Would love to see a video about the entire Barcelona subway network, due to its impressive size. Dubai and the many shortcomings of its system (like missing express tracks, the overly expensive design of the stations and lack of connections to other forms of transportation) would also be interesting, as kind of an example of how not to design a metro network.
I find its smell quite interesting. It gives you more freedom due to the lack of fare gates. It is convenient that a message comes before each station telling you which side the doors open. And I think the best part about it is that it has a far-reaching system of trams and buses to complement it
We had a guest from Germany with a wheelchair. He was able to get anywhere and use any public transport mode without using the car, planning or thinking long about it. He is from Germany and never even had this experience in his hometown (while I guess that is not representative for all of Germany)
A thing worth mentioning is the excellent color coding of the lines. Each line has its own signalling color that is used throughout the station and entrances. At transfers, the color changes midway between the lines. As a passenger it's obvious on which line you're on, at any given time.
True, that’s one of the best aspects of the system. However, this only works because there’s not a single section of line-sharing. So quite a lot of systems couldn’t adapt this wayfinding principle.
@@ft4709 True, that can't be done fully. But I think a lighter version would still improve wayfinding, especially on transfers, even if you loose the "I know exactly which line I'm on" feature. On many transit maps this is already done; and some parts are implemented for example in Munich. But it's not done properly, stations that serve multiple lines often have no color coding, newer stations do have color coding, stations where Lines split don't have any, even if they are refurbished (looking at you, Münchner Freiheit). It would be so much more clear to non-regular travelers if that would be made more obvious, even if it is just a stripe of color someplace easy to see. And if you want to do it on the cheap and don't spend a whole lot of money... colorful adhesive tapes for the floors are a thing until you can get a proper solution done.
@@delirium3181 Absolutely, I meant to say the Vienna U-Bahn is just perfectly layed out for this kind of wayfinding and it‘s a lot more difficult with other systems, especially Stadtbahns. Thanks for pointing out Munich btw. That’s easily the worst offender in the German speaking realm. I‘ll never understand why instead of fixing the issues with the old color coded wayfinding they went ahead and removed it entirely. It’s such a simple network made needlessly confusing by improper signage.
Great signage is one of those things that you don't so much as "see" as experience. When I used the Vienna system it was so easy to figure out where to go. In other sytems, I have had to really look to me sure I am find the right path (either into, through, or out of stations). It felt so effortless to find your way around. Such a great overall system
I remember going to elementary school in Vienna. Waldschule on Dr Schöber Straße in Hietzing. Sometimes I'd visit family with my parents near prater/donau (danube) and would have to take u1/u4 to Hietzing, take the tram 60 line (Straße bahn) and then a bus I think it was the 56b but it had a far shorter route back then only from lainzer tiergarten to speisinger Straße/lainzer Straße. When I moved to America I remember going "wtf is this". So did my mother and my wife who moved from Germany. America is third world trash compared to Vienna which is consistently ranked number 1 most livable city in thr world. I live in calabsasas, CA but even so Los Angeles is garbage filthy place with low class people. Vienna is paradise for a city.
Forgot to mention that the yearly ticket for the Vienna Metro is 365,- euro per year (1,-€ per day) around 500,- CAD$. If you buy it for the year and decide to return they refund the open amount.
And also, there now is a ticket that costs 3€ per day (annual billing) and allows you to use almost all public transport in the whole country, including high speed trains and regional busses
@@georgplaz Still it's much cheaper than e.g. the Swiss "Generalabonnement" (the only other whole-network-ticket I'm aware of), which costs almost 4 times as much! Granted, the public transit network of Switzerland is better than in Austria, but definitely not 4x better.
I live in Vienna and really love their public transportation in general. Some comments: 1. As living here, it is cheap. A one year card costs 365 Euro. Valid for U-bahn, most trams and most buses. 2. The most beautiful lines to travel (according to me) are the U4 and U6. Many older stations, mostly above ground and the "Märklin-feeling" (the model railway mark). The first time I saw it, I got truly charmed. But of course, going over Donau is worth it too, though one really do not see much. 3. If you ever visit Vienna and ride with one of the older trains, be aware of that the doors do take some effort to open. A hard sideways punch on the door handles is the usual way to open them. You can recognize the locals by the "double punch", they open both doors with one fast motion. It always makes me smile when I see older, seemingly fragile locals, that when they come to one of these doors with handles, one usually hears "BAM BAM" with full force, then they keep on walking with their supportive sticks. :D 4. Respect the local tradition of letting folks OUT before going IN. I have understood it was not always like this, but it simply works and is great! When you want to board any public transportation, you stand beside the doors, let all folks out and then you enter. I have visited some cities where this does not work and there is always a small battle to get out or in. Not in Vienna.
to your 4th point, people are actively mad if there is someone right infront of the door once it opens. And sometimes even insult that person for being selfish. Social pressure to keep you in line in small doses.
As someone who's lived in Vienna for most of their life, it seems kinda funny to me you'd even call it a "local tradition" 😅 I always thought that's how it's done everywhere and it's just common sense to me to be honest 😁
@@lukasmaly7295 well, it is common sense - the advice exists everywhere there are public transports. One of the few places where it actually WORKS in reality is Vienna... :D
@@DasTamii Oh, why? I use it a lot and I know it sometimes has irritating delays - but I still think the line and what you can see from it is beautiful. :)
It's worth mentioning that the Vienna Airport is not *just* connected to the S-Bahn system of Vienna. It's a proper train station with 4 platforms that get frequent service from Inter City trains as well. Basically, some routes that come into Vienna Hauptbahnhof from other major cities don't actually terminate there, they go the extra 30 or so minutes to the Airport, which gives anyone from the Salzburg-Linz-Vienna route and the Graz-Vienna route (i.e. the four largest cities in the country) a direct, no transfer connection to the only major Airport in the country. And since I'm talking about Intercity: currently, three of the worlds longest railway tunnels are being built in Austria. The largest - the Brenner Base Tunnel - is a joint project with Italy which mainly serves the purpose of avoiding the Gothart Tunnel in Switzerland and making the Brenner route much much quicker. The other two are the Semmering Base Tunnel and the Koralm Base Tunnel. The Semmering Base Tunnel cuts the travel time from Graz to Vienna by half an hour as it bypasses the very beautiful but very slow and winding Semmeringbahn entirely. The Koralm Base Tunnel is a big part of a completely new high speed (for alpine standards anyway) connection between Graz and Klagenfurt, cutting travel time for that route from significantly over two hours to less than one hour.
Vienna and Schiphol Airport stations are however not comparable in terms of traffic frequency, which only makes sense since Schiphol is a much bigger hub. But things are improving. Vienna is now up to 8 trains per hour (If you count the 2 surcharged express services) leaving for vienna, which is quite decent.
@@kurzzug160 15 min with the airport express (CAT) or Railjet, 22 min with the S-Bahn. But considering that the CAT cost's 9€ one way, as opposed to 4,30€ with the other 2, I actually don't understand why people are still using the CAT.
Two more important features: 1. it has awesome LTE network throughout the tunnels. 2. as someone with a 2year old kid just returning from London: you have elevators everywhere with very short walkways between lines. 3. great air quality everywhere. Not hot like London or New York. 4. no congestion at entryways, broad walkways 5. nice intervals and nighttime operation.
The air quality in London is something I noticed as a big difference indeed, when I visited the UK. Also: Some of the London lines are so loud and cramped, they made me really claustrophobic.
@@ex101jc The Jubilee line is *not* comfortable. Even I, an average sized Austrian (maybe at the smaller end of average?) has to duck to get into the train door. And it is soo loud! I try to never use it again when I'm in London. The metro lines in Vienna are all the same and all roomy in comparison. Maybe comparable with the DLR. The non-metro trains in Austria are even bigger and quieter (on the inside).
aw man, you missed the heyday of peak-hour on the U6 before eating was banned onboard trains. People who complain that Stephansplatz station smells bad in summer have obviously never been on the U6 back then. Sweet smelly memories. 😅😅
2 года назад+4
@@impaledloaf Yeah, why does Stephansplatz smell so bad!? 😅 And I definitely do not miss the smell of Leberkäse from my morning rides to Alser Straße
@ That's the deteriorating waterproofing agents that were injected into the soil surrounding the station building. I don't know if the smell will disappear given enough time, but there is probably no other way of getting rid of it.
@@impaledloaf I passed Stephansplatz nearly everyday back in my schooldays. Now I can't smell it anymore when passing by again. I don't know if it's good or bad.
By the way, if you want to know more about Vienna, there's a channel called Tapakapa who makes videos about the city (and other topics) in both English and viennese German.
I lived in Vienna from 1999-2003. The most beautiful country ever. When I moved from Vienna to Los Angeles I thought how garbage and hideous and bad for living la was. It was a decade afterward that I searched for the best cities to live in the world and Vienna was always at number 1 on nearly all lists. I used to go to school using the bus, tram, and u-bahn as a 7 year old there. Kids were free to travel to school alone. There was an afterschool program also called "Hort" which I also used to have to walk over a mile to get to. I used to live in Hietzing district. Always took line 60 (tram) to get to the U4 in Hietzing and take it to the U1 or U6 to get to donau (danube river has u1/u2/u4 connecting it although u2 was a semi ring line back in 2000) and in the danube river they would just have top less girls like it's nothing
Fun facts: Parts of the tunnel of U2 was buildt with liquid nitrogen turning gravel into ice. Technically U2 terminates in Schottentor not Karlsplatz right now. The former tunnel of the U2 plattforms of Karlsplatz station needed to be extra soundproof, because of a concerthall right next to it. Actually the best concerthall in Vienna to hear Mozart. The old Stadtbahn stations of U4 and U6 were built by Dr. Wagner famous architekt befor 1914.
@@RMTransit common indeed. My example is the only one I know my university TU Wien was directly involved in though, because it was directly under a river in the city centre. Also there were some tricky issues with the local geology if I remember correctly. ;-)
If I remember correctly, the U2 crossing underneath Donaukanal was the first time that this method was used in vienna, so it was kind of a big deal back then, eventhough the method is otherwise quite common, as you mentioned.
2:20 - Many Vinnese lament the removal of tram lines when a more or less parallel U-Bahn line was opened. With densely spaced stops trams might be slower, but are often much more convenient for short distances, and sometimes those removed lines offered better, more convenient transfers to other tram lines.
Even though I'm just a few years to young to have witnessed the 8 tram, I'm already for reopening it. A line running parallel to the central section of the U6 would be immensely useful in case of the not-so-uncommon breakdown. And since most of the track is still in use, except for the strech between Burggasse and Kreuzgasse, rebulding it wouldn't even require that much effort.
@@Marquis-Sade No, no, no - i _love_ Viennese U-Bahn, but I think that in most cases old tram lines should be retained. Each layer of public transport, from busses to trams to U-, S- and R-Bahn have their role.
Thank you for talking about the public transport system in Vienna! I have been living here for my whole life and I really enjoy the U-Bahn and other transport systems in Austria. I use the metro to get to school every day and I don't even think about using a car, I just look up the best public transport route or a bike route. And I really like the ticketing system, because of the 1€/ day fare in Vienna or the 1095€ for every public transport in the whole of Austria, called KlimaTicket
Living in Vienna… I really have to say that you pointed out quite a lot information about the history, but there are many informations that are more important and actually make the system unique in comparison to other transport systems of cities of a similar size. For example there are no shorter trains used on the underground system. There is always a 6 car train. The frequency is pretty decent during the day and even in the middle of the night the maximum waiting time is 15 minutes. It’s also worth mentioning that there are more people who use the annual pass of the network (which by the way costs only 356 € a year) than those who own a car. The trams are also very good, providing services to nearly everywhere you can’t go by taking the underground. And also the suburban train lines that connect the outer skirts with the city centre. The system is cheap, efficient and it makes travelling a joy. Also because of the city’s heritage
@@factor1079just want to add to @boris' answer, regardless of type includes rail (S-Bahn/RJX), all within Zone 100 / Vienna Core, makes going from e.g. Hütteldorf to HBF a lot easier (direct rail connection, 16 minutes to cross from far east to west side of the city). öbb scotty is a good app to use for calculating the different A-B if you need to get tickets and stuff, Google Maps' route timetable is currently wrong (since Wiener Linien keeps changing it every few months). Just remember, the airport is outside of Vienna, buy a ticket for your trip for e.g. week ticket (Monday 00:00 till following week Monday 09:00) and just the ticket from airport to city border (is an option in the dropdown, or it states have city ticket depending whether app or terminal, if buy in-app, it will automatically reduce the price).
3:50 the u3 also connects to the u4 (Landstraße) and u6 (Westbahnhof). One thing I absolutely love about vienna‘s u-bahn system is that no matter where you are in the city, you can just go and find *any* u-bahn and you will be able to get to the u-bahn station you need to get to. It’s connected so well that you truly can’t get lost
I remember going to elementary school in Vienna. Waldschule on Dr Schöber Straße in Hietzing. Sometimes I'd visit family with my parents near prater/donau (danube) and would have to take u1/u4 to Hietzing, take the tram 60 line (Straße bahn) and then a bus I think it was the 56b but it had a far shorter route back then only from lainzer tiergarten to speisinger Straße/lainzer Straße. When I moved to America I remember going "wtf is this". So did my mother and my wife who moved from Germany. America is third world trash compared to Vienna which is consistently ranked number 1 most livable city in thr world. I live in calabsasas, CA but even so Los Angeles is garbage filthy place with low class people. Vienna is paradise for a city. By the way we took the u4 to the u6 so much to get to family and friends living there. The u1 towards donau is also amazing. U4 Hietzing was my home station 🥰🥰. Miss it so much. By the way in the ubahn, is it the same guy announcing the stations with the kind of deep voice? Or is it a female now? I miss that guys voice
@@davidt8087 i‘ve never been to america so I dont know much about it, but from what I hear cars are more important than public transport. I did go to other european countries and i do have to say that i prefer the viennese public transport because it’s so connected. You can get on any subway and end up where you need to go because they’re all connected. In italy (this was naples) there were 3 or 4 subway lines but each serviced a different area, they were not connected at all. So if you wanted to go somewhere you would first have to find the right subway and get there by other means. The voice announcing the stops is a female now. Some service announcements are done by a male voice, although it’s mostly a female voice
My wife has serious mobility issues. She uses a rollator when we have to visit cities. Vienna was by far the best public transit system we have ever used regarding universal accessibility. Every metro station had CLEAN elevators. The elevators were being constantly used either by people with wheel chairs/rollators, people with baby strollers, bikes or parents with little kids using the pedal free bikes. I have never experienced a system where every single elevator was working and clean. No need to hold your breath (see NYC for smelly elevators). Interconnections to busses and trams was excellent. The tram stations had a slightly elevated platform (just a couple of inches). Those were easy to get onto and then the "step-in" height for entering the tram was just a minor lift of 2 to 3 inches. Super easy on-off. The system was also amazingly cheap. We were there for a week and a pass runs from Sunday Midnight to the following Sunday Midnight for around $22 per person for full access with the only exception being the airport train (that's a silly $15, for 2 people just take a $30 taxi and get to your exact destination. It was so easy to get around Vienna without a car. I could totally move there, be car free and be quite happy.
