The MARTA broken promises story was incredibly enlightening. Really good stuff

@alabastermontague6841

3 жыл бұрын

Yes. I knew about the rejection of MARTA in the white flight suburbs. I've known about the slur abbreviation. I've been the only white person on the bus because I'm European and I take the bus. And we know that Clayton and Gwinnett need to be integrated into MARTA. But I never knew about Perry Homes and all those broken promises. The closing segment -- the metro impulse for "residents you want to have, not the ones you already have" -- is really powerful and important, and I'm grateful for it.

@qjtvaddict

2 жыл бұрын

@@alabastermontague6841 Clayton is part of MARTA now

@DiamondKingStudios

Жыл бұрын

@@alabastermontague6841 late grandfather was an engineer for MARTA. Whenever he told me about Gwinnett voting no there seemed to be a bit of frustration in his voice. Not exactly the kind of sentiment his daughter, a member of the white NIMBY “my sons both went to GA Tech” Republican-leaning upper middle class commonly found in that part of the county, shares.

That's quite an education on how postwar transit construction in the US was fueled by classism and especially racism. Thank you. I also love how you obliterated "eBart". I think a real Bart extension would have been just as cheap, and attracted many more riders, despite it's location in a freeway.

As someone who grew up in the DC Metro Area (MD side), it's shocking to see how vastly different transit is in the DC Metro Area vs the Baltimore Metro Area. Truly Baltimore deserved better and even before I saw this video I knew they were cheated of a decent transit system.

@edwardmiessner6502

2 жыл бұрын

I was born in Baltimore and grew up on Boston and I have to agree with you. In fact, Baltimore should have had a prewar subway built, too. It certainly was dense enough with 73 square miles and almost a million residents

@ocularpatdown

Жыл бұрын

I've lived in the "Baltimore-Washington corridor" for almost eight years now, and I just shook my head about some of the factors in why mass transit (especially the metro) in Baltimore Just Plain Sucks. It really is sad. And then, there's the DC Metro. Besides being actually functional, it's actually a pleasure to ride. It's far easier to let WMATA do the driving whenever I need to go into Washington. But to be fair, for where I live, it's far easier to access Camden Yards (via MTA light rail) than it is to get to Nationals Park, but that's a "me" issue. But dammit, BW area, get your intercity rail right! MARC is just sad and Amtrak is just inefficient.

@ocularpatdown

Жыл бұрын

@@edwardmiessner6502 -- I love riding the T. No, I'm not on drugs.

It's almost as though those who looked at the skokie swift just saw fast suburb train, and thought that was all that was needed to be successful. and they forgot that y'know, the swift connected at howard station to a very robust rail and bus network that connected the 2nd biggest, and 1st coolest city in America.

@chipbipple2593

4 жыл бұрын

I'm beginning Phase .001 of cutting back the extent of the Blue and Red lines, necessitating the creation of the "Berwyn Bomber" into The Loop.

@MilwaukeeF40C

3 жыл бұрын

It is a fucking cold city, that's for sure. Don't know if its 1st.

@thechicagorailfan9234

2 жыл бұрын

@@MilwaukeeF40C unless it's summer, then it's get up to 100 degrees if conditions are met.

@thechicagorailfan9234

2 жыл бұрын

I find it interesting that she brings up the Yellow line out of the whole CTA L system. If CTA hadn't had the 4 stations along the straight shot closed. There wouldn't be a fast service or maybe an express service if it had the demand

The Choo-Choo Pantheon, where mortals tithe to the train gods. There are many steps and columns

@loplopthebird1860

4 жыл бұрын

Is lord Gaben a train god? His gaming website runs on S T E A M

This is fantastic! I did an extensive research project on Atlanta Public Housing a few years ago and I wish this had been available then. Really well made and well researched. Honestly a crime that this doesn’t have more views.

@loplopthebird1860

4 жыл бұрын

That's because the title is wrong on terms of KZread algorythm. I'd write instead: «THE UNCANNY TRUTH OF MARTA (GONE WRONG)» «Destroying Atlanta's subway with FACTS and LOGIC» «YOU WON'T BELIEVE WHY MARTA WAS AN E P I C F A I L» And I'd put in the thumbnail something clickbaitable.

@DiamondKingStudios

Жыл бұрын

@@loplopthebird1860if my grandfather was still alive, he would have made for a good interviewee, being a former engineer for MARTA way back when and a bit of a rail fan himself. Was kind of resentful about Gwinnett county voting no on rail expansion

I like that smaller city like Honolulu is deciding to build an automated metro system. If it’s successful (which I believe it would be) this could motivate other cities to choose metro over light rail.

@GenericUrbanism

Жыл бұрын

Nah, American cities will use it as an excuse not to build metros. Only light rail is going to be built.

