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Comment by jnwatson | Hacker News Reader

68 new stations in the Paris area and it took forty years to get a Metro stop at DC's biggest airport.

Meanwhile Seattle is planning to maybe-kinda-sorta begrudgingly start building one single light rail line to the west side of the city in the next few decades. Maybe it'll be ready by the time I retire.

As someone who visits Seattle regularly it is painful seeing this roll out gradually.

As a Seattle resident I don’t mind it being gradual, but it is painful seeing its compromised again and again. For example, using slow light-rail vehicles on a regional length line, abandoning a centralised transfer hub, and monumental station designs that are either hundreds of feet underground or hundreds of feet in the air with escalator after escalator adding minutes to every trip.

Until a few years ago there were some dumb limitations for federal infrastructure funding that connected trains to airports

In 1993 I remember thinking that the skytrain line to UBC in the Vancouver west side would be complete by the time I needed to go to university. They started building it a couple years ago, it's in progress now and last I checked due to people in the neighborhood complaining it won't make it all the way to the university. You have to complete the trip on a bus.

I guess Seattle and Vancouver really do have a lot in common.

Just wait till you read how many (stunning) stations and lines of track in highly sanctioned (and supposedly beyond corrupt) Russia has laid in Moscow, it’s depressing. If they can do it on time and under budget, why can’t America?

Pretty sure a decent amount of the Moscow metro was built with convict labor under Stalin.

Pretty sure the OP is referring to the more relevant fact that in the last decade they've built over 100 new stations and continue to do so at a rate of about 12 new stations every year, no slave labor involved.

Is this because politicians don’t need to be concerned with reelection?

That's an odd take: where I grew up (Korea), everybody loves subway stations, and "I'll bring in more subway stations!" is a reliable way for politicians to buy more votes. Everywhere, including the most expensive districts.

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.

I'm sure it can be attributed to a lot of factors.

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

Real question: Why don't Korean car companies lobby against the metro? Same in Japan. In the US, the car companies were heavily invovled in the demolition of some mass transit (post WW2).

When an entire nation has bought on the idea that X is desirable, lobbyists can only go so far: you might as well ask why American factory owners don't lobby against Thanksgiving breaks.

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.

Stalin labor is able to travel in time?

The one big advantage single party dictatorships have is that they can build infrastructure way faster than democracies can. There is no opposition party to block spending, and no one to complain about safety issues (I'm sure a bunch of people have died building those stations and tunnels but there were no records). They can also suppress worker complaints about unpaid overtime, and they don't have to negotiate with worker's unions.

China is the same way. They can build infrastructure like nobody's business.

And not to forget, they can disown land and ignore complaints of nearby residents fairly easy.

To be honest, and this is just my opinion, when it comes to scaling up and scaling out public infrastructure I don't particularly give a damn about what the land owners think.

I guess that goes for almost everyone. Until you are the person disowned. Nimby.

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.

That's only half true. Every party has various blocks, there are still interest groups and various levels of government (city, region, national). You still need to get everybody in line, just not in the same way. Spain has a higher democracy index than the US, yet they build infrastructure cheaper and faster.

don't be depressed. Moscow is the only russian city that accomplishes that. Even Saint-Petersburg cannot do that.

Has St. Petersburg experienced enough growth to warrant big metro projects? I do remember their existing metros being beautiful and clean.

yes.

I looked it up and Saint-Petersburg opened around 7 new stations during 2010-2020. Don't know if this is a success.

It's way behind of population growth since new construction is going on like crazy. Still better than nothing and important places became accessible, such as 300 years anniversary park with its waterfront. Also shaved 30-40 minutes from a trip to Kotlin.

Or we still haven’t, depending on how you decide which is the biggest airport. BWI had slightly more passengers than Dulles last year; Dulles had slightly more flights than BWI.

BWI doesn’t have subway, but it does have light rail service to Baltimore and Amtrak service to DC.

It has light rail service to Baltimore, but the Amtrak/MARC connection to DC is many miles away from the airport, connected via an awful shuttle bus that dawdles around the woods wasting 20 minutes of your day. Plus the trains are extremely infrequent. The option exists, but only in the most nominal way.

The airport line from and to the city (RER B) is literally the worst I ever took anywhere in the world. Two issues: there's no room or equipment at people's height for luggages which is infuriating. And it's shared with the local people going to and from the North suburbs, making it very crowded at times. I don't understand why there isn't a dedicated line, or at least a dedicated express train going on the line.

If the RER B is "literally the worst [you] ever took anywhere in the world", then you mustn't have taken public transportation to the airport in many places. At least the RER B... exists! There are so many places where the airport can only be reached via car or taxi, it's insane. Many other places have just a bus. Usually a terrible bus.

Exactly. I was going to say the same exact thing.

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 have to defend Logan just a little here. The new Airport station is a lot less convenient than the old one, but the Blue Line isn't really that useful unless you live in East Boston anyway (or on the Orange Line with a transfer at State St). The Silver Line to South Station is at least as good as the bus to new Airport. Once you're there, you're on the Red Line and by extension a couple stops from the Orange or Green lines.

I think it was a worthwhile trade off.

You are not wrong about Cancun, but you can take the ADO bus downtown for about $6, or rent a car for $25/day in low season or $50/day in high season with downtown return.

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.

Yeah, remains to be seen. Too much money in it for the taxi cabal I think to give up.

But the fact that the locals don't even know what any of the bus routes mean is so hilarious to me

And those suburbs are not populated with the nicest people, it didn't really feel very safe either.

PS: To elaborate, I took this train once and 2 men got on and started a big fight. I was thinking of getting off but the surrounding area looked like a bad one.

I've never taken it since. If there was a nonstop airport express it would be lot safer (and faster)

> If there was a nonstop airport express

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...

Another project is the CDG Express : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CDG_Express

> I don't understand why there isn't a dedicated line

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.

CDG is also one of the busiest airports in the world and is used by French residents, not only tourists. If they can fill trains with airport traffic then obviously the demand is there, and that makes the other trains nicer for commuters who no longer have to step over luggage and get bonked by giant backpacks.

CDG is comparable to Heathrow. Before the pandemic, Heathrow Express carried 17k passengers/day. That's a bit over 100 passengers per departure, or about 1/6 of the capacity. It turns out that even the busiest airports in the world are barely busy enough to justify dedicated rail service.

The heathrow express is very expensive, before the elizabeth line a lot of londoners would just take the piccadilly

Dedicated airport trains are expensive, because the fixed costs are high and somebody has to pay the bills. Their passenger numbers are often naturally low, because they only make a few stops, which are not where most people are going. Metro lines and local / regional / long-distance railway lines that would exist without the airport are always more cost-effective. For many people, they are also more convenient, because they go to the right direction and stop at the right place.

The number of times I witnessed tourist's suitcases being swiped from the RER B as the doors were closing was just depressing.

Actually, about half of RER Bs are express lines which go straight from CDG to Gare du Nord without any stop. They include a large luggage storage area at floor level, in the middle of the car. When you are at the CDG station, check if your train is going to be an express train or if it will stop at all the local stations before you jump in!

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