The airport train is a rip-off but it is just one of many train options to the airport. The S7 is going to the airport every 30 min and it does not only stop at Wien Mitte like the airport train but also various other central stops like Praterstern. There is also the option of taking the Railjet from airport to the main station of Vienna (also an only 15 min ride), for only a few EUR if you have a ticket for Vienna itself. The latter is interesting if you are staying at one of the numerous hotels at the main station.
Note that's the CAT (City express), don't take that one most of the time, it's a rip-off. You can just use the normal S-Bahn/RJ/RJX, there the platform opposite it. So buy a day/72h/week ticket (Mon 00:00 to Monday 09:00 the following week) for Vienna and just two tickets from Schwechat to the city border (Stadtgrenze), will cost ~2.3 EUR per ticket for that trip piece, so
we're not grumpy, just brutally honest! which can ofc be difficult to get used to, but also has value bc you always know exactly what's up, no fake behavior
Other than Praterstern, another major station serving regional/S-Bahn trains is Wien Mitte/Landstrasse station which is the terminus of the City Airport Train. It is an interchange station for U3/U4 too. It has a mall and office towers right above, and a very good example of a well-planned TOD.
The only real drawback of the Vienna U-Bahn is that from the very start it was planned and built as a tram _replacement_ (to get more space for cars on the surface). Thus in many parts of the city it has rather short distances between stations and therefore a limited travel speed, while at the same time still not reaching the density of the former tram network. Also, especially in the outskirts, bus routes are mostly oriented towards the U-Bahn, without having much value on their own - resulting in prolonged trips on meandering routes before you actually go anywhere. This has led to overall service quality actually being _lower_ and overall travel times being _longer_ than before 1970 in some parts. Fortunately in recent years there has been a re-thinking of this approach (albeit politicians in some districts - especially north of the Danube - still dream of getting rid of all trams and replacing them with oversized and expensive subway lines). Distances between stops are now planned significantly longer on the latest sections (e.g. U2 between Schottenring and Seestadt, and also the under-construction southern part of the U2). Also the tram network is being slowly expanded again, after it was almost cut in half (!) in the 70s and 80s. Long story short: even in a city with excellent public transit like Vienna there is always room for improvement.
@@mikulabeutl Yes, the extension of the U2 and the new U5 are actually the last two sensible routes and they will fill notable gaps in high-density areas of the city. That half-circle of the U2 was always a bit weird. And it wasn't the original plan anyways; the tunnel between Karlsplatz and Rathaus was always meant to be for the future U5 line. The tight curve between the stops Schottentor and Rathaus was only a maintenance connection between U2 (which would have continued to Hernals) and U5 (to Gersthof) in the original plans. Having (more or less) straight through-lines makes much more sense for a high-level mode of transport like the metro. Also the new connection to the S-Bahn at Matzleinsdorferplatz will be a bonus for the whole network, as it will relieve the overcrowded lines U1 and U6. Hence U2/U5 are a sensible adaptation of the original plans, taking into account the actual city development in the last 40 years (Gersthof has now significantly lower population density than the area between Matzleinsdorferplatz and Wienerberg).
There is much disinformation in the comment i just cant let it stand, cause it makes the wrong impression of the UBahn-Network. Point A: The relatively short stops actually are a good thing. As the U-Bahn is the most efficent way to go around the city, it makes it easy to go from A to B, without having to switch to a Bus or Tram for that, which leads to a shorter Traveltime overall. The Ubahn has shorter intervalls (meaning time between Trains), which make a switch between different Ubahn lines time efficent. I dont know from where you are getting the longer travel time, as you can go around the city within 30 minutes anywhere, and at max 60 minutes if you have a weird connection to where you want to go. If any, the density has gone up, not down. I understand, that if you want to go from A to D, and you have to stop at B and C, that it annoys you, but people at B and C also want to travel. The prolonged trips you are mentioning are very specific and dont generally exist, its impossible to have the perfect connection for every A to B destination anyway. You can only try to cover as much as possible in a efficent as possible way. On the contrary, longer stops would mean, i will have to switch more to a Bus or Tram. Meaning longer waiting times and increased travel Time for them beeing just slower. As an Example: While the U2 is beeing expanded, the S-Bahn at Matzleinsdorfer Platz has been renovated in the process. (The S-Bahn in the city kinda works like a Ubahn). This forced me to switch from the S-Bahn to a Tram. It took me 10 to 15 minutes Longer to reach my desitination, despite having more or less the same route. And the reason for that was simply the tram beeing slower. Even if you added new stops to the S-Bahn, i would have been quicker. So except for very short distances or a specific connection, the UBahn (in this exampe the S-Bahn) is much faster than any tram could be. That is also the very reason, why it makes sense to have a Bus and Tramsystem that is oriented along the Ubahn Network, those Buses and Trams still make stops at populated areas and connects them to each other. I cant undestand why that has no value for you. For the few destinations that dont have a viable UBahn connection, a Bus and Tram still exist and can be used. I cannot think of any connection, that would profit from a Bus or Tram instead of the Ubahn. More stops also make it much more viable for people to leave the car at home. If your destination doesnt have a reasonable stop to go to, people will use the car out of conveniance. And thats exactly what you dont want to have. So the "old" thinking if you want, has led to less cars not more. So the overall Claim, the Service has has gotten lower and travel time higher since the UBahn 1970 was built, is factually wrong. I dont say, that individually, some people couldnt have had longer travel times or have it harder to reach a destination, but those are exceptions not the rule. The UBahn has connected the city in a very quick and efficent way, a Tram never could have. Point B: This is much less about a rethinking but about the actual situation at hand. North of the danube, the city is less dense populated, so it makes sense to have more space between stops (and only true for the U2 expansion, not the U1) . Less people are travelling in those parts anyway and so Tramnetworks and Buses are economicly more sound. They are simply cheaper to build and maintain. Still, the traveltime is still longer there and the waiting times are longer. For poeple who have to travel there, it takes more time. So i dont see how you can value that as an improvement on the service side, when it takes longer. On a Side note: The other parts that are beeing expanded west of the danube (U5 and U2) are built with the same short stops. The claim alone that a rethinking has been happening is simply not true. While in the inner City trams have been either changed or scraped for the exact same reason. The Ubahn just replaced succesfully many of the Tram routes, or parts of it. Yes, as long as it makes sense, replacing trams with the UBahn is a very good thing. In the end, you still have to pay and maintain the network. And redundant Tram Lines dont help. Conclusion: In my opinion, the author of the original comment, speaks more of an personal experience rather than the actual reality that exist. Of course you can always improve, and it is in the nature of a Viennese (Inhabitant of Vienna) to complain about everthing, so nothing unusual here. But compared to other cities in europe, we in Vienna can be very happy with what we have. Of course living in the outskirts of the city, makes it a little harder to use the Public Transport, but thats true for every city in the world. I could not imagine living in a city without that kind of a public network. I can only hope, that a rethinking like the Commentator had, never happens, cause the thinking right now is the one you want to have.
@@Alexander-bc8dh * Point A: the subway network can never be as dense as bus or tram. It just would not be cost effective. Hence, logically, you are _less_ likely to have a direct route between point A and B, i.e. you are _more_ likely to have to change between lines. Additionally the distances by foot are longer (because of the lower density of lines & stations and the mere size of the stations themselves - people often dont notice how far they actually have to walk once they are "in the subway"). A good example is Mariahilferstraße, which previously had 4 tram stops but now only has 2 subway stations. Those station buildings themselves are also around 400m long. Which is about the distance _between_ the former tram stops (which were basically located at either end of the new stations buildings). So basically, on average you have to walk an additional 200m now - just inside the subway station. The same can be observed in many areas, where the walking distances to the new subway stations became much longer than to the former tram stops, simply because there were about double as many of those. Hence the overall travel speed did not improve in many cases! People in the Peer-Albin-Hansson residential complex have actually been complaining about this ever since the U1 replaced the former tram line there and 7 tram stops were merged into just 3 subway stations. At the same time a short distance between stations effectively reduces speed. Average driving speed of the Vienna subway is just 32km/h, despite the vmax being 80km/h. And the average _travelling_ speed (i.e. including the walk to/from/inside the station) is even lower. Plus it forces people to change lines in many cases. E.g. when you come from the outer Mariahilferstraße and want to go to the Ring you could previously just stay in the tram, but now you have to change to the subway at Westbahnhof, which eats up all the time you may save in the U3. Whenever there is a direct tram route you're typically _faster_ with it. A prominent example is e.g. Hauptbahnhof -> Westbahnhof: tram 18 has a travel time of 15 minutes, U1+U3 take at least 16 minutes (but you have to get to/from the platform first, which takes an additional 1-2 minutes on each end). This is not the exception but the standard case. As I said before: since the network of surface lines can be more dense (about 10x more dense actually, for the same cost), you're _more_ likely to have a direct route. Of course you need to consider the original tram network for that comparison, not the current one where lines have been shut down in favor of the subway (line 18 just happens to be one of the few remaining examples). And that's despite the trams in Vienna being exceptionally slow when compared to other cities of similar size and density. Vienna is one of the few cities worldwide where trams are on average slower than buses - so there would be _much_ room for improvement in this area as well (on most lines we could easily save about 15-20% of travel time, simply by optimizing the traffic signals for them - which would also mean 20% more capacity for the same cost btw.). Speaking of cost: The operational cost of a medium size subway _station_ is about the same as the cost to run a short tram line! To stay with the example of Mariahilferstraße: it would actually have been _cheaper_ to not build the Zieglergasse station, but keep the tram lines instead. And service and accessibility in Mariahilferstraße would actually be _better_ now. * Point B: The new extensions have _measureably_ longer distances between stations. Just compare it on a map. E.g. Rathaus-Neubaugasse will be well over 1km (so long that some local politicians even wanted an additional station at Burggasse), Neubaugasse-Pilgramgasse will be over 800m, Michelbeuern-Elterleinplatz almost 1km, Elterleinplatz-Hernals a whopping 1.3km (there even I would be inclined to add an intermediate stop at Wattgasse), Gußriegelstraße-Wienerberg also almost 1km. The average distance in Vienna today is ~770m (which includes the latest extensions of the U1 and U2, that already were built with longer distances as well). Most of the new station distances will be around that number or longer, thereby further increasing the overall average. Before 2005 the average distance was ~700m; so it has been growing significantly over the last years - which proves my point. Also the inner city subways (especially the U2) _massively_ disrupted the tram network in this area. There were 3 lines on Landesgerichtsstraße - branching off in different directions - before the U2 was built. Those 3 lines obviously provided more direct routes than a single line ever could. Plus they interconnected with the former tram lines in Gumpendorferstraße, Mariahilferstraße and Burggasse allowing for flexible re-routing in case of service disruptions on the Ring. * Conclusion: I'm not against the U-Bahn in any way. I'm just opposed to using it as a tram _replacement_, when it should actually be a _complement_. It has a very different role in the network: long distance trips across half of the city, whereas trams provide interconnection between districts and local hotspots, and bus lines fill the low-demand gaps in between. This isn't just my personal experience (I happen to live and work right next to subway stations, so the network actually suits my needs quite nicely), but the general consensus among transit planners. Also I'm not complaining about the overall quality of public transit in Vienna (I even called it "excellent" in my original comment). I'm just saying that it could have been even better _and_ cheaper at the same time if it had been planned as an _additional_ layer in the network, without disrupting the already existing "middle layer" of trams.
You know, as an Austrian who just returned from a short trip to Vienna today, I had little to no idea about how nice our system actually is. It took the New York City Subway for me to realize it. Compared to that, the clean stations, wide cars, walk-through cars (I thought this was normal), smoothness of the ride and escalators at the stations are just amazing. And the proof of payment concept and online ticketing is really nice as well. I would have also added to the video that Siemens actually makes a lot of trains in Vienna (I went there once, really interesting). I am glad to be moving to the city in the fall to study at the university that is located on Karlsplatz. Oh and regarding the population surrounding the city: we don't really have suburbs in Austria, people really live all over the country, except on the mountains and in the lakes I guess :D
Meanwhile my countryman was convincing us to be more grateful for our subway system by showing us a photo of NYC's W4 subway station & claiming that he'd heard no one complain about it
Just a detail: For the mainline train stations, you clearly forgot Meidling, which is popular, since better located to downtown vienna than Hauptbahnhof.
Yes, i also thought Wien Meidling is definitly missing. For me living in the district Mödling and going to University in Vienna Wien Meidling is the most important station.
Vienna really has a tradition to have a number missing in the underground system. For many years U3 was missing in the setup of U1 to U4, now it is U5 in the U1 to U6 system. And I daresay that there might be a U8 sometime with the U7 missing. That is Vienna, keeping up the tension...
Maybe also worth mentioning: tickets are valid for all public transport in Vienna, metro, trams, buses and rail. And a whole year ticket for all that is just 365 Euros, thanks to a commitment to make public transport more attractive.
I suggest you devote one of the future episodes to very, umm, interesting history of Vienna U-Bahn network, with many planned and then abandoned lines, false starts, changes in direction etc (all ultimately resulting in a pretty nice network). Also, integration with S-Bahn and R-Bahn network is interesting (not unlike Paris RER and Transilien).
Nice video, but I think you forgot something important: The U1-U4 didn't and don't have any signals! From the beginning, the driver only had a monitoring function and only carried out the dispatch, the trains are remotely controlled via an LZB-like system... The Viennese were the first to automate subways in this way.
as a person who went to ALL these trains and stations as a kid its very nostalgic looking at this. Im not from Austria but i came to visit my grandma a few times and honestly Vienna is my favorite place ever
Very nice to hear about Vienna. Usually, it's the German U-Bahn or S-Bahn systems that people discuss, even while Vienna has a good sized metro system. The U6 reminds me of Ottawa, the future TTC Line 5, and other light rail systems that have to couple 2 to 3 sets together to run regular service.
While the systems are less extensive than in other places, Vienna has an S-Bahn and a tram system and buses which are highly integrated with the Ubahn. I've seen examples for a lot of best practices in Vienna, before I learned that other cities implemented them, often on a wider scale.
@@RMTransit It reminds me of the MRT - Not many lines, but coverage is great. Although of course Singapore is currently building 2 new mrt lines, with 1 more in planning, so it's certainly not a new system anymore!
Covering only the metro is a bit very narrow focus. The Vienna public transport system is deigned as a multi tiered system with the metro as the fast backbone and trams and busses covering the wider areas with more closely space stops where the cost of constructing a subway would not be justified
@@RMTransit That is what happens if mid sized cities are actually compact and urban. The overall length of the subway system is then naturally relatively low, even if it serves the area well and is dense. Suburbs are served by the S-Bahn system. Another example would be Barcelona. The area served by metro there isn't that large either, because the city is very compact and urban.
That part always irritated me. It was always a poorly layed-out route to begin with. But instead of building a new tunnel on a more sensible alignment they kept dumping money into that damn tram tunnel. I wonder if there’s still part of the original building left after all those upgrades.
