Most times it rained or snowed in New York City when I lived there, New Jersey Transit and PATH would have problems because of the issues of weather on outdoor trains. It only affected NYC's subway when there was flooding (which also affected NJT and PATH).
The fascination with tunnels is that they're a much more ergonomic way to build infrastructure for the humans that have to live near them.
As to weather, Chicago has tons of it and manages fine: https://chicago.curbed.com/2019/1/31/18204627/chicago-cold-w...
(Well, that's the ground-level light rail — Metra — that does that)
In contrast in Berlin, the areas with elevated subway belong to the most desireable living areas, e.g. the U2 in Prenzlauer Berg:
https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-d&biw=1047&bi...
Or check out the lovely bridges above Gleisdreieck-Park:
https://www.google.com/search?q=berlin+u-bahn+gleisdreieck+p...
I think the main issue in the NYC metro area is that the offending trains/platforms do not seem to take noise pollution (let alone neighborhood flavor) into account at all. The result is that the platforms and trains are unfortunately more like alien oppressors than helpful neighbors.
It's also worth pointing out that today's Berlin is enjoying the fruits of an unique opportunity to rebuild their urban infrastructure post-ww2 (Gleisdreieck was an industrial train yard, for example). Much of the city was leveled, and then shortly thereafter occupied by East/West Germans with fiscally-backed ideological incentives to compete over who could build the most impressive X "for the people".
Lessons learned: Maybe we should tear down NYC, split each borough in half down the middle, and give one half of it to liberals and the other half to conservatives?
Tbf, the reason people use it for those purposes is because they are the most sheltered, out-of-the way places available.
When they stop being available, that activity moves to the next most sheltered, out-of-the-way place available.
They are way cheaper if you can build them. Look at how long it's taking Seattle to build ST3 (although it's going to be amazing when the Redmond corridor opens; I agree).
America needs good transport now, in many more cities. Musk's tunnel ideas are just really impractical and will cost the tax payers more than the benefits of other types of standard/existing rail.
Here (in the US) I've only ever seen 1) homeless people, 2) garbage, or 3) graffiti (and not the good looking stuff).
Even though I was 25 floors up with "soundproof" windows, it was jarringly noisy at all times of the day and night because of the way the sound waves travel up a building.
If we had a Robert Moses of transit, then it could happen, just like the highways happened. There are no Robert Moseses of transit. Now the best we can do for new lines is shadow the highways.
Elevated lines like in Chicago also seem very uncommon now, I suspect they aren't actually that great? They certainly take a lot of maintenance and don't have great trip times. I think putting an incredibly large and heavy vehicle on metal stilts isn't a good approach. There have been people who want to instead put relatively light vehicles on stilts [1], with many benefits, but that's been met with almost no interest from people who can make these things happen. (Personally I think it's a missed opportunity.) Though in a sense what's being built here is along those lines, but underground.
https://penguindreams.org/blog/self-driving-cars-will-not-so...
Public transport also forces you to see people every day. Even this very bare minimum interaction is vitally important. It changes the way we see and treat people.
There was an executive at Lehman Brothers who had a private elevator he used from his condo to take him to a car with a private driver, which took him to another elevator that took him to his office. Most days he could go from home to work without interacting with a single person. That changes the way you see and treat people, and we need less of that.
It’s not about being anti-social. Here in the Annapolis area (which has 200,000 people, with 40,000 in Annapolis itself), people commute from the Annapolis suburbs to jobs in the southern Baltimore suburbs or in Baltimore. They’d take a train if there was one, instead of sitting in I97 traffic But the volume of commuters comes nowhere near justifying building one. (Many Metro lines, though at capacity in the downtown core, are desolate in even the relatively urbanized suburbs of MD). A cheap, fast, point-to-point transit solution, that you could string up along an existing highway median or below one, would revolutionize transit because it would actually address peoples’ needs outside the tiny minority.
You're answering a question no one is asking. Cars and taxis (and imagined self-driving cars) get people from where they are to where they want to go. Roads are capable of serving any trip, and with a reasonable travel time. If transit could serve most trips then transit could be successful. Start from there, and see if you can work backwards to traditional rail mass transit. I don't see it happening, but maybe I'm missing something.
I am not an expert but I don't see how digging tunnels is cheaper than building a raised platform, they both seem pretty expensive.
No, they don't. They add a massive amount of noise and other pollution to the city, and block light and air, turning normal city streets into seedy alleys. (Ex: Wabash before the recent renovation)
They seem a lot cheaper to build and maintain than tunnels
Build, probably. Maintain, no. The elevated structures require a ton of maintenance that is ongoing constantly because they're exposed to weather, vandals, and other external forces.
I suspect you've never been in a subway tunnel and noticed all the grime and dirt spewed all over the walls and ceiling by electric trains.
Noise isn’t much higher once you’re even a block away
Now I know you've never been in a city with an elevated train system. I once lived nine blocks away from an elevated train, and I could hear it all day and all night.
And light and air is a matter of setbacks
You can't set back a building that's already built, and you can't take away air rights from a property owner without massive compensation.
There is more light standing right under an L track than in NYC
More is not the same as optimal. Why should any of the public's light and air be removed if it's not necessary?
And it is necessary. The alternative to a cheaper above-ground line isn’t a subway. Usually, it’s no rail at all.
The noise is the thing. In New York you can stand directly over a subway station and not even know it, in Chicago you always know when you're with in a few blocks of a line.
It is possible to build elevated rail that is much quieter than Chicago's and NYC's systems, so Chicago shouldn't be held up as an example of how noisy elevated systems have to be.
Elevated rail is not inherently noisy, but the majority of examples in the US are. This is why people are against them. If we could fix the noise problem, this could be the optimal solution. I personally think it is possible.
"So often you won't even notice."
I say this without commenting on the actual financial viability, since that is very much a matter of debate and I'm tepidly optimistic on it at best.
The upscale crowd doesn't like the audio/visual clutter.
There's nothing tunnels do that well planned overhead infrastructure can't do more cheaply (at the cost of being audible and visible).
Edit: Since I'm being down-voted, other than being less offending to the eyes/ears of non-users, what do tunnels do that overhead infrastructure doesn't?
Quantity ≠ quality.