The new Paris métro
forbes.com
forbes.com
Also, I feel like this is an unusually hostile comment.
To anyone who's "started travelling" (how smug), they'd realize that Vancouver, Toronto, and Montreal, maybe even Calgary and Edmonton to lesser extents have viable or great municipal train systems. They aren't Tokyo great, or Paris great, but they are pretty good and usually clean.
Among developed countries, I can think of a few that since visiting, while novel, I've actively chose Vancouver over; other cities in Canada would probably not win out, but that's why broad statements about countries shouldn't be taken seriously.
There's also a decent amount of anti-public transit people here that tend to make their job a bit harder. I live in a part of town where almost everyone except me drives and I remember chatting to my neighbors when we had a transit funding referendum. The details are a bit hazy because I think it was around 2016 but in my area people were more or less unanimous when it came to preventing public transit funding.
I do have a few personal gripes about the new skytrain line being full at rush hour but for what it's worth I had the same issue with the main circle line in Tokyo. Rush-hour is rush-hour no matter what your method of transport.
t. former NoVa resident
DC’s general height limits in conjunction with typical American SFH friendly zoning also do not help utilization.
2) It's not uncivil, it's illegal.
What is so astonishing, and what is your alternative to this specific issue?
Also, why the hostility? I've never met a Canadian that expressed a sense superiority about not being part of the USA. I've met plenty who are proud of their national identity, and there's nothing wrong with that. It's quite admirable too, in my opinion. Nation-building isn't easy.
Classic case is health care (‘look, we spend less than the US and have free healthcare’) where instead of looking up to countries with better healthcare outcomes than us, we look down on America and act smug. Other cases include our climate record, and post secondary education.
Who is saying this, other than low-information Americans on social media hung up on the word 'free'? Every Canadian knows that the reality is much more complicated with capacity shortages since Covid, and an opportunistic provincial government in Ontario doing its very best to push further privatization.
Anecdotally it's usually used when someone starts to criticize our healthcare system.
Since US and Canada are so similar, a lot of the discussion of identity are around the differences, which to me is a weird way to talk about a national identity.
It also comes up a lot when someone mentions something positive about the US that Canada struggles with, say economic growth - then it becomes a common refrain of “yes, but at least X is better in Canada than the US”.
It’s also used commonly in discussions in healthcare - any change is described as “Amerification” of the healthcare system even those the change would just make Canada more like European systems.
Maybe it’s unavoidable being right next door to the US, I don't know.
I’ve seen this a few times, only on HN, so it’s either a particular HN meme, or it’s you posting it every so often
Outside of HN, I haven't even heard this smugness since the early years of the invasion of Iraq.
All this talk about being a world-class city, while nobody knows when Eglinton Crosstown, a "subway" line using streetcar ("LRT") tech that's been "in progress" since 2011, will open. Don't even get me started on SmartTrack :)
NYC and Chicago are dream cities for many, some Torontonians included. Does that mean that their transit stations aren't teeming with capybara-size rats? That they don't have problems with homelessness and poverty?
And I say this as someone who lives in the 'burbs and is upset that the LRT delays have continued as long as they have.
Vienna metro was even cleaner and slightly less sketchy than Paris, but that is also not a fair comparison in terms of size and demographics. The Delhi metro is almost equally impressive as Paris's in convenience but feels about as clean as Ottawa.
Most Indians gush at the cleanliness of the Delhi metro. It is a world ahead of most average India Rail cars and stations. (I'm not speaking of long distance, upper class cars. Those are amazing, but ridiculously expensive.)
No different than any other cities.
I'm sure everyone is able to figure it out, but IMO they could take some inspiration from e.g. London or Paris.
One more idea: Tokyo metro stations don't make a lot of use of colour schemes. I have used some metros that use very loud colour schemes all throughout the station to guide you to interchanges. Again: Very helpful for visitors.
It is unfortunately a bit hard to compare the length of the system, since it's hard to distinguish between the local lines that are not operated by tokyo metro vs. the longer distance ones.
Can you help me to understand this part?
The metro's top speed is up to 5 times as fast as Paris's metro.