@@ft4709 The original structure is very much still there. There is even a pre-built interchange below Landesgerichtsstraße, where the original U2 an U5 routes would have met. Although the new interchange will be at Rathaus, the old structure will be integrated into the new Frankhplatz station.
@@ft4709 The original semi-circle layout of the U2 was a compromise due to financial constraints. Instead of doing that sharp 90 degree turn towards Schottentor, U2 would have continued to the north-west towards Währing, while the original U5 would have come down from Hernals (more or less the branch that's going to be built until 2027), intersected U2 at Landesgericht and continued on eastward pretty much the along the same route of the new eastern branch of U2. So ironically, a large part of U5 entered service in 2010 without the denomination appearing on the map.
Fun fact: You mentioned the elevation the different lines were operating at. They were originaly planned (which one can still see in the more central/older stations) to go up in elevation with the line number. So U1 is the lowest, then U2 then U3 and so on and U6 is the highest. So at stations like Schwedenplatz or Karlsplatz if you go from one line to another the number wil dictate of you have to move up (eg U1 to U4) or down (eg U4 to U2)
Coming from a small city my first encounter with a proper metro was in Vienna and I was blown away by it. Now I live in a bigger city myself and a nice frequent metro is just so nice.
Great video as always, Reese. Interesting factoid: in Vancouver the Expo Line Skytrain stations were designed by the The Architektengruppe U-Bahn, which designed the stations for much of the Vienna system (among others around the world). The station at 7:56 in the video looks almost exactly like Burrard or Granville in Vancouver. The 80s AGU style is very evident along the Expo Line and quite a few stations and station entrances would be very much at home in Vienna.
I'm wondering why you didn't also include the Vienna S-bahn like you did with Berlin's Explainer video ? It also supplements the U-bahn really well just like Berlins and it includes a few key orbital like routes
To be honest the S-Bahn is sort of the weak link in Viennas otherwise excellent transit network. The Berlin S-Bahn is a lot more metro-like with dedicated infrastructure, shorter intervals, shorter distances between starions and metro-style trains. Plus its rejuvenation post BVG-takeover actually lead to the cancellation of U-Bahn projects, meaning it functions more like a seperate U-Bahn system rather than something that just shuttles commuters into the city. Therefore its inclusion in the Berlin video was justified. Viennas S-Bahn is still more of a glorified regional rail service and even uses low-floor trains, leading to ridiculously long dwell times and low capacity numbers. It could (and should) be a lot better.
True. The Hamburg U Bahn is about as long and has about as many stops as the Vienna system. The S Bahn is not the best though with basically just 3 lines (S1, S21, S3), and the other regional rail lines to Kiel, Lübeck, Bremen, Sylt and Uelzen are a big mess to put it mildly (the number of trains delayed/cancelled is extremely high compared to the rest of Germany, and German trains already have the reputation of always being late)
Viennese here (don't know why RUclips recommended me this) but for all U-Bahn enthusiasts there's a crossed over U4 & U6 station (Längenfeldgasse) where one direction of the u6 connects directly to the u4 on the other side of the station and they arrive at the same time so if you also need the u4 after arriving with the u6 u just have to walk a couple steps and jump into it. It's very convenient that it's organized like that instead of having the same line but other direction like all the other stations.
The U4 trains have a striking similarity to the trains used on the Oslo Metro (both were designed and built by Siemens Mobility as well). Great video, I'd suggest doing Oslo next, they have a wide variety of transit modes such as bus, regional trains, metro trains, trams, and even ferry boats.
I am citizen of Vienna and i have the annual ticket for the public transport system and it is great. I have no drivers licence and of course no car and i truly do not need that. It is not only the metro system, the trams and busses are reaching or connecting almost every part of a district. During the week there is the Nightline which is a bus system that helps residents of vienna to enjoy their nightlife and at the weekends, the metro goes for 24 hours.
Great video! I found your remark at Vienna not being very big for a north american a little odd, since it would be the 5th biggest city were it located in the US, and if I am not mistaken 3rd or 4th in Canada. In relation to Austrias size that is pretty darn big. Also roughly a quarter of Austrias population lives in Vienna. -a happy Viennese citizen :)
I was used to the U-Bahn in Cologne and the biggest thing for me was that they run almost twice as often and how freaking clean everything was. That's literaly what I tell people about Vienna 1. The buildings are amazing 2. The U-Bahn is great and so amazingly clean
Reece, you should consider covering some of the rural transit options in Switzerland and Austria like the post buses. Both countries do a really good job connecting less populated areas with transit.
4:04 here is a small mistake in the production, U4 does not pass Stephansplatz, you should have marked the mentioned intersection of U3 and U4 at Landstrasse/Wien Mitte. But the overall video and knowledge is great, make more about middle European cities please :)
A lot has already been said, and I can throw in my two cents as a long-term expat who has lived in this wonderful city: 1. Given the breadth and scope of the public transport grid, I don't own a car. 2. If I do find myself needing a car for whatever reason, the ShareNow system is truly exceptional, especially if you need a ride to the airport or one of the shopping outlets outside of the city proper (looking at SCS and Parndorf mostly). 3. The biking infrastructure is obviously not as developed as say the Dutch, but it's quite robust and is seeing a lot of investment recently. 4. The advent of the e-scooter has provided a niche form of transportation that has been integrated by Wiener Linien itself (for the time being it's with the Berlin-based TIER company). And whilst it'll take some time for them to fully integrate, there is already a "scootering" culture in the city. 5. The Jahreskarte (yearly card) has already been mentioned, add to that the mobile app and I find myself not worrying if I find myself stepping into the metro or a tram without my wallet. 6. Since the system is proof of purchase, ticket controllers go undercover, so it's hilarious to see on a crowded subway car all the fretting free-riders. 7. The city itself is investing heavily in making the city more pedestrian and bike friendly and reducing the amount of cars, as well as installing electric charge ports all around the city. All in all everything works so well that it becomes ingrained into your daily life and you no longer have to worry about how to get from point A to point B.
@RMTransit great video! I think what other cities can learn from Vienna is that transit comes first in the planning of new tod's. Eg. in Seestadt the U-Bahn was completed before anything else making it easy for new residents to go by U2 from day 1. it is often overlooked that psychologicly it is much easier that way rather than trying to convince people to switch after the fact. However I don't want to say that our system is perfect. Eg. when almost all long distance trains switched to Wien Hbf. U1 can be pretty overwhelmed because it is the only U-Bahn line to serve that train station (unlike Westbahnhof, Wien Mitte and Praterstern which are served by 2 lines) and Wiener Linien has a hard time keeping up their schedule due to a lack of drivers and maintainance personel and therefore a lack of rolling stock. So now you ofter see trains only arriving every 4-5 minutes instead of every 3 minutes. All in all I think our system is great though and I can use public transport (especially U-Bahn) for 95 % of all my inner city travel, meaning I hardly have to use my car at all.
Hopefully the crowds at U1 Hauptbahnhof get better when U2 Matzleinsdorfer Platz opens in 2029 or something. Also I noticed at U1 Hauptbahnhof that since all the people enter the platform on one side, sometimes they all stay at one side of the platform, creating overcrowding but only at the back end of the train while the rest is quite empty.
Just wanted to ask. Bratislava recently renumbered all of its trolleybus lines (for example, line 201 became 71, 209 -> 49, 211 -> 45, 205 -> 60 ...) And I wanted to know why should or shouldn't a city renumber its transit lines
@@RMTransit Vienna's trams have a very interesting numbering system (which has been covered in a video by Tapakapa). The bus lines and S-Bahn lines also kind of follow this system so you can kind of guess in what general direction a line is going based on its number.
@@pleasantpheasant1095 Yes but only roughly and it gets even more muddled up as time progresses. Take the new 11 line, named by popular vote, since it runs largely in the 11th district. Historically, (as under the 1907 system) the 11 belongs on Engerthstraße, and the current route should recieve a letter (because through-line) with a tangent-suffix. so someting like P6 or R6. But that would obviously not have been very popular. 😅
I didn't realize Vienna's U-Bahn was originally a stadtbahn. Stadtbahns have their place especially when you have dense areas, where you wanna provide lots of lines with shorter stop spacing, but there are places in Germany, for example, where they try to do the work of what should really be a full U-Bahn and it seems that they get built with the promise of U-Bahn service later, but that hardly happens.
Stadtbahn is a term with thousands of meanings. The original Berlin Stadtbahn is a viaduct in the city that later formed the base for the first German S Bahn, and the Vienna Stadtbahn was basically a light version of that. The term Stadtbahn as a tram line with more grade separation was born much later in post WW2 Germany in cities like Cologne, Stuttgart, Hanover and the Ruhr area
@@haisheauspforte1632 And to make things even more confusing, „Stadtbahn“ rhine-ruhr was originally just a fancy name for a regular U-Bahn system. Until it got downgraded and, ironically, became a Stadtbahn.
Deutscher Tipp: st = scht ; Seestatd = See + Statd ( ✖ NICHT "sees + tatd"). Daher, ist "Seestatd" wie "Say shtat" ausgesprochen. Verstehen Sie mich? I am sure you know, being connected to Germany, that in German "st" will read as "scht" at the start of a morpheme. "Statd" is one such morpheme, meaning "city," so that "Seestadt" means "Sea City." The important point is that the and are not part of separate morphemes, it's not like the word "Bundestag" were we have "Bundes + Tag" and thus the stays a normal /s/ sound. Knowing whether or not an pair is part of a single morpheme or not takes a bit familiarity with German, so it is easy for people to make mistakes. Colbert once said "Reich-schtag" instead of "Reichstag," which I thought was a funny mistakes because while total noobs of German usually don't know the "st → scht" rule, Colbert seems to know that rule but not the important morpheme break rule and made an overcorrection.
What’s also worth mentioning is the following fact: The system is designed in a way where you can reach every U-Bahn station by U-Bahn with a maximum of 2 tranfers. I think this still applies when you take the 2 S-Bahn lines which have an U-Bahn like interval and are operating at nighttime into consideration too. But i am not 100% sure about that. Fun fact at this point which I noticed while looking at the network map: The S-Bahn Stammstrecke (interurban railway main line) intersects with every U-Bahn line and the second S-Bahn line. There are even 3 stations where U6 and S-Bahn intersect.
I've traveled U-Bahn in Vienna last week, and I was stuned by the simularity with Prauge's metro. The tickets works the same, transfers are basicly same (allthought in Vienna they're shorter, because their U-Bahn wasn't designed with second purpous of being a public shelter in case of nuclear attack during the cold war). The only down-side was, it's very utilitarian. In Prague you go in and you see large marbel panels on wals, artistic glass bricks, sometimes even old statues recovered during bilding of metro. Not just every station, but every platform of every line has it's mood/feeling/wibe. Like you don't even need to read names of stations you sense it by just looking out of the window. In Vienna there's none of it.
There's a little bit of that, but really not as much. I think there are statues at Schwedenplatz, there are some remnants of the city walls at Stubentor, there's a Mini Cooper hanging from the ceiling at Schweglerstraße and of course there's the Virgilkapelle.
2 года назад+1
Oh yeah, that's the one thing that I've always felt was missing from Vienna's U-Bahn: a little fun! It's long seemed to me that modern constructions in the German-speaking world spend so much time trying to be 'modern' that they end up with something so sterile, it looks like it was designed by hospital architects: Hyper-functional and intuitive (the extensive colour-coding is brilliant), but oh so cold and heartless. There are exceptions, of course, but I much prefer the gorgeous Otto Wagner stations and the art nouveau ones on the U6. P.S. - I miss your wonderful capital and its metro dearly! Can't wait to return in August. Greetings from Vancouver, Canada :)
@@woodywoodverchecker I never understood why there's a car hanging from the walls of a metro station. (Isn't there also a station with an old locomotive?)
@Ryan C Actually, go to Hamburg, Munich… I would also say Berlin. These cities really show what could have been on the design side. I somehow think that you can find something better than the Subways in Vienna. It‘s not really special to build a subway line to an area before it‘s being built. Actually it‘s even quite common around the world. Have seen that in Hamburg before and there they executed it beautifully It always frustrates me when I see how Vienna could do so much more but they are just content with being mediocre on aspects like station or interior design. I use the public transit because the alternatives mostly suck. Not because I‘d really want to do that
Hey, love your videos! I just love with how much passion you make them. Would be great if you covered Pragues public transport system. We are currently building a new metro line which should be top tier as its being planned for about 20 years.🤩 And our amazing tram system can't be forgotten! I feel like our capital isnt talked about nowhere near as much as it deserves. ☹️ Love from Prague, Lásku z Prahy 🇨🇿 ❤️
You could also talk about the Salzburg trolleybuses, one of the biggest networks in the world, and the first U-Bahn line they are gonna build in the next few years. I'm just unsure on how much English information is available.
For Wien U-Bahn the signaling system is LZB like the S-Bahn München City Tunnel also uses LZB like the U-Bahn Wien. Inside the trains these are LZB Sifa equipped. Try doing the Wien S-Bahn system
2:30 the image of a line 6 going to Zentralfriedhof Tor 3 (central cementary gate 3). This is an old picture, line 6 doesn't go there anymore. as for the lines, there is the "stammstrecke" (stem line), S-bahn, connecting meidling, hauptbahnhof, wien mitte / landstraße, praterstern and floridsdorf. it acts like a further u-bahn line but connects further out into the countryside, a lot like the metropolitan line in london that leaves the city of london and connects to a lot of other smaller cities.
