London, Paris, Seoul Show Commuting Power of Fast Regional Rail | Hacker News Reader

London, Paris, Seoul Show Commuting Power of Fast Regional Rail

bloomberg.com

85 pointsohjeez77 comments

This article really needs to mention Japan, who pioneered and perfected the idea and its smooth integration into the subway network. It's common in Tokyo for a train to start as a limited express that travels long distances at speed, then transition into an all-stops subway, tunnel through Tokyo, and then morph back into an express for the long haul out. Some trains on the Toyoko Line do this twice: express, subway in Tokyo, express, subway again in Yokohama.

Could you share a link with more details?

Here's a pretty solid overview in the late, lamented JRTR.

https://www.ejrcf.or.jp/jrtr/jrtr63/pdf/14-21_web.pdf (PDF)

The article also notes that the Parisian RER was inspired by Tokyo, and throws casual shade by noting that public transport in Paris at 3 billion trips per year is just a small fraction of Tokyo's 15 billion trips.

> The article also notes that the Parisian RER was inspired by Tokyo, and throws casual shade by noting that public transport in Paris at 3 billion trips per year is just a small fraction of Tokyo's 15 billion trips.

The Paris metro area is 11 million, while Tokyo's is 38 million. So the difference isn't as huge as it initially seems, and I'd bet Paris will start catching up with the Grand Paris Express (4 new automated lines, the first one of which is a loop in the metro area and will be very high capacity) and all other related projects (there are like 10 different trams being built in various parts of the metro area, a new airport express, a bunch of BRTs, RER extension and hell even a cable car).

Edit: did some digging, and I'm not buying the number for Paris. Surprisingly the total number of trips isn't a number referenced in Ile de France Mobilités (the organising authority)'s Open Data [1], and they're the only ones that would have all of it, instead of just metro/some RERs/etc.

Statista say that for 2022 (year still impacted by Covid), there were 1.3 billion trips on the metro alone [2]. And the metro is a small part, RERs cover much wider territory and have much higher capacity, and there are of course a bunch of trams and a few hundred bus lines. And there are also people commuting by regular intercity trains or even TGVs, but they're a small minority.

According to OMNIL (observatory of mobility in Ile de France), there's a total of 4.1 billion trips on public transit (including metro, RER, Transilien regional trains, trams, buses and night buses) in Ile de France for 2023 [3].

4.1 billion vs 15 billion for less than 1/3 of the population means that Tokyo and Paris actually aren't all that far off.

Per capita, this makes for 394 trips per year per inhabitant for Tokyo, and 372 for Paris. Of course both cities receive lots of tourists and business travel, so this is skewed somewhat. And as I said, Paris is undergoing a massive expansion in number and length of lines, so it will surpass Tokyo in a few years (initial sections of the line 15 will open in 2025).

1 - https://data.iledefrance-mobilites.fr/pages/home/

2 - https://fr.statista.com/themes/5703/la-mobilite-en-ile-de-fr...

3 - https://omnil.fr/trafic-annuel-et-journalier

When you say "surpass Tokyo", it really depends what you mean by Tokyo's metro. A lot of the stats literally talk about the central Tokyo subway network, which consists of 13 lines [1]; when in reality that's just one amongst a huge number of other operators that comprise the Greater Tokyo rail system, arguably consisting of 121 lines, excluding trams [2]. Given that this article is about regional transit, I think that's a fair comparison.

Taking that into account, as far as number of rail lines are concerned, Paris would probably need to at least quintuple its rail lines before it gets even close.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tokyo_subway [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transport_in_Greater_Tokyo#Rai...

Number of lines is an irrelevant metric, especially when you think about the fact that there are multiple private operators in Tokyo, and thus multiple competing lines in various places. Compared to Paris where lines were always centrally planned, and thus there is only overlap if there are capacity issues (lines A, 1, to a lesser extent 14 and E).

Length of track will similarly be skewed towards the city with the overlapping competing lines.

Passenger kilometres travelled, number of trips, etc are more relevant.

Here's a somewhat morbid link that really hit home how far these Tokyo-area trains can travel in a day (suburban express to urban and back again, times four):

https://soranews24.com/2024/07/03/man-passes-away-on-tokyo-t...