The average speed is higher, the speed is lower the closer the stations are together, but the speed also depends on the line; i.e. the Ginza line added ATS(automated train stop, added in 1993). I just learned that Paris' Line 14, that went into service in 2022, also drives at accelerated speeds, it's the first line with ATS in Paris. I think the main problems that need to be addressed with respect to higher speed transportation are the following:
1. the breaking system needs to be assisted (ATS)
2. the railway needs to be replaced and reinforced
3. turn angles can't exceed a certain degree
1 and 3 are a design issue that isn't really addressed in older metro system, and 2 is probably a political problem. Contrary to my previous belief it seems that France is at least trying to address some of the points in their metro extensions, which is nice.
"Paris Syndrome is a psychological condition experienced almost exclusively by Japanese tourists who are disappointed when the city of lights does not live up to their romantic expectations."
The Japanese Embassy in Paris now has a 24-hour hotline for Japanese tourists suffering from the syndrome, whose symptoms can range from depression and anxiety to acute delusional states, dizziness, sweating, hallucinations and "feelings of persecution."[1]
[1] https://www.huffpost.com/entry/french-toilet-story_b_2422398
However, there is imo no way to avoid seeing rats if you used NYC subway more than once and had your eyelids up.
Might be all those 'classic' NYC films exporting a vibe.
I still haven't seen an NYC rat chase a cat while carrying a pizza though, admittedly I'm an infrequent and short term visitor.
Kidlington, which is remarkable in only its banality, for example: https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-oxfordshire-37820663.amp
This is almost certainly due to the rudeness of store and restaurant employees during tourist season.
I think the Paris metro is average-good compared to my experience in other countries. It has its quirks, and strikes are a thing but I have used it extensively (I have lived in Paris for several years) without big problems, and I arrive most of the time within a few minutes of the expected time (in Tokyo, that's seconds!).
I’ve never taken it, but I’ll note I’ve never personally taken public transport to match Bangkok’s BTS and MRT, which are both excellent, although it’s very irritating they haven’t implemented cross-system billing yet
Also the thing to remember is that part of the reason JR works so well is because of the defined career path.
For example, you don't just become a Shinkanzen driver, you have to follow the career path:
- Work two years as station attendant
- Work two years as a conductor
- Work two years as a standard (non-Shinkanzen) train driver
The result is you have people working on the railways who are intimately familiar with both the system as a whole and the impact they and their actions can have on others. Which is a very Japanese thing, life is not just about you but your impact on others around you.
Second, the Paris metro is dramatically better than New York's in terms of pleasantness of the experience and arguably better than London's and DC's, both of which are pretty pleasant by any standard that does not include Tokyo.
Newer trains? Yeah, sure, because the network is newer. I can recall riding the maglev in Shanghai from the airport. The first thing that I noticed: The seat covers were filthy. So typical mainland China.
"[M]ultiple metros in Tokyo"? Use the Suica/Pasmo payment card. Hardly anyone thinks about what operator they are riding in 2023: They are thinking about destination and convenience. And, be real: The reason why Tokyo has so much complexity is the age and history of the system. (London, Paris, Berlin, and NYC have similar stories.) If Shanghai was rich in 1920 (well, it was, but that wealth was controlled by colonialists) and building metro lines, it would surely look different today.
Regarding infrastructure, yes it's new in Shanghai, but new != better. For example, the station floors may look shiny in Shanghai, but they become quite slippery on rainy days—a non-issue in Tokyo. Another example is that many trains in Japan have different air conditioning in different cars even within the same train, a subtle but welcome feature for those sensitive to temperatures—no such thing in Shanghai. Lastly, unlike Japan, metros in Shanghai/China still lack public timetables in 2023. A timetable can save you a lot of time by allowing you to plan your trip.
I agree that the integrated metro system in Shanghai is better for travelers.
And I'm not even talking about how the Paris metro is narrow, dark and stinky.
The Paris area train system (if you consider metro + other trains) is reliable inside Paris, and the very close suburbs, but as you get further away it gets extremely shitty. In some cities (with RER) daycare will refuse families where both parents work in Paris because they know they can't reliably be on time to pick up the kids and will end up with late parents.