Ha! Was wondering when you would get to Vienna :D Some remarks and further trivia form a Viennese Urban Planner ;) Praterstern is not *that* major a station regarding connections. It is massive, but it sits on the same S-Bahn trunk as for example Landstraße (S-Bahn /U4) or Floridsdorf (S-Bahn /U6), the trunk line that also serves many other stations as well as the Hbf and Meidling. I would rather say the two major stations in the city are Hbf (lit. "main train station") and Meidling (which has a U6 connection making it quite practical for the eastern part of the city), both of which are serviced by most long distance trains and are also served by various S-Bahn und Regoinal trains, both on and off the main trunk, as well as trams and buses. Westbahnhof was the city's main station while the Hbf was being built, but since then it has lost quite a bit of importance. It stil has however an important interchange for the U3 and U6 and the privately run WestBahn runs some trains here, as well as some ÖBB regoinal lines and some non-trunkline S-Bahn routes. Also Hbf itself used to be two Termini which were literaly across the street from eachother. The Hbf project merjed these termini, creating a through station, connecting these rail lines, and opening land to new development and a large park The U2/U5 project is quite important to the city, as it would create one new station in the middle of the 5th district, which at the moment as rather poorly served by the public transport, especiallly compare to the other central districts (districts 1-9). It also will provide massive relief for the bus 13A, which is notorious for delays and capacity issues (to be expected when a tram is replaced by a bus), as well as connect the Wienerberg Complex (a collection of sky scrapers with no rail or tram connections in the southern part of the city), which was a bit of a planning fail (and probably the result of private interests). The U5 would also provide a new metro exchange point between the U6 and other lines, providing relief for the Spittelau (U6 U4) and Westbahnhof (U6 U3), as well as tram 43, which is the main connection on the central portion of the U6 to the city center (Schottentor U2) and has capacity issues. You might also find the S45 ("Vorortelinie) interesing, it runs parallel to the U6 farther away from the city and was also built by Otto Wagner,. It was abandoned any only used by steam trains, even into the 80s I believe (theres color video of steam trains running on the viaducts within the city), untill it was "reactivated" and new track was layed, and the stations were for the most part restored to their former glory. The S45 and main trunk line also serve more or less as two "extra" metro lines and are now included on the metro map with their own colors. The ÖBB (public railways) experimented a bit with the train signage, so now trains are named primarily by the station at which the leave the "trunk line" meaning you dont have to figure out which of the various S-Bahn lines you need to get to your destination. Of course the exact train number is also there, but its smaller. Also, while the the Seestadt is relatively, transit oriented unfortunately the city's outer areas are extremely car dependent (often with poor connections within these areas) and theres a bit of a struggle between more progressive and more conservative members of the city government. Even the inner areas are very much car oriented despite all the transit infrastructure in place, and there was a proposal to turn the midievel city within the ring road into a shared use zone, like in many italian or dutch cites, and this was blocked by the city's mayor. And even the transit oriented Seestadt you mentioned is planned to be connected to two highways, one even below a national park, and the district mayor there has delayed tram extensions to the Seestadt to try to increase pressure towards building the highway projects. At the moment theres a massive fight going on over the higway project. The city airport is also served by long distance RailJet trains (think ICE's at Frankfurt) allowing direct connections from other cities, like Graz, Linz or Innsbruck to the airport. Also the proof of purchase work, becaus the fine is particularly massive (€115-145 depending on when you pay) if youre unlucky enough to run into a ticket controller. And considering that the yearly pass costs €365, and there are even cheaper tickets for students, well... Its not really worth risking it ;) And an interesting note: Siemens and Bombardier have factories within the city producing vehicles for many cities also in other countries :) There's even a massive wind tunnel to test trains in the north of the city.
Just discovered your channel and I LOVE IT!!! Could you make a video about Barcelona's metro and Tram system please? I live in Barcelona and I think it's a really interesting network and there's now a huge expansion plan
I think having at least very small depots at the end of lines is the best model for consistent service across the entire system. Having at least 1 or 2 trainsets at the end of each line allows for covering all stations on the line at the start and end of daily service. Also is good for reliability in case a trainset has to go out of service - more likely to have a spare nearby to take over.
Just for information: The last of the old E1 rolling stock of the Vienna tram was put out of service on July 1st. Now the E2, which looks similar, is the oldest rolling stock in Vienna. It's planned to be used until 2025.
Always interesting to see other systems around the world. I love getting about by myself and being able to rely on good systems. I hope you eventually get around to Oslo and the T-Bane. I don’t know how it would rank in comparison to other systems but I love it so much. All the lines sharing the same few core stations in the centre of town and then all branching off to various suburbs and being well connected with the trams and buses around the city with all having the same central point, and the ticket being the same for all of them along with the boats. Always fun to get around and easy.
I really love the "small" things. Elevators and marks on the ground for blind people. In every wagon is a Plan of the whole network. Important places have symbols like an elephant for the Zoo. Stadion, where the Football stadion is, has an special designed crowd control Station for the massive crowd after a match or concert. Cleaning staff is the whole day on his feed to clean the wagons over the day. Special places called Ubahn Star for musicans to play music in the stations...
Fun Fact - a friend in Vienna who just watched this told me that The Type U is called SilberpfeilIt named after Mercedes’ F1 racecar. it’s nice to see a European city with a similar population to Toronto that has the kind of rail interconnectivity that Toronto can also have.
@@manuelfrey5069 "Silberpfeil" war zur Anfangszeit der U-Bahn eine recht übliche Bezeichnung für die damals nagelneuen Züge. Bei den V-Wagen haben die Wiener Linien versucht das zu widerholen, aber das "Lichtgoscherl" hat nie wirklich Verbreitung gefunden (sowas funktioniert halt nicht wenn's aus einer Marketingabteilung kommt und nicht von den Leuten selbst).
So cool to see Vienna featured on your channel, Reece! Loved the video. Looking forward to the video about our tram system you mentioned. As before, if you are in need for additional footage, do not hesitate to reach out to me on Twitter @simply_aviation ! :)
I was in Vienna last weekend, a few things I noticed : - The rolling stock is really not the best (not easy to walk through, quite narrow, suspention is not the best) - Frequency is good but could be improved (french standard is one train every 2 or 3 min peak hour, it was more like 4 or 5 there) - The urban integration of elevated tracks is really good in my opinion. U6 sometimes "cuts" the city though, but it's because heritage ( - I love the style of U6 stations, inherited from the Stadtbahn - Network is not really dense. Sometimes in quite central places you can end up being 10 or 15min by foot from the nearest station (tram network is much more dense) - The trams there are more like big busses, in terms of frequency, mode of operation, inside street traffic, quite short for a tram (again compared to french standard where citadis 302 is the bare minimum nowadays), ... - I had a tram party there (privatised tram with DJ and bar inside, touring around the city, making 2 intermediate stops in a 3h ride). This is something quite common in central/eastern europe but as a french transit lover I found that quite amazing
Not really sure what peak hour means to you but U1 operates every 2.33 min, U3 and U6 every 2.67 min, U4 every 3.67 min and U2 every 3.75 min. Maybe there was a small service interruption when you tried. As for trams, French cities do trams in a Stadtbahn style while Vienna still has a real Straßenbahn (street train) running on the same lanes as car traffic. Outside the inner districts, you will see much more track separations.
@@kurzzug160 Oh ok thanks for this infos. I was there friday to monday so only 2 week days to see peak hours (I expect the weekend schedules to be less dense) the lines I took these days were U2 and U6 (several times in full peak hour so 7-9am and 16-19pm) and U1 during the day (at 10am) The number you give are really good actually, I didn't take time to do some proper research, just observed the interval between 2 trains on the passenger info screens
Rolling Stock: Compare to London Tube the U Bahn Stock in Vienna is actually quite spacious.. Some of the older models are a bit shaky, but they are gradually replaaced by newer types. Density: There are few places (except the very outskirts of the city) where you are more than 10 minutes walking away from the the next stop of Bus, tram (or Bim, as we call them), Subway or S-Bahn
@@walterpleyer261 I stayed 2 nights out of 3 there near Volkskundenmuseum this is quite central I'd say and 13min away from the nearest U-bahn. Very well connected with tram though. I actually needed U-Bahn because I was going back home late at night (after the tram party) and the trams don't run all night long like the U-bahn on weekend nights. This is what I referred to for the density of the U-Bahn (of course, trams are a great mean of transport where there is no U-bahn in most situation)
@@jeanphilippeardrone5135 The general plan seems to be to have the U-Bahn and S-Bahn as central quick lines and tram and bus completing the system into a dense grid. So in the end you never should walk more than 5 minutes to the next station and rarely more than 4-5 tram / bus stops till the next u-bahn / s-bahn connection if you need to travel further away. The U-Bahn servers as way to get in and out of down town, while the S-Bahn lines form a ring around the outskirts of the city, connecting the outskirts of the city quickly with each other.
Thanks for covering my favourite city, Reece! Brought back some memories of good times spend on the U-Bahn, and I have spent lots of time on there as I used to live in Seestadt. 🤪 Looking forward to the tram video - almost as much as I'm looking forward to riding them again in August :)
One thing notable is the lack of giant ads everywhere like in the US. On trains, they're all about local needs, not gigantic Coca-Cola and beer ads. It's a relief not to be assaulted by commercials when you're walking about or on the train. You feel calmer and can actually think and relax.
I'm from Vienna and it feels nice that you're giving our public transport such a glowing review, but I would've liked to hear more about why its design is superior from an economic and social perspective. What are the things in particular that other metro systems do worse and could improve on? And what lead to the city planners making good decisions? Did they have some foresight that other cities didn't or was it simply luck? Still, your videomade me appreciate our public transport a bit more. Thx.
Thank you, I loved the video. Believe it or not, it is not the coolest part of Viennese public transport. I hope you will soon make a video of our beloved “Schnellbahn” - how regular train gauges are used as the city’s public transport infrastructure. I am happy to help. Cheers!
It would have been nice to mention the Station Wien Meidling as it connects the U6 to the Rail network again close to Vienna Main Station In generell the regional train system (S-Bahn) between Wien Meidling and Wien Floridsdorf (through Vienna Main station and Praterstern) acts as if it was another Metro line also being able to board it with the Metro ticket.
I'm from Vienna. I recently spoke to a small girl from the countryside, who asked me where my car was parked. I told her I didn't own one, that you don't need one in Vienna (most of the time). The tram I use to go to work comes every three minutes, and it takes me about 30 minutes to get there. You should have seen the look on her face. Her mind was totally blown. The area I was staying in had a bus every 2 hours, and a train operating in the same interval. Which, I'm being told, is still frequent for the countryside.
What am I missing ? Vienna has some magnificent suburban stations that date back to prior to the First World War. Is there another rail system in Vienna not mentioned in this video or were they repurposed for the “ new “ U-Bahn ?
You are either referring to what is now the U6 Line, which - as mentioned - runs along a historic corridor, tho I am not sure how old that corridor is. If that's not the case, there is a whole gigantic S-Bahn system with about 9 lines running in different directions. The other option is that you're referring to the Semmering Bahn, which is a very pretty and very old rail corridor about half an hour south of Vienna, tho I wouldn't describe that as suburban, so maybe not.
hey there! yes, large parts of the U4 and U6 are repurposed tracks. they were built at the end of the 19th century with steam trains and then later electrified railway cars running on them. it was called the Stadbahn and these lines were repurposed into Ubahn lines in the 70s. that's why a lot of station buildings on these lines are beautiful protected buildings designed and built in the 1890s by a famous austrian architect Otto Wagner.
U6 and U4 use older lines, but there is also an S-Bahn system in place that also uses infrastructure from the era of Stadtbahn (station Hütteldorf comes to mind)
@@niiinaa The old Lines along the Gürtel ring road (former location of the outer city walls) - now U6 - and along the Wien river and Danube canal - now U4 - date back to 1898. They were originally built as full-scale railway lines, later electrified and operated with tram-like trains (there were even connections to the tram network, with trains of tram line 18 running through to the north of the city as line '18G'). There is also a third line from this era, the "Vorortelinie" on the western outskirts of the city which is still operated as a railway and nowadays served by the S45 S-Bahn line.
I am from vienna and i generally think all public transport in vienna including busses, trams, s-bahns, u-bahns and more is really good and organized in vienna
I appreciate that probably most of these comments and viewers are people from Vienna XD. Always proud of our origin and living quality and happy other people are appreciating it too!
Indeed the entire public transport network in Vienna from buses to U-Bahn is absolutely amazing. By far the best of any capital I have visited. Really encourages the locals not to use cars (as a greek I was pretty astonished because I am used to the horrific public transport in my country). Looking forward to come back to the most beautiful city in Europe!
When you talked about the tram (Straßenbahn) you showed the Badener bahn (the blue train that goes on the tram line). That is more a regional train that can tun on tram tracks but actually leaves Vienna and connects the region to the south.
What's your favourite aspect of the Vienna U-Bahn? What other iconic metro systems should we cover next?
I like the Part that it is elevated in the outer regions. please cover the Hamburg U Bahn/S Bahn atSome time
Would love to see a video about the entire Barcelona subway network, due to its impressive size. Dubai and the many shortcomings of its system (like missing express tracks, the overly expensive design of the stations and lack of connections to other forms of transportation) would also be interesting, as kind of an example of how not to design a metro network.
The same platform transfer between the brown and green lines. The only one in the U-bahn network.
I find its smell quite interesting.
It gives you more freedom due to the lack of fare gates.
It is convenient that a message comes before each station telling you which side the doors open.
And I think the best part about it is that it has a far-reaching system of trams and buses to complement it
We had a guest from Germany with a wheelchair. He was able to get anywhere and use any public transport mode without using the car, planning or thinking long about it. He is from Germany and never even had this experience in his hometown (while I guess that is not representative for all of Germany)
A thing worth mentioning is the excellent color coding of the lines. Each line has its own signalling color that is used throughout the station and entrances. At transfers, the color changes midway between the lines. As a passenger it's obvious on which line you're on, at any given time.
True, that’s one of the best aspects of the system. However, this only works because there’s not a single section of line-sharing. So quite a lot of systems couldn’t adapt this wayfinding principle.
@@ft4709 True, that can't be done fully. But I think a lighter version would still improve wayfinding, especially on transfers, even if you loose the "I know exactly which line I'm on" feature. On many transit maps this is already done; and some parts are implemented for example in Munich. But it's not done properly, stations that serve multiple lines often have no color coding, newer stations do have color coding, stations where Lines split don't have any, even if they are refurbished (looking at you, Münchner Freiheit). It would be so much more clear to non-regular travelers if that would be made more obvious, even if it is just a stripe of color someplace easy to see.
And if you want to do it on the cheap and don't spend a whole lot of money... colorful adhesive tapes for the floors are a thing until you can get a proper solution done.
@@delirium3181 Absolutely, I meant to say the Vienna U-Bahn is just perfectly layed out for this kind of wayfinding and it‘s a lot more difficult with other systems, especially Stadtbahns. Thanks for pointing out Munich btw. That’s easily the worst offender in the German speaking realm. I‘ll never understand why instead of fixing the issues with the old color coded wayfinding they went ahead and removed it entirely. It’s such a simple network made needlessly confusing by improper signage.
Great signage is one of those things that you don't so much as "see" as experience. When I used the Vienna system it was so easy to figure out where to go. In other sytems, I have had to really look to me sure I am find the right path (either into, through, or out of stations). It felt so effortless to find your way around. Such a great overall system
I remember going to elementary school in Vienna. Waldschule on Dr Schöber Straße in Hietzing. Sometimes I'd visit family with my parents near prater/donau (danube) and would have to take u1/u4 to Hietzing, take the tram 60 line (Straße bahn) and then a bus I think it was the 56b but it had a far shorter route back then only from lainzer tiergarten to speisinger Straße/lainzer Straße. When I moved to America I remember going "wtf is this". So did my mother and my wife who moved from Germany. America is third world trash compared to Vienna which is consistently ranked number 1 most livable city in thr world. I live in calabsasas, CA but even so Los Angeles is garbage filthy place with low class people. Vienna is paradise for a city.
Forgot to mention that the yearly ticket for the Vienna Metro is 365,- euro per year (1,-€ per day) around 500,- CAD$.
If you buy it for the year and decide to return they refund the open amount.
And also, there now is a ticket that costs 3€ per day (annual billing) and allows you to use almost all public transport in the whole country, including high speed trains and regional busses
@@MatthiasNeumeister130499
In the UK that gets me about 2.5 miles on my local train service. 🤔
@@darthwiizius just to be fair, this is a yearly ticket, so the daily price might be a bit misleading, unless you literally use it every day ;)
@@georgplaz Still it's much cheaper than e.g. the Swiss "Generalabonnement" (the only other whole-network-ticket I'm aware of), which costs almost 4 times as much! Granted, the public transit network of Switzerland is better than in Austria, but definitely not 4x better.
