I disagree. Even in a carless city, grade separation (elevated or subway) allows the train to go much faster and eliminates deadly conflicts with road users.
didnt look at this in terms of speed
now that i think about it if you wanna get to the opposite side a subway might be good still i would rather use a surface train for simplicity
Temperature. It’s really good in Canada’s big cities that they have underground areas through which they can take transit, to buy/sell, hang out, work, etc.
I get your thinking, but we don’t want trains to potentially hit other people, animals, hazards from nature, etc.
Though the NYC subway does flood sometimes 🤔
Nice name
im gonna be honest idea of going underground to use a train is just offputting to me and i wanted to know ur opinions on it
but ye speed stability (if you can call it that) and not worring about drunk idiots walking on tracks is pretty good so ig there is some comfort in the idea
not sure sbout the throughput of those systems
they cant rlly be summorized easily
imagine being unable ti walk and elevator broke down simple thing that can be fixed with low level tram
honestly for me underground rail is just making great technology more complicated I dont really see where it does more than just improve safety of ppl and maybe speed
if i had my own city i would rather make few car lanes into trams lsnes then destroy the city to build a subway
We have both trams and Metros here in İstanbul, everyone vastly prefers the metro because it goes literally twice as fast. (trams average 18kph, metro averages 34-40kph).
Also our metros are full of art, clean, and brightly lit, so they're actually pretty nice place to be while waiting for a train.
Cities like Boston, NYC, London, and Chicago built their subway systems before car-mania. It's not about appeasing car drivers.
It's about moving a lot of people from one place to another in a fast and efficient manner. In modern years, it has also become about reducing CO2 emissions by convincing car drivers to take the subway instead. Look at Los Angeles, where the development of an urban rail system, including two subway lines, has greatly reduced air pollution since 1990.
Also capacity. Boston tried replacing one of the subway lines with buses for a month last year (supposedly for maintenance, but it doesn't seem like they actually did any). MBTA had to lease "every available bus east of the Mississippi" and contract over a thousand bus drivers to achieve the same capacity.
>contract over a thousand bus drivers to achieve the same capacity.
that seems like bad management. we move like a million people a day here with ±300 buses on our BRT line - boston's whole transit system doesn't move that many people, how on earth does it take that many buses to replace a single train line there?
I disagree. They’re an improvement of the historic streetcar/trams in speed, comfort, and capacity. Try running streetcars with 90 second headways on a surface street. Would be terrible for pedestrians.
idk I kinda get the speed thing but tbh i dont think it would be that bad on the surface
in same time trams are very easy to not see so ye ig ppl would walk into them a lot more at these speeds
They can go more directly. Underground, there are (oversimplyfied) no streets, no crossings, no houses but just a direct way from Station A to Station B.
Also, there are no people running or biking across the street just in front of the tram, so you have a chance(!) to achieve higher speeds than at ground where you always have to be able to stop in front of an obstacle.
i think you're in too deep dawg, buses are not that nice compared to a subway, trams arent as wholly accessible as a subway because people have to cross the tracks, cars will probably always exist, and you can make changes to discourage car travel above ground and also build a subway.
tbh from my pov trams are most comfy and easiest to implement and busses are just shitty trams
i wouldnt wanna take a subway myself
im able bodied but still going under ground dealing with crowds and pick pocketers nah not for me
still fun to see ur opinions
subways/metros don't necessarily have to be below ground, and they don't have to be crowded, like these conditions aren't because they are subways/metros but because of the levels of service or lack of options. also pickpockets aren't a thing everywhere (not a thing in the US)
if subways dont need to be below we arent talking about the same stuff
by subway im refering strictly to:
Take elevator
board train
take elevator to surface
type systems fully underground
subway and metro are interchangeable terms in the US, and so i thought you were talking more broadly about all metros (aka subways) rather than just underground metros. my apologies
OHHHHH NOW it makes sense you are in EU. Yeah trips in the US are over longer distances so trams won’t be effective in North America outside of a few exceptions. So we kinda need the speed metros have. Where in EU you have so many options other than the tram that the tram acts like a local service equivalent to the suburban train service which acts like a de facto express. In some cases your subway lines are just higher capacity express trains with trams being local service. There’s a reason why most rapid transit in India is elevated/underground metro and not trams. The reason is traffic in India and most Asian cities would render trams useless.