Also metro stations in Paris are so close it's very slow. The only exception is line 14 which is the most recent. It's also the best line but it's the only one.
Overall, they're making a big fuss about the Grand Paris and while it is a big deal, it's not going to make it the best transportation system for cities of that size. I'm just really catching up on fixing the very broken transportation system for anyone living outside of Paris itself - which is only 105m2, very small for the population living in the greater Paris area. It's roughly the size inside the Yamanote line.
Not living there anymore but I think those zone are on the way out anyway. They make it more expensive for folks with less income.
Paris was far and away easier to navigate, even though I don't even speak French.
By the way seoul is also way cleaner than Paris, I believe Singapore too.
Europe does rail pretty well, all things considered. Well enough that companies (like mine) eventually get subcontracted to build things for the North American market as well. Problem is, rail is a highly regulated industry, which means lots of mandatory software documentation.
European countries all use the EN documentation standards. The US and Canada tend to use the IEEE-1558 and its ilk. Neither document is a subset of the other; there exists no easy list of differences between the two standards to allow compatibility.
So the actual software development goes pretty smoothly -- then someone realizes there's no standard-conforming documentation and the whole project grinds to a halt. Often for years, because the number of people who are fluent in writing docs for/translating docs between both standards in any given country, you can count on one hand. I am rumored to be one of them.
The FRA basically just did this for European rail vehicle standards, which are different than US ones significantly. The issue is that the US market is generally too thin to support US-specific passenger rail manufacturers who would happily comply.
It mostly legalizes European trainsets with minor adjustments, though Japanese sets would need significant reworking since they follow yet another standard. But this is important, because an FRA-compliant vehicle at 220MPH basically does not exist, and those have become legal if in their own exclusive right-of-way; and alternative compliance trainsets can now operate with regular American freight trains below 125MPH, which is basically the entirety of the network today anyways.
it depends on the time of the day and the standards you're used to.
I am from Rome, not the cleanest city in the World I might say, but I used to go to Paris frequently, my ex girlfriend lived there for 10 years and I found Paris a terrible patchwork of "looking clean, but not really clean", "smelly and not in a good way" and "rats on the streets of the center not scared at all by the people" together with "there are actually people living in the catacombs below the building I'm currently living in and we can't do anything about it"
We both were victims of robbery a few times and attempted robbery several times (one time I put my hand in the pocket of my jacket and shacked hands with a burglar that was looking for something to steal) in the metro stations, so we usually were very worried when we had to get one, we ended up walking a lot to avoid the stress, which ironically turned out to be a great idea, if there's something good I can totally agree about Paris is that it is one of the best cities to take a long walk.
I assume that this is an advertising piece to promote the newfound cleanliness for the upcoming Olympic games in the city, it's happening the same in Rome for the 2025 Jubilee.
They didn't tell you this:
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/sep/29/bedbug-crisis-...
This is a huge expansion. Being brave enough to build rings is great: most capital cities obsess with spokes to existing hubs, or like the Elizabeth line do a single slash across.
New York should read and weep.
Speaking about rings, Moscow metro now has three of these.
The other new ring is a fairly old preexisting train line that used to be cargo-only; it had the potential to be great, but unfortunately the ridiculously long connection times have made the real thing somewhat niche—if both your origin and your destination aren’t on it, the ten to fifteen minutes’ walk will likely make the result worse than just going through the center. And two connections are just never worth it.
(There’s a whole story behind how building stupid useless connections came to be viewed as a virtue in Moscow transport planning—look up “Vykhino effect”. Doesn’t make the result any less shit, though.)
I, too, dislike the new connections, and the lack thereof, but the speed with which the new lines sprung up is a marvel.
I don't think it is possible to be physically unable to enter the train in 2023 (unless football fans return from thei match). In 2003 it was expected.