A really really good deal!
I live in Vienna and really love their public transportation in general. Some comments:
1. As living here, it is cheap. A one year card costs 365 Euro. Valid for U-bahn, most trams and most buses.
2. The most beautiful lines to travel (according to me) are the U4 and U6. Many older stations, mostly above ground and the "Märklin-feeling" (the model railway mark). The first time I saw it, I got truly charmed. But of course, going over Donau is worth it too, though one really do not see much.
3. If you ever visit Vienna and ride with one of the older trains, be aware of that the doors do take some effort to open. A hard sideways punch on the door handles is the usual way to open them. You can recognize the locals by the "double punch", they open both doors with one fast motion. It always makes me smile when I see older, seemingly fragile locals, that when they come to one of these doors with handles, one usually hears "BAM BAM" with full force, then they keep on walking with their supportive sticks. :D
4. Respect the local tradition of letting folks OUT before going IN. I have understood it was not always like this, but it simply works and is great! When you want to board any public transportation, you stand beside the doors, let all folks out and then you enter. I have visited some cities where this does not work and there is always a small battle to get out or in. Not in Vienna.
to your 4th point, people are actively mad if there is someone right infront of the door once it opens. And sometimes even insult that person for being selfish.
Social pressure to keep you in line in small doses.
As someone who's lived in Vienna for most of their life, it seems kinda funny to me you'd even call it a "local tradition" 😅 I always thought that's how it's done everywhere and it's just common sense to me to be honest 😁
@@lukasmaly7295 well, it is common sense - the advice exists everywhere there are public transports. One of the few places where it actually WORKS in reality is Vienna... :D
The U6 is beautiful? The U6 is the most hated line here xD
@@DasTamii Oh, why? I use it a lot and I know it sometimes has irritating delays - but I still think the line and what you can see from it is beautiful. :)
It's worth mentioning that the Vienna Airport is not *just* connected to the S-Bahn system of Vienna. It's a proper train station with 4 platforms that get frequent service from Inter City trains as well. Basically, some routes that come into Vienna Hauptbahnhof from other major cities don't actually terminate there, they go the extra 30 or so minutes to the Airport, which gives anyone from the Salzburg-Linz-Vienna route and the Graz-Vienna route (i.e. the four largest cities in the country) a direct, no transfer connection to the only major Airport in the country.
And since I'm talking about Intercity: currently, three of the worlds longest railway tunnels are being built in Austria. The largest - the Brenner Base Tunnel - is a joint project with Italy which mainly serves the purpose of avoiding the Gothart Tunnel in Switzerland and making the Brenner route much much quicker.
The other two are the Semmering Base Tunnel and the Koralm Base Tunnel.
The Semmering Base Tunnel cuts the travel time from Graz to Vienna by half an hour as it bypasses the very beautiful but very slow and winding Semmeringbahn entirely.
The Koralm Base Tunnel is a big part of a completely new high speed (for alpine standards anyway) connection between Graz and Klagenfurt, cutting travel time for that route from significantly over two hours to less than one hour.
As with Amsterdam Schiphol! That’s why I made that comparison :)
@@RMTransit Fair, I didn't know exactly what Schiphol looks like, never went there by train
Vienna and Schiphol Airport stations are however not comparable in terms of traffic frequency, which only makes sense since Schiphol is a much bigger hub. But things are improving. Vienna is now up to 8 trains per hour (If you count the 2 surcharged express services) leaving for vienna, which is quite decent.
Only 3 platforms and travel time Hbf-Flughafen is 15 min
@@kurzzug160 15 min with the airport express (CAT) or Railjet, 22 min with the S-Bahn.
But considering that the CAT cost's 9€ one way, as opposed to 4,30€ with the other 2, I actually don't understand why people are still using the CAT.
Two more important features:
1. it has awesome LTE network throughout the tunnels.
2. as someone with a 2year old kid just returning from London: you have elevators everywhere with very short walkways between lines.
3. great air quality everywhere. Not hot like London or New York.
4. no congestion at entryways, broad walkways
5. nice intervals and nighttime operation.
The air quality in London is something I noticed as a big difference indeed, when I visited the UK. Also: Some of the London lines are so loud and cramped, they made me really claustrophobic.
@bloody_albatross Don‘t worry, at rush hour it can also get pretty full in Vienna - except on the S-Bahn. Only at some peak times it gets full there…
@@ex101jc I know, I went to uni in Vienna. Though I take the Vienna metro at rush hour over the Jubilee line at any time any time.
@bloody_albatross Well I only know that London Tube has more style and comfort 😅
@@ex101jc The Jubilee line is *not* comfortable. Even I, an average sized Austrian (maybe at the smaller end of average?) has to duck to get into the train door. And it is soo loud! I try to never use it again when I'm in London. The metro lines in Vienna are all the same and all roomy in comparison. Maybe comparable with the DLR. The non-metro trains in Austria are even bigger and quieter (on the inside).
Im on vacation in Vienna right now, I love their transit system!
Jealous!
aw man, you missed the heyday of peak-hour on the U6 before eating was banned onboard trains.
People who complain that Stephansplatz station smells bad in summer have obviously never been on the U6 back then.
Sweet smelly memories. 😅😅
@@impaledloaf Yeah, why does Stephansplatz smell so bad!? 😅 And I definitely do not miss the smell of Leberkäse from my morning rides to Alser Straße
@ That's the deteriorating waterproofing agents that were injected into the soil surrounding the station building. I don't know if the smell will disappear given enough time, but there is probably no other way of getting rid of it.
@@impaledloaf I passed Stephansplatz nearly everyday back in my schooldays. Now I can't smell it anymore when passing by again. I don't know if it's good or bad.
By the way, if you want to know more about Vienna, there's a channel called Tapakapa who makes videos about the city (and other topics) in both English and viennese German.
I lived in Vienna from 1999-2003. The most beautiful country ever. When I moved from Vienna to Los Angeles I thought how garbage and hideous and bad for living la was. It was a decade afterward that I searched for the best cities to live in the world and Vienna was always at number 1 on nearly all lists. I used to go to school using the bus, tram, and u-bahn as a 7 year old there. Kids were free to travel to school alone. There was an afterschool program also called "Hort" which I also used to have to walk over a mile to get to. I used to live in Hietzing district. Always took line 60 (tram) to get to the U4 in Hietzing and take it to the U1 or U6 to get to donau (danube river has u1/u2/u4 connecting it although u2 was a semi ring line back in 2000) and in the danube river they would just have top less girls like it's nothing
@@davidt8087 so Vienna is the Portland of Europe
@@davidt8087 Vienna is not a country 🙈
Great recommendation!
@@davidt8087 why did you move?
I love the public transport in Vienna! I have lived here for the last 13 years. Thanks for covering our system!
Fun facts:
Parts of the tunnel of U2 was buildt with liquid nitrogen turning gravel into ice.
Technically U2 terminates in Schottentor not Karlsplatz right now.
The former tunnel of the U2 plattforms of Karlsplatz station needed to be extra soundproof, because of a concerthall right next to it. Actually the best concerthall in Vienna to hear Mozart.
The old Stadtbahn stations of U4 and U6 were built by Dr. Wagner famous architekt befor 1914.
This type of construction method is more common than you’d think, and I find it very cool 🤣🤣
@@RMTransit common indeed. My example is the only one I know my university TU Wien was directly involved in though, because it was directly under a river in the city centre. Also there were some tricky issues with the local geology if I remember correctly. ;-)
If I remember correctly, the U2 crossing underneath Donaukanal was the first time that this method was used in vienna, so it was kind of a big deal back then, eventhough the method is otherwise quite common, as you mentioned.
2:20 - Many Vinnese lament the removal of tram lines when a more or less parallel U-Bahn line was opened. With densely spaced stops trams might be slower, but are often much more convenient for short distances, and sometimes those removed lines offered better, more convenient transfers to other tram lines.
Even though I'm just a few years to young to have witnessed the 8 tram, I'm already for reopening it.
A line running parallel to the central section of the U6 would be immensely useful in case of the not-so-uncommon breakdown.
And since most of the track is still in use, except for the strech between Burggasse and Kreuzgasse, rebulding it wouldn't even require that much effort.
Bitte sei nicht auch einer, der so extrem gegen den Ubahn-Ausbau ist...
@@Marquis-Sade No, no, no - i _love_ Viennese U-Bahn, but I think that in most cases old tram lines should be retained.
Each layer of public transport, from busses to trams to U-, S- and R-Bahn have their role.
@@bazoo513 Wird aber leider kaum passieren
@@Marquis-Sade I know :o(
Thank you for talking about the public transport system in Vienna!
I have been living here for my whole life and I really enjoy the U-Bahn and other transport systems in Austria. I use the metro to get to school every day and I don't even think about using a car, I just look up the best public transport route or a bike route.
And I really like the ticketing system, because of the 1€/ day fare in Vienna or the 1095€ for every public transport in the whole of Austria, called KlimaTicket
Living in Vienna… I really have to say that you pointed out quite a lot information about the history, but there are many informations that are more important and actually make the system unique in comparison to other transport systems of cities of a similar size. For example there are no shorter trains used on the underground system. There is always a 6 car train. The frequency is pretty decent during the day and even in the middle of the night the maximum waiting time is 15 minutes. It’s also worth mentioning that there are more people who use the annual pass of the network (which by the way costs only 356 € a year) than those who own a car. The trams are also very good, providing services to nearly everywhere you can’t go by taking the underground. And also the suburban train lines that connect the outer skirts with the city centre.
The system is cheap, efficient and it makes travelling a joy. Also because of the city’s heritage
if you pay 365eur can you use only metro or also buses and strasenbahn ?
@@factor1079 You can use all of Vienna's public transport, regardless of type.
@@factor1079just want to add to @boris' answer, regardless of type includes rail (S-Bahn/RJX), all within Zone 100 / Vienna Core, makes going from e.g. Hütteldorf to HBF a lot easier (direct rail connection, 16 minutes to cross from far east to west side of the city).
öbb scotty is a good app to use for calculating the different A-B if you need to get tickets and stuff, Google Maps' route timetable is currently wrong (since Wiener Linien keeps changing it every few months).
Just remember, the airport is outside of Vienna, buy a ticket for your trip for e.g. week ticket (Monday 00:00 till following week Monday 09:00) and just the ticket from airport to city border (is an option in the dropdown, or it states have city ticket depending whether app or terminal, if buy in-app, it will automatically reduce the price).
@@factor1079 you can even use ÖBB trains that go all over Austria with it, as long as you stay within the city area!
3:50 the u3 also connects to the u4 (Landstraße) and u6 (Westbahnhof). One thing I absolutely love about vienna‘s u-bahn system is that no matter where you are in the city, you can just go and find *any* u-bahn and you will be able to get to the u-bahn station you need to get to. It’s connected so well that you truly can’t get lost
I remember going to elementary school in Vienna. Waldschule on Dr Schöber Straße in Hietzing. Sometimes I'd visit family with my parents near prater/donau (danube) and would have to take u1/u4 to Hietzing, take the tram 60 line (Straße bahn) and then a bus I think it was the 56b but it had a far shorter route back then only from lainzer tiergarten to speisinger Straße/lainzer Straße. When I moved to America I remember going "wtf is this". So did my mother and my wife who moved from Germany. America is third world trash compared to Vienna which is consistently ranked number 1 most livable city in thr world. I live in calabsasas, CA but even so Los Angeles is garbage filthy place with low class people. Vienna is paradise for a city. By the way we took the u4 to the u6 so much to get to family and friends living there. The u1 towards donau is also amazing. U4 Hietzing was my home station 🥰🥰. Miss it so much. By the way in the ubahn, is it the same guy announcing the stations with the kind of deep voice? Or is it a female now? I miss that guys voice
@@davidt8087 i‘ve never been to america so I dont know much about it, but from what I hear cars are more important than public transport. I did go to other european countries and i do have to say that i prefer the viennese public transport because it’s so connected. You can get on any subway and end up where you need to go because they’re all connected. In italy (this was naples) there were 3 or 4 subway lines but each serviced a different area, they were not connected at all. So if you wanted to go somewhere you would first have to find the right subway and get there by other means.
The voice announcing the stops is a female now. Some service announcements are done by a male voice, although it’s mostly a female voice
A few
My wife has serious mobility issues. She uses a rollator when we have to visit cities. Vienna was by far the best public transit system we have ever used regarding universal accessibility. Every metro station had CLEAN elevators. The elevators were being constantly used either by people with wheel chairs/rollators, people with baby strollers, bikes or parents with little kids using the pedal free bikes. I have never experienced a system where every single elevator was working and clean. No need to hold your breath (see NYC for smelly elevators). Interconnections to busses and trams was excellent. The tram stations had a slightly elevated platform (just a couple of inches). Those were easy to get onto and then the "step-in" height for entering the tram was just a minor lift of 2 to 3 inches. Super easy on-off. The system was also amazingly cheap. We were there for a week and a pass runs from Sunday Midnight to the following Sunday Midnight for around $22 per person for full access with the only exception being the airport train (that's a silly $15, for 2 people just take a $30 taxi and get to your exact destination. It was so easy to get around Vienna without a car. I could totally move there, be car free and be quite happy.
The airport train is a rip-off but it is just one of many train options to the airport. The S7 is going to the airport every 30 min and it does not only stop at Wien Mitte like the airport train but also various other central stops like Praterstern. There is also the option of taking the Railjet from airport to the main station of Vienna (also an only 15 min ride), for only a few EUR if you have a ticket for Vienna itself. The latter is interesting if you are staying at one of the numerous hotels at the main station.
Note that's the CAT (City express), don't take that one most of the time, it's a rip-off.
You can just use the normal S-Bahn/RJ/RJX, there the platform opposite it.
So buy a day/72h/week ticket (Mon 00:00 to Monday 09:00 the following week) for Vienna and just two tickets from Schwechat to the city border (Stadtgrenze), will cost ~2.3 EUR per ticket for that trip piece, so
Oh yes, Vienna, the most livable city in the world! The great food, the culture, the grumpy people. You simply have to love Vienna!😊
i live in vienna and i hate it. it's always beautiful for tourists, but not when you actually live there.
@@michalgos4692 You are just one of the lovely grumpy people I told about... :)
@@michalgos4692 grass looks green on the other side.
@@michalgos4692 Then move ...
we're not grumpy, just brutally honest! which can ofc be difficult to get used to, but also has value bc you always know exactly what's up, no fake behavior
Other than Praterstern, another major station serving regional/S-Bahn trains is Wien Mitte/Landstrasse station which is the terminus of the City Airport Train. It is an interchange station for U3/U4 too. It has a mall and office towers right above, and a very good example of a well-planned TOD.
Allso Meidling is a more important rail station
Love everything about the U Bahn. The darkness, the ominous noises , the gust of wind you feel when the train pulls in, the smell even.