Not a link, but there are many lines that do this; the poster mentions Toyoko line, which (as of now) goes

Hannō > Kotake-Mukaihara: Seibu Ikebukuro Line

Kotake-Mukaihara > Shibuya: Tokyo Metro Fukutoshin Line

Shibuya > Yokohama: Tokyu Toyoko Line

Yokohama > Motomachi-Chūkagai: Minatomirai Line

Those are all different companies operating on the same rights of way seamlessly! When you reach the through service stops, it just looks like any normal stop - there is generally no interruption in service, it just stops for some seconds and proceeds onwards like nothing happened. If you visit Tokyo you would notice that sometimes you'll see Tokyo Metro-branded trains on JR tracks, or Toei-branded trains on Keio tracks, and so on.

Many lines are like this; if you look up any of the central railway lines in Tokyo on Wikipedia, you'll see on their station charts notes about their through services. Some more instances:

Odakyu Line > Tokyo Metro Chiyoda Line > JR Joban line

Keio Line > Keio New Line > Toei Shinjuku Line

Tokyo Metro Hibiya Line > Tobu Skytree Line > Tobu Nikko Line

JR Chuo Sobu Line > Tokyo Metro Tozai Line > Tōyō Rapid Railway Line, and so on.

If only they'd give them sensible names so I could remember whether a Commuter Rapid is faster than a Special Rapid or a Limited Express. (Maybe it makes more sense in Japanese)

The Japanese order is pretty consistent: futsu (Regular) < junkyu (Semi-Express) < kyuko (Express) < kaisoku (Rapid) < tokkyu (Limited Express) < chotokkyu (Superexpress, better known as Shinkansen/bullet train). It's the random branded Nantoka Liners that throw me off.

Even shinkansen lines have different speed classes, the fastest ones weren't covered by the previous cheaper JR pass.

Tangentially related, in the Netherlands there's 2 types of train, Sprinter and InterCity.

The Sprinter is the one that stops at every small station along the way, whereas the InterCity is the one that speedily goes only to the major stations.

This has always annoyed me to an unreasonable degree

InterCity makes sense to me (inner vs inter). I’m guessing “sprinter” has more to do with being advertised for shot trips. Still silly though.

Doesn't this describe the Metropolitan line in London, which is the first one?

And that's not how the Parisian RER works - they have very few stops in the city of Paris itself, to prioritise long distance travel and make it faster (somewhat as a reaction to how unsuited the Paris metro, which has a ridiculously dense stop network, is for long distances).

> the Paris metro, which has a ridiculously dense stop network, is for long distances

I think it's interesting how the most recent line (n° 14) has way less stops, instead focusing on covering more distance

Yep, because a big part of the drive for it is to reduce the overcrowding on the lines 1 and A, and thus it needed to be as fast as possible to actually be competitive with them.

Funnily this was so successful this led to overcrowding on the 14, hence the extension of the line E to take some of the traffic from the 1, A and 14; and the 14 itself was extended to connect one of the airports and a bunch of suburbs under heavy redevelopment.

Yes line 14 is very much an express link. The original project name was METEOR, which was an acronym for “rapid east/west metro” (METro Est Ouest Rapide) (although it’s more of a south-east to north-west link).

The Metropolitan line stock only has a top speed of 100kmh and I would reckon it doesn't even reach that

The TFL service, the actual Metropolitan Line, only goes from London to Amersham. It used to go to Aylesbury, which is at least a moderate sized town, but it hasn't since electrification last century.

Amersham is a 13th century market town. It's not tiny, but it's certainly not a city.

Now, there are mainline services running on the same physical rails which do move passengers between London and other cities, but those don't turn into a stopping underground service, the trains leave those shared rails inside London and run to a terminus station, Marylebone. Marylebone is an Underground station, but only in the same sense as say King's Cross or Waterloo - the Underground is separate though located in the same warren of buildings and tunnels.

The Elizabeth Line is closer to the model explained here, running a fast long distance service, a metro service and then back to fast long distance. Reading isn't a city but it's more significant than Amersham and those are core London services not a terminus with the option to change.

The Elizabeth line doesn't run a particularly fast long-distance service - it stops at all stations [1] between Reading and London.

If you wanted to go from Reading to somewhere in central London, it would be faster to take a non-stop express which terminates at the edge of central London and then change onto the Elizabeth line than to take it all the way. The service to Reading is more about providing a local service between Reading and its surrounding small towns.

[1] except Iver

> The Elizabeth Line is closer to the model explained here, running a fast long distance service, a metro service and then back to fast long distance

It only has 5 stops with generous distance between them in London/Zone 1, which is equivalent to Parisian RERs. Not really what I would call metro service.

