I was a Londoner for 20 years and Thameslink (north to south through running discussed in the article) always felt special but I'd never looked into its history. To be able to get on a 'proper train' in Brixton and then run right through to Kentish Town or Luton was kindof amazing. And it was very fast, I'd try and incorporate it into journeys where possible. Like, if you were going somewhere and realised you could do it via Thameslink it felt like a bonus.
Crossrail (aka Elizabeth line) was being talked about or built the whole two decades I lived there but opened after I left.
derr1 · 1h ago
Through running in Tokyo is next level. You can catch a train from the airport, which then turns into a subway, then later on it becomes a train again.
anileated · 24m ago
> a train from the airport, which then turns into a subway, then later on it becomes a train again.
This is confusing.
Subway is already a kind of train.
You mean to say that the train partly runs underground? That is pretty common. I actually can't remember any city where airport connecting train does not do the same at some point or another.
What's kinda interesting is does that train classify as metro transit that goes slightly beyond city to airport and such (making many stops all the way) or an distance intercity train that happens to stop both at airport and city? Or does it change this classification? That would be actually unusual.
bluGill · 2m ago
Most subways have move above ground sections than underground. That is why the article uses the term "metro" not subway - it better describes something useful about the system. A Metro is a system that runs completely separate from other traffic - this forces bridges or tunnels where other traffic needs to cross it.
4hg4ufxhy · 4m ago
Typically trains are powered from above, and subways are powered from the rails. Perhaps this is the distinction, rather than running underground.
ethbr1 · 2h ago
>> In Germany, Britain, America, and France, the period of explosive growth of railways mainly took place in the mid-to-late nineteenth century.
There's a curious European vs American distinction that the article doesn't address -- many modern, large American cities are younger than that.
Especially southern and western ones that grew up on rail lines.
There, the only thing that would be needed is the political will to fund and build new bypass, outside-the-city freight track to free up the contiguous in-city rights of way.
steveBK123 · 2h ago
Yes that's one of the big distinctions.
Even American cities that existed then are drastically different and larger than they were back then.
I mean even in NYC in 1850s, 42nd street was practically "uptown" and what we now call "uptown" was farmland. Brooklyn & Queens which are now the population centers of NYC with ~2.5M residents each had a grand total of under 200K back then. At the time Manhattan had 500K residents (2.5x BK&QNS 200K) while it has 1.7M now (1/3 the ~5M across BK&QNS now).
So the population center even within our biggest city has completely shifted from the time our railroads were built out.
senkora · 1h ago
You may enjoy this video showing the expansion of NYC over time from the first Dutch settlement to the present day: https://youtu.be/f6U7YFPrz6Y
1842 is at 2:55 in the video.
porridgeraisin · 1h ago
Yep this is what happened in my home city in india as well. Our property which my ancestors purchased for dirt cheap on the outskirts of the city is now smack in the center and valued higher. Populations have also shifted.
We always had a good train network around here. When the shift happened though, the "hub" stations have not really moved. Today the main stations are still where the old center of town was. As a result, taking the train for me is a bit like going to the airport you're gonna have to take a 30min trip(without traffic) and 60min trip(with traffic) or a 30min metro (crowded) or a 45min (but less punctual and gets full too often) bus/suburban train to reach the station.
As I type this, the city keeps expanding on one side, so in a decade's time, there will be a new city center, closer to the airport, but further and further away from the hub station. I'll have to wait and see if they change the hub station to a more central one at that point.
ethbr1 · 1h ago
Transit is one place where I'll say authoritarianism and central planning are superior.