The only real drawback of the Vienna U-Bahn is that from the very start it was planned and built as a tram _replacement_ (to get more space for cars on the surface). Thus in many parts of the city it has rather short distances between stations and therefore a limited travel speed, while at the same time still not reaching the density of the former tram network. Also, especially in the outskirts, bus routes are mostly oriented towards the U-Bahn, without having much value on their own - resulting in prolonged trips on meandering routes before you actually go anywhere. This has led to overall service quality actually being _lower_ and overall travel times being _longer_ than before 1970 in some parts.
Fortunately in recent years there has been a re-thinking of this approach (albeit politicians in some districts - especially north of the Danube - still dream of getting rid of all trams and replacing them with oversized and expensive subway lines). Distances between stops are now planned significantly longer on the latest sections (e.g. U2 between Schottenring and Seestadt, and also the under-construction southern part of the U2). Also the tram network is being slowly expanded again, after it was almost cut in half (!) in the 70s and 80s.
Long story short: even in a city with excellent public transit like Vienna there is always room for improvement.
By the way I am looking forward to the new Subway being built :)
@@mikulabeutl Yes, the extension of the U2 and the new U5 are actually the last two sensible routes and they will fill notable gaps in high-density areas of the city. That half-circle of the U2 was always a bit weird. And it wasn't the original plan anyways; the tunnel between Karlsplatz and Rathaus was always meant to be for the future U5 line. The tight curve between the stops Schottentor and Rathaus was only a maintenance connection between U2 (which would have continued to Hernals) and U5 (to Gersthof) in the original plans.
Having (more or less) straight through-lines makes much more sense for a high-level mode of transport like the metro.
Also the new connection to the S-Bahn at Matzleinsdorferplatz will be a bonus for the whole network, as it will relieve the overcrowded lines U1 and U6.
Hence U2/U5 are a sensible adaptation of the original plans, taking into account the actual city development in the last 40 years (Gersthof has now significantly lower population density than the area between Matzleinsdorferplatz and Wienerberg).
Yes, the U-Bahn should have been, from the beginning, an addition and not a replacement for trams. But such were the 70s... Cars, cars cars.
There is much disinformation in the comment i just cant let it stand, cause it makes the wrong impression of the UBahn-Network.
Point A:
The relatively short stops actually are a good thing. As the U-Bahn is the most efficent way to go around the city, it makes it easy to go from A to B, without having to switch to a Bus or Tram for that, which leads to a shorter Traveltime overall. The Ubahn has shorter intervalls (meaning time between Trains), which make a switch between different Ubahn lines time efficent. I dont know from where you are getting the longer travel time, as you can go around the city within 30 minutes anywhere, and at max 60 minutes if you have a weird connection to where you want to go. If any, the density has gone up, not down. I understand, that if you want to go from A to D, and you have to stop at B and C, that it annoys you, but people at B and C also want to travel. The prolonged trips you are mentioning are very specific and dont generally exist, its impossible to have the perfect connection for every A to B destination anyway. You can only try to cover as much as possible in a efficent as possible way. On the contrary, longer stops would mean, i will have to switch more to a Bus or Tram. Meaning longer waiting times and increased travel Time for them beeing just slower.
As an Example:
While the U2 is beeing expanded, the S-Bahn at Matzleinsdorfer Platz has been renovated in the process. (The S-Bahn in the city kinda works like a Ubahn). This forced me to switch from the S-Bahn to a Tram. It took me 10 to 15 minutes Longer to reach my desitination, despite having more or less the same route. And the reason for that was simply the tram beeing slower. Even if you added new stops to the S-Bahn, i would have been quicker.
So except for very short distances or a specific connection, the UBahn (in this exampe the S-Bahn) is much faster than any tram could be. That is also the very reason, why it makes sense to have a Bus and Tramsystem that is oriented along the Ubahn Network, those Buses and Trams still make stops at populated areas and connects them to each other. I cant undestand why that has no value for you. For the few destinations that dont have a viable UBahn connection, a Bus and Tram still exist and can be used. I cannot think of any connection, that would profit from a Bus or Tram instead of the Ubahn. More stops also make it much more viable for people to leave the car at home. If your destination doesnt have a reasonable stop to go to, people will use the car out of conveniance. And thats exactly what you dont want to have. So the "old" thinking if you want, has led to less cars not more.
So the overall Claim, the Service has has gotten lower and travel time higher since the UBahn 1970 was built, is factually wrong. I dont say, that individually, some people couldnt have had longer travel times or have it harder to reach a destination, but those are exceptions not the rule. The UBahn has connected the city in a very quick and efficent way, a Tram never could have.
Point B:
This is much less about a rethinking but about the actual situation at hand. North of the danube, the city is less dense populated, so it makes sense to have more space between stops (and only true for the U2 expansion, not the U1) . Less people are travelling in those parts anyway and so Tramnetworks and Buses are economicly more sound. They are simply cheaper to build and maintain. Still, the traveltime is still longer there and the waiting times are longer. For poeple who have to travel there, it takes more time. So i dont see how you can value that as an improvement on the service side, when it takes longer.
On a Side note:
The other parts that are beeing expanded west of the danube (U5 and U2) are built with the same short stops. The claim alone that a rethinking has been happening is simply not true.
While in the inner City trams have been either changed or scraped for the exact same reason. The Ubahn just replaced succesfully many of the Tram routes, or parts of it.
Yes, as long as it makes sense, replacing trams with the UBahn is a very good thing. In the end, you still have to pay and maintain the network. And redundant Tram Lines dont help.
Conclusion:
In my opinion, the author of the original comment, speaks more of an personal experience rather than the actual reality that exist. Of course you can always improve, and it is in the nature of a Viennese (Inhabitant of Vienna) to complain about everthing, so nothing unusual here. But compared to other cities in europe, we in Vienna can be very happy with what we have. Of course living in the outskirts of the city, makes it a little harder to use the Public Transport, but thats true for every city in the world. I could not imagine living in a city without that kind of a public network. I can only hope, that a rethinking like the Commentator had, never happens, cause the thinking right now is the one you want to have.
@@Alexander-bc8dh
* Point A: the subway network can never be as dense as bus or tram. It just would not be cost effective. Hence, logically, you are _less_ likely to have a direct route between point A and B, i.e. you are _more_ likely to have to change between lines. Additionally the distances by foot are longer (because of the lower density of lines & stations and the mere size of the stations themselves - people often dont notice how far they actually have to walk once they are "in the subway").
A good example is Mariahilferstraße, which previously had 4 tram stops but now only has 2 subway stations. Those station buildings themselves are also around 400m long. Which is about the distance _between_ the former tram stops (which were basically located at either end of the new stations buildings). So basically, on average you have to walk an additional 200m now - just inside the subway station.
The same can be observed in many areas, where the walking distances to the new subway stations became much longer than to the former tram stops, simply because there were about double as many of those. Hence the overall travel speed did not improve in many cases! People in the Peer-Albin-Hansson residential complex have actually been complaining about this ever since the U1 replaced the former tram line there and 7 tram stops were merged into just 3 subway stations.
At the same time a short distance between stations effectively reduces speed. Average driving speed of the Vienna subway is just 32km/h, despite the vmax being 80km/h. And the average _travelling_ speed (i.e. including the walk to/from/inside the station) is even lower.
Plus it forces people to change lines in many cases. E.g. when you come from the outer Mariahilferstraße and want to go to the Ring you could previously just stay in the tram, but now you have to change to the subway at Westbahnhof, which eats up all the time you may save in the U3.
Whenever there is a direct tram route you're typically _faster_ with it. A prominent example is e.g. Hauptbahnhof -> Westbahnhof: tram 18 has a travel time of 15 minutes, U1+U3 take at least 16 minutes (but you have to get to/from the platform first, which takes an additional 1-2 minutes on each end). This is not the exception but the standard case. As I said before: since the network of surface lines can be more dense (about 10x more dense actually, for the same cost), you're _more_ likely to have a direct route. Of course you need to consider the original tram network for that comparison, not the current one where lines have been shut down in favor of the subway (line 18 just happens to be one of the few remaining examples). And that's despite the trams in Vienna being exceptionally slow when compared to other cities of similar size and density. Vienna is one of the few cities worldwide where trams are on average slower than buses - so there would be _much_ room for improvement in this area as well (on most lines we could easily save about 15-20% of travel time, simply by optimizing the traffic signals for them - which would also mean 20% more capacity for the same cost btw.).
Speaking of cost: The operational cost of a medium size subway _station_ is about the same as the cost to run a short tram line! To stay with the example of Mariahilferstraße: it would actually have been _cheaper_ to not build the Zieglergasse station, but keep the tram lines instead. And service and accessibility in Mariahilferstraße would actually be _better_ now.
* Point B: The new extensions have _measureably_ longer distances between stations. Just compare it on a map. E.g. Rathaus-Neubaugasse will be well over 1km (so long that some local politicians even wanted an additional station at Burggasse), Neubaugasse-Pilgramgasse will be over 800m, Michelbeuern-Elterleinplatz almost 1km, Elterleinplatz-Hernals a whopping 1.3km (there even I would be inclined to add an intermediate stop at Wattgasse), Gußriegelstraße-Wienerberg also almost 1km.
The average distance in Vienna today is ~770m (which includes the latest extensions of the U1 and U2, that already were built with longer distances as well). Most of the new station distances will be around that number or longer, thereby further increasing the overall average.
Before 2005 the average distance was ~700m; so it has been growing significantly over the last years - which proves my point.
Also the inner city subways (especially the U2) _massively_ disrupted the tram network in this area. There were 3 lines on Landesgerichtsstraße - branching off in different directions - before the U2 was built. Those 3 lines obviously provided more direct routes than a single line ever could. Plus they interconnected with the former tram lines in Gumpendorferstraße, Mariahilferstraße and Burggasse allowing for flexible re-routing in case of service disruptions on the Ring.
* Conclusion: I'm not against the U-Bahn in any way. I'm just opposed to using it as a tram _replacement_, when it should actually be a _complement_. It has a very different role in the network: long distance trips across half of the city, whereas trams provide interconnection between districts and local hotspots, and bus lines fill the low-demand gaps in between.
This isn't just my personal experience (I happen to live and work right next to subway stations, so the network actually suits my needs quite nicely), but the general consensus among transit planners. Also I'm not complaining about the overall quality of public transit in Vienna (I even called it "excellent" in my original comment). I'm just saying that it could have been even better _and_ cheaper at the same time if it had been planned as an _additional_ layer in the network, without disrupting the already existing "middle layer" of trams.
You know, as an Austrian who just returned from a short trip to Vienna today, I had little to no idea about how nice our system actually is. It took the New York City Subway for me to realize it. Compared to that, the clean stations, wide cars, walk-through cars (I thought this was normal), smoothness of the ride and escalators at the stations are just amazing. And the proof of payment concept and online ticketing is really nice as well. I would have also added to the video that Siemens actually makes a lot of trains in Vienna (I went there once, really interesting). I am glad to be moving to the city in the fall to study at the university that is located on Karlsplatz.
Oh and regarding the population surrounding the city: we don't really have suburbs in Austria, people really live all over the country, except on the mountains and in the lakes I guess :D
Meanwhile my countryman was convincing us to be more grateful for our subway system by showing us a photo of NYC's W4 subway station & claiming that he'd heard no one complain about it
TU?
@@sconosciuto3914 yes
@@honeyloop2746 which direction? 😁
Just a detail: For the mainline train stations, you clearly forgot Meidling, which is popular, since better located to downtown vienna than Hauptbahnhof.
And Franz Josef Bahnhof/Spittelau
Yes, i also thought Wien Meidling is definitly missing. For me living in the district Mödling and going to University in Vienna Wien Meidling is the most important station.
Vienna really has a tradition to have a number missing in the underground system. For many years U3 was missing in the setup of U1 to U4, now it is U5 in the U1 to U6 system. And I daresay that there might be a U8 sometime with the U7 missing. That is Vienna, keeping up the tension...
Lets just rename U5 to U7 and Keep that tradtion
Maybe also worth mentioning: tickets are valid for all public transport in Vienna, metro, trams, buses and rail. And a whole year ticket for all that is just 365 Euros, thanks to a commitment to make public transport more attractive.
I suggest you devote one of the future episodes to very, umm, interesting history of Vienna U-Bahn network, with many planned and then abandoned lines, false starts, changes in direction etc (all ultimately resulting in a pretty nice network). Also, integration with S-Bahn and R-Bahn network is interesting (not unlike Paris RER and Transilien).
Nice video, but I think you forgot something important: The U1-U4 didn't and don't have any signals! From the beginning, the driver only had a monitoring function and only carried out the dispatch, the trains are remotely controlled via an LZB-like system... The Viennese were the first to automate subways in this way.
as a person who went to ALL these trains and stations as a kid its very nostalgic looking at this. Im not from Austria but i came to visit my grandma a few times and honestly Vienna is my favorite place ever
Very nice to hear about Vienna. Usually, it's the German U-Bahn or S-Bahn systems that people discuss, even while Vienna has a good sized metro system.
The U6 reminds me of Ottawa, the future TTC Line 5, and other light rail systems that have to couple 2 to 3 sets together to run regular service.
While the systems are less extensive than in other places, Vienna has an S-Bahn and a tram system and buses which are highly integrated with the Ubahn. I've seen examples for a lot of best practices in Vienna, before I learned that other cities implemented them, often on a wider scale.
It’s a good system, it’s not gigantic but the quality is excellent!
@@RMTransit It reminds me of the MRT - Not many lines, but coverage is great. Although of course Singapore is currently building 2 new mrt lines, with 1 more in planning, so it's certainly not a new system anymore!
Covering only the metro is a bit very narrow focus.
The Vienna public transport system is deigned as a multi tiered system with the metro as the fast backbone and trams and busses covering the wider areas with more closely space stops where the cost of constructing a subway would not be justified
@@RMTransit That is what happens if mid sized cities are actually compact and urban. The overall length of the subway system is then naturally relatively low, even if it serves the area well and is dense. Suburbs are served by the S-Bahn system. Another example would be Barcelona. The area served by metro there isn't that large either, because the city is very compact and urban.
The U5 plan is also an example of an old LRT line (from Karlsplatz to Schottentor, part of U2 in the map you showed) being converted to metro spec.
Yep! Quite a lot is possible when the will to do it is there!
That part always irritated me. It was always a poorly layed-out route to begin with. But instead of building a new tunnel on a more sensible alignment they kept dumping money into that damn tram tunnel. I wonder if there’s still part of the original building left after all those upgrades.
@@ft4709 The original structure is very much still there. There is even a pre-built interchange below Landesgerichtsstraße, where the original U2 an U5 routes would have met. Although the new interchange will be at Rathaus, the old structure will be integrated into the new Frankhplatz station.
@@ft4709 The original semi-circle layout of the U2 was a compromise due to financial constraints. Instead of doing that sharp 90 degree turn towards Schottentor, U2 would have continued to the north-west towards Währing, while the original U5 would have come down from Hernals (more or less the branch that's going to be built until 2027), intersected U2 at Landesgericht and continued on eastward pretty much the along the same route of the new eastern branch of U2.