Interesting how both sibling comments (by sofixa and twic) complain about opposite things: that Elizabeth is not a metro service (i.e. it's fast) and the other that it's not fast, it stops at all stations (i.e. it's a metro).

It's interesting because both are true: outside of central london is a metro service, in central london is a fast service. The parent op explains it pretty well in the last paragraph:

> running a fast long distance service, a metro service and then back to fast long distance.

the met has express services that skip stations

London also created Thameslink in the 1980s by linking existing suburban rail north and south of the city. It's not as fancy as the new Elizabeth line, but it did make a big difference to a lot of people commuting to the City of London, saving them the extra time of changing from rail to tube.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thameslink

Well, not sure if exactly this but it sounds like what I am occasionally using to commute to Geneva, Switzerland. Regional train, traveling up to 120kmh (trains have same speed limits as cars here apparently), then enters the Geneva and stops in like 6 places in its newly-built 'subway' (it doesn't have a lot of stops, but then again Geneva is tiny compared to megacities mentioned).

I mean it covers all the stops there are in the city, of which with single line in small city there aren't that many. And then goes to neighboring France, and on the way back picks up french commuters coming daily for (much better paid) work.

There are no dedicated subway trains per se that I am aware of, just this. Helps me a lot to get close to my workplace, although drawback of this is long stops, I guess due to being proper big double decker swiss train and overall a massive behemoth.

> Trains arrive as often as every three minutes during peak hours along the central spines of both the Elizabeth Line and the RER Line A.

I've taken the RER A everyday for few years (both and after automation), and that frequency combined with its size still puts me in awe.

My usual connection with RER A, I arrive at the middle of the train platform, and my next connection is at the end of the train. Statistically I reach the end of the platform before the train arrives maybe 5% of the time?

The frequency is so high that it takes more time to get at the right place of the train than to wait.

It's almost at the level of "don't think of the train, just your walking route".

(I'm saying almost because incidents still happen, and RER A can still suffer of "trains are running slowly because they are overcrowded because trains are running slowly" negative feedback loops, though it's usually resolved within 15m)

Took it for a few years too, I think the frequency can be as much as every 90 seconds.

Yep, I live on it and 2 minutes is underselling it.

On the central trunk frequency in rush hour is a departure every 90s, which means there's almost constantly a train at the station.

This reminds of the way the S-Bahn system works through central Berlin. Several different lines all converge on the same route through the heart of the city, providing "adequate" service intervals to their actual endpoints, but as a side effect, 90 sec departures in the city itself.

It's like a magic trick!

That's not how the RERs work. The only shared track between any RER lines is the short tunnel for the B and D lines between Chatelet - Les Halles and Gare Du Nord. There have been many plans about doubling it, but it would be extremely expensive because it's under one of the densest and oldest parts of the city, and cross multiple metro lines, and connecting to two of the largest transit hubs in Europe and the world outside of East Asia.

Every other line has dedicated tracks. There can and often are branches, but usually they're 2-3 at most per "side" of the central trunk, with the exception of the unwieldly spaghetti that used to be the RER C between the simplification of it, which reduced it to three branches per side as well.

* RER A in question has two branches to the east, and three to the west.

* B has 2.5 to the south and 2 to the north

* D has 2-3 to the south and one to the north

* E has two to the east, and for now one to the west (I think there will be 1.5 in the end when it's all finished)

So not at all comparable to the S-Bahns that more often than not get all forced into a single tunnel resulting in atrocious frequency on the branches. As an example, frenquency on the branches in rush hour on the A is 5 minutes at most on the least frequented branches. At the worst of times, late at night on the least frequented branches of the least frequented lines you're looking into 20-30 minutes frequency, which isn't great, but isn't terrible either for a station in the middle of nowhere far away on the C, D or E.

> 5 minutes at most on the least frequented branches

I suppose I should say at this point that I live in the USA. And not only in the USA, but in New Mexico :)

> late at night on the least frequented branches of the least frequented lines you're looking into 20-30 minutes frequency

Ditto. This doesn't sound that different from what I remember growing up on the Central Line coming in from the NE of London. Doesn't sound that bad, though more is generally better, I suppose.

Yes, but they realized that at that point the problem is no longer the trains but people. You can't reliably board people that fast. IIRC, they moved from theoretical every 2 minutes to theoretical 2 minutes 30, and largely improve their throughput. But yes when there is congestion trains can go faster than 2 minutes 30 when relevant.

Thanks to the SACEM automation system (with dynamic blocks) you can have a train arriving at the platform while the previous one is departing, it's pretty impressive.