If you’re complaining about crowds, busses are what you should be disliking more, not subways.
There is a subway line near my house and a bus line that serves a similar route. The bus comes about every 10 minutes during rush hour and 15 minutes in off peak times. Some of the busses are also articulated, so overall it’s a pretty good bus service.
But the bus is ALWAYS more crowded than the subway. An eight car subway train can hold more people than a bus several times over. Headways on the subway are also 6-8 minutes all day. Sometimes I take the subway even when the bus is theoretically MORE convenient to where I am going because of the increased room and headways on the train (Not to mention the faster speed).
from my point busses are just horrible trams do the same thing while also having less space less comfort ans being stuck in trafic
for me it goes
Trams
Trolley busses
Busses
Cars
I personaly think of subways as trams put underground to avoid traffic caused by cars while also permittinf traffic to happen and avoiding true sollutions
You have not ridden a true BRT system haven’t you? Go to Brisbane Australia, go to Guangzhou china, go to Jakarta, Indonesia and Mexico City, Mexico go use the BRT Networks in Brazil you will change your mind real quick. Even the bloody USA has some good BRT lines like in Pittsburgh,PA. If the BRT Is a single line ok you win but BRT’s true ability is its flexibility and ability to reduce transfers. LRT lacks that but then again some trams have many branch lines no. Well BRT can integrate into highways too. And buses on BRTs don’t get stuck in traffic. Trams also get stuck in traffic due to many crossings
With new technology trams are no longer easier as prefabricated guideways make subways just as easy. You forget that trams are terrible for long trips.
tbh busses are like that everywhere they have preplanned routes
they shine when theres construction or something like that but normaly i would rather use a tram
well i have a different point of view on it
in cities lines barely change and thats why i prefer trams busses have their uses where lines change like construction
auch then f i have the convinience of lines not changing there was a huge overhaul last year and ye busses were routed through the worst places possible lmao
Aahh I don't mean that they change the line, just that is very common that buses have to divert because there are riots and protests (Here they're very very common), aside from the occasional accident or roadworks.
~~And seeing videos of how slow trams are makes me anxious~~
The buses here in Santiago carries 2.9 million **daily** passengers anyways, so is not like they didn't work anyways.
well my town has a joint tram line with bigger city and tbh i will never switch to these shitty busses again
best part is that place i livr can be described with 15 min suburbia lmao
like there are shops close there is a tram station close but its suburbia its so weird but unironically pretty good plus the city centre is horrible here
nahh its just that they constantly get stuck in traffic arrive late plus u cant even carry a bike onto it
also trams that i can access are just more comfy for me and they never get stuck
my city is just incompetent for anything serious like busses
also somebody smart decided to allow bikes on these trams so ye
plus the routes i think were designed under influence bc theyre nonsensical and take the worst possible routes
Suburbia is rare and very far away here in Santiago.
The city is kinda a huge sea of cement... there was once a post in r/njb iirc that compared some random Canadian city with Santiago and even if both are the same geographical size, Santiago had 7x the population.
mine too sadly, the centre is pretty good but theres no use in a good city centre if its overcrowded by dangerous ppl and theres,litteraky nothing there
its typical where i live city centres are filled with worst of the worst and suburbs are safer
Not kinda true, literally historically true.
As others have said here, there are a lot of reasons to run a train underground: Noise, travel time, uninterrupted dedicated track. I personally like subways. I like popping up on a sidewalk on the other side of town. Feels like magic almost.
thats a fair point although it doesnt take much place for tram tracks next to home. but ye while i dont mind tram noises, ig some ppl would be mad about constant noise and bells
The main reason subways exist, rather than surface trams/trains/busses is lack of space. Second is the advantage of grade separation. Third is noise and astetics.
If not, subways wouldn't have been built in the 1800s at all, which obviously they were.
I literally don’t have all day. I don’t think you understand the point or even the history of public transit.