Great video I was recommended this series by donoteat from his newest Franklin episode and I must say I'm very much satisfied

@GroundThing

4 жыл бұрын

Same. Though it does feel weird to watch a public policy cities skyline channel where the voiceover isn't a monotone guy who sounds like he's been in urban planning for longer than he's been alive. Though seriously, good video, even though I'm slightly miffed Cleveland wasn't included, since I've lived there for the better part of a decade, and I wish the Red line got its due take-down video (sure, it's pre-war designed, but it's not really akin to most pre-war transit).

@michdem100

4 жыл бұрын

@@GroundThing Maybe some day in some video she'll include Cleveland. I'm from central Europe, so I doubt there will be anything about my city (unless it would be about the presidential elections that we're supposed to have - checks notes - today)

@TheKoobon

4 жыл бұрын

@@michdem100 oh, I would love an episode about the clusterfuck that is Warsaw subway

Okay, do me a favor and keep existing. Two years on, I came all the way back to your channel and paged through videos just to find "with the exception of the park-and-ride abomination called eBart, which I will never mention again because it should be stricken from the face of the earth" for a modern transit presentation I'm making. You stopped your Patreon because you felt guilty for not making enough videos; I'm mad I can't continue to just throw my money at you, videos or not. Your personality and perspective are multifactorily brilliant: your analysis is sharp, your humor is riotous, and your ideas are beyond exceptional. Whatever it is you're doing, don't stop doing it. I can only dream I might one day continue to bask in the glow of your endeavors again.

This sounds just like Port Authority in Pittsburgh. The T serves downtown with a few underground stations via lines that basically bring in suburban workers from the South Hills instead of actually serving the city itself. It amazes me the volume of buses that clog downtown streets where all these routes terminate and begin.

I make city planning videos in Toronto, and I was excited by the mention of the TTC! It's interesting to look at what Toronto has done for transit because its style is quite american in look, but it has an excellent network of streetcars (something that maybe should've been mentioned in the streetcar video), buses, and of course the subway and future light rail projects which are currently being built. Some of the streetcar, bus, and subway lines in toronto have more daily ridership than many whole systems in the US.

One thing I really like about the Tyne and Wear Metro is how much of the old stations get used around the coast. The further away you get from the cities, the further you go back in time.

Many routes in Toronto (the thick red lines on the map) are Ten Minute Network meaning that buses or streetcars are scheduled every 10 minutes or better from 6am to 1am weekdays and Saturdays and 8am to 1am on Sundays. You read that right, a bus every 10 minutes at midnight every day of the week! The worst regular TTC routes run every 30 minutes.

29:35 - In Miami’s case, there actually was an expansion of bus infrastructure done after the Metrorail line was completed. The Busway opened in 1997, connecting the southern end of the Metrorail line with suburbs further south. This BRT line occupies the same former Florida East Coast Railway ROW as the southern half of the Metrorail, and could eventually be upgraded back to rail [though probably at-grade given the costs] down the line. Current plans are to enhance the existing BRT infrastructure with renovated stations, crossing guards at intersections and new buses. It’s not exactly the most successful example of BRT, as most of the stops are in areas still zoned to be auto-centric. And the line’s southern extension to Homestead/Florida City even goes alongside lots still zoned for agricultural use. But ridership on the lines which use the BRT lanes is noticeably above what it was prior to the Busway opening. Besides that, the Metrorail’s airport connection includes two whole bays for buses. One serving the local bus system while the other connects to intercity services provided by Greyhound and Megabus.

I remember when the ride share program was first implemented back in the 80s. The high minded planners of that system failed to account for one important thing: That while people are willing to ride public transport with strangers, they most certainly are NOT willing to share an automobile with one. The public nature of the former, and the very intimate nature of the latter runs contrary to human instincts. This is why the idea of automated sharable taxicabs is dead on arrival.

Those amshacks almost cost Worcester it's grand Union station, but we saved it and it's a fuckin gem. Interestingly the amshack is still up and used for train crews I think?

@peskypigeonx

3 жыл бұрын

*sad New York Penn Station noises*

DC Metro also has great Transit-Oriented Developments. Examples:- Rosslyn- Ballston Corridor Tysons Corner Area Station in Maryland around the Red Line like Silver Spring, Bethesda, Rockville, White Flint, Twinbrook Pentagon City-King Street Corridor (Arlington-Alexandria) Largo Town Center

@CaradhrasAiguo49

11 ай бұрын

yep to all of these except Tysons. Only McLean station (e.g. Capital One and a mixed-use high-rise with a Wegmans base) is semi-decent. The other 3 are in the middle of even wider stroads with Spring Hill and Greensboro in particular having strip malls and SIX car dealerships around them.