Here's an example... from 12 years ago: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oCj0yQacKVE

Nowadays these older trains have been deprecated and only double-deckers run the line.

Not sure about RER, but if my memory is good, during RATP strikes in 2019, the automated line 1 was running every 60 seconds or so.

Paris has such a good public transport system, and now also cycling infrastructure, that something like 50% of young adults (<30y) don't even have a driving license !

AFAIK the world record for this is held by Moscow, where some lines run every 80 seconds in regular schedules operation. That's departure to departure, and it's virtually impossible to go below that, because the speed of humans boarding becomes the limiting factor. Some automated lines claim 75 seconds as a theoretical limit, but AFAIK nobody actually does this.

Intersting, I've just googled a bit, and Ligne 1 in Paris was running every 90 seconds in peak hours, most other lines are around 100-110.

horrible to come back to the states after becoming acquainted with the paris metro & friends

the further away you are in your commute in the RER A the worse it is. the segments handled by SNCF (beyond nanterre) are a real pain where they left me stranded when they broke down and they do that more often than you would like. bus, uber, etc no longer work at that moment because well all the passengers flock to them and they don't have the capacity. I happened so often that ended moving to the center of paris just to avoid it.

It's due to a lack of maintenance in the 90s. Here a video in french that show why there is so much maintenance work to do right now: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hWNc4QgHrQ0

This was a great read. As an American who is currently living in France, I'm always blown away by how easy it is for me to get just about anywhere via train.

America is way less dense than France and Europe at large. Only in BoWash such an high density network would make sense

Almost 2/3 of Americans live in states with population density comparable to Europe. The real issue is that the density is too uniform to make rail a viable form of transportation. If you take a major American city and the surrounding suburbs and drop it in Europe, it will likely cover several cities, their suburbs, and rural land between the cities.

As @jltsiren noted, this is a false equivalence. You need to compare the population densities where most people actually live, not overall density. When you do that, a very different picture emerges.

I don't think this argument really holds up in a world where China built twenty-eight thousand miles of HSR in two decades, a lot of it connecting disparate urban areas much like what the US has:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_high-speed_railway_lin...

Those lines generate insane losses just to operate and maintain them

Odd to see the Elizabeth Line (Crossrail) presented in such a positive light.

As an engineering project Crossrail became famous for being repeatedly delayed (eventually opening four years late) and many billions over budget.

Since opening the Elizabeth Line has been beset by high numbers of service cancellations and poor punctuality (usually blamed on having to share track outside the central tunnel section with other operators).

It's not perfect but better than the older alternative. Londoners will always grumble about transport, because they pay a lot of money and commuting is a pain no matter how nice the trains are.

Despite this it's been generally fantastic, has air conditioning, now has mobile service, and has provided incredible commuting and airport access.

Once it opened and started running, I haven't heard anyone complain about the budget overruns or delayed opening date.

By most accounts the Elizabeth line in its operational phase has been a great success.

According to the ORR's (Office of Road and Rail) first annual report after opening the central section of the Elizabeth line, passenger numbers have exceeded their "post-pandemic optimistic scenario" and the line is on course to be revenue-positive within a few years.

More details in this London Reconnections post here: https://www.londonreconnections.com/2023/the-state-of-rail-b...

Only complaint I have is that it's already so popular that trains are absolutely packed!

Nobody uses it anymore because the trains are so full.

Well there were a lot of nobodies including me using it last night.

As someone who lives on the lizzy line, it's definitely far from perfect. It is improving however, and I cannot overstate the blessing that it has been on my life.

Toronto has some of the pieces in place to make this happen with the GO Train network, particularly the Lakeshore lines that stretch from Oshawa (60km east) to Hamilton (70km west). Unfortunately a lot of it hinges on electrification, which has been mired in administrative back and forth for decades and even the most ambitious plans still only call for 15 minute service:

https://www.metrolinx.com/en/projects-and-programs/go-expans...

Fare integration is another important piece— being able to jump on the GO to get out to a far-flung subway station like Main or Dundas West and continue your trip from there is a really nice prospect, but having pay separately for it kind of kills the vibe.

FWIW, literally the first sentence on the page is wrong:

> An Elizabeth Line train at the Shenfield station west of London.

Shenfield is east of London!

It feels odd to talk about the US without bringing up BART, which has comparable characteristics to the Elizabeth Line (the yellow line is over 60 miles long, for instance, and headway through the core area is under 5 minutes at peak).