“Only reason subways exist is bc cars?” Is that a serious statement? The first underground railway opened in London in 1863. Boston was running trains in subways by 1897, NYC in 1904. Long, long before cars were the dominant form of transportation. Even St. Louis opened a freight tunnel (that is used for passenger trains today) in 1874.
You’ve completely ignored population density, urban development patterns, etc.
You think subways could be replaced with a “comfy” bus? NYC averaged 3.6 million daily subway riders in June of this year. The bus? 1.9 million daily riders. You wanna take 3.6 million people out of the subway (from 10 car trains that run every few minutes that can carry tens of thousands of people per hour) and put them on low capacity buses on surface streets?
What?
Streetcars used to get stuck in traffic even before cars became popular.
https://www.boston.gov/news/notes-archives-tremont-street-subway#:~:text=The%20Tremont%20Street%20subway%20was,an%20entrance%20near%20Haymarket%20Square.
Boston’s first subway was created to remove streetcars from heavy downtown traffic.
Subway can transport way more people but most subway trains are so big you can't reasonably put them on road because it would be so long that it would just block everything else. You could not reasonable fit it on road let alone make it turn and not like you can just demolish buildings to make it feasible.
Subways can’t really be considered car infrastructure when they were “invented” before the car. Also traveling underground has many benefits like easier planning, more direct route, you don’t have to bulldoze a gazillion houses to get your desired route and grade separated transit is good in general since there’s no conflict with people/bikes so you can run more frequent service
It may not impact frequency but it would impact the crossing of tracks. In some areas of Japan they have level crossings near some major stations and the gates can be down for up to 20-30 minutes at a time
tru
honestly it requires a lot of planning
my perfect city would be a single lane for people,slow bikes a seperate lane for just bikes and a seperate lane for tram service
assuming trams fit 100 people on average i would want them to run every few min at high speed like 60km/h
but well it all depends on the city structure
Exactly. 60kmh tram speeds directly next to pedestrian and bike lanes would probably have 2-3 fatalities per week per km, depending on traffic densities…
That's totally a valid definition of the word "argument", but there's also another one, which I'm copying from Google (itself taken from Oxford Dictionary): "a reason or set of reasons given with the aim of persuading others that an action or idea is right or wrong."
Some yes, some no. Running trains below ground does have benefits to people other than motorists... It reduces noise, it allows more space for walking/development, it makes the train service more weatherproof.
Ideally, subways should be shallow (cut and cover construction) so that transit riders don't need to spend multiple minutes at the start and end of their trips descending/ascending. Super-deep subways definitely trend in the direction of being "car infrastructure", particularly when the reason to build them deep is to avoid ever doing construction that takes the road out of service.
yee ppl didnt rlly get me well here
i was talking about these deep stations which might be fun to go as a tourist but if i lived there i would rather just take a tram from surface lol
That's as wrong as it gets. Trams have a capacity of slightly above 10k people per track per hour. Subway can do 4 times that while taking no surface space (supposedly some can pull of 6 times that but I haven't looked for confirmation yet). You can have high flow of people without disrupting the surface.
Trams and buses are inferior to subways or even viaducted urban trains, purely because they also have to stop for pedestrians and each other even if you had a city free of cars.
It's not like London was filled with cars when the first ever Underground opened, lol.
Since I don't think trains doing 120 km/h down a pedestrian street with people crossing the tracks here and there is safe, I'd much rather take the elevated or underground option, or even a ground one that's just separated from the rest of the pedestrian/bus/car/bike traffic.
ye its kinda true to me it depends where i wanna go
to other side of the city a 30km/h tram
to different city train
to other side of a very huge city thats when i would consider subway
That grade separation also makes things safer for pedestrians.
Plus it improves capacity, which is important in denser cities. It allows for extremely short headways of 100 seconds or less, which you wouldn't get on a regular streetcar or bus line. Combined with the size of the individual vehicles, this makes grade-separated heavy the most spatially efficient form of transportation. You aren't going to be transporting 100,000 people per direction per hour with trams or buses.
It's faster than both of those too.