1. Identify direction of expansion
2. Buy / eminent domain land
3. Build transit
4. Develop area
The laissez faire model of urban planning sucks, because it acquires necessary infrastructure after the land needed has already increased in price.
steveBK123 · 1h ago
Not just increased in price, but the area is now filled with NIMBYs who would benefit and yet will whinge .. therefore immobilizing any attempt to improve transit.
immibis · 6m ago
Well that explains why Kassel Hauptbahnhof is a terminus station, while the bigger and busier central station is Kassel-Wilhelmshöhe.
logifail · 3h ago
If anyone's interested, there's a massive project in Munich to expand capacity, improve performance, and reduce journey times on the suburban lines that run through the centre:
> To upgrade the S-Bahn system and to reduce the traffic burden on the existing core line, two new tracks will be built parallel to it between the stations of Laim in the west of the city and Leuchtenbergring in the east, covering a total of about 10 kilometres. The core of the new east-west connection is a 7-kilometre tunnel linking Munich's main station Hauptbahnhof with the eastern hub Ostbahnhof.
ta12653421 · 3h ago
jahahaha, you should have also mentioned that zwei Stammstrecke will make it horrible long to switch from platform 1 to platform 2, through elevators 40m up + down on each side, forcing you to go completely upwards, and then going down again.
Apart from fire security, most people will just hate it :-)
(Source: Projektplan / SZ.de)
logifail · 2h ago
I'd not really considered connections or which trains which run in which track/tunnel once it's finished(!)
> zwei Stammstrecke will make it horrible long to switch from platform 1 to platform 2, through elevators 40m up + down on each side, forcing you to go completely upwards, and then going down again
Are the connections between the faster and the slower lines going to be equally bad at all five connection points (Laim, Hbf, Marienhof or -platz, Ostbahnhof and Leuchtenbergring)?
DiscourseFan · 51m ago
That 1943 map of proposed through-running routes for London...
Anyone who lives on the outskirts of London near a big commuter station knows that pain: 15 minutes to get into the centre, and another 25 to get anywhere else.
One problem I've encountered in Munich is they essentially have a single trunk that runs through the centre. In the case of problems on one line you can often find multiple other lines are also affected. London always seems to have a redundancy in the case of a line being unusable.
I suppose this is more a problem of sharing track than through running, but I just found it funny to see Munich public transport described so positively.
weiliddat · 3h ago
> I just found it funny to see Munich public transport described so positively
Been living in Munich for the past 9 years, with the exception of the S-Bahn, it's still very good. I've never felt the need to own a car (only the occasional rental for moving or trips to more remote areas). Anecdotally, I know colleagues and friends who also make do without one, even those with kids.
Only city I've experienced better is Singapore (where I lived for ~7 years), though people complain all the same :D
bayindirh · 51m ago
I once read an anecdote:
In an airport, people complained that luggage delivery was so slow after landings. Airport measured the time, agreed with passengers and increased workforce to reduce waiting times substantially, but the complaints didn't reduce.
Instead, they routed passengers through a longer path, so their luggage was waiting for them when they arrived, and nobody complained about the longer walk.
We, the humans, are interesting.
devilbunny · 5m ago
> nobody complained about the longer walk
I've never formally complained about luggage arrival delays, but I have definitely noticed long walks. Some ridiculously so. I suppose I should complain, but to whom?
SideburnsOfDoom · 2h ago
> London always seems to have a redundancy in the case of a line being unusable.
The London underground is indeed a redundant spiderweb. But the article focuses more on mainline trains, which are much more constrained.
The only way right through central London for these trains was north-to-south, the Snow Hill tunnel: Kings Cross -> Farringdon -> City Thameslink -> Blackfriars -> South of the river. This can only be a bottleneck.
But now there is the Elizabeth line east-to-west as well.
Havoc · 3h ago
There is also an element of critical mass - a city needs to get to a stage where it is a reasonable decision to not have a car.
resource_waste · 2h ago
People have no idea how much cars benefited the lower and created the middle class.
Instead of having an hour commute to move a few miles, you could have a half hour commute to move 30 miles.
This made land ownership possible for this group of people. Low value land that was too far from work was now usable for those same jobs.
Whenever I see propositions of removing lanes from freeways, I think how that benefits only rich people and landlords. I can afford to live near my company because I'm well-off, but I know plenty of people making 40-60k/yr that have plots of land 30-60 minutes from their jobs. They would otherwise be renting apartments 1/3 of the size of their home.
jobs_throwaway · 6m ago
> you could have a half hour commute to move 30 miles
only by ignoring the externalities of traffic and highways. If everyone tries to do this, it doesn't work. Hence the need for public transit
coldtea · 2h ago
>This made land ownership possible for this group of people. Low value land that was too far from work was now usable for those same jobs.