Where is this "Under 5 minutes at peak" ? I see about 6tph scheduled on BART's busiest line at rush hour. The Elizabeth Line's core runs 24tph which is what I'd consider an actual metro service - No reason to schedule my arrival, normal operating fluctuations dominate attempts to get there in a timely fashion so just rock up and board the next train.

"headway through the core area"

The core area of West Oakland, SF, and Daly City has service from all lines, so it's the sum of tph of all lines.

Of course, that does not help you at all for commuting outside the core area - which is where the length comes into play. The GP wasn't wrong, just disingenuous.

If you’re going to take that view, then you need to be comparing the BART system to the entire London Metro system (The Tube, overground, Lizzie line, and suburban rail). There are many services that run parallel to the Lizzie line in central London. But they don’t share track, because that’s a terrible way to operate a metro service.

If you take that approach, then BART looks like a toy compared to its equivalent in London.

If you're making that comparison then you need to count the frequency of Shenfield services separately from Abbey Wood services.

On different lines?

By that definition there's about 300 trains per hour in the core of London across each underground line, elizabeth and thameslink. That's in each direction.

That's one train departing from the core of London every 6 seconds, before you even consider surface rail.

I think you have a different definition of "different lines".

BART is like a tree. The branches join together into one trunk. It's shared tracks into the same stations. So measuring the frequency of all the lines makes sense, as long as you only want to move between stations on the trunk.

London is not like that (if I understand correctly). Elizabeth and Thameslink don't share tracks between common stations.

So London has much higher aggregate than BART. But the statement about BART's train frequency on the trunk is not a nonsense statement.

Some of London's Underground lines do share track along some of their length, like BART, but overall this is an exception rather than a rule, e.g. some of the District and Circle overlap, and indeed the Metropolitan also shares with the Circle.

And I agree that for the purpose of a trip within this core, you'd only care about that 5 minute wait, which is pretty reasonable, much as often passengers won't care if this is a District Line train or a Circle, since the stop they're going to is served by both.

Looking at the service pattern it seems the bart "routes" are more like separate branches of the same line.

In reality there's not much difference between the Hammersmith/City, Circle, and District lines, especially the wimbleware part of the district line.

OK, so it's about 12tph on bart on the core stations? Disappointingly difficult to get a map of bart which wasn't geographic.

So all the lines share track from Daly City to West Oakland, with some extending to Millbrae, and then branches on the east side of the bay?

From the map, it looks similar to the Picadilly Line, or Central line, or as mentioned upthread the Metropolitan line, but BART has 12tph on the core, where those services have twice that. Each "line" is just a branch on a core service.

The longest run is 53 miles (there's a completely separate service), which is a bit more than the Picadilly line (46) but not massively, and the frequency is under half that of the Picadilly. I think it's fair to compare BART with a single London Underground line (like the Picadilly, or the Central), just with half the frequency.

Another analogy might be the NYC subway, where in Manhattan you have lines like 1/2/3, A/C/E, B/D/F/M, N/R/W etc. that share a number of stops in southern Manhattan, so along the 1/2/3 or A/C/E, the sum of tph matters... but as they break from that "trunk" in the boroughs, or at the ends of Manhattan, the individual lines matters.

I don't use BART a lot--mostly from SFO into the city--but I don't schedule my arrival. Pretty much walk up. Contrast that with actual commuter rail in my city which is pretty much useless for an evening event as I think there are two trains scheduled after around 8pm.

BART and the Lizzie line aren’t even vaguely comparable.

The Lizzie line is just one line in London. The closest comparable line on the BART system is the yellow line.

The Yellow line seems to operate a maximum of 5 trains/hour, over a distance of 62 miles, at a max speed of 70mph, and still uses a fixed block system.

The Lizzie line in comparison operates 24 trains/hour in its central core, has a total distance of 73miles, a max speed of 90mph, and operates an almost fully automated moving block system in its central core (that how it can achieve 24tph).

The two systems aren’t even in the same league when it comes to capacity, speed or capability.

It's the closest thing the USA has got... which isn't much. "Will the US get on board?" Maybe in a century or two...

BART is primarily a suburban commuter train. Borne out by the fact that ever since the pandemic when downtown San Francisco offices reached record vacancy rates, BART ridership is way down, because of much fewer commuters.

This article's sub-headline is a good example of Betteridge's Law of Headlines. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betteridge's_law_of_headlines

What commute? I seriously hope you guys didn't return to the office...

Some people enjoy working in an office, and (so long as you aren't imposing your desires on anyone else) that's just fine.

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