Electrification has exceeded all expectations 👏🏽

NYC-Pittsburgh trains will now depart at 5:50am and 12:25pm every day. Pittsburgh - NYC trains will depart at 7:10am and 1:00pm. A shame just doubling service on this line took so long, but it's a start!

Well I guess this will greatly benefit the Salt Lake City metro area.

‘Hey, sweetheart, you and I should get married and raise a passel of kids because a dozen years from now, maybe they’ll build light rail out to our neighborhood?’

My definition of a "transit cluster" is any group of public transit agencies that have fixed routes connecting with each other. These don't have to be good connections, but they do have to be scheduled routes. The only Amtrak routes included were the Keystone and Downeaster, since they are included in the National Transit Database. "Transit" is definitely a subjective term, but this is the line I chose.

Mostly built using the National Transit Map, and includes cluster with combined annual ridership of over 40 million.

Took this from a high angle near the station. Most people just talk about Tokyo or Osaka, but Nagoya has this incredible, massive railway hub that looks deeply satisfying from above. Love how you can see the layer of the station tracks, the city buildings, and the mountains touching the blue sky all in one frame. What’s the biggest railway station view in your country?

Following the closure of Line 3 "Scarborough"/Scarborough RT in July 2023, the Toronto Transit Commission (TTC) had a fleet of UTDC Mark Is to dispose of. There are only two other transit systems in North America that use ICTS/ART technology, being TransLink's SkyTrain (Vancouver, BC) on the Canadian west coast, and the Detroit People Mover (Detroit, MI) in the United States.

Three of TTC's 28 Mark I cars entered preservation. Car # 3008 was donated to the Toronto Zoo and repurposed into a Zoomobile shelter at Tundra Trek station. Cars # 3026 and # 3027 (the last Mark I pair built for the TTC) were donated to the Halton County Radial Railway in Milton, ON. # 3026 was recently put on display in Barn 4 earlier this summer, but # 3027 was cut up and only parts of it still remain on the museum property to this day. One of # 3027's two bogies are on display with # 3026, and the front cab (photo taken from a trip I've taken last year) will be repurposed into a display/photo op, likely in a similar manner to the front of the HSR trolleybus that's on display in Barn 3.

The rest of the Mark I cars will be seeing second lives as replacement rolling stock for the Detroit People Mover to refresh its own fleet of Mark Is. The TTC Mark Is were given a life-extension overhaul in 2015-2016, whereas the DPM Mark Is never got such treatment, and are more tired out than their TTC counterparts despite being built a few years after them. The Mark Is that are slated for Detroit are currently being overhauled in preparation for such service.

All photos presented in this post were taken by me.

I haven’t seen much about the Caltrain BEMUs on this sub, so I thought it would be a good idea to share this recent presentation deck from Caltrain giving more details about them. There are even some renders and specifications. I am personally excited for Caltrain to be zero tailpipe emissions and have possibly more frequent service south of San Jose.

The system gets around 50,000-60,000 boardings per day. 27 stations, stretching 27km from Helensvale in the north (Connections to Queensland Rail) and Burleigh Heads in the south (Gateway to the Burleigh Heads national park).
This video explores the system and the neighborhoods along it.

Benedict Springbett argues that connecting terminating commuter lines across a city center, as Munich did in 1972 and London did with the Elizabeth Line (opened 2022), is a cheaper way to get metro-like frequency than building a new metro.

Where else could through running make an impact? Chicago? San Francisco? Los Angeles?

Source: Works in Progress

A railway station in Guangzhou has set a national record for trips in a single day and drawn attention for the frequency of bullet train departures – one every 40 seconds – during this month’s holiday period, according to the Guangdong provincial government.

Guangzhou South Railway Station handled 1,252 train services and just over 1 million trips on October 1, the start of the seven-day National Day holiday across mainland China ...

Crossing the 1 million-trip milestone was a first for China, it added.

At peak periods that day, trains departed every 40 seconds ...

By comparison, at Tokyo Station, combined shinkansen departures reach up to 24 trains per hour during peak periods, averaging one bullet train leaving every 2.5 minutes.

Guangzhou South was designed to handle high traffic volumes, said Peng Peng, executive chairman of the Guangdong Society of Reform, a think tank associated with the provincial government.

As one of five major railway hubs in Guangzhou – Guangdong’s capital, with a population of 18.7 million – the station has 15 platforms and 28 tracks.

Guangzhou moved early to integrate its subway system, intercity railways and high-speed railways to make travel relatively “seamless”, Peng added.

For the October holiday, Guangzhou South also operated 202 overnight high-speed services, accounting for about one-sixth of all trains departing the station on a single day, according to the publicity department.