The same is the case with public transport where available and where the city is built to support it. Which is what the poor people and rising middle class used -- especially as they didn't afford a car until the 1930s (and in places like New York not even then, though they still managed to turn from piss poor Italian, Jewish, Greek, Bulgarian, Irish, etc immigrants to middle class).
lm28469 · 2h ago
It benefited business owners more than anything... wasting hours of your life in a fucking cage you probably pay a loan and interests on because without it you wouldn't even be honoured to slave your life away isn't anywhere close to "benefiting the lower class". Car is freedom, war is peace... people can't even tell how brainwashed they are by the car industry.
prmoustache · 2h ago
There is no need for a car to do that.
I've lived 40km from my office, commuting by bicycle (there was an highway and a railway available as well). I was super fit at the time. I've lived 100km from my office, taking a mix of train + bicycle. Despite being a wee bit slower than using a car, I could do something ( or sleep/nap) in the train, so that was better time spent.
Anyway you look at it, even when it is faster, using a car in an area that has decent public transport is a time that is not well spent over different modes of transportation and you don't really gain time if you think of it thorously.
nkrisc · 2h ago
You biked 50km after 8+ hours of physical labor?
SideburnsOfDoom · 3m ago
[delayed]
prmoustache · 1h ago
That was a typo, it was actually 40km but yes, and I enjoyed it.
It was basically free 2h40 of fitness every day.
nkrisc · 1h ago
What kind of work did you do? I would personally not look forward to a 2h40m bike ride after doing physical labor all day. Impressive.
piva00 · 36m ago
40km is more like a 1h20m-1h40m ride on a slightly above average pace (25km/h-30km/h), it shouldn't take 2h40m to ride 40km even on a very slow pace (15km/h).
squircle · 2h ago
> Instead of having an hour commute to move a few miles, you could have a half hour commute to move 30 miles.
Traveling faster than what the human body is capable of on its own feels like time travel to me. Horse, buggy, car, whatever... like stepping into or activating a warp bubble where your consciousness arrives at a place faster than humanly possible. Similarly, having access to information or experience (different manners of vehicles) is potentially a huge advantage or major pitfall. (Perhaps why some ancient maps indicate, "here be dragons!")
Inversely, moving slow when others are traveling fast allows you to witness where those paths lead without having to go down proverbial rabbit holes.
inglor_cz · 1h ago
"you could have a half hour commute to move 30 miles."
Well unless half a million people try to commute along you during the same rush hour, with their commute ending in the wider centre of an old city which cannot absorb all the cars.
In Prague it is quite common to spend half an hour to cross the outer 25 miles of your journey and spend another half an hour in the traffic jam of the last 5 miles.
If it wasn't for the suburban trains and buses which alleviate the pressure, that last 5 miles would be one huge gridlock moving at the speed of a slow walk.
piva00 · 2h ago
I don't see how having a decent public transportation network is any different.
I live in a suburb of Stockholm, 15km away from the city centre but it takes me only some 35 min to get to the central station on the metro, I have the option to take a 10 min bus to the nearest rail station that connects me to a different part of the city so if I need to go there I can choose the commuter train. Not only that but I do get local trains taking me to different towns southwards, also a direct connection to the airport and other towns northwards, and a connection to the long distance rail that can take me to the other coast, or south to Malmö/Copenhagen.
My suburb only exists because the metro station was built here, around the station there's a small centre with shops for daily needs, all of that was designed prior the existence of residential buildings to support the city's expansion, around the station are the higher-density buildings with apartments while I live some 5-10 min away in a townhouse; and this suburb is considered a poorer area of the Stockholm metropolitan region, not requiring a car was a must.
SideburnsOfDoom · 2h ago
> People have no idea how much cars benefited the lower and created the middle class.
Yes, and with reference to London, one of the cities discussed, cars are now literally poisoning us.
> The most economically disadvantaged are often those worst affected by air pollution, particularly because they often live in less desirable locations, such as near busy roads. But they are conversely least likely to own a car or use them as much and therefore emit the least pollution.
