heavy storms, which means third rail is too dangerous. (Yes, they will close the line during such storms, and yes, I am aware of the Blue Line in Boston.)
I get the feeling that RM just likes shitting on Seattle. He's made this point about Seattle's use of light rail vehicles and at-grade segment multiple times in various videos.
"It was designed for a smaller city" and yet the initial plans were to build a line from Everett to Tacoma, a distance of 60 miles. That is an extremely long rail system to be built entirely from scratch. So the thinking was "We are tiny. Let's build a subway line that extends farther from the core than the New York City Subway, the London Underground, or the Paris Metro". Do I have that right?
@@rossbleakney3575 You may be confusing it with the commuter train, which does run from Everett and Tacoma to Seattle on existing freight lines. Only a few runs at rush hour instead of every 10 minutes all day long.
At first I thought you were thinking of placing a metro in place of a tram altogether and how the latter fills in the gaps of the former (here in Germany, Hamburg is a notable offender) and instead talked more about jack of all trades which end up being a master of none and a waste of money instead. It still fits this theme since metros are expensive to build and run and the result would be an undersized network with no other option to fill in the gaps aside from running more buses but I still wished you would have talked about that as well.
What makes this issue with the tram-metro hybrid like Seattle Light Rail even stand out is that many metros developed out of trams but they started out as some central segment being put underground with while newer expansions are build to metro standards altogether. Here, the first step is skipped which lead to the problems this video mentioned.
Now compare that to Frankfurt, a city I mention quite often and also has got a similar population as Seatle itself, which too has got a partial-metro light rail except in there, the conversion is from the inside-out than inside-in which makes sense since headways are lower on the outside and thus don't need as much grade separation as in the city centre, though some tram-like lines are worse offenders than others (Eschersheimer Landstraße and Eckenheimer Landstraße for different reasons). Furthermore, this system is build with high floor trains in mind like many others premetros in Germany which solves the issue with rolling stock (in fact, it is one of the better examples since the platforms are almost universally build to the trains' floorheight unlike similar systems which require retractable steps).
And of course, that headway you showed for the Miami metro is definitively inacceptable for regular use. Standard for regional trains, lower end for an S-Bahn style system and very low for metros in regular use.
Hopefully someone will send this video to governor Ron de Santis
With 4 Million people, the Seattle metro area is definitely big enough for a heavy metro!
"You need to run more service" But surely from the point of view of some of these transit agencies, the main reason for public transit was to move more people without investing in more drivers (I'm not saying that should have been their priority, just that it probably was a factor in their thinking)
More service can only be achieved, is people actually use the system. Though with that low headways, it might be that increasing frequency will create the demand
@@jan-lukas true, but I'm thinking that in some cases we're getting thinking transferred from North American freight railways, where the effort has been made to maximise train length to minimise the number of train crew needed- and while that sort of thinking is massively short sighted in terms of building ridership, it might appeal to management in terms of keeping overheads down
I really wish my home city of Austin, Texas, instead of getting a light rail line, would be getting a people mover system limited to the central, most congested areas, because that's where the tourists are, many who don't have cars, and more people would ride the buses into the city if they would have an easier time getting around once they are there, even if it meant a transfer and the buses throughout the city aren't that fast. It's not like the light rail will be much faster anyway where it isn't tunneled through downtown.
I need a Miami Metro explained soon since I know it would be rather short but our county needs to be roasted to perhaps *finally* treat our almost 40-year-old system as something other than a political play piece. Incredible to see the good work cities in Mexico are doing to improve their transportation options.
Miami needs less sprawl.
subscribed....December 15, 2022 10:19am
There is a project of 4th subway line in our capital city, Kyiv.
Line is planned to create rapid transit connection to a district with population 300 000.
Our "new urbanists" say that metro line would be obsolete, and tram line would be enough. For 300 000 people-neighbourhood. 🙂
Interurban service is also a good case for smaller cities.