So ironically, a large part of U5 entered service in 2010 without the denomination appearing on the map.
1:51 Wien Mitte is missing here! It's a very important interchange and it's the terminus of the Airport Express
Definitely! Also there's Wien Meidling, which is a second station connecting to long-distance trains apart from the Hauptbahnhof.
Also missing is that U3 connects to 2 railway stations: Wien Mitte and Westbahnhof
I love the stations on U6. The old art-nouveau stadtbahn stations are beautiful!
Fun fact: You mentioned the elevation the different lines were operating at. They were originaly planned (which one can still see in the more central/older stations) to go up in elevation with the line number. So U1 is the lowest, then U2 then U3 and so on and U6 is the highest. So at stations like Schwedenplatz or Karlsplatz if you go from one line to another the number wil dictate of you have to move up (eg U1 to U4) or down (eg U4 to U2)
Alright time to wake up, Reece Posted!!
Coming from a small city my first encounter with a proper metro was in Vienna and I was blown away by it.
Now I live in a bigger city myself and a nice frequent metro is just so nice.
Great video as always, Reese. Interesting factoid: in Vancouver the Expo Line Skytrain stations were designed by the The Architektengruppe U-Bahn, which designed the stations for much of the Vienna system (among others around the world). The station at 7:56 in the video looks almost exactly like Burrard or Granville in Vancouver. The 80s AGU style is very evident along the Expo Line and quite a few stations and station entrances would be very much at home in Vienna.
You can indeed see the resemblance! Thanks for letting us know.
5:48 the newer models are also quite similar to german models! It's similar to the Class C1 in Munich and to the class H in Berlin
At 8:20 you made a foto in the station tschertegasse!! It's 2 minutes away from where i live!!
I just love the design aesthetic of the stations, vehicles and branding. It feels very clean, sharp and Germanic. Awesome.
The Subway in SINGAPORE is very CLEAN ! ! !
I'm wondering why you didn't also include the Vienna S-bahn like you did with Berlin's Explainer video ? It also supplements the U-bahn really well just like Berlins and it includes a few key orbital like routes
I think mainline rail in Austria probably will get a dedicated video that I will tie the S Bahn into
@@RMTransit Good choice, since most frequent suburban services in all major austrian urban centers have since been adapted to S-Bahn standard.
To be honest the S-Bahn is sort of the weak link in Viennas otherwise excellent transit network. The Berlin S-Bahn is a lot more metro-like with dedicated infrastructure, shorter intervals, shorter distances between starions and metro-style trains. Plus its rejuvenation post BVG-takeover actually lead to the cancellation of U-Bahn projects, meaning it functions more like a seperate U-Bahn system rather than something that just shuttles commuters into the city. Therefore its inclusion in the Berlin video was justified. Viennas S-Bahn is still more of a glorified regional rail service and even uses low-floor trains, leading to ridiculously long dwell times and low capacity numbers. It could (and should) be a lot better.
Great Video! A nice video would be about Hamburg U-Bahn and S-Bahn!
Thought that aswell
It’s very underrated
True. The Hamburg U Bahn is about as long and has about as many stops as the Vienna system. The S Bahn is not the best though with basically just 3 lines (S1, S21, S3), and the other regional rail lines to Kiel, Lübeck, Bremen, Sylt and Uelzen are a big mess to put it mildly (the number of trains delayed/cancelled is extremely high compared to the rest of Germany, and German trains already have the reputation of always being late)
I’d like to, the list is long but we will get there!
Viennese here (don't know why RUclips recommended me this) but for all U-Bahn enthusiasts there's a crossed over U4 & U6 station (Längenfeldgasse) where one direction of the u6 connects directly to the u4 on the other side of the station and they arrive at the same time so if you also need the u4 after arriving with the u6 u just have to walk a couple steps and jump into it. It's very convenient that it's organized like that instead of having the same line but other direction like all the other stations.
The only cross platform transfer in the system!
but sadly inconvinient if you need to switch the other way round, eg. U4 to Hütteldorf to U6 Floridsdorf. you need to cross over all the lines first
@@austrogalant It is the same as almost any other interchange that is not cross-platform... you have to take 2 flights of stairs.
Can you do an Episode on the Hamburg Ubahn and Transit System?
Eventually for sure!
@@RMTransit oh yeah!
I'm on Vacation in Hamburg right now and I love the quick and easy Transit System.
The U4 trains have a striking similarity to the trains used on the Oslo Metro (both were designed and built by Siemens Mobility as well). Great video, I'd suggest doing Oslo next, they have a wide variety of transit modes such as bus, regional trains, metro trains, trams, and even ferry boats.
It won’t happen next (videos take a long time) but it’s on the list!
The Oslo trains have been built in Vienna as well.
I am citizen of Vienna and i have the annual ticket for the public transport system and it is great. I have no drivers licence and of course no car and i truly do not need that. It is not only the metro system, the trams and busses are reaching or connecting almost every part of a district. During the week there is the Nightline which is a bus system that helps residents of vienna to enjoy their nightlife and at the weekends, the metro goes for 24 hours.
Great video! I found your remark at Vienna not being very big for a north american a little odd, since it would be the 5th biggest city were it located in the US, and if I am not mistaken 3rd or 4th in Canada. In relation to Austrias size that is pretty darn big. Also roughly a quarter of Austrias population lives in Vienna.
-a happy Viennese citizen :)
I was used to the U-Bahn in Cologne and the biggest thing for me was that they run almost twice as often and how freaking clean everything was. That's literaly what I tell people about Vienna 1. The buildings are amazing 2. The U-Bahn is great and so amazingly clean
Reece, you should consider covering some of the rural transit options in Switzerland and Austria like the post buses. Both countries do a really good job connecting less populated areas with transit.
"There are three train stations in Vienna: Wien hbf, West Bahnhof and... PRATERSTERN?"
Wien Meidling: "Am I a joke to you???"
4:04 here is a small mistake in the production, U4 does not pass Stephansplatz, you should have marked the mentioned intersection of U3 and U4 at Landstrasse/Wien Mitte. But the overall video and knowledge is great, make more about middle European cities please :)
A lot has already been said, and I can throw in my two cents as a long-term expat who has lived in this wonderful city:
1. Given the breadth and scope of the public transport grid, I don't own a car.
2. If I do find myself needing a car for whatever reason, the ShareNow system is truly exceptional, especially if you need a ride to the airport or one of the shopping outlets outside of the city proper (looking at SCS and Parndorf mostly).
3. The biking infrastructure is obviously not as developed as say the Dutch, but it's quite robust and is seeing a lot of investment recently.
4. The advent of the e-scooter has provided a niche form of transportation that has been integrated by Wiener Linien itself (for the time being it's with the Berlin-based TIER company). And whilst it'll take some time for them to fully integrate, there is already a "scootering" culture in the city.
5. The Jahreskarte (yearly card) has already been mentioned, add to that the mobile app and I find myself not worrying if I find myself stepping into the metro or a tram without my wallet.
6. Since the system is proof of purchase, ticket controllers go undercover, so it's hilarious to see on a crowded subway car all the fretting free-riders.
7. The city itself is investing heavily in making the city more pedestrian and bike friendly and reducing the amount of cars, as well as installing electric charge ports all around the city.
All in all everything works so well that it becomes ingrained into your daily life and you no longer have to worry about how to get from point A to point B.
@RMTransit great video!
I think what other cities can learn from Vienna is that transit comes first in the planning of new tod's.
Eg. in Seestadt the U-Bahn was completed before anything else making it easy for new residents to go by U2 from day 1.
it is often overlooked that psychologicly it is much easier that way rather than trying to convince people to switch after the fact.
However I don't want to say that our system is perfect.
Eg. when almost all long distance trains switched to Wien Hbf. U1 can be pretty overwhelmed because it is the only U-Bahn line to serve that train station (unlike Westbahnhof, Wien Mitte and Praterstern which are served by 2 lines) and Wiener Linien has a hard time keeping up their schedule due to a lack of drivers and maintainance personel and therefore a lack of rolling stock.
So now you ofter see trains only arriving every 4-5 minutes instead of every 3 minutes.
All in all I think our system is great though and I can use public transport (especially U-Bahn) for 95 % of all my inner city travel, meaning I hardly have to use my car at all.
Hopefully the crowds at U1 Hauptbahnhof get better when U2 Matzleinsdorfer Platz opens in 2029 or something. Also I noticed at U1 Hauptbahnhof that since all the people enter the platform on one side, sometimes they all stay at one side of the platform, creating overcrowding but only at the back end of the train while the rest is quite empty.
Just wanted to ask.
Bratislava recently renumbered all of its trolleybus lines (for example, line 201 became 71, 209 -> 49, 211 -> 45, 205 -> 60 ...) And I wanted to know why should or shouldn't a city renumber its transit lines
That definitely deserves a video….
@@RMTransit Vienna's trams have a very interesting numbering system (which has been covered in a video by Tapakapa). The bus lines and S-Bahn lines also kind of follow this system so you can kind of guess in what general direction a line is going based on its number.
@@pleasantpheasant1095 Yes but only roughly and it gets even more muddled up as time progresses.
Take the new 11 line, named by popular vote, since it runs largely in the 11th district.
Historically, (as under the 1907 system) the 11 belongs on Engerthstraße, and the current route should recieve a letter (because through-line) with a tangent-suffix.
so someting like P6 or R6. But that would obviously not have been very popular. 😅
@Tapakapa made a great and funny video of the renumbering of Vienna's tram lines, you might be interested in that one
I didn't realize Vienna's U-Bahn was originally a stadtbahn. Stadtbahns have their place especially when you have dense areas, where you wanna provide lots of lines with shorter stop spacing, but there are places in Germany, for example, where they try to do the work of what should really be a full U-Bahn and it seems that they get built with the promise of U-Bahn service later, but that hardly happens.
viennas stadtbahn was a steam railway
Stadtbahn is a term with thousands of meanings. The original Berlin Stadtbahn is a viaduct in the city that later formed the base for the first German S Bahn, and the Vienna Stadtbahn was basically a light version of that. The term Stadtbahn as a tram line with more grade separation was born much later in post WW2 Germany in cities like Cologne, Stuttgart, Hanover and the Ruhr area
Not all of it, but parts yes!
@@haisheauspforte1632 And to make things even more confusing, „Stadtbahn“ rhine-ruhr was originally just a fancy name for a regular U-Bahn system. Until it got downgraded and, ironically, became a Stadtbahn.
Deutscher Tipp: st = scht ; Seestatd = See + Statd ( ✖ NICHT "sees + tatd"). Daher, ist "Seestatd" wie "Say shtat" ausgesprochen. Verstehen Sie mich?
I am sure you know, being connected to Germany, that in German "st" will read as "scht" at the start of a morpheme. "Statd" is one such morpheme, meaning "city," so that "Seestadt" means "Sea City." The important point is that the and are not part of separate morphemes, it's not like the word "Bundestag" were we have "Bundes + Tag" and thus the stays a normal /s/ sound. Knowing whether or not an pair is part of a single morpheme or not takes a bit familiarity with German, so it is easy for people to make mistakes. Colbert once said "Reich-schtag" instead of "Reichstag," which I thought was a funny mistakes because while total noobs of German usually don't know the "st → scht" rule, Colbert seems to know that rule but not the important morpheme break rule and made an overcorrection.
What’s also worth mentioning is the following fact: The system is designed in a way where you can reach every U-Bahn station by U-Bahn with a maximum of 2 tranfers.
I think this still applies when you take the 2 S-Bahn lines which have an U-Bahn like interval and are operating at nighttime into consideration too. But i am not 100% sure about that.
Fun fact at this point which I noticed while looking at the network map: The S-Bahn Stammstrecke (interurban railway main line) intersects with every U-Bahn line and the second S-Bahn line. There are even 3 stations where U6 and S-Bahn intersect.
What an excellent and informative video! I live in Vienna, and it made me so proud to watch this.
I've traveled U-Bahn in Vienna last week, and I was stuned by the simularity with Prauge's metro. The tickets works the same, transfers are basicly same (allthought in Vienna they're shorter, because their U-Bahn wasn't designed with second purpous of being a public shelter in case of nuclear attack during the cold war). The only down-side was, it's very utilitarian. In Prague you go in and you see large marbel panels on wals, artistic glass bricks, sometimes even old statues recovered during bilding of metro. Not just every station, but every platform of every line has it's mood/feeling/wibe. Like you don't even need to read names of stations you sense it by just looking out of the window. In Vienna there's none of it.
There's a little bit of that, but really not as much. I think there are statues at Schwedenplatz, there are some remnants of the city walls at Stubentor, there's a Mini Cooper hanging from the ceiling at Schweglerstraße and of course there's the Virgilkapelle.
Oh yeah, that's the one thing that I've always felt was missing from Vienna's U-Bahn: a little fun! It's long seemed to me that modern constructions in the German-speaking world spend so much time trying to be 'modern' that they end up with something so sterile, it looks like it was designed by hospital architects: Hyper-functional and intuitive (the extensive colour-coding is brilliant), but oh so cold and heartless. There are exceptions, of course, but I much prefer the gorgeous Otto Wagner stations and the art nouveau ones on the U6.
P.S. - I miss your wonderful capital and its metro dearly! Can't wait to return in August. Greetings from Vancouver, Canada :)
@@woodywoodverchecker I never understood why there's a car hanging from the walls of a metro station.
(Isn't there also a station with an old locomotive?)
I was in Prague a month ago and the most impressive thing at the subway stations was the speed of the escalators, they are crazy fast ;-)
@Ryan C Actually, go to Hamburg, Munich… I would also say Berlin. These cities really show what could have been on the design side.
I somehow think that you can find something better than the Subways in Vienna. It‘s not really special to build a subway line to an area before it‘s being built. Actually it‘s even quite common around the world. Have seen that in Hamburg before and there they executed it beautifully
It always frustrates me when I see how Vienna could do so much more but they are just content with being mediocre on aspects like station or interior design.
I use the public transit because the alternatives mostly suck. Not because I‘d really want to do that
Hey, love your videos!
I just love with how much passion you make them.
Would be great if you covered Pragues public transport system. We are currently building a new metro line which should be top tier as its being planned for about 20 years.🤩 And our amazing tram system can't be forgotten!
I feel like our capital isnt talked about nowhere near as much as it deserves. ☹️
Love from Prague, Lásku z Prahy 🇨🇿 ❤️
You could also talk about the Salzburg trolleybuses, one of the biggest networks in the world, and the first U-Bahn line they are gonna build in the next few years.
I'm just unsure on how much English information is available.
For Wien U-Bahn the signaling system is LZB like the S-Bahn München City Tunnel also uses LZB like the U-Bahn Wien. Inside the trains these are LZB Sifa equipped. Try doing the Wien S-Bahn system
2:30 the image of a line 6 going to Zentralfriedhof Tor 3 (central cementary gate 3). This is an old picture, line 6 doesn't go there anymore.
as for the lines, there is the "stammstrecke" (stem line), S-bahn, connecting meidling, hauptbahnhof, wien mitte / landstraße, praterstern and floridsdorf. it acts like a further u-bahn line but connects further out into the countryside, a lot like the metropolitan line in london that leaves the city of london and connects to a lot of other smaller cities.