That these are being “built” is once again a bit too strong a statement—the rail lines were already there and in use for cargo and the occasional suburban train. (The veeery slooow speeds at which the latter went between the big stations had relegated them to the sole use of urban arcanists and the occasional exhausted hiker disembarking from his long-distance train.) There’s some renewal of the aging rails, to be fair, and the stations are new.
Two problems with these:
First, the stations are too few and once again too far away from anything else. (Nobody’s fault—the rails are sometimes a century older than the metro and the outward creep of the city limits.)
Second, unlike on the ring, the trains on the chordal lines (I refuse to call them “diameters”) are operated according to the railway rules, meaning there are too few of them to be able to disregard the schedule, the schedule itself is at best a suggestion (and woe is you if you don’t keep track of train cancellations), and the stupid multi-hour midday “maintenance breaks” are still in place.
I’ve used these lines for weekly commutes, and if they fit your problem well, they can be very useful. But overall I’d say they are even more situational than the ring, and it’s frustrating compared to my utopian headcanon of how well they could work. Or hell, to the RER lines in Paris, even if those connections are no joke either—nevermind the Barcelona Rodalies, which are (or were, two decades ago) the platonic ideal of suburban/urban rail transport interconnection.
an understatement
My point is the distances regularly covered in LA would be absolutely unthinkable in Manhattan and the more urban parts of the outer boroughs, let alone Paris which is a smaller city than San Francisco. So on the one hand we need better land use to reduce distance traveled and on the other improvements to overall speed.
By contrast New York has a built environment that is absolutely fantastic for transit but cannot build enough to fully capitalize on it. Their costs are astronomical and going up.
unless they have absolutely no better option
One thing people don’t realize is that the LA Metro area actually has a greater population density than the New York Metro area. Yes, Manhattan and some of the boroughs have higher density than you’ll see anywhere in Los Angeles, but the low-density areas in L.A. are higher density than the low density areas in NY.
Small nitpick but it was Exposition Line. Also “Expo” line. LA Metro did a big system rename though, so now it’s just the E Line.
And Michelin must have a phenomenal lobbying team if they managed this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rubber-tyred_metro#List_of_sys... (In particular, "didn't catch on outside France" is, well, just plain wrong.)
The list once you exclude that basically consists of
* France, which wanted a niche technology to export and maintain supply domination over
* China, Japan, and Korea, trying to replicate it
* Quebec, which often looks to France for planning inspiration
* Mexico and Chile, which were recipients of French development assistance that included using French suppliers
What a silly assumption. They are not.
Replicate the industrial strategy, not the technology.
Railways are also part of this strategy. China, Japan and Korea all export railway products from high speed rail to subways to monorails, and so in this context rubber tired metros are another niche technology to get an edge in. Note that this strategy doesn't always work; no one outside of these countries is very interested in maglev trains, for example.
---
The other part of this is development finance. Countries that do not have know-how with big infrastructure projects often look to international institutions to build projects and secure financing. And part of the deal is that if you take French money you must spend it on French suppliers, and this is true for basically any country doing this kind of lending, so basically the lender is getting both interest payments and spending towards its economy. The Chinese and Japanese compete a lot for railway projects in particular; Japan built the Taiwanese HSR and the Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City metros, China is currently building high speed rail in Thailand and Laos, etc.
Even in the countries where they exist, rubber tired metros are niche.
You can't retrofit rubber wheels easily so of course compared to all metros as a new technology it will be rare
Rubber tired metros are also a niche in new metros.
Retrofitting actually has some advantages for old lines with short station distances, tight curves and steep gradients, whereas new lines can be planned with the limitations of rail technology in mind.
And generally speaking 5 % wouldn't be considered very steep at all by modern standards. Gradients up to 4 or even 5 % weren't uncommon even on older rapid transit systems dating from a century ago, and for modern multiple units I'd regard 4 to 6 % as about par for the course.
And in hilly terrain, a number of systems definitively go beyond that into the 8 – 10 % range, including some new built systems (e.g. the light rail systems in Stuttgart, Tenerife and Jerusalem).
Unless you go with a rack railroad, or maybe a cable way, you are only climbing hills with rubber.