Excellent. Thank you. I appreciate your stress on buses as the backbone. The critical problem with transit use is the extra time required and wait times are a part of that. A helpful exercise would be an alternative system analysis. What if those cities had built gold standard BRT like Curitiba? They could have had larger networks with high frequency services. There is a constant con job that transit will reduce existing traffic congestion so drivers support it expecting others to stop driving. But really it only adds capacity and reduces the growth in congestion. Your video indicated that saying Metros were built to relieve pressure on freeways. The car is the primary mode. Transit helps carry the peak loads. That said there is another relationship between the two modes. I saw a professor at UTS (Sydney) make the point that the average speed on freeways in Australia is determined by the average speed of the competing public transport because some riders will swap between them to save time, creating the dynamic equilibrium. (Assuming out of pocket costs are similar). In Sydney the trains only recover about 1/3rd of costs at the fare box. The other 2/3rds is subsidised explicitly on the basis that drivers benefit from the traffic congestion that would occur if train passengers had to pay the cost. In other words the economic benefit overall is greater than user pays. The chronic pattern of lowballing the costs and overstating the ridership continues. San Juan (and probably Honolulu) are other examples. I’m keen to look at your other videos. I hope they are all as good as this. PS You may also be interested to know that more public transport passengers cross the Sydney Harbour Bridge on buses than on trains. There is one dedicated south bound bus lane.

ok so this was an excellent video, I can only imagine how much time all that research took so thank you for sharing it in such an entertaining way. one thing I'll say about Toronto's transit system is that although our network is very, very connected, the ridership varies really wildly from route to route. there's a single bus route in my neighbourhood with almost 40,000 daily riders, while our line 4 subway in the north of the city has 5 stops and only serves 50,000 riders daily. that subway line funnels into a single transfer station and connects to line 1, which serves almost 800K riders a day. in theory our grid network is great, and at off peak hours it's super reliable, but during rush hour the surface traffic that makes buses and streetcars painfully slow really just forces every commuter in the city through only a few frustratingly overcrowded transfer stations. I know our system is better than we Torontonians think it is, and we're very lucky to have it, but for a lot of riders it's enough to turn them away from public transit, sadly. damn, I cracked up at the nixon/reagan bit, too. looking forward to future videos!

@canadave87

4 жыл бұрын

It's kind of funny, we view the Sheppard line as a failure (rightfully, it would have been better served as a longer light rail line or something) and yet it's daily ridership blows away the per\km ridership of most of the lines and systems discussed in this video.

@internetfamousdog

4 жыл бұрын

@@canadave87 it's wild, isn't it? I still don't believe anyone is truly confident in pronouncing Bessarion station though

@jacktattersall9457

Жыл бұрын

@@internetfamousdog I joke that some American cities would kill to have the ridership we have in Toronto on Line4. The TTC's biggest issues is a lack of priority for surface routes (God-forbid we take away car lanes), and a lack of expansion especially when the Sheppard Subway was built but Eglinton West Subway was not.

I never knew the Skokie Swift was so consequential. I work right near it. None of us use it, because everyone at the office live on the northwest side mostly and the bus or bike is a better option.

Please don't sleep on Los Angeles Metro! It certainly didn't belong in this video, but it is a rapidly growing system that does as well as it can with how hobbled it's been. (Critical support for LA Metro!)

Didn't think Cleveland's Red Line ( we locals call it "the Rapid") would get a mention at all, very cool that you did talk about it even a little. I was thinking the other day about how it was this weird middle child compared to all the metro systems in the states.

@bigmoodenergy

4 жыл бұрын

it is weird! It definitely stands on its own, nothing else in the country is like it. First rapid transit to connect to a city's airport!

@robk7266

3 жыл бұрын

I have ridden it once. It is so strange. It is definitely a remnant of a different era of Cleveland.

@edwardmiessner6502

2 жыл бұрын

While Toronto's is the grandfather metro 🚇 of Canada

Honestly looking at the problems post-war transit faces, it's surprising they didn't fail even more. I mean, year after year the urban, as in not rural, population has become increasingly spread farther and farther out, with euclidean zoning deepening its stranglehold on American development with even larger office parks, even larger strip malls, even larger subdivisions. The number of middle class persons within walking distance to a potential station of any kind has dropped dramatically, the middle class being the original target demographic and funder of mass transportation in an era when the city was walkable for people of all incomes, and the middle class could afford to move somewhere that was transit accessible but not walkable to their place of work, the latter being the norm. With all these problems and more, old models of transit just don't work as well as they do in Europe, a place that has more or less kept its traditional aka walkable city structure. If America really wants successful transit, new development needs to be "upzoned", lot sizes variable, street networks dense and interconnected, euclidean zoning saved for heavy industry, parking minimums removed, lot setback minimums removed, height maximums removed, etc. Fortunately, the impetus for such restrictive development is much much weaker, but the development continues because it already has two and a half generations of momentum and is now contained in the subconscious culture of America. If I were a transit planner trying to create transit for a place whose streets look like loop de loops I think I'd be rejoicing at having daily riders in the thousands instead of the hundreds.