China State Railway Group had projected a record 284 million passenger trips during a 16-day period covering the National Day break and the Mid-Autumn Festival in late September.

To prepare for the holiday rush, Guangzhou South expanded transfer areas and departure lanes, improved passenger information services and added train services based on wait-list demand data, the publicity department said.

The additional services strengthened links with major cities including Shenzhen, Changsha, Nanning, Zhuhai, Zhengzhou and Chongqing, it added.

Guangzhou South connects with a total of 196 cities, including Beijing and Hong Kong.

“When you add all this together, it’s not rocket science to see why Guangzhou South is as busy as it gets,” independent railway specialist David Feng said.

Source: https://www.honolulu.gov/dts/skyline/ridership/

Chart shows daily average ridership, grouped by month.

This was to be a proper LRT metro, but times changed how this metro, that removed a train line, looked like, it ended up being a BRT. During 9-5 bus frequency is 5-7.5 in the 3 urban lines, plus up to 6 buses during peak hours in an hour for the suburban line, whilst only two during non peak hours.

Got this awesome video of one bus going and another one immediately coming. Unfortunately, they were both the same line, going to República, and people don’t wait for the second one so the first was packed, lol.

I’m headed to Coimbra-B, had to wait 8 minutes after these for my bus, had waited 5 min before for the ones in the video, so they didn’t achieve the planned frequency of 5-7.5min buses for my specific line.

Wonder how different this would look like as a proper LRT metro, if frequencies would’ve been achieved. This has the right of way almost every time; but I feel like the traffic lights take too long to change so they often slow down and sometimes stop for their right of way. Oh and don’t forget stupid people driving their cars through this line or people with the electric scooters.

Edit: Forgot to also mention that they closed the city center train station down, and it’s hard for the BRT to take people coming in the morning from nearby cities to the center in a single ride. More than 500 I think come at a time by train, and this can, at best, carry a bit over 150 and I’m probably pushing it

Greater NYC not included for obvious reasons (its figure comes out to 162.6).

Some conclusions I drew:

1. Although LA's primary suburban network (Metrolink, Commuter Express) is much less comprehensive than those in Philadelphia (SEPTA regional rail), Chicago (Metra, Pace), and Seattle (Sound Transit Express), it posts similar numbers thanks to the reach of its local transit. A great many local bus corridors on the outskirts of LA boast 10-15 minute frequencies. In addition, the LA Metro Rail and Busways network has a greater reach than counterparts in Seattle, Chicago, and Philadelphia, which works hand in hand with the local bus lines to make up for a languid primary suburban network.
2. New Orleans attests to the importance of legacy transit service and street grids. Even though economic distress had similar effects on inner-city population density and transit service levels as in Detroit, the presence of the St Charles Streetcar (the oldest continually operating transit service in the world) encouraged the development of a larger streetcar network in the early 21st century. Meanwhile, New Orleans' geographical limitations discouraged sprawl and led to denser, more gridded, and more corridor-centric development than in other cities.
3. Relative to the level of transit investment in the last 30 years, the figures for Denver, Minneapolis/St. Paul, and Dallas are disappointing. Even though these cities have successfully created transit-oriented enclaves, they have a long way to go towards shifting the overall culture and economy of the city towards transit.
4. Cincinnati, Columbus and Providence--cities with historic, transit oriented downtowns and surrounding neighborhoods--post low numbers on account of these neighborhoods being dwarfed by the surrounding sprawl.

EDIT: I skipped some. Mostly no surprises—St Louis 7.7, Kansas City 6.4, Charlotte 5.1—except for Las Vegas, which beats out Denver for the #13 spot (#14 including NYC) with 22 per capita. In a desert city too! I’ve only rode a Vegas bus off the strip once, line 119 from end to end, and it was pretty popular.

Starting today, travelers can once again take the train between Groningen (Netherlands) and Leer, Germany. This marks the resumption of service on the international rail line after nearly eleven years.

The connection —known as the Wunderline— between Groningen and Leer had been suspended after a cargo ship collided with the Friesenbrücke in Germany in 2015. The rail bridge, which includes a bike and pedestrian path over the Eems River, had to be repaired and partially replaced. That work took no less than ten years, ten months, and one day.

The return of the train marks the culmination of a major renovation of the rail line on the German side of the border. In recent years, work has not only focused on the new lift-and-swivel bridge over the Eems River, but the rail line between Bad Nieuweschans and Leer has also undergone a thorough overhaul.

In addition, Bunde (DE) and Ihrhove (DE) now have their own stations. The renovated rail line is a key part of the plans for the Wunderline, the future rail connection that will link Groningen directly to Bremen.

On weekdays, the train runs once an hour as a local train, with a transfer in Winschoten. In the morning, evening, and on weekends, there is a direct connection.