If cars are so great all around, ever think why "near busy roads" are "less desirable locations" ?
suddenlybananas · 2h ago
You can take suburban trains in Paris to well over 50 km outside of the city center.
prmoustache · 1h ago
There are people taking the high speed train from places such as Dijon every day to go to Paris. That is a +300km commute in 1h40 that would take around 3h30 to 4h by car with no traffic jam.
xnx · 2h ago
This is true. The rich would like to relegate the poors to public transportation to keep the roads clear and keep undesirables out of their neighborhoods.
coldtea · 2h ago
The "that's an advantage for the rich" has an easy fix: ban all city traffic except commercial vehicles for delivery of goods, ambulances, etc.
A good public transport is a boon to the poor and even middle class. In Europe, in cities where it's available, even the rich (the top 10%-5%, not the top 0.01%) routinely take it.
TeMPOraL · 1h ago
We do need to do something about the "holiday conundrum", for lack of a better name. That it, there are times during the year, most notably around Christmas, where suddenly everyone in the city gets time off and wants to travel to visit their family out in the middle of nowhere - and that also includes the operators of public and commercial transportation networks. You have a sudden influx of commuters at the same time as transport service capacity drops to a fraction of the normal.
Not sure how to handle this short of abolishing holidays entirely
(Not necessarily a bad idea - too many things in society already run in synch where they shouldn't; see e.g. most people working 9-5, including services all those people need, so there's e.g. no good time to go to a dentist or visit a bank without taking a day off at work.)
jobs_throwaway · 4m ago
I am rich and I want to be able to take public transit to work
davexunit · 2h ago
Here's to hoping that Andy Byford can make through running happen at NY Penn.
As of right now, it would just be pork. The traffic patterns it would enable are very low volume.
In the long term, it's anyone's guess. My fear is it would be another Airtrain.
inglor_cz · 1h ago
This is being discussed in Prague, but it is going to be very expensive.
The city is very much not-flat, with significant altitude differences, a lot of already existing infrastructure under the surface (three extant lines of metro with fourth one being built, some road tunnels, parking spaces etc.), and a major river must be crossed. Plus, the rocks underneath are fractured and finicky. It isn't a nice big slab of granite, but a mixture of sediments, water and various primordial rocks. Quite hellish to put tunnels into.
deepvibrations · 4h ago
Imagine if Elon had put all that money to work on mass transit solutions instead of cars for each and every person, along with tunnels for those cars. Of course, you will never make the same riches, but interesting to imagine how different the impact might be.
Both of these companies contributed approximately nothing to the advancement of Mass Transit.
sgerenser · 3h ago
Arguably the Hyperloop was publicized specifically for the opposite: to stoke opposition to traditional high speed rail, while at the same time knowing it is completely impractical.
FL33TW00D · 3h ago
Why rely on one man?
presentation · 3h ago
The goal is not to rely on one man, but regardless of what you think of him, he has proven to be very effective at bringing big ideas to reality.
No point in imagining that whatsoever. Just like imagining Bezos paying taxes or Trump not lying.
lionkor · 3h ago
Or like imagining people on the internet not make everything about American politics
absurdo · 5h ago
I foresee in the near future, in addition to the archive.is link (which is not needed here thankfully), a summary.is link will be present (which is needed here unfortunately).
It’s an okay article but there’s no real magic to it. It amounts to wordy trivia and you spend your time reading it as I have at your peril. Zero-calorie content is easily forgotten.
dkdbejwi383 · 4h ago
It’s ok to not like trains. Just read something else instead.
Crossrail (aka Elizabeth line) was being talked about or built the whole two decades I lived there but opened after I left.
This is confusing.
Subway is already a kind of train.
You mean to say that the train partly runs underground? That is pretty common. I actually can't remember any city where airport connecting train does not do the same at some point or another.
What's kinda interesting is does that train classify as metro transit that goes slightly beyond city to airport and such (making many stops all the way) or an distance intercity train that happens to stop both at airport and city? Or does it change this classification? That would be actually unusual.