@MilwaukeeF40C

3 жыл бұрын

Electric railway historian George Hilton wrote, essentially, that if freewheel transportation was perfected about three decades earlier then there probably would have been almost no investment in urban transit ever. Zoning is not as consequential as you think. Almost no new development is "zoned" for anything until someone with money asks for permits to build something. Land is just very cheap and there is no incentive to build infrastructure beyond streets that connect each lot to the existing rural roads that become the suburban arterials.

Washington was the only one of the seven metro systems in the United States that began construction after world war 2 to be completed in it’s entirety. The final section of the original system opened in January 2001 and two other extensions were added since that, one of them being the silver line that opened in 2014-2022.

@ocularpatdown

Жыл бұрын

What about the Purple Line? I don't know the full story, but was that line an afterthought?

@XDTape

Жыл бұрын

@@ocularpatdown purple line is a maryland project and isn't part of the washington metro lines

The "WARPA" echo effect had me genuinely laughing. Our humor is broken. These videos are amazing

@edwardmiessner6502

2 жыл бұрын

It reminds me of Star Trek and its warp drives

These are some great videos! I hope to see the LA Metro System pop up soon with it's interesting blend of light and heavy rail, with all the political restrictions that held it back. Well that and commuter rail in the US! Keep up the great work.

Would love to hear your take on the history of the New York City Subway

"Of course it needs to sound sexy. Nobody is going to vote for a train unless it's sexy. Voters in the early 70s just elected Nixon and were gearing up to elect Reagan. They wanted to vote for something they can f***!" Wasn't expecting it at all, and it killed.

Love it as a fellow Atlanta native! I'm interested in your thoughts on the recent MARTA expansion plans. Would you have different priorities given the same budget?

@JAXONcreed

4 жыл бұрын

Also, assume that the funding wasn't still coming from sales tax.

What I find interesting is that all these cities didn’t have a mass of suburban railway infrastructure from the 19th and 20th centuries that could be used as the basis of a decent public railway system. Here in Australia State governments have been building city and suburban railways since the 19th century. Providing good public transport is regarded here as a prime service of government. Parties on both sides of the political divide are keen to be seen as supplying decent infrastructure.

@DiamondKingStudios

Жыл бұрын

I’m pretty sure a lot of these cities did, whether in the form of far-flung trams, interurbans or local trains on main railroad routes, but they gradually atrophied starting around the 1920s and weren’t even thought of by the time city governments took over transportation in their metropolitan areas. Add in some GM/Oil/Tire companies buying up tram lines to turn into buses and all that and you get the modern car-centric American transportation system.

38:30 Jesus Christ. That quote caught me off guard.

@BL4CKKN1GHT

Жыл бұрын

I know right. I was shocked and disgusted but imma be honest it left me in stitches

I love trains too and I love your channel so much. Great to know the history behind some of these transit systems. I do also remember "Amshacks" well as a kid and love that segment.

BART is amazing as a transit system. It may have it's short falls, but it works very well. SF Muni developed it's regional connections to the BART stations and later moved a portion of the Market street commuter light rail line under ground and made for a great and seem less travel experience. Each station for BART is connected to a Muni line in SF and each bus system connects with BART. It is completely in brilliant. LA Metro is an example of a well planned system that was destroyed by wealthy West LA citizens. Think your a-holes from Beverley Hills and Santa Monica. They are the reason the line never got built out initially as a heavy rail line, because some a-hole politician ran a campaign to terminate all funding towards heavy subway construction. This is why the majority of the LA Metro rail system is an effing light rail line and light rail isn't as great as a heavy metro rail line. LA could easily convert all the light rail b.s. to heavy commuter lines if the Federal Government would help finance larger sections of the line.

This series has been completely refreshing, binged them all incl. Amshacks, such effort into your videos.

@redalex457mc

4 жыл бұрын

I too am here from the Franklin ep mention.

If you could, could you put together a mod list of all the assets you use on these videos? I love them! Great videos, keep up the great work!

When you mention the Chicago L. I thought you would bring up the Blue line and Red Lines that run on Expressway medians and that only the blue line's section on the Kennedy has Park and Ride and bus depot's while the other 2 don't have much. Apart from the 95th/Dan Ryan Terminal that has a large bus depot. However, the O'hare extension was built in the early 80s while the other 2 were built in the 50s and 60s. Not to mention the Orange Line built in the 90s that mostly consists of Park and Rides as well as a connection to Midway Airport. This contrasts with the older style that was built pre-CTA

Whatever you're using to illustrate reminds me of Transport Fever. Now I wanna go play it.

I really can't express in words how much I loved 8:41 - 8:55 .

_"People who use mobility aids just require training."_ Given the videos I've seen on the internet, that man was absolutely correct. The thing is, increasing accessibility also increases throughput and efficiency. Having the floor of the car be level with the platform allows people to simply walk on, and walk off the train, without having to take the extra time to negotiate a small set of stairs. When you have tens and hundreds of thousands of riders every day, making the process a few seconds quicker actually increases your profits by a measurable proportion. I guess what I'm trying to say is that accessibility was an inevitability, regardless of circumstances.