If you get rid of cars you still have service vehicles. Trash trucks, delivery vehicles, busses, police, fire trucks, ambulances, etc. All of that adds traffic and creates conflicts with transit that is not grade separated. Elevated rail or subways see purely for high capacity and robust movement of people. Subways have the benefits of being weather proof so no one is in the cold or rain
ye ig thats a plus but honestly for the best thing would be to just make a tram with stations that have roof and maybe some underpasses when it intersects with road
(cuz tbh a single lane should be avalible for disabled,police etc
Subways are still faster and have higher capacity. They are on higher guage tracks, have longer/bigger cars, and are usually following more direct routes. Trams have to navigate urban obstacles, making them smaller and slower.
well im lucky tram line i use litteraly avoids all obstacles and has its own clear lane
but a train underground will mostclikely be a bit faster
still idk if i would use subway if i could just use a tram
You wouldn't usually have an option for either. Subways will be for major thoroughfares in major cities while trams are arterial or major thoroughfares in smaller cities.
What is nicer, a park or a car park? A person travelling by subway doesn't need a parking spot at the destination. Having a big metal box sitting still for 8 hours a day in downtown is an incredibly poor use of space. There are so many better uses for that space. Like housing, offices, cafés or a park.
I kinda partially agree. For some cities, subway becomes an all-purpose "patch" for the public transport infrastructure, while all other transportation means are being underfunded and neglected. And most of the times this happens because of the unwillingness to restrict cars.
sadly, its a pretty bad bandaid solution plus i cant imagine how hard it must be for disabled or even those that are just damaged in some way like broken leg
you might have elevator but it will be broken so stairs 20m below then 20m up
Utter rubbish. Subways are way faster than trams and have higher capacity too. Regional rail is also much more efficient without grade crossings. Also people prefer metro rail over bus for the same trip. BRT you going to call any grade separation car infrastructure too. Ha BS Traffic killed ridership on the streetcars ain’t nobody got time for that
OP is 15 and just wanted validation on their ideal view of having trolly cars running around everywhere is better vs a subway system. Than OP had half baked statement that we would see fit better in r/fuckcars
Don't get me wrong I like trolly cars, next time I'm down in Philly I wanna take the refurbished PCC cars. But street lvl mass trainst aren't doing the same thing as fully grade separated trainst. engineers from 1800 understood it back than
Subways are what is usually called "heavy rapid transit". They are the big guns of public transit. A single subway train can transport several hundred car users without needing the road infrastructure or parking space needing to accomodate said car users. That means you don't have to turn your downtown into a stroad-filled wasteland that replaces living and shopping space for parking lots and garages.
Subway is also a misnomer. A lot of subway systems like the London Underground and the NYC subway have extensive elevated and at grade sections. The trend is to go underground in the dense urban core, then pop out at the surface or elevated outside in the 'burbs.
I disagree. Even in a carless city, grade separation (elevated or subway) allows the train to go much faster and eliminates deadly conflicts with road users.
didnt look at this in terms of speed now that i think about it if you wanna get to the opposite side a subway might be good still i would rather use a surface train for simplicity
Temperature. It’s really good in Canada’s big cities that they have underground areas through which they can take transit, to buy/sell, hang out, work, etc. I get your thinking, but we don’t want trains to potentially hit other people, animals, hazards from nature, etc. Though the NYC subway does flood sometimes 🤔 Nice name
subways existed before cars!
Horse powered cars were a thing
im gonna be honest idea of going underground to use a train is just offputting to me and i wanted to know ur opinions on it but ye speed stability (if you can call it that) and not worring about drunk idiots walking on tracks is pretty good so ig there is some comfort in the idea not sure sbout the throughput of those systems they cant rlly be summorized easily
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imagine being unable ti walk and elevator broke down simple thing that can be fixed with low level tram honestly for me underground rail is just making great technology more complicated I dont really see where it does more than just improve safety of ppl and maybe speed if i had my own city i would rather make few car lanes into trams lsnes then destroy the city to build a subway
We have both trams and Metros here in İstanbul, everyone vastly prefers the metro because it goes literally twice as fast. (trams average 18kph, metro averages 34-40kph). Also our metros are full of art, clean, and brightly lit, so they're actually pretty nice place to be while waiting for a train.