Ha! Was wondering when you would get to Vienna :D
Some remarks and further trivia form a Viennese Urban Planner ;)
Praterstern is not *that* major a station regarding connections. It is massive, but it sits on the same S-Bahn trunk as for example Landstraße (S-Bahn /U4) or Floridsdorf (S-Bahn /U6), the trunk line that also serves many other stations as well as the Hbf and Meidling. I would rather say the two major stations in the city are Hbf (lit. "main train station") and Meidling (which has a U6 connection making it quite practical for the eastern part of the city), both of which are serviced by most long distance trains and are also served by various S-Bahn und Regoinal trains, both on and off the main trunk, as well as trams and buses. Westbahnhof was the city's main station while the Hbf was being built, but since then it has lost quite a bit of importance. It stil has however an important interchange for the U3 and U6 and the privately run WestBahn runs some trains here, as well as some ÖBB regoinal lines and some non-trunkline S-Bahn routes. Also Hbf itself used to be two Termini which were literaly across the street from eachother. The Hbf project merjed these termini, creating a through station, connecting these rail lines, and opening land to new development and a large park
The U2/U5 project is quite important to the city, as it would create one new station in the middle of the 5th district, which at the moment as rather poorly served by the public transport, especiallly compare to the other central districts (districts 1-9). It also will provide massive relief for the bus 13A, which is notorious for delays and capacity issues (to be expected when a tram is replaced by a bus), as well as connect the Wienerberg Complex (a collection of sky scrapers with no rail or tram connections in the southern part of the city), which was a bit of a planning fail (and probably the result of private interests). The U5 would also provide a new metro exchange point between the U6 and other lines, providing relief for the Spittelau (U6 U4) and Westbahnhof (U6 U3), as well as tram 43, which is the main connection on the central portion of the U6 to the city center (Schottentor U2) and has capacity issues.
You might also find the S45 ("Vorortelinie) interesing, it runs parallel to the U6 farther away from the city and was also built by Otto Wagner,. It was abandoned any only used by steam trains, even into the 80s I believe (theres color video of steam trains running on the viaducts within the city), untill it was "reactivated" and new track was layed, and the stations were for the most part restored to their former glory. The S45 and main trunk line also serve more or less as two "extra" metro lines and are now included on the metro map with their own colors. The ÖBB (public railways) experimented a bit with the train signage, so now trains are named primarily by the station at which the leave the "trunk line" meaning you dont have to figure out which of the various S-Bahn lines you need to get to your destination. Of course the exact train number is also there, but its smaller.
Also, while the the Seestadt is relatively, transit oriented unfortunately the city's outer areas are extremely car dependent (often with poor connections within these areas) and theres a bit of a struggle between more progressive and more conservative members of the city government. Even the inner areas are very much car oriented despite all the transit infrastructure in place, and there was a proposal to turn the midievel city within the ring road into a shared use zone, like in many italian or dutch cites, and this was blocked by the city's mayor. And even the transit oriented Seestadt you mentioned is planned to be connected to two highways, one even below a national park, and the district mayor there has delayed tram extensions to the Seestadt to try to increase pressure towards building the highway projects. At the moment theres a massive fight going on over the higway project.
The city airport is also served by long distance RailJet trains (think ICE's at Frankfurt) allowing direct connections from other cities, like Graz, Linz or Innsbruck to the airport.
Also the proof of purchase work, becaus the fine is particularly massive (€115-145 depending on when you pay) if youre unlucky enough to run into a ticket controller. And considering that the yearly pass costs €365, and there are even cheaper tickets for students, well... Its not really worth risking it ;)
And an interesting note: Siemens and Bombardier have factories within the city producing vehicles for many cities also in other countries :) There's even a massive wind tunnel to test trains in the north of the city.
Just discovered your channel and I LOVE IT!!! Could you make a video about Barcelona's metro and Tram system please? I live in Barcelona and I think it's a really interesting network and there's now a huge expansion plan
Thanks for making an video about vienna transit!
Do you plan to do a video on the tram service of Vienna? :)
I think having at least very small depots at the end of lines is the best model for consistent service across the entire system. Having at least 1 or 2 trainsets at the end of each line allows for covering all stations on the line at the start and end of daily service. Also is good for reliability in case a trainset has to go out of service - more likely to have a spare nearby to take over.
Just for information: The last of the old E1 rolling stock of the Vienna tram was put out of service on July 1st. Now the E2, which looks similar, is the oldest rolling stock in Vienna. It's planned to be used until 2025.
Always interesting to see other systems around the world. I love getting about by myself and being able to rely on good systems. I hope you eventually get around to Oslo and the T-Bane. I don’t know how it would rank in comparison to other systems but I love it so much. All the lines sharing the same few core stations in the centre of town and then all branching off to various suburbs and being well connected with the trams and buses around the city with all having the same central point, and the ticket being the same for all of them along with the boats. Always fun to get around and easy.
Was there for a week recently and the transit is absolutely amazing
I really love the "small" things. Elevators and marks on the ground for blind people. In every wagon is a Plan of the whole network. Important places have symbols like an elephant for the Zoo. Stadion, where the Football stadion is, has an special designed crowd control Station for the massive crowd after a match or concert. Cleaning staff is the whole day on his feed to clean the wagons over the day. Special places called Ubahn Star for musicans to play music in the stations...
Fun Fact - a friend in Vienna who just watched this told me that The Type U is called SilberpfeilIt named after Mercedes’ F1 racecar. it’s nice to see a European city with a similar population to Toronto that has the kind of rail interconnectivity that Toronto can also have.
"Silberpfeil"
Ich bin wiener hab nix davon gehört
Außerdem geht die u5 ganz woanders lang... Am Bacherplatz wird eine Station gebaut
@@manuelfrey5069 solls auch geben. Ist aber definitiv so.
@@manuelfrey5069 "Silberpfeil" war zur Anfangszeit der U-Bahn eine recht übliche Bezeichnung für die damals nagelneuen Züge.
Bei den V-Wagen haben die Wiener Linien versucht das zu widerholen, aber das "Lichtgoscherl" hat nie wirklich Verbreitung gefunden (sowas funktioniert halt nicht wenn's aus einer Marketingabteilung kommt und nicht von den Leuten selbst).
So cool to see Vienna featured on your channel, Reece! Loved the video. Looking forward to the video about our tram system you mentioned. As before, if you are in need for additional footage, do not hesitate to reach out to me on Twitter @simply_aviation ! :)
Thanks! I’m really excited to talk trams!
Definitely looking forward to tram video as I travel to Vienna to see my family there
Are you Viennese by any chance? Love your channel!!
I was in Vienna last weekend, a few things I noticed :
- The rolling stock is really not the best (not easy to walk through, quite narrow, suspention is not the best)
- Frequency is good but could be improved (french standard is one train every 2 or 3 min peak hour, it was more like 4 or 5 there)
- The urban integration of elevated tracks is really good in my opinion. U6 sometimes "cuts" the city though, but it's because heritage (
- I love the style of U6 stations, inherited from the Stadtbahn
- Network is not really dense. Sometimes in quite central places you can end up being 10 or 15min by foot from the nearest station (tram network is much more dense)
- The trams there are more like big busses, in terms of frequency, mode of operation, inside street traffic, quite short for a tram (again compared to french standard where citadis 302 is the bare minimum nowadays), ...
- I had a tram party there (privatised tram with DJ and bar inside, touring around the city, making 2 intermediate stops in a 3h ride). This is something quite common in central/eastern europe but as a french transit lover I found that quite amazing
Not really sure what peak hour means to you but U1 operates every 2.33 min, U3 and U6 every 2.67 min, U4 every 3.67 min and U2 every 3.75 min. Maybe there was a small service interruption when you tried.
As for trams, French cities do trams in a Stadtbahn style while Vienna still has a real Straßenbahn (street train) running on the same lanes as car traffic. Outside the inner districts, you will see much more track separations.
@@kurzzug160 Oh ok thanks for this infos. I was there friday to monday so only 2 week days to see peak hours (I expect the weekend schedules to be less dense) the lines I took these days were U2 and U6 (several times in full peak hour so 7-9am and 16-19pm) and U1 during the day (at 10am)
The number you give are really good actually, I didn't take time to do some proper research, just observed the interval between 2 trains on the passenger info screens
Rolling Stock: Compare to London Tube the U Bahn Stock in Vienna is actually quite spacious..
Some of the older models are a bit shaky, but they are gradually replaaced by newer types.
Density: There are few places (except the very outskirts of the city) where you are more than 10 minutes walking away from the the next stop of Bus, tram (or Bim, as we call them), Subway or S-Bahn
@@walterpleyer261 I stayed 2 nights out of 3 there near Volkskundenmuseum this is quite central I'd say and 13min away from the nearest U-bahn. Very well connected with tram though. I actually needed U-Bahn because I was going back home late at night (after the tram party) and the trams don't run all night long like the U-bahn on weekend nights. This is what I referred to for the density of the U-Bahn (of course, trams are a great mean of transport where there is no U-bahn in most situation)
@@jeanphilippeardrone5135 The general plan seems to be to have the U-Bahn and S-Bahn as central quick lines and tram and bus completing the system into a dense grid. So in the end you never should walk more than 5 minutes to the next station and rarely more than 4-5 tram / bus stops till the next u-bahn / s-bahn connection if you need to travel further away. The U-Bahn servers as way to get in and out of down town, while the S-Bahn lines form a ring around the outskirts of the city, connecting the outskirts of the city quickly with each other.
Looks like Ottawa needs to do some research in Vienna on how to use low floor metro trains.
viennas arent that great either
Thanks for covering my favourite city, Reece! Brought back some memories of good times spend on the U-Bahn, and I have spent lots of time on there as I used to live in Seestadt. 🤪
Looking forward to the tram video - almost as much as I'm looking forward to riding them again in August :)
0:35 - 0:40 - Kudos to the guy who filmed this for resisting the temptation to pan to the right :o)
Next time you do a vid about vienna i`d be happy to help. Been living here for all my life :)
One thing notable is the lack of giant ads everywhere like in the US. On trains, they're all about local needs, not gigantic Coca-Cola and beer ads. It's a relief not to be assaulted by commercials when you're walking about or on the train. You feel calmer and can actually think and relax.
I'm from Vienna and it feels nice that you're giving our public transport such a glowing review, but I would've liked to hear more about why its design is superior from an economic and social perspective. What are the things in particular that other metro systems do worse and could improve on? And what lead to the city planners making good decisions? Did they have some foresight that other cities didn't or was it simply luck?
Still, your videomade me appreciate our public transport a bit more. Thx.
I will never again troll, you are a great man!
In a seriousness, thank you, great Vid
Thanks ;)
I'm in Vienna rn and I just thought that it would be nice if you make a video about U-bahn here
And now it exists!
Thank you, I loved the video.
Believe it or not, it is not the coolest part of Viennese public transport. I hope you will soon make a video of our beloved “Schnellbahn” - how regular train gauges are used as the city’s public transport infrastructure.
I am happy to help.
Cheers!
Please make a video about São Paulo, in Brasil. We are full of works going on in the rapid transit system (Metro and CPTM)
Great video, would you please make a video explaining public transport in Prague.
It would have been nice to mention the Station Wien Meidling as it connects the U6 to the Rail network again close to Vienna Main Station
In generell the regional train system (S-Bahn) between Wien Meidling and Wien Floridsdorf (through Vienna Main station and Praterstern) acts as if it was another Metro line also being able to board it with the Metro ticket.
I live in Vienna and learned a lot about the upcoming U5 line. Very interesting video! :)
I'm from Vienna. I recently spoke to a small girl from the countryside, who asked me where my car was parked. I told her I didn't own one, that you don't need one in Vienna (most of the time). The tram I use to go to work comes every three minutes, and it takes me about 30 minutes to get there. You should have seen the look on her face. Her mind was totally blown. The area I was staying in had a bus every 2 hours, and a train operating in the same interval. Which, I'm being told, is still frequent for the countryside.
Da müssen wir aber froh sein :)
At 1:00 you can see one of the large concrete Flak towers built during World War Two!
What am I missing ? Vienna has some magnificent suburban stations that date back to prior to the First World War. Is there another rail system in Vienna not mentioned in this video or were they repurposed for the “ new “ U-Bahn ?
You are either referring to what is now the U6 Line, which - as mentioned - runs along a historic corridor, tho I am not sure how old that corridor is. If that's not the case, there is a whole gigantic S-Bahn system with about 9 lines running in different directions.
The other option is that you're referring to the Semmering Bahn, which is a very pretty and very old rail corridor about half an hour south of Vienna, tho I wouldn't describe that as suburban, so maybe not.
hey there! yes, large parts of the U4 and U6 are repurposed tracks. they were built at the end of the 19th century with steam trains and then later electrified railway cars running on them. it was called the Stadbahn and these lines were repurposed into Ubahn lines in the 70s. that's why a lot of station buildings on these lines are beautiful protected buildings designed and built in the 1890s by a famous austrian architect Otto Wagner.
U6 and U4 use older lines, but there is also an S-Bahn system in place that also uses infrastructure from the era of Stadtbahn (station Hütteldorf comes to mind)
@@niiinaa The old Lines along the Gürtel ring road (former location of the outer city walls) - now U6 - and along the Wien river and Danube canal - now U4 - date back to 1898. They were originally built as full-scale railway lines, later electrified and operated with tram-like trains (there were even connections to the tram network, with trains of tram line 18 running through to the north of the city as line '18G').
There is also a third line from this era, the "Vorortelinie" on the western outskirts of the city which is still operated as a railway and nowadays served by the S45 S-Bahn line.
@@alexpetersilvasi3529 the Schonbrunn Palace Station is stunning.
I was in Vienna last month and really enjoyed the U-Bahn and public transportation system as a whole! Very comfortable, convenient, and efficient :)
Thanks for the Video an greetings from Austria 🇦🇹
I am from vienna and i generally think all public transport in vienna including busses, trams, s-bahns, u-bahns and more is really good and organized in vienna
I traveled to Vienna and im still in it today, I absolutely love the trams and trains
Hey,
I'd love for you to do a video on Hamburgs (Germany) U-Bahn and or S-Bahn system!
Your praise fill's my viennese heart with Joy
I appreciate that probably most of these comments and viewers are people from Vienna XD. Always proud of our origin and living quality and happy other people are appreciating it too!
Indeed the entire public transport network in Vienna from buses to U-Bahn is absolutely amazing. By far the best of any capital I have visited. Really encourages the locals not to use cars (as a greek I was pretty astonished because I am used to the horrific public transport in my country). Looking forward to come back to the most beautiful city in Europe!
When you talked about the tram (Straßenbahn) you showed the Badener bahn (the blue train that goes on the tram line). That is more a regional train that can tun on tram tracks but actually leaves Vienna and connects the region to the south.
Pls make video of Prague metro or tram systém
Very nice to see this as a viennese resident :) And yes, we can be happy about our public transport system.
You should look at the TRAX/Frontrunner system in Utah. I just want to see your opinion on it.