@theexcaliburone5933

Жыл бұрын

elevators to platform level aren't an inevitability, the construction of them needs to be legislated

Great video, enjoyed the history lesson of modern metro systems. Look forward to your next video.

I added this video to my watch list a few days ago and expected a very different format. But it is much better than expected. Well explained, very in depth. Great content. Only that I thought Washburn was a real city I never heard from you tried to copy in cities skylines 😁. I subscribed you channel. Greeting from the other side of the world and good night.

Another transit tour de force! This is among the best content on KZread.

Great episode! I see a lot of the same ideas you presented here being used in our light rail line. And I had no idea there was a term for those Amtrak stations, we still have one!

Fun fact is that Baltimore actually calls itself BOTH a metro and a subway. Larry Hogan fixed transit here by naming it "Metro Subway Link"

bougeon, eh? Sounds like a rich place to live.

This is amazing, its exactly what I've been looking for but never got on KZread.

I liked this video as soon as you disowned e-BART

AMAZING WORK! Surely, you’ll have 100k subscribers in a year

I love this real historic perspective mixed with fictional cities skylines city history based on real history mixed with the class, race and disability perspective. You earned a new subscriber.

You got my local network in the group to (yellow one on the bottom row), although it's not a metro it's more of a light rail (famed for being the first of its type in the UK). Unfortunately it's unreliability and aging network has pushed more people back to using busses and cars. Keep up the good work

I really like your content, and this was informative.

Very well researched, informative video. All my brain will remember: 21:28

They included the suburbs in their plans because trains are more scalable than roads. All you need to do is add more cars to the train and it can still run on the existing track. The only way to add more cars to a road is to either lower the speed limit, (which congestion does naturally until it literally slows to a crawl) or you have to seize private land to make the highway larger. They were trying to solve the interstate highway congestion problem before it became a problem. They fully understood the pattern of population growth and realized that despite all the money poured into interstate and intercity highway development, they would soon reach the limits of it's capacity. You don't bother sinking enormous sums of money into the most densely packed areas, because those areas are already "walkable", and you are better served by just increasing the access from the surrounding areas. This is why a lot of old elevated lines were eventually torn down or abandoned, because they served areas more easily and flexibly served by busses or simply pedestrians. It doesn't matter the ethnicity of the people being served, it's about the development of infrastructure, and realizing it's limitations. The history of transport is riddled with bad decisions, incompetence, and poor planning, but it's not like anyone sat down and said, _"Well let's make the metro line skip over that neighborhood, because we don't want those filthy blacks to be able to travel."_ Holy crap, I come here for a history lesson, not a lecture on social justice. Especially an unfounded one.

So Baltimore has one little line, that doesn't connect to the light rail, Amtrak or the airport. That's shockingly bad

36:00 You might not be aware of this, but a long time ago there was this thing called the Civil Rights movement. This was a nationwide movement of the blacks coordinated to accomplish several goals, one of which was the implementation of the welfare state, the next was the desegregation and then further inclusion of racial discrimination in public schools (trust me that's a wild journey!), the other of which was the codification into law of equal access to housing. Well, the blacks got all of those things, in the form of the Great Society legislation creating the welfare state, and the Equal Housing Act, which guaranteed an end to housing discrimination (as well as the inclusion of racially motivated subjects being taught in public schools and universities). Now, as the one thing came to fruition, segregated housing projects were considered to be obsolete, and the specific example of the Atlanta housing neighborhood you point out was likely under consideration for re-development, and thus the planned expansion of the rapid transit wasn't needed at the time. However the implementation of welfare threw a wrench into the works, because in order to qualify for welfare, you had to be a single unsupported parent. So what we saw was a nationwide phenomenon of low income families separating themselves so they could qualify for welfare, which suddenly plunged many previously intact working families into the hellscape of broken homes. As the family unit was broken, the ability to provide the care and maintenance a home needed declined as well. So those who would have had the opportunity to move into more affluent areas and purchase a home, once again found themselves isolated by their own hubris. As the living conditions in the projects declined, eventually protests against the conditions became too much, and the city was forced to intervene. Newer low income housing projects were built in the late 80's and 90's, and the welfare class moved back into the downtown areas. The outlying projects were demolished, and everyone stood back and declared a great victory in the name of equality and justice. The welfare moms got new subsidized housing, the construction firms and big corporations got their tax shelters in the form of these new projects, and the property developers got to tear down the old projects and prepare for re-development. Now we skip ahead to the present day, where the long since abandoned plan to expand rapid transit has come home to roost: If you look at the area of Atlanta in which the former projects resided, you will find a bunch of abandoned empty areas, often with the foundations of those old buildings still in place. Turns out, without access to rapid transit, no one even wants to develop those areas anyway, and no one is interested in living there either. Isn't history fun?

What a spectacular video

i really like your content, concise,opiniated and fun good work!