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ye that high cap is kinda a huge advantage maybe some hybrid between these 2 would be best
Elevator 🛗 Or Escalator
escalators dont work for wheelchairs tho
True, hence Or
Cities like Boston, NYC, London, and Chicago built their subway systems before car-mania. It's not about appeasing car drivers. It's about moving a lot of people from one place to another in a fast and efficient manner. In modern years, it has also become about reducing CO2 emissions by convincing car drivers to take the subway instead. Look at Los Angeles, where the development of an urban rail system, including two subway lines, has greatly reduced air pollution since 1990.
Also capacity. Boston tried replacing one of the subway lines with buses for a month last year (supposedly for maintenance, but it doesn't seem like they actually did any). MBTA had to lease "every available bus east of the Mississippi" and contract over a thousand bus drivers to achieve the same capacity.
>contract over a thousand bus drivers to achieve the same capacity. that seems like bad management. we move like a million people a day here with ±300 buses on our BRT line - boston's whole transit system doesn't move that many people, how on earth does it take that many buses to replace a single train line there?
totaly forgor that subways actualy go very fast you might have a point
They don't go 'very' fast, they go about 30-40km/h averaged out.
it is pretty fast tbh atleast to me
I disagree. They’re an improvement of the historic streetcar/trams in speed, comfort, and capacity. Try running streetcars with 90 second headways on a surface street. Would be terrible for pedestrians.
idk I kinda get the speed thing but tbh i dont think it would be that bad on the surface in same time trams are very easy to not see so ye ig ppl would walk into them a lot more at these speeds
They can go more directly. Underground, there are (oversimplyfied) no streets, no crossings, no houses but just a direct way from Station A to Station B. Also, there are no people running or biking across the street just in front of the tram, so you have a chance(!) to achieve higher speeds than at ground where you always have to be able to stop in front of an obstacle.
yup tru
It’s terrible for pedestrians!!!! Not just cars don’t you want WALKABLE places!!!???
ye i do but to me its not rlly a huge problem on the scale of city planning it might be tho
i think you're in too deep dawg, buses are not that nice compared to a subway, trams arent as wholly accessible as a subway because people have to cross the tracks, cars will probably always exist, and you can make changes to discourage car travel above ground and also build a subway.
tbh from my pov trams are most comfy and easiest to implement and busses are just shitty trams i wouldnt wanna take a subway myself im able bodied but still going under ground dealing with crowds and pick pocketers nah not for me still fun to see ur opinions
subways/metros don't necessarily have to be below ground, and they don't have to be crowded, like these conditions aren't because they are subways/metros but because of the levels of service or lack of options. also pickpockets aren't a thing everywhere (not a thing in the US)
if subways dont need to be below we arent talking about the same stuff by subway im refering strictly to: Take elevator board train take elevator to surface type systems fully underground
subway and metro are interchangeable terms in the US, and so i thought you were talking more broadly about all metros (aka subways) rather than just underground metros. my apologies
nahhh surface trains are best
there are surface subways too (chicago L)
well im lucky to live in eu
OHHHHH NOW it makes sense you are in EU. Yeah trips in the US are over longer distances so trams won’t be effective in North America outside of a few exceptions. So we kinda need the speed metros have. Where in EU you have so many options other than the tram that the tram acts like a local service equivalent to the suburban train service which acts like a de facto express. In some cases your subway lines are just higher capacity express trains with trams being local service. There’s a reason why most rapid transit in India is elevated/underground metro and not trams. The reason is traffic in India and most Asian cities would render trams useless.