BART is standard steel track and steel wheel, just different wheel and rail profiles - plenty of resources if you wanna read about it
https://www.railwayage.com/news/bart-revised-wheel-profile-q...
The article you linked to talks about all the money that BART's thrown at the noise problem without addressing the elephant(s) in the room: BART cars are aluminum tubes that are inherently noisy and BART wears its tracks aggressively. The first iterations had carpeted floors which absorbed some of the noise, but those got predictably gross.
Much of the track noise comes from corrugation because the wheels are dragged over the track. Other systems might grease their wheels so that there's more slip in turns, BART can't. Other systems sand the tracks in wet weather so you don't skid, BART can't. Modern systems have anti-skid systems so that you don't wear the wheels. Bombardier's anti-skid system is awful. So the new cars flat spot the wheels at a much higher rate than the old and you get noisy track (and noisy trains as they thump thump thump down the track). BART grind the rails and the noise goes away for a bit, but it eventually comes back with a vengeance because they're doing everything they can to avoid addressing the underlying problems.
They are useful if stations are very near each other because of greater braking power, so you can stay decently fast in-between stations.
Lines 1, 4 and 14 have rubber tyres and platform doors because they are fully automated (or in the case of line 4 in the process of being fully automated). So far Paris only fully automates rubber tyres lines.
Line 13 has classic metal tyres and is only semi-automated, but it has platform doors because it is very high traffic. Most Parisians avoid line 13 at rush hours because it is probably the most packed line in the city.
However if it is too close to the center the cost of extra transfer is likely too high.
Moscow inner ring has around the same number of stations than all the ones inside it (counting connections as one each)
By contrast look at the Yamanote line in Tokyo for a great ring that provides tons of connections and gets tons of ridership.
It really does suck. I lived between 3rd and 4th ring road in the eastern mid section (around san yuan qiao), and my work was on 4th ring in the northwest section in zhongguancun. So...around the loop I went, it makes the trip 20-30% longer. Line 10 (a loop line between 3rd and 4th ring, line 2 would be the inner loop around 2nd ring) theoretically takes me straight to work from near my house, but I almost never took it because it was just too long (and it was just easier to sit in a taxi on 4th ring if I timed my to work and from work time right).
I used to stay near Lincuiqiao (?) so line 8 down to 10/2 worked well for me.
Back in 2002...I had to bus it to xizhimen a lot to grab a subway to sanlitun (forget the name of the station) on line 2! That sucked, but line 2 is a pretty small loop (so lots of time on bus). In 1999, my first trip there, it was only line 1 and 2, and line 1 was broken at Xidan (4th ring was also still a ditch they were building out). Fun times!
Willing to give up art and deco for keeping the fares where they are - agree modern tech upgrades is necessary and is being made now with Biden's admin help. I hope they keep the low fares
The equivalent in London would be the Overground which while largely cobbled together from existing tracks was a huge improvement. If you change you can even go in a ring. The projected ridership for these new lines in Paris looks to be about triple that of the Overground.
The Elizabeth line (along with Thameslink) is more like Paris' RER.
It is possible to have fully digital ticketing with complete anonymity (again, assuming no external surveillance) using zero-knowledge proofs. As far as I'm aware, no such systems have been implemented for ticketing yet, but rapid progress is being made in implementing these for general-purpose digital identity situations.
There's also the much more pedestrian^ option, used for instance in Brussels, where the transport company simply promises not to track individuals even when it would be possible for them to do just that. That said, in Brussels I personally got the impression that a large proportion of passengers did not present tickets when entering a bus or tram, and indeed the Brussels Metro trains don't require that anyway. Thus tracking of individuals' movements would be quickly thwarted by apathy on the part of passengers!
^: not the most pedestrian option, naturally.
At worst, a paper ticket can reveal your location when you buy it, when you start a journey, and possibly when you transfer or end a journey. It's already a close to ideal system: it provides proof of the right to travel in the event of a ticket control, without needing to reveal your identity, destination, past or future journeys, home address, phone number, banking details, or any other extra info. Out of band info exists in either case.