Very very very nice video!!!!!!!

Looking forward to this!

You know, I kinda feel bad for Atlanta. It's gotta be tough being a major metro center that is literally in the middle of nowhere.

The folx in the 70s really dropped the ball voting AGAINST MARTA. Jesus.

@Itstwentwen

4 жыл бұрын

I never even know about the Perry homes fiasco.. Smh that was fucking dirty!!! Most videos only talk about how white flight derailed the plans for the Marrietta line and the extension into gwinett/Norcross and as well as six flags. Appearantly There was a fear that inner-city black kids would use Marta to commit crimes in their suburban neighborhoods. Which is fucking laughable. Anyway voters in Cobb, Gwinnett, and even Clayton voted against it. Wish we could've gotten the second line in DeKalb.

@edwardmiessner6502

2 жыл бұрын

@@Itstwentwen Exactly! As if teens are going to wait 20 minutes for a MARTA train while the police could be on their @$$. 😆😆😆 No, they'll drive like everyone else. 😔

It’s 04:48 yet this is still worth my sleep deprivation

Super! eBART is an abomination! Baltimore is bad a all forms of connection. Having lived in the SF Bay and Baltimore, I totally agree! And I'm glad you're bringing up the points about racial discrimination. I can definitely see this in how the routes of Baltimore and BART were designed. Un-necessarily indirect (as to avoid the "undesirable districts"), lacking non-car connections, and the lack of care to keeping the stations clean. I mean look at Tokyo! I wonder how socio-economic discrimination may have contributed (or hadn't) to metro-development overseas and why it's just so much worse in the US in general...

17:28 Holy shit no kidding!

Train = Good is cancelled! What an exciting era of nuance!

This video is almost like Contrapoints, but for American metro transit issues :D

Interestingly enough, Philadelphia is rebranding their system as metro in the new station designs

_"Sales tax is regressive."_ Wow, that is literally the first time I have ever heard that. I didn't know that the people who buy more stuff somehow pay less tax than those who don't.

@MrJstorm4

11 ай бұрын

They pay a smaller portion of their income.

DoNotEat sent me here and I'm glad he did!

@loplopthebird1860

4 жыл бұрын

I've already eaten it (°J°)''

New sub, care of donoteat

1:55 I see you 👀

You forgot about PATCO.

0/10, no mention of the greatest metro of all time, San Juan's Tren Urbano (This one would be too new to make the list, but at least a mention at the beginning along with Cleveland and LA would be nice)

31:50 I like what you call our airport. I’ve always just called it “National” and have never started calling it “Reagan.”

what game is in the background? it looks a lot like cities skylines

No public transit system is truly self sustaining on fares. People like to say that the Hong Kong metro is profitable and runs without subsidies, but the government lets it charge rent on property around its stations. In one of the highest land value cities in the world. That's the oldest kind of subsidy there is - feudalism.

@MrJstorm4

3 жыл бұрын

You realize that they own the land did they lease right?

@MilwaukeeF40C

3 жыл бұрын

Transit used to be profitable before governments started subsidizing the competition.

The failures of these systems in the timeframe of their creation, yes, seems like a waste of money in hindsight, but as a result of all that investment, we now have a bunch of high capacity, high frequency, non-dilapidated, accessible rapid transit corridors with excellent connection infrastructure built. Baltimore, Miami, Atlanta, Cleveland, the Bay Area, and Capital region all now have the bones of an excellent network, and have the resources to do something amazing with their networks. Take BART for example. The trans bay tube is, I would argue, the greatest and most important single piece of infrastructure built in North America since its construction, and is only surpassed by the Delaware Aqueduct, which was built nearly 40 years earlier. This may sound like Hyperbole, but it is a piece of infrastructure that equitably connected the East and West Bay (Some may argue the Bay bridge was the equitable piece, but streetcars/interurbans were on their way out, with cars and congestion becoming the status-quo for the bridge, and the bay bridge was woefully underdesigned for earthquake loads, meaning that it was susceptible to long term closure, choking off one region from another). Suddenly, the poorer areas (at the time) of San Francisco and Oakland were connected together reliably, and provided service to places of immense job growth and innovation such as Walnut Creek, Berkeley, and Richmond. BART as a system transformed the Bay Area and is arguably part of the reason San Francisco became such an important hub in the US. BART eventually came to carry more than 300K passengers per day across this one tube (more than the North River Tunnels in NYC), something that would have required another bay bridge and twice the freeway capacity of the east Bay, as well as significant parking supplies to be added in San Francisco. It was a success, a huge one, in spite of the massive flaws that plagued the system. Lack of TOD (relative to NYC or other more historic hubs), lack of agency integration, way too much interlining (reducing frequencies and constraining capacity across the bay), high fares, and poor bus frequencies on agencies outside of the key Oakland and SF bus systems. Those failures, however, present the biggest opportunities in urban development in the history of the United States. Sure, people like to talk about California HSR, Calmod, BART to San Jose, and all the other transit expansions in California, but we currently have a system with some of the best bones of any major system, cities along the corridors that have the potential to be complete urban spaces in a matter of years (looking at you Oakland and Berkeley), so much available land to develop serious transit-oriented development, park-and-ride lots that can be relatively easily rebuilt as housing or places of commerce, a fare system that can be seriously rejigged into a zone based system that's completely integrated with local transit (think taking a bus from one side of Berkely to BART, then taking BART to West Oakland or Fruitvale, then another bus to your home all on the same fare of say 3$ instead of 2.50 for the BART fare and 4.00$ for two separate AC transit fares), and the ability to massively increase frequencies with a single project - a second trans bay tube (connecting to a Geary Subway). You could decouple the Yellow and Green lines from the Red and Blue lines with ease and basically triple capacity with this project, while significantly improving the rapid-transit accessible footprints of BART in San Francisco and Oakland/Almeda. These are huge potential impacts that could shift the Bay Area from being a Good Transit region to being one of the best in the world, and all with mainly some policy changes. The same can be said about every other system. While Baltimore and Cleveland are having trouble gaining residents, their heyday will come again, and its up to them to enact policy decisions that support the use of their god-given metro corridors. Miami (and to a lesser extent, Atlanta) is a good example of what not to do. They have a corridor, yet they choose to develop their city around sprawl, and make everything absurdly expensive for everyone. Policy is key to fixing the metro systems, and it is our job as advocates to discuss these benefits with the public and convince them to make changes that will support progressive city development.