There's a curious European vs American distinction that the article doesn't address -- many modern, large American cities are younger than that.
Especially southern and western ones that grew up on rail lines.
There, the only thing that would be needed is the political will to fund and build new bypass, outside-the-city freight track to free up the contiguous in-city rights of way.
I mean even in NYC in 1850s, 42nd street was practically "uptown" and what we now call "uptown" was farmland. Brooklyn & Queens which are now the population centers of NYC with ~2.5M residents each had a grand total of under 200K back then. At the time Manhattan had 500K residents (2.5x BK&QNS 200K) while it has 1.7M now (1/3 the ~5M across BK&QNS now).
So the population center even within our biggest city has completely shifted from the time our railroads were built out.
1842 is at 2:55 in the video.
We always had a good train network around here. When the shift happened though, the "hub" stations have not really moved. Today the main stations are still where the old center of town was. As a result, taking the train for me is a bit like going to the airport you're gonna have to take a 30min trip(without traffic) and 60min trip(with traffic) or a 30min metro (crowded) or a 45min (but less punctual and gets full too often) bus/suburban train to reach the station.
As I type this, the city keeps expanding on one side, so in a decade's time, there will be a new city center, closer to the airport, but further and further away from the hub station. I'll have to wait and see if they change the hub station to a more central one at that point.
https://www.2.stammstrecke-muenchen.de/home.html
> To upgrade the S-Bahn system and to reduce the traffic burden on the existing core line, two new tracks will be built parallel to it between the stations of Laim in the west of the city and Leuchtenbergring in the east, covering a total of about 10 kilometres. The core of the new east-west connection is a 7-kilometre tunnel linking Munich's main station Hauptbahnhof with the eastern hub Ostbahnhof.
(Source: Projektplan / SZ.de)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trunk_line_2_(Munich_S-Bahn)#/...
> zwei Stammstrecke will make it horrible long to switch from platform 1 to platform 2, through elevators 40m up + down on each side, forcing you to go completely upwards, and then going down again
Are the connections between the faster and the slower lines going to be equally bad at all five connection points (Laim, Hbf, Marienhof or -platz, Ostbahnhof and Leuchtenbergring)?
Anyone who lives on the outskirts of London near a big commuter station knows that pain: 15 minutes to get into the centre, and another 25 to get anywhere else.
I suppose this is more a problem of sharing track than through running, but I just found it funny to see Munich public transport described so positively.
Been living in Munich for the past 9 years, with the exception of the S-Bahn, it's still very good. I've never felt the need to own a car (only the occasional rental for moving or trips to more remote areas). Anecdotally, I know colleagues and friends who also make do without one, even those with kids.
Only city I've experienced better is Singapore (where I lived for ~7 years), though people complain all the same :D
In an airport, people complained that luggage delivery was so slow after landings. Airport measured the time, agreed with passengers and increased workforce to reduce waiting times substantially, but the complaints didn't reduce.
Instead, they routed passengers through a longer path, so their luggage was waiting for them when they arrived, and nobody complained about the longer walk.
We, the humans, are interesting.
I've never formally complained about luggage arrival delays, but I have definitely noticed long walks. Some ridiculously so. I suppose I should complain, but to whom?
The London underground is indeed a redundant spiderweb. But the article focuses more on mainline trains, which are much more constrained.
The only way right through central London for these trains was north-to-south, the Snow Hill tunnel: Kings Cross -> Farringdon -> City Thameslink -> Blackfriars -> South of the river. This can only be a bottleneck.
But now there is the Elizabeth line east-to-west as well.
Instead of having an hour commute to move a few miles, you could have a half hour commute to move 30 miles.
This made land ownership possible for this group of people. Low value land that was too far from work was now usable for those same jobs.
Whenever I see propositions of removing lanes from freeways, I think how that benefits only rich people and landlords. I can afford to live near my company because I'm well-off, but I know plenty of people making 40-60k/yr that have plots of land 30-60 minutes from their jobs. They would otherwise be renting apartments 1/3 of the size of their home.
only by ignoring the externalities of traffic and highways. If everyone tries to do this, it doesn't work. Hence the need for public transit
The same is the case with public transport where available and where the city is built to support it. Which is what the poor people and rising middle class used -- especially as they didn't afford a car until the 1930s (and in places like New York not even then, though they still managed to turn from piss poor Italian, Jewish, Greek, Bulgarian, Irish, etc immigrants to middle class).