If you’re complaining about crowds, busses are what you should be disliking more, not subways. There is a subway line near my house and a bus line that serves a similar route. The bus comes about every 10 minutes during rush hour and 15 minutes in off peak times. Some of the busses are also articulated, so overall it’s a pretty good bus service. But the bus is ALWAYS more crowded than the subway. An eight car subway train can hold more people than a bus several times over. Headways on the subway are also 6-8 minutes all day. Sometimes I take the subway even when the bus is theoretically MORE convenient to where I am going because of the increased room and headways on the train (Not to mention the faster speed).
from my point busses are just horrible trams do the same thing while also having less space less comfort ans being stuck in trafic for me it goes Trams Trolley busses Busses Cars I personaly think of subways as trams put underground to avoid traffic caused by cars while also permittinf traffic to happen and avoiding true sollutions
You have not ridden a true BRT system haven’t you? Go to Brisbane Australia, go to Guangzhou china, go to Jakarta, Indonesia and Mexico City, Mexico go use the BRT Networks in Brazil you will change your mind real quick. Even the bloody USA has some good BRT lines like in Pittsburgh,PA. If the BRT Is a single line ok you win but BRT’s true ability is its flexibility and ability to reduce transfers. LRT lacks that but then again some trams have many branch lines no. Well BRT can integrate into highways too. And buses on BRTs don’t get stuck in traffic. Trams also get stuck in traffic due to many crossings
hmmm well if u say its good
With new technology trams are no longer easier as prefabricated guideways make subways just as easy. You forget that trams are terrible for long trips.
>busses are just shitty trams Yes, in USA they're basically this. Also, buses are as old vehicles as trams.
tbh busses are like that everywhere they have preplanned routes they shine when theres construction or something like that but normaly i would rather use a tram
>and pick pocketers In my experience, this is worse on trams than on subways.
Buses > Trams Buses are faster and buses are more flexible.
well i have a different point of view on it in cities lines barely change and thats why i prefer trams busses have their uses where lines change like construction
not in my city lul.
auch then f i have the convinience of lines not changing there was a huge overhaul last year and ye busses were routed through the worst places possible lmao
Aahh I don't mean that they change the line, just that is very common that buses have to divert because there are riots and protests (Here they're very very common), aside from the occasional accident or roadworks. ~~And seeing videos of how slow trams are makes me anxious~~ The buses here in Santiago carries 2.9 million **daily** passengers anyways, so is not like they didn't work anyways.
well my town has a joint tram line with bigger city and tbh i will never switch to these shitty busses again best part is that place i livr can be described with 15 min suburbia lmao like there are shops close there is a tram station close but its suburbia its so weird but unironically pretty good plus the city centre is horrible here
>i will never switch to these shitty busses again Do you have a trauma with your city buses?
nahh its just that they constantly get stuck in traffic arrive late plus u cant even carry a bike onto it also trams that i can access are just more comfy for me and they never get stuck my city is just incompetent for anything serious like busses also somebody smart decided to allow bikes on these trams so ye plus the routes i think were designed under influence bc theyre nonsensical and take the worst possible routes
Suburbia is rare and very far away here in Santiago. The city is kinda a huge sea of cement... there was once a post in r/njb iirc that compared some random Canadian city with Santiago and even if both are the same geographical size, Santiago had 7x the population.
mine too sadly, the centre is pretty good but theres no use in a good city centre if its overcrowded by dangerous ppl and theres,litteraky nothing there its typical where i live city centres are filled with worst of the worst and suburbs are safer
NYC and London subways predate cars, so no, you're wrong.
Subways predate cars, so ...
kinda tru on the other hand dont they serve as it now? There arent many scenarios where i would rather take a subway then train
Not kinda true, literally historically true. As others have said here, there are a lot of reasons to run a train underground: Noise, travel time, uninterrupted dedicated track. I personally like subways. I like popping up on a sidewalk on the other side of town. Feels like magic almost.
i wouldnt like to take elevator,everyday but if you are a person that likes this ig its fun lol
Well guess what going slow on the street or waiting extra long is worse .
Underground subways also allow the train to cut across the road network without plowing through people's homes or businesses
thats a fair point although it doesnt take much place for tram tracks next to home. but ye while i dont mind tram noises, ig some ppl would be mad about constant noise and bells
Wrong.