omg that's the subway station i grew up around Downsview now its called Sheppard West 29:04

@bigmoodenergy

4 жыл бұрын

yeah, it is! Good spot! steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=660692773

@blackpanda7298

4 жыл бұрын

bigmoodenergy wow, that’s awesome

Choo choo Pantheon! LMAO

Hi Alex, I'm working on a pro metro info graphic to share locally within my region helping to illustrate that metro is a viable option for my peninsula. Other than this video (which i love btw), can you direct me to any good books or sites i can draw citations from. Anything you can provide would rock, Thank you!

@bigmoodenergy

4 жыл бұрын

I read Great Society Subway by Zachary Schrag which covers the history of the DC Metro. Most of the metros had engineering studies which are still available through archives. If you send me a message on Twitter I can share engineering docs with you, I don't know how helpful they'll be, they are 40+ years old

@Velcera

4 жыл бұрын

@@bigmoodenergy i'll grab a copy of that book and read it for more information! This infographic is less of an engineering argument, and more of a demographic / economic argument. Unfortunately i don't have twitter. I appreciate the offer though.

Don't mind me, just a Canadian strolling by to remind our American viewers of how Montreal is building 66km of automated metro with another 40km planned, Toronto is extending the Yonge and Bloor subway lines and building a new relief line, and Vancouver is building over 100km more of Skytrain after they're done building the 23km of extensions already planned. If it's so hard for America to build new Metro systems, then why is Canada, a country with 10% the population, running circles around you? Really, there is absolutely no excuse for the failure of American public transit. BART should have been in San Jose 20 years ago, New York has decades of modernization ahead of them, and the DC Metro is in dire need of subway expansions instead of a ricky dink streetcar system that serves no purpose.

@SigmaRho2922

3 жыл бұрын

Expanding the DC and Los Angeles metro systems are cost-prohibitive. Besides the Los Angeles system is building 40 miles of rail service in preparation for the 2028 Olympic Games (mostly light rail but one heavy rail expansion).

@RoboJules

3 жыл бұрын

@@SigmaRho2922 LA's light rail lines are such a joke that the 720 bus gets you to Santa Monica faster than the Expo Line. I don't know whats more laughable: the tiny trains, their slow speed, or the countless at-grade crossings that slow it down to the speed of a bus. It's not like a grade seperated metro brings a ridership of 500,000 people every day in Vancouver to the point that the system pays for itself, and we have another 100-150km planned. You want to talk about cost effective? Why spend anything on a train that goes slower than a bus when you're building transit for two of the largest, most important cities in the continent? Why won't America stop being so endlessly, laughably mediocre when it comes to transit, and actually build transit they can be proud of? It would be far more effective for these places to develop regional express rail systems in an S-Bahn configuration and connect it with BRT than to keep embracing the mediocre money pit that is LRT.

@SigmaRho2922

3 жыл бұрын

@@RoboJules the debasement in the country’s currency is what is causing transit projects to be canceled.

@RoboJules

3 жыл бұрын

@@SigmaRho2922 Again, why is Canada moving forward? Our currency is debased even worse. Yet we keep planning, building, and easilly paying off new transit projects. We realize that paying for transit saves a lot more money to the average person than paying for a car. Inflation is going to effect everyone, and that's just a fact - we can't hault progress due to economic shifts.

@SigmaRho2922

3 жыл бұрын

@@RoboJules I think the climate of the country is too cold for car-related infrastructure...