I've lived 40km from my office, commuting by bicycle (there was an highway and a railway available as well). I was super fit at the time. I've lived 100km from my office, taking a mix of train + bicycle. Despite being a wee bit slower than using a car, I could do something ( or sleep/nap) in the train, so that was better time spent.
Anyway you look at it, even when it is faster, using a car in an area that has decent public transport is a time that is not well spent over different modes of transportation and you don't really gain time if you think of it thorously.
It was basically free 2h40 of fitness every day.
Traveling faster than what the human body is capable of on its own feels like time travel to me. Horse, buggy, car, whatever... like stepping into or activating a warp bubble where your consciousness arrives at a place faster than humanly possible. Similarly, having access to information or experience (different manners of vehicles) is potentially a huge advantage or major pitfall. (Perhaps why some ancient maps indicate, "here be dragons!")
Inversely, moving slow when others are traveling fast allows you to witness where those paths lead without having to go down proverbial rabbit holes.
Well unless half a million people try to commute along you during the same rush hour, with their commute ending in the wider centre of an old city which cannot absorb all the cars.
In Prague it is quite common to spend half an hour to cross the outer 25 miles of your journey and spend another half an hour in the traffic jam of the last 5 miles.
If it wasn't for the suburban trains and buses which alleviate the pressure, that last 5 miles would be one huge gridlock moving at the speed of a slow walk.
I live in a suburb of Stockholm, 15km away from the city centre but it takes me only some 35 min to get to the central station on the metro, I have the option to take a 10 min bus to the nearest rail station that connects me to a different part of the city so if I need to go there I can choose the commuter train. Not only that but I do get local trains taking me to different towns southwards, also a direct connection to the airport and other towns northwards, and a connection to the long distance rail that can take me to the other coast, or south to Malmö/Copenhagen.
My suburb only exists because the metro station was built here, around the station there's a small centre with shops for daily needs, all of that was designed prior the existence of residential buildings to support the city's expansion, around the station are the higher-density buildings with apartments while I live some 5-10 min away in a townhouse; and this suburb is considered a poorer area of the Stockholm metropolitan region, not requiring a car was a must.
Yes, and with reference to London, one of the cities discussed, cars are now literally poisoning us.
> The most economically disadvantaged are often those worst affected by air pollution, particularly because they often live in less desirable locations, such as near busy roads. But they are conversely least likely to own a car or use them as much and therefore emit the least pollution.
https://trustforlondon.org.uk/news/london-inequalities-infec...
https://www.london.gov.uk/press-releases/mayoral/bame-and-po...
If cars are so great all around, ever think why "near busy roads" are "less desirable locations" ?
A good public transport is a boon to the poor and even middle class. In Europe, in cities where it's available, even the rich (the top 10%-5%, not the top 0.01%) routinely take it.
Not sure how to handle this short of abolishing holidays entirely
(Not necessarily a bad idea - too many things in society already run in synch where they shouldn't; see e.g. most people working 9-5, including services all those people need, so there's e.g. no good time to go to a dentist or visit a bank without taking a day off at work.)
In the long term, it's anyone's guess. My fear is it would be another Airtrain.
The city is very much not-flat, with significant altitude differences, a lot of already existing infrastructure under the surface (three extant lines of metro with fourth one being built, some road tunnels, parking spaces etc.), and a major river must be crossed. Plus, the rocks underneath are fractured and finicky. It isn't a nice big slab of granite, but a mixture of sediments, water and various primordial rocks. Quite hellish to put tunnels into.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyperloop
With specific reference to Mr Musk and commuter rail, this is the opposite of reality. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44297667
It’s an okay article but there’s no real magic to it. It amounts to wordy trivia and you spend your time reading it as I have at your peril. Zero-calorie content is easily forgotten.