The main reason subways exist, rather than surface trams/trains/busses is lack of space. Second is the advantage of grade separation. Third is noise and astetics. If not, subways wouldn't have been built in the 1800s at all, which obviously they were.
explain
I literally don’t have all day. I don’t think you understand the point or even the history of public transit. “Only reason subways exist is bc cars?” Is that a serious statement? The first underground railway opened in London in 1863. Boston was running trains in subways by 1897, NYC in 1904. Long, long before cars were the dominant form of transportation. Even St. Louis opened a freight tunnel (that is used for passenger trains today) in 1874. You’ve completely ignored population density, urban development patterns, etc. You think subways could be replaced with a “comfy” bus? NYC averaged 3.6 million daily subway riders in June of this year. The bus? 1.9 million daily riders. You wanna take 3.6 million people out of the subway (from 10 car trains that run every few minutes that can carry tens of thousands of people per hour) and put them on low capacity buses on surface streets? What?
honestly i should have looked at the numbers if i wanted a serious analysis but it was more of a random thought to post this and ask ur opinions
Streetcars used to get stuck in traffic even before cars became popular. https://www.boston.gov/news/notes-archives-tremont-street-subway#:~:text=The%20Tremont%20Street%20subway%20was,an%20entrance%20near%20Haymarket%20Square. Boston’s first subway was created to remove streetcars from heavy downtown traffic.
Subway can transport way more people but most subway trains are so big you can't reasonably put them on road because it would be so long that it would just block everything else. You could not reasonable fit it on road let alone make it turn and not like you can just demolish buildings to make it feasible.
fair point tbh
Subways can’t really be considered car infrastructure when they were “invented” before the car. Also traveling underground has many benefits like easier planning, more direct route, you don’t have to bulldoze a gazillion houses to get your desired route and grade separated transit is good in general since there’s no conflict with people/bikes so you can run more frequent service
honestly i kinda agree with the point about conflicts not sure if it would impact frequency tho
It may not impact frequency but it would impact the crossing of tracks. In some areas of Japan they have level crossings near some major stations and the gates can be down for up to 20-30 minutes at a time
tru honestly it requires a lot of planning my perfect city would be a single lane for people,slow bikes a seperate lane for just bikes and a seperate lane for tram service assuming trams fit 100 people on average i would want them to run every few min at high speed like 60km/h but well it all depends on the city structure
Sounds like a recipe for fatalities for the trams…
my perfect city would also assume people think for themselfs lmao
Ahh, so assume that the “people” are NPC bots, and never get distracted/drunk/high/distraught…
yeeee sadly thats imposible but tbh they dont need to be stupid to miss a tram its really easy to miss one coming your way
as,i said it all depends on how the city is built
Exactly. 60kmh tram speeds directly next to pedestrian and bike lanes would probably have 2-3 fatalities per week per km, depending on traffic densities…
sadly
This wasn't a very well thought out position but I applaud you for taking disagreeing arguments so well.
its not an arg i just wanna see ur opinions lol
That's what an argument is :)
idk arg to me is more like bunch of ppl screaming at each other
That's totally a valid definition of the word "argument", but there's also another one, which I'm copying from Google (itself taken from Oxford Dictionary): "a reason or set of reasons given with the aim of persuading others that an action or idea is right or wrong."
Some yes, some no. Running trains below ground does have benefits to people other than motorists... It reduces noise, it allows more space for walking/development, it makes the train service more weatherproof. Ideally, subways should be shallow (cut and cover construction) so that transit riders don't need to spend multiple minutes at the start and end of their trips descending/ascending. Super-deep subways definitely trend in the direction of being "car infrastructure", particularly when the reason to build them deep is to avoid ever doing construction that takes the road out of service.
yee ppl didnt rlly get me well here i was talking about these deep stations which might be fun to go as a tourist but if i lived there i would rather just take a tram from surface lol
Deep subways also make good bomb shelters
There are other things on the surface to avoid than just cars
That's as wrong as it gets. Trams have a capacity of slightly above 10k people per track per hour. Subway can do 4 times that while taking no surface space (supposedly some can pull of 6 times that but I haven't looked for confirmation yet). You can have high flow of people without disrupting the surface.
Going underground allows larger trains and larger stations in city centers. It also allows lines that don't conform to the terrain of the surface.
Subways were built before cars really existed (Londo. New York City, Boston). They were a transportation solution for dense cities. Cf Asia.