But, but, but train good! Train good

I love trains too fam

Cities Skylines took Simcity out of the city building game.

The story of american post war metros has a lot of overlap with the story of Soviet post war metros. Expensive, ambitious and over engineered while habitually underperforming in ridership and not meeting the city's key transit issues, all while public transit on the surface stagnates and then degrades. It's a mixed bag, with some systems having few of these issues while some have the whole bag. The worst examples are Dnipro in Ukraine and Samara in Russia. Both highlight a key difference to american systems, in that they often go to and through industrial areas. Soviet planners had unrealistic expectations of ridership to key manufacturing facilities, and when the economy violently transitioned to a service one, even the lowest expectations were too ambitious. Because of this, there are even some unfinished systems: Krasnoyarsk, Omsk and Chelyabinsk. Even the succesful systems have led to an effect which you call uniquely american, which is ignoring surface transport and failure to see transit in a holistic manner with a variety of modes supplementing one another. This trend has only been reversing in the last few years with renewed bus, streetcar and urban rail projects (albeit at a lower quality than western european counterparts for the most part).

Just started watching your video, and the LA thing had me laughing. And I'm from LA. I say good for you for not looking into it, as much as I love our system, it is has a 3d chess like planning given LA's political scene

21:35 omfg lmao

Woah, toblerone trains.

@loplopthebird1860

4 жыл бұрын

French had toblerone tanks

B: Today we'll talk about Baltimore Me: Yay my city! B: And their Metro Me: Ah, beans Unfortunately Hoagie boy killed our latest chance at east-west transit that, given the redevelopment of Sparrows Point is badly needed

LA’s Metro is awesome, and trains good.

@flip1sba

4 жыл бұрын

It should be extended which is happening.

@richardwills-woodward5340

4 жыл бұрын

Have you travelled the world? LA's transit is appalling.

@SigmaRho2922

3 жыл бұрын

@@flip1sba Los Angeles will become the only one of the three systems built after 1980 to be completed after the rest of line D opens in 2027.

@flip1sba

3 жыл бұрын

@@richardwills-woodward5340 he was more referring to trains and it is somewhat impressive.

@flip1sba

3 жыл бұрын

@@SigmaRho2922 hopefully it gets completed. LA would be easier to travel with an extended Metro.

The one big thing **ATLANTA** to put them on the world stage **ATLANTA** omg so true lmao

Wow

Did you read “The Great Society Subway” by Zachary M. Schrag? It sounds like you read “The Great Society Subway” by Zachary M. Schrag.

@spacepeanut

4 жыл бұрын

If you haven’t, you should also read “Better Buses, Better Cities” by Steven Higashide

@bigmoodenergy

4 жыл бұрын

that has been on my reading list a while! And yeah I speed-read Great Society Subway for this video

Lake Cobbington

Imagine living up to Montreal. That system was neglected for a good 30 years. then again, I live in the most irrelevant capital of a country in the world, so I'm probably biased.

Where does PATCO fit into this era?

@bigmoodenergy

4 жыл бұрын

I considered talking about PATCO at the same time as the Skokie Swift, I think it's another metro precursor. The commuter rail/subway hybrid is similar to metros, although I think it's closer to PATH in that it's a passenger railroad that assumed the visual of a rapid transit system than an intentional design decision, since PATCO inherited all its ROW from passenger railroads. Parsons, Brinckerhoff, et. al. planned the system and a lot of people involved in PATCO were brought on by WMATA. PATCO also used technology that the metros would, it operates under automatic control and one person train operation. I excluded it for two reasons: it's origins and who runs it. PATCO is a direct incremental upgrade of Philadelphia Rapid Transit's pre-war Bridge Line. New ROW was added in NJ but it was mostly a modernization project I think. PATCO is run by the bi-state Delaware River Port Authority. It didn't go through the federal funding mechanisms that metros did and the DRPA owned the Bridge Line for nearly 15 years before starting reconstruction.

@edwardmiessner6502

2 жыл бұрын

@@bigmoodenergy well that explains the stub end of Philly's Broad Street Subway spur line. I read somewhere that PATCO took over the east-west portion of the spur and its trains run through abandoned stations within. What a shame, they could have taken over the whole subway network and unified it.

21:41 😂😂😂

What is Wasburn?

@spencergraham-thille9896

4 жыл бұрын

Is that a made-up place to illustrate a point?

@bigmoodenergy

4 жыл бұрын

yes, if you haven't watched the intro, it covers the backstory. I'll re-iterate it in the next video for new viewers

Im 33 years old living in Seattle without a car. Totally doable, livable, and happy, but I cannot find a date. So I am about to do plastic surgery.

Train = good Metro = very good Planners and agencies who can't do their job right and get swayed by self destructive racist/classist interests = the worst

@MilwaukeeF40C

3 жыл бұрын

Planners sway themselves and are the problem.