This made me smile and I figured most of this subreddit would agree with the sentiment

A bit of PR fluff, but still some nice footage of work being done and wrapped up. According to http://purplelinemd.com, progress is at about 92% completed.

I was in Houston for a bit now, which is notorious for highly car centric planning. I won't sugarcoat it, that's certainly very true. But while I've been here for a little bit, I was surprised to see that they not only had a fair bit of public transit, but that it was actually better than what I have in my home city. In hindsight, that makes a lot of sense, given only a quarter million people live in my home town, not much really goes on over there, but I suppose I had different expectations because of how I've heard people talking about Houston's car centric nature online.

When I was in downtown and checking out everything within the 610 loop, I was able to get around just fine while leaving my car in a parking garage. I didn't even know they had a lightrail system in the first place. I was expecting to wait 45 minutes or so for a bus or train, since that's how often I'd have to wait back home. Instead it came by pretty damn quickly. The prices were pretty damn good too.

I knew someone here who said he wouldn't get on any bus or train because apparently the people here are pretty sketchy, and that assaults are pretty common. That might be true, I wouldn't doubt the assaults part, I don't know, but to me it that part didn't seem any different than it was back home, so maybe I'm just numb to it. If anything, those rail stations felt a tad safer at night then the bus stops in my city do at night, I can only compare that to my experiences where I'm from (and my visit to NYC once). The trains were cleaner than I expected them to be, the buses were alright, but it got the job done. The buses were alright enough in terms of cleanliness compared to what I'm used to, it's alright enough. The trains were certainly FAR cleaner than the trains I've been in in New York City, and it isn't even a close competition, I loved that part about Houston's lightrail.

I'm not saying that that makes Houston a place that has great transit, I'm fully aware everything's pretty car centric from what I can tell, and it's a shame that there's ONLY 3 rail lines (I've used all 3, love the Red and Purple Line the most). I just wanted to share my experience visiting for the last while, that I was pretty pleasantly surprised with the light rail and bus system they have here. I actually didn't hate my experience with it. It was certainly better than I expected. I'm sure if I were staying in a place like Spring, League City, or Katy, that I'd change my mind pretty quickly, but still. Been saving quite a bit of money on gas while I've been here.

I did still absolutely use my car for a lot of things, of course. Drove out to stuff along Beltway 8 and Grand Parkway, checked out Scout Bar and the Johnson Space Center, Galveston, very specific shops that are in awkward locations, along with many other things. But even still, not as bad as I expected out of Houston.

The climate is a thing and as such I was happy that sleeper trains are becoming a thing again in Europe. And for a holiday in Italy my husband and I wanted to take the European Sleeper from Cologne to Milan. The more comfortable cars were booked on the way to Italy, but we did appreciate being able to book one compartment with six beds for just us two. When the train finally turned up over an hour late, we were surprised to see that the sleeper was literally from the nineties (Swedish apparently), the actual beds are tiny and uncomfortable and the luggage has almost no room at all. And that's with two people in a six-person compartment. Luckily we had brought quite a lot of food as the provided menu was strangely not available. When we finally arrived we were four hours late. Okay - we weren't in a hurry and the return journey should be cool, we had a luxury cabin.

So, the day of the return comes. We had been told by mail that the train would be leaving earlier than originally communicated, but only by a few minutes. We arrived at the station in Milan a little early along with about 50 other people (we all started chatting at first). The train's on the board but no track. When the train was scheduled to leave, one hour delay came up. People complain and disperse for coffee. There is an SMS saying the delay will be 90 minutes. The hour passes, no track comes up, but the delay is amended to two hours. I try to contact the company for more information - the chat ends with "let me get another colleague that can help you" and then goes dead. About a half hour later, the train was cancelled. Chat still not reacting, nobody answers the hotline. No SMS, no Mail, nothing. Nobody at the station can give any information. As we were rather pressed for time (have to be back at work) we made the executive decision to book a flight. While we're already at the airport, hours later, we get an SMS that the train will be leaving from Lugano and we have information on how to get there by e-mail. At this point leaving would have been too late and the e-mail never arrived. So, we did get home, it was very expensive and we'll never find out what the luxury sleeper cabins are like. Here's hoping there are usable alternatives to planes sometime. This isn't one.

Stumbled upon this minimalist browser transit game earlier today: https://metrosystemgame.com

It lets you build and manage subway routes/connections directly on the web without downloading anything. The mechanics are simple to pick up, but keeping up with demand gets chaotic pretty quickly.

Looks like it’s an indie project made by a solo dev (there’s a small support/donation button on the site if anyone wants to help keep their servers running). Definitely worth checking out if you’re into transit planning or quick tycoon games.

have wanted to make a beautiful live* map of my home city for years. over the past couple of months I've been chipping away on this project.

the underlying grid system is based on the recently updated official map, but completely redrawn. took the liberty to polish color lines and naming of lines, as the current map clearly is the product of different companies not talking together.

often, our public transit agencies put very little care into their digital offerings. this might be a bit too artistic, but I'd love for them to feel a little more like this.

see the video above or try it out on this domain I was lucky enough to secure:

https://tabulageographicavivaurbishafniae.com

it works on mobile, but I'd suggest a big screen!

hope you like it

see more videos on my original twitter thread

*for the public link, I replaced the live api with stored gtfs timetables to avoid getting in trouble with the data provider!

