When’s the last time you were here? It still isn’t great, but I"m sure it’s better than Kinshasa’s. It takes time to build it out, but we voted to spend the money on it, honest!
One thing that is crappy about the new rail lines plus the dedicated busway Orange line is that most of the transfer points are not well thought out, to the point of downright inconvenient. For instance, if you ride the Orange LIne busway to the North Hollywood terminus of the Red Line, you have to wait for a signal, cross busy Lankershim, and then enter the Metro station. Why couldn’t they build it so the Orange Line buses could pull up right by the ticketing level of the subway station? And then changing from the Red Line to the Gold Line at Union Station is a hassle because the Gold LIne is boarded at one of the regular platforms where the Amtrak and commuter trains pull in. So between the Red LIne and Gold LIne you have to go up about three levels, and also cover a considerable lateral distance in the process. I think there’s a project on the books though to fix that and have some Blue Line trains bypass Union Station and continue along the Gold Line.
Other than the trains, the buses are like buses everywhere. If you’re going a long way it’s slow and it sucks. For trips of a few miles, though, the buses work pretty well.
Chicago is becoming more accessible, slowly but surely. Finishing the Red/Brown line Fullerton and Belmont stations will be a significant advance. The Blue line is completely accessible (I think), but half of the downtown Orange line stops are inaccessible - a huge drag for the handicapped, but also for folks with luggage coming in from Midway. And, for some reason both stations near the Amtrak station are inaccessible, the Brown/Orange Quincy and the Blue Clinton stops.
I like NYC and Washington DC systems.
LA,CA system is the worst what you can drive in an hour takes 3 by mass transit.
In the 1930s LA had a very fast street car line and it was forced to be ripped out by FORD Goodyear and Standard Oil they should be forced to put mass transit back in at cost.It was a criminal conspiracy. LA got on the building subway routine which is beyond stupid with earthquakes methane and a huge areas to cover.
We are past the 50 percent mark on world oil reserves and if Washington doesn’t get the lead out and start the convertion away from petrol run vehicles this country could strangle on the vine. While we have solutions for ground transportation there doesn’t seem to be much in the way of a replacement for jet fuels perhaps the large dirigibles will return.
I am using an electric bike and would like to see the speed limits increased to at least 30 mph for those.
London is doing pretty well at the moment. Over the past decade or so there has been a political determination to discourage car use in the city by, in part, making a huge commitment to improved public transport services. I emphatically do not agree with all of the politicians and policies that have been part of this process, but I will happily concede that the public transport network now is the best it has even been and probably ranks with the best the rest of the world has to offer. The frequency and reliability of the various services I use all the time (bus, tram, train, tube) actually astonishes me. Whereas once I would always use my car to get in and out of the city, these days I just about never do because I can’t see the point.
The tube (underground metro system) has always been a great source of pride for Londoners, and it just seems to get better all the time. It’s true that some parts of it aren’t the prettiest, and you do sometimes think they could spend more on cleaning it up and making the place look nicer. But as a fast way to whizz around London relatively inexpensively, it’s a superb engineering and logistical achievement. The Victoria Line alone handles over 76 million passenger journeys per year. Think of trying to organise a transit system to do that, running trains through holes in the ground. The statistics look pretty impressive from where I’m sitting.
L.A.'s not so bad anymore if you live near one of the Metro stations. I use the Red Line quite often to get from the Valley to downtown. It’s pretty nice.
Best: London. It’s fairly reliable, clean, safe, and shockingly user-friendly - they take steps to help you figure out how to get where you want to go! Also, the history of the system deeply pleases my inner urban history nerd*.
Pretty good: Washington, DC - again, clean, safe, fairly reliable. Brussels has a shockingly wide-spread system (with really quite beautiful art in some of the stations). NYC is a bit intimidating just based on size, but I’ve never had a real problem with it.
Meh: Philadelphia: still no common ‘smart card’ that can be used on both SEPTA and PATCO? And I know it’s probably just confirmation bias, but…everything’s always just dirty. LA: It might be okay, I didn’t use it much, but they have absolutely the most useless public transportation website I have ever seen in my life.
*Like the time I was getting off the Tube on my way to my terrible, soul-crushing job, and I realized that the station I was walking through opened while the Civil War was still going on. Parts of the London Underground are 150 years old, and still being used daily. That’s kind of awesome.
I admit though that that’s a cool feeling. I was staying at Rotherhithe yough hostel and got to use Rotherhithe station before the East London Line was closed. I went down the stairs and saw the portal of the original Thames Tunnel, the one that opened as a footpath and is in all the engineering history books.
True. But that’s what all the shouting last spring was about: funding for the new generation of streetcars which will be accessible. These are to replace the current streetcars on the current routes, mind, not the planned extensions.
And the painful process of making all the stations accessible goes on. About half the subway stations are accessible, and they’re adding elevators to one or two a year. Slow and expensive to do. At least most of the train stations are accessible (notable exceptions include Mimico).
I love the Montreal Metro as well–the architecture kicks Toronto’s butt there. But for accessibility, the Toronto subway is way better.
I’ve been (briefly) on the Chicago subway (not any elevated portions), but I don’t know how it fares for accessibility.
