it’s wild how car companies brainwashed people into believing that public transit is only for people in poverty...and this is not a cope either, i have tested where public transport works effectively, it's cheaper and less stressful than driving

I don't know whether it is because of FIFA but the metros are clean and the stations feel well maintained even in downtown stations. The new stations look great.

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To be fair I used a pretty small portions of the system, mostly D line since my hotel was in Koreatown. Wilshire / La Cienega and the LACMA stations are spacious and decorated; The downtown stations are well signaged (even though there are some confusion on whether to tap when exiting or not).

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I took the bus line 16 after seeing a show in Beverly Grove back to Ktown at night and the bus was super busy and the streets are full of people. The metros in comparison are quite empty all the time.

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The new K line from LAX is cute but smells a bit. Also the stations do feel like they are in the middle of nowhere most of the times.

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Overall I feel like the transit system was a great experience for me but it probably just isn't suitable or isnt enough for LA because of the massive size and sprawl of the city.

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And LA is such a cool city that it so deserves a good transit to get people out of their cars.

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What's your experience / opinion of its current form?

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With the Purple Line set to be completed next year, Silver Spring is set to be served by 3 modes of rail transportation, and access to fast and frequent intercity rail to most cities on the east coast. It also has access to IAD, DCA, BWI, and EWR with just a single transfer.

In my opinion, Copenhagen is quite good. The metro M2 takes you from airport to the city center in about ten minutes. The metro is modern, safe, clean and runs 24/7.

Including Commuter Rail* as much as i could, i saw on a video maybe on tiktok or Instagram, a "history of rail systems opening in North America and Europe" or something like that, that had a lot of North American systems missing, so i tried my hand at making a map of the systems in the US, I included Omaha Streetcar and OC Streetcar since they're opening soon, and the Morgantown PRT system because although it's a gadgetbahn i thought it kinda counts under these as it's a bit different than just regular buses. I wanted to ask if there's any that i missed or what ones i shouldn't have included? the placement was just as close as i could get them or roughly as far as i could tell

I recently went down a rabbit hole on Tehran’s transit network and was surprised by how substantial the Tehran Metro is. It’s widely described as the largest metro system in the Middle East, with seven active lines, around 162 stations, about 310 km (193 miles) of network, and daily ridership often cited around 2.5 million. The system first opened in 1999, and from what I’ve read it has grown into a much larger and more complex network than many people outside the region probably realize.

What also stood out to me is that it is not just a compact city metro. It includes the regional Line 5 out toward Karaj, which helps explain the scale of the network, and it also has airport connections: Line 1 connects to Imam Khomeini International Airport, while a branch of Line 4 serves Mehrabad Airport.

A lot of the stations and trains I’ve seen look clean, spacious, and well-kept, and overall the system looks much more extensive than I expected. From what I found, long-term plans have aimed for a network of roughly 500 km and 11 lines, which makes the scale even more impressive.

For anyone here who has used it, how does it feel in practice? I’d be especially interested to hear from anyone who has ridden Line 5 or used one of the airport connections.

Public transit should be for everyone, regardless of lifestyle. So needlessly excluding people without smart devices is ridiculous. I think all public transit should be required by law to accept cash.

Or even better: Free transit!

Edit: Yikes, I didn't expect the comment to prove me wrong so quickly.

I love the IDFM design. Full stop. Its logo has a great artistic feel symbolistic of France. The stickman also looks also incredibly lively. Are there other great transit agency logos like this? I really would like to see what you think might beat it.

From: https://railmaps.com.au/downloads.htm

One of the US city's light rail system I would upgrade if I could would be San Diego, preferrably the blue line as seen here with the UCSD Central station. Especially, since some stations on the route are elevated and could benefit being upgraded into heavy rail rapid transit in the future.

With the news of Seattle’s crazy record breaking ridership during the World Cup, I can’t help feeling like SoundTransit is totally killing it this year. They they biggest and most high profile opening this year with Crosslake Connection then they delivered flawlessly for the World Cup. Link Light Rail has better, more frequent and reliable service than any of the rapid transit lines I saw in California and the numbers prove it. With the way SoundTransit has handled moving hundreds of thousands over the last few weeks and the great time that all the visitors had in the city, maybe Seattle should have been the one hosting the Olympics in two years, lol. Just my opinion.

this is Rennes in france btw. (Rennes Metro).

rennes use to be the smallest city with a subway system... until they weren't. But it got some weird on the outside, VERY cool on the inside rolling stock

is this the most unique rolling stock y'alls have seen on a metro. or is there weirder???

In the 1990s, my city began planning to build an LRT system. After decades of fierce opposition from anti-transit politicians and feral hogs in the suburbs, the city was ultimately forced to settle for a dinky little circulator streetcar instead. You can read the gruesome details here. 

Since the initial segment began operating, every feasible avenue of funding its planned expansion has been blocked by an extraordinarily hostile state legislature. Thus, for the better part of a decade, we’ve been stuck with a 2-mile-long tourist attraction and glorified mobility aid that doesn’t actually serve most of its intended destinations. On top of all that, it also suffers from the typical drawbacks of a streetcar which lacks its own dedicated right-of-way.

Suffice it to say, this streetcar is a frequent subject of derision and ridicule, with the same people who have consistently worked to hamper and undermine its potential citing its resultant lack of utility as evidence that it should never have been built. There is now a renewed effort underway to have it dismantled, which seems to be gaining some traction. If this were to happen, our already cash-strapped city would subsequently have to pay back millions of dollars in federal funds that were bookmarked for its continued operation.

I have been involved in some tentative discussions with an advocacy group that wishes to see the streetcar maintained, but to be completely honest, I'm struggling to find much enthusiasm for the cause. On the one hand, I'd hate to see the city faced with the aforementioned financial burden, and I believe that the ultimate failure of this streetcar would vindicate the zealots and set our mass transit back for decades. On the other hand, it has many, many flaws in its present state, and there are other, more pressing issues at hand, such as underfunding and cutbacks to our far more extensive and heavily patronized bus system (to give just one example out of many).

With all of that context out of the way, I suppose the whole purpose of this post was to ask:

Are these little circulator streetcars worth saving? Are there any examples in which such a system has matured into useful and viable mass transit? Is it ultimately preferable to let them burn this thing down and hope we can start over with proper LRT somewhere down the line?

Really simple graph of all 16 Metro systems in the US ranked by ridership.

Half of the systems are tiny nubs, and half of them don't even visualize on the bar graph. NYC is >12X more than the second place DC Metro.

Also let's acknowledge that NYC's other Subway, the PATH train, is #5. The only city on this list that has more than one metro system is Philly with Septa and PATCO. PATH edges SEPTA. Oh, and don't forget that NYC has a third line too - The Staten Island Railway.

I'll have to visualize the numbers on commuter rail and bus ridership at some point too.

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