A phone app, which is what everything trends towards and seemingly what most people want to use, almost certainly has access to enough information from your device to uniquely identify you. The default will be to ask for your location, and most will grant it. Now the app knows who you are, where you live, exactly when you travel, who with, to what destinations, etc.
The trend is always towards more surveillance. Regardless of what is technically possible, digital will always struggle to achieve the levels of privacy and anonymity that are trivial with century old technology.
I grew up with the paper tickets, and remember being jealous of people with a Navigo. They could go through the gates so fast, and the contactless tech and little "bling" sound the gate makes when they touch in seemed so futuristic and cool! I never thought I'd come to see the paper tickets as almost too good to be true. That they have survived this long feels like a glitch in history, and in a rapidly evolving world they're a strong reminder of what's being lost.
Some cities in Germany do this. Instead they do regular ticket inspection with high fines.
Makes for much smoother entry and exit to the stations and making the metro feel part of the city.
I hope that digital options which are as private as paper tickets will be implemented, because I don't want 'digital' to mean 'surveillance' by default!
Some machine have contactless payment support, it's indicated on them. Sure it would be better to have more but the option exists at last, and I guess more equipment will be upgraded in the future. If anything this is the smallest issue with the subway and the capital in general.
Maybe Paris will support iPhones properly and get contactless working in 2030, at this rate?
My wife has a Pixel and is with Bouygues and it works.
My son has a Xiaomi and is with Free and it works.
Does this work on iPhone now?
I live in SF and travel regularly to NYC and both of those just let me tap my phone and go. It honestly felt weird for the US to be ahead of a major European city in this way.
But you can use cards, ticket, or phone in any station.
The only thing you can’t use, which, in 2023 is pretty stupid, are payments cards (so neither Apple Pay and Google Pay). They even had a long fight with Apple for years to get full access to the NFC API instead of going with just payment cards.
Ironically, there are a lot of other cities in France that are compatible with payment cards, but not Paris.
I can imagine that it’s not the same scale to upgrade Paris ticketing vs the smaller cities but since they’ve done a major overhaul anyway …
I wouldn't expect anything else from an American attempt at a public transport (sorry, "public transit") system, unfortunately. Sadly it seems like a very car-centric culture has taken hold in the states which has stifled investment and innovation when it comes to public transport.
OMNY will eventually fix things using tech 'borrowed' from Oyster when it's fully rolled out (which must be soon), but until then it seems like a poor system.
> I find it frankly absurd to be nitpicking such details in the face of such an accomplishment.
The whole customer proposition is important; not just the infrastructure. I am sure the Elizabeth Line in London wouldn't have seen the adoption it has (well in excess of predictions) without an easy-to-use fares system.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OMNY
I use Apple Express Transit on my Apple Watch with the NY MTA. I just tap my wrist and the turnstile unlocks.
Also it caps at $34 in a 7 day period.
And when I write "they", it is from the perspective of a native of Versailles who still has to think hard when looking at the web site in his own language. I cannot imagine for a tourist.
Maybe this has improved (I hope so) but everytime someone visited, I had to do a new PhD in ticketology.
not to mention that we managed to buy a return ticket for CDG "for nothing". because on Sunday morning that part of RER B was not running due to some scheduled work, and the replacement bus ran once every hour, which we missed by a few minutes (because we spent time buying and eating fresh croissants, yes, whahah! but were also completely unaware that we really should go to catch that bus ...), so we had to get a taxi.
oh, and we managed to get trapped at the Versailles station, because we had no idea that the ticket we bought for Zone1-4 was "dans" Paris. whatever that means. of course we got a very stereotypical pointing out by the otherwise kind station attendant :D
oh and the BigMacs in Paris are the best so far I had in Europe... how? and why? and what's the secret!?
oh, and no bed bugs. (so far. fingers crossed.)
Weird, because any of the 5 train stations in Versailles should be in zone 4 and you shouldn't had any issue to leave the station... Though honestly, I feel like there's a bunch of things that aren't clear with the RATP system, especially for people who aren't local.
YTA here bud, if you had spent less time on the pastries you wouldn't of missed the bus!