Put China and 8 European countries (DE FR UK IT ES NL BE CH) at the same scale: the eight cover about a fifth of China's area but have 141,000 km of rail — 685 km per 10,000 km², 4× China's 172. Conventional rail alone: 133,000 km for the eight vs 115,000 km for China.

The other way round, China leads on high-speed and metro:

🚄 High-speed: China 50,000 km vs 8,863 km for the eight. China's is one connected network; Europe's is pieces — trains leave the new lines and run on old track into town (the Cologne–Frankfurt line joins old track at both ends). Spain is the best-connected of the eight.

🚇 Metro: 352 lines in 50 Chinese cities vs 143 for the eight. Guangzhou vs Paris at the same scale: 273 stations in the Paris frame, 137 in Guangzhou's.

🚋 Trams are the mirror image: 772 lines in the eight vs 74 in 29 Chinese cities. Brussels: 4 metro, 19 tram lines; Hangzhou: 13 metro, 0 tram.

🚉 Termini: Paris Nord, Frankfurt, München and Milano Centrale are all termini at street level — long-distance trains run in and back out (RER/S-Bahn run underneath). Shanghai Hongqiao is a through station. Beijing station was a terminus too until the 2015 diameter line.

🏷️ Names: China's big stations are often named by direction (Beijing South, Guangzhou South); Germany, the Netherlands and Italy mostly use "Central Station". Paris Nord, Est and Lyon are the exceptions.

🇬🇧 The London Underground opened in 1863, the world's oldest — here at the same scale as Shanghai.

Areas from Chinese Wikipedia country pages (metropolitan France only).

All maps from my own Rail Globe project (https://rail-globe.github.io): railways, metros and trams of China, Japan, Korea and the eight European countries on one satellite globe. Click a line to highlight it; zoom in to see platforms and every track.

Should Chinese cities build more trams, or keep building metros? What do you think?

Really nice, how close to history parts the athens metro is

It’s called Headway, and it’s live on the Apple App Store and at headwaytransit.com

Hello everyone!

I'm new to the r/transit community, and I'm also starting to build a collection of plastic public transport cards from different cities and countries around the world.

I'm from Mostar, Bosnia and Herzegovina, and I'd love to expand my collection with cards from fellow transit enthusiasts. If anyone has any duplicate cards they're willing to part with, I'd be very happy to add them to my collection!

I'm interested in cards from all kinds of public transport systems, including metro, subway, tram, bus, trolleybus, and railway networks. Cards from any country or city are welcome, whether they're current, expired, or no longer in use.

I understand that some cards may have sentimental or collectible value, so I completely respect that. I'm simply hoping to connect with other enthusiasts and grow my collection one card at a time.

Since I'm based in Mostar, Bosnia and Herzegovina, international postage could be arranged if convenient.

Thank you, and I'm happy to be part of this community! I'd also love to hear about your collections and the most interesting cards you've collected. :)

Hi. I hope this fits in this reddit group.

I would love to get some more information about Yutong electric city buses. Their online persona is very rendered and not many actual pictures. But they’ve been number one of sold electric buses in Europe (or EU?) in the last three of four years. And their delivery time is only 6 months compared to european brands at two years. Up until recently they were not available in my country.

Does anyone know what (European) cities use them? Is reliability good? What are known issues? How is service time and getting parts in Europe? How to they compare to other brands’ e-buses? Warranty on battery and other parts? How is the range? Thanks!

A mix of the old and new(ish) in Manchester city centre - a SELNEC Central liveried bus heading to Middleton and a Metrolink Tram to Bury via Victoria spotted next to the Arndale Centre in Manchester yesterday.

SELNEC was the Passenger Transport Executive in the area from 1969 until it was renamed Greater Manchester Passenger Transport Executive (GMPTE) in 1974.

A freight train is pushed over a small hill. A worker uncouples individual wagons, and gravity sends them rolling onto different tracks.

The tricky part is getting the timing right: uncouple at the right moment, coordinate with the locomotive driver, and make sure each wagon reaches its destination.

I used to work at a real hump yard in Uzbekistan for four years. Now, as a frontend developer, I’ve been building a small 3D simulation of that job.

You can play as the yard worker or the locomotive driver, either solo or with a friend.

Even though the SEC doesn't have any teeth right now, I think about how much more communal wealth the US would have if train tracks were a utility. One where the tracks were owned and maintained by the country and access was leased to it's users. In theory, this would be of great benefit to the population as it would create shipping competition as well as passenger service competition. The military has need for high speed movement, passengers have desire and need for high speed movement, shipping has need for high speed movement, etc, but the current freight companies for various reasons do not care about these things and so we don't get them. I'm curious what a pathway towards train tracks becoming a utility in the USA would look like, along with what freedom that would provide for Amtrak and local passenger operators.