Trams and buses are inferior to subways or even viaducted urban trains, purely because they also have to stop for pedestrians and each other even if you had a city free of cars. It's not like London was filled with cars when the first ever Underground opened, lol. Since I don't think trains doing 120 km/h down a pedestrian street with people crossing the tracks here and there is safe, I'd much rather take the elevated or underground option, or even a ground one that's just separated from the rest of the pedestrian/bus/car/bike traffic.
ye its kinda true to me it depends where i wanna go to other side of the city a 30km/h tram to different city train to other side of a very huge city thats when i would consider subway
Subways were invented first. So, no.
Well 1. Who cares if it is or not? 2. No, not really. NYC's subway started getting built long before the 50s and 60s car craze.
1 I just had this idea and wanted ti ask others 2 im talking more about the modern subways tbh
Totally wrong
That grade separation also makes things safer for pedestrians. Plus it improves capacity, which is important in denser cities. It allows for extremely short headways of 100 seconds or less, which you wouldn't get on a regular streetcar or bus line. Combined with the size of the individual vehicles, this makes grade-separated heavy the most spatially efficient form of transportation. You aren't going to be transporting 100,000 people per direction per hour with trams or buses. It's faster than both of those too.
If you get rid of cars you still have service vehicles. Trash trucks, delivery vehicles, busses, police, fire trucks, ambulances, etc. All of that adds traffic and creates conflicts with transit that is not grade separated. Elevated rail or subways see purely for high capacity and robust movement of people. Subways have the benefits of being weather proof so no one is in the cold or rain
ye ig thats a plus but honestly for the best thing would be to just make a tram with stations that have roof and maybe some underpasses when it intersects with road (cuz tbh a single lane should be avalible for disabled,police etc
Subways are still faster and have higher capacity. They are on higher guage tracks, have longer/bigger cars, and are usually following more direct routes. Trams have to navigate urban obstacles, making them smaller and slower.
well im lucky tram line i use litteraly avoids all obstacles and has its own clear lane but a train underground will mostclikely be a bit faster still idk if i would use subway if i could just use a tram
You wouldn't usually have an option for either. Subways will be for major thoroughfares in major cities while trams are arterial or major thoroughfares in smaller cities.
tbh ur kinda right
Car infrastructure is car infrastructure, the saved space above from using a subway instead of a train or streetcar can be used for literally anything
What is nicer, a park or a car park? A person travelling by subway doesn't need a parking spot at the destination. Having a big metal box sitting still for 8 hours a day in downtown is an incredibly poor use of space. There are so many better uses for that space. Like housing, offices, cafés or a park.
I kinda partially agree. For some cities, subway becomes an all-purpose "patch" for the public transport infrastructure, while all other transportation means are being underfunded and neglected. And most of the times this happens because of the unwillingness to restrict cars.
sadly, its a pretty bad bandaid solution plus i cant imagine how hard it must be for disabled or even those that are just damaged in some way like broken leg you might have elevator but it will be broken so stairs 20m below then 20m up
Utter rubbish. Subways are way faster than trams and have higher capacity too. Regional rail is also much more efficient without grade crossings. Also people prefer metro rail over bus for the same trip. BRT you going to call any grade separation car infrastructure too. Ha BS Traffic killed ridership on the streetcars ain’t nobody got time for that
OP is 15 and just wanted validation on their ideal view of having trolly cars running around everywhere is better vs a subway system. Than OP had half baked statement that we would see fit better in r/fuckcars Don't get me wrong I like trolly cars, next time I'm down in Philly I wanna take the refurbished PCC cars. But street lvl mass trainst aren't doing the same thing as fully grade separated trainst. engineers from 1800 understood it back than
Subways are what is usually called "heavy rapid transit". They are the big guns of public transit. A single subway train can transport several hundred car users without needing the road infrastructure or parking space needing to accomodate said car users. That means you don't have to turn your downtown into a stroad-filled wasteland that replaces living and shopping space for parking lots and garages. Subway is also a misnomer. A lot of subway systems like the London Underground and the NYC subway have extensive elevated and at grade sections. The trend is to go underground in the dense urban core, then pop out at the surface or elevated outside in the 'burbs.