This is almost a tradition Versailles (or at least used to be - there were changes in the zoning and since I hardly take the train anymore I do not know what the zones are now).
The traditional way is to look surprised and desperate and to go to the attendant with a sad face and they wave you through.
Rhôôôô (← the typical annoyed French grunt). This was some kind of non-event and everyone played along (even our government). No worries, there are much more dangerous things in Paris to be afraid of.
The road to CDG is currently a shitshow. I took it two or three weeks ago and what normally takes 45 minutes took almost 2 hours. Good thing I always plan to spend quality time at the airport.
There are plenty of road (and not road) works in the northern part of Paris for the Olympic Games and you never know what you get (and as the mayor of Paris said, we will be late anyway)
So, it ensures high quality sourcing as well as fresh cooking, it makes sense that it's better. But it is also way more expensive than neighboring countries in my experience.
The last one is important, because there's a huge protectionist tariff on beef in Switzerland, so McDonalds is either buying super cheap import meat or using local. (And my guess is that they are not importing, it's simply noticeably worse.)
You really see they squeeze every bit of quality to have the cheapest menus possible (I guess due to high CH wages), but at the end they cost the same as normal restaurant with lunch menu offer, so only desperate or not-so-smart people go there when there is competition (after 10pm situation is different unfortunately).
And of course it still only works with Android.
Easy would be following what's being done in major transit systems all over the world: Let people immediately pay for rides without installing or thinking about anything, by tapping their phone on the turnstile. And for a bonus, adopt TfL's fare capping so people don't have to try to game the various discount options.
Nowadays money is no longer physical for the vast majority of users (instead cards/phones are used), so there is no need for tickets anymore as managing an EMV transaction is just as easy as some internal ticketing operation (in both cases you'd need a network-connected computer).
Touch screens which can handle vandalism and the elements and not need calibration are not as easy as just using a roller ball to go through elements.
I guess Seattle and Vancouver really do have a lot in common.
I'm afraid the American phenomenon of turning their nose up at public transportation projects is just that - a distinctly American phenomenon. They don't know what they are missing.
Geographically, the USA has a lot of space, so it's relatively easy to sprawl. Some places have to be more space-efficient.
Ideologically, the USA has always been about individual rights, private property and self-reliance. Car ownership fits that model of thinking better.
Politically, private companies have always had a lot of influence over government. When the car became widespread, it was easy to influence governments to build highways, favour cars in roads, pass parking minimums, etc.
Historically, the USA has a history of segregation. Public transit mixes people from around the city, and I'm sure at a certain point in time there were people in power interested on reducing that as much as possible. I mean, there's that whole event with Rosa Parks as an example [1].
Moreover, a lot of the USA is "new". With a shorter tradition of city-building and more of a blank canvas to start, I'm not surprised what people expect and how they try to build their cities is different.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rosa_Parks#Refusal_to_move
Another complication is that subway stations reliably increase real estate prices, and in Korea everybody desires higher real estate prices for their town. (Of course we then complain that the prices are too high and vote for the opposition. And then we demand the new government to increase real estate prices just for my town. The cycle continues. Don't ask me why, it's a whole can of worms.) In Korea, a company lobbying against subway would fare about as well as a company lobbying for real estate tax hike, that is, very poorly.
China is the same way. They can build infrastructure like nobody's business.
I and my family have been there twice. Thrice if you count my grandfather's quarry disowned by the Nazi's. Me and my parents were lucky to live in a lawful society. Where, at the very least, you can use the law to demand a fair price for the property, else we would've been without a house and without the money to get something new. First the garden for a road. Then the rest of the house for a new trains tunnel. We aren't some rich landowning, rent extracting family; just two working parents with a mortgage loan.
It makes me understand why people oppose windfarms, public infra and such. Even though I also consider such projects crucial to survive the coming decennia.
I looked it up and Saint-Petersburg opened around 7 new stations during 2010-2020. Don't know if this is a success.
Anyone else ever experienced the public transportless hellscape of Cancun airport? Where a short ride into the city is a cool 75 usd, rideshare is chased off by the cartels, and the walk to the highway to take a collectivo bus with incomprehensible route numbers is 1.5 miles away in sweltering jungle heat?