Mexico City’s subway is very good. I seem to recall large Aztec and other archaeological artefacts that were unearthed on display not only in the stations, but in wall niches as you’re coming into one.
The last thing in this world that Houston needs is another street level train causing traffic problems and costing billions of dollars. Houston does not have the population density to justify rail. It never has and probably never will.
It’s partially accessible. All the buses are now accessible and the elevated stations are being renovated. Sadly, some of the ones closest to popular tourist destinations - the Art Institute, Millennium Park, Grant Park and the Amtrak station - are not. The stations on the east side of the Loop are not, and neither are the Quincy or LaSalle stops on the west side. Other than the Loop stops, the whole Brown line is accessible, same thing for the re-built Green and Orange lines. The Red line is very spotty, with some of the worst and shabbiest stations, and stretches of three or more inaccessible stations in a row, in (surprise!) some of the poorer neighborhoods. But even the Purple line, running through Evanston, has two stretches of three inaccessible stops.
I don’t know about that. I’ve been to Chicago once. I went to the Museum of Science and Industry and took the bus back to downtown. At one of the stops was a woman in a wheelchair. The driver didn’t sound too hopeful, but he tried the lift anyway. It only got her about halfway up. By that time another bus had arrived, but our driver told the woman that that one was broken, too. I don’t know how he knew that.
I got the impression that Chicago buses were handicapped accessible more in theory than in practice.
I think Johannesburg is begging for a nomination as Worst Public Transport contender, perhaps not within SA itself, but definitely in the world.
An under/over ground train system has been in the works for the past half decade, still incomplete, overbudget, over-schedule, will not be running in time for the FIFA circus next year.
There was a plan to bring out a new bus system, but so far that’s only working within the city itself - if you want to get across Gauteng you’re boned. At the moment it looks doubtful this new bus system will be operating as planned by the World Cup either.
The current municipal buses have no marked bus-stops and trying to get hold of a route schedule is like asking for state secrets. There are trains that run in southern and eastern areas, but nothing north of the city (which is where most of the commercial activity is). There is currently no public transport between the international airport and anywhere else.
All this leaves a carless traveller with one realistic option - the notorious (privately operated) taxi-bus. These vehicles follow no planned routes or schedules, few traffic rules, and are often in a state of severe dis-repair. The drivers tend to be unlicensed and are quite aggressive on the road. Taxis are affordable though, and so long as you don’t look like you’re worth more than ten bucks you should make it to your destination with all your belongings.
I think Joburg generally deserves some kind of award for least/worst planned city, anywhere.
Now that Tom Delay is out of the way, we’re going to get more light rail. Too bad we don’t have the money to elevate the tracks. Putting them undground would also be more expensive–& vulnerable to our frequent floods.
Even Houston drivers have mostly found out that it’s stupid to make a turn in front of a light rail car; the train is bugger than even their Escalades.
Lifelong New Yorker here. I’m a big fan of the subway system. I think it’s great, and I think it’s improved a lot since the bad old days in the 70s and early 80s (yes, I’m that old). But it doesn’t go absolutely everywhere. Big chunks of Queens, in particular, cannot be reached by subway. You’ve got to take the appropriate subway line to the end, and then transfer to a bus. The same is true of parts of Brooklyn, but there are fewer of those parts, and they’re smaller.
Oh, yeah, there’s Staten Island, too, but that hardly counts. Special case.
There are high-floor and the newer low-floor buses. The low-floor ones have a ramp that just flips out, while the high-floor ones have a much more complicated (and breakdown prone) system that converts the stairs into a lift (neither image of actual Chicago buses). The low-floor ramp ones are a dramatically better and simpler piece of engineering.
Too many of the supposedly accessible stations are plagued with broken elevators and doors broken through overuse by lazy jerks using the automatic doors even though they are perfectly fit. I get the distinct impression that the CTA maintenance and repair departments are understaffed.
When I was a kid, Detroit had electric streetcars. The Big 3 lobbied to get them removed. The tracks were all torn up. They were clean. The diesel buses always made me sick.
I worked for the city and found that a subway system was planned and the drawings were made. The Big 3 with a total lack of vision for the city and selfish motives, put the kabosh on that too. It is sad that we can not plan of a future.
Detroit and most suburbs are not on great terms. If we ran buses to the far suburbs we would cross several boundries. Each would argue over routes, times and cost until it becomes a waste of time. You need rapid transportation. Taking hours to go to work and then repeat going home every night ,is counterproductive. It is too late now, the money is not available any more.
The Metrolink is OK to get between the airport and downtown. Other than that, I’ve never used it. There seem to be almost yearly proposals to build a south city line, but nothing ever happens. I’ve taken a bus exactly once in the 12 years I’ve lived here. It’s just not very convenient. Driving a car is pretty much the only way to go in StL. Sad thing is, St. Louis used to embrace rail and street car travel. Now we just have touristy remnants of the glory days – like Union Station (which no longer connects to the train at all) and the Loop (which has no trace of the original street car system). I couldn’t believe it the first time I went to take an Amtrack train from StL to Chicago. The StL “station” (I use that word loosely) was basically a trailer parked under the overpass. Pathetic.