Or how about Tampa, Asheville, Austin or any other medium sized us airport, where train transport doesn't exist at all
How about Boston Logan which is only connected to the main Metro lines by a crappy bus that will add a nice 30 minutes and luggage heaving to your journey
I literally love the rer. It can be much shittier lol
I think it was a worthwhile trade off.
Supposedly there was an agreement reached between the federal government and Uber/Didi and they will be able to pickup in January. Remains to be seen. I hope they put the national guard in the terminal to keep the taxi drivers in line.
But the fact that the locals don't even know what any of the bus routes mean is so hilarious to me
I've never taken it since. If there was a nonstop airport express it would be lot safer (and faster)
There kind of is (it stops once). Here's the schedule for next week: https://www.rerb-leblog.fr/wp-content/uploads/2023/11/oraire...
Obviously, because it would take away capacity for the regular users?
It's among the most heavily used lines in the world and tourists are probably a single digit percent of users, or less, so whatever funds available are better used to increase global capacity than to provide a better experience for a few people taking the plane.
Please, let this project finish successfully and inspire others to quit the madness of resource waste that is car scapes.
For me it’s a one hour car ride to the next major city (in southern Germany). With the train it takes 25 minutes.
Although that does seem like the easy part compared to actually building the stations and lines, which is why it's weird Paris hasn't caught up in that area.
Comparing it to the second busiest metro in the Americas, it's crazy how Mexico City Metro, which isn't always "nice", is still so much nicer and much cheaper [2]. Even comparing it to cities with more similar economies— systems in London/Paris are cheaper per ride, but also much nicer.
[1] https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Chambers_Street_-_Na...
[2] https://www.businessinsider.com/mexico-city-metro-review-201...
"Nicolas".
Here in SF it cost us $2B to lay 1.7mi of tracks and that too took many years.
:cry:
Now VTA is spending 75million dollars on a massive tunnel boring machine, for a project that should cost less than half of what it does
I think it went along the lines of: the couple tracks running from the north towards London from Midlands are all at the edge of their capacity. The HS2 will take some load off those and thereby increase the capacity by X percent for all the commuter trains.
edit: I haven't been following this in the past year. Now I see they scrapped the Euston hub.
We love to complain about it but after being in Paris and NY... wow
Couldn't you just say or link to something concrete to make your point instead? The cost problems of large American projects are incredibly well covered in the media; you're a trivial Google search away from lots of great material here.
But when you are not the shareholder but the user / citizen, you have the right to decide what "successful" means to you.
The usual bullshit by designers who never consider there are people who need to carry stuff to where they want to go. Or people who cant walk properly anymore. Or people who care about safety at night.
Sure, public transport is all fine when you are a teenager or a young adult, but thinking it's a good solution for people of all ages and medical conditions is just believing in a lie.
> but solving it by sitting in a two ton bubble is kind of the wrong way to go about it, no?
There is safety with known risks, which is taking a car and driving somewhere, and then completely unknown and random risks when taking public transports in Paris. I prefer known risks any day.
And, for what it’s worth, the risks are only unknown if you don’t take public transit. People who are frequent riders know all the good and bad lines and what times to take them just like you probably know which parts of the city you don’t want to drive through at night. Not to mention that a clean, safe, well-trafficked subway can often directly skip you through parts of the city you don’t want to go through.
Safety is also largely a psychological issue. People don’t want to be safe (most of the time they have no clue), they want to feel safe (which depends on personal experience and prejudice). Even a quick and dirty analysis of accidents statistics shows that driving is much less safe than public transport.
I understand that you have a particular perspective, probably in a car centered area, but I think you would be very surprised to see the diversity of people using transit in a city like Paris at all hours of the day. It’s a system that works and works well.
Maybe it's trying to make Chicago, New York and Tokyo feel better? I dunno.
When people mention The Tube I do think London though. I haven't heard anyone else call their subway "the tube". To be fair though, the London Underground _is_ quite more tubular than other systems around the world.