London's Underground: The First Circle of Hell?

The Underground is hot, according to this heat map of heat:



Says Times Online:

It is easy to feel sorry for commuters on the London Underground at this time of year, crammed into stuffy carriages with the temperature rising. But some passengers, it appears, are more deserving of pity than others.

A map compiled by Transport for London (TfL) has revealed the hottest spots on the Tube network, notorious for its lack of air-conditioning.

The map, which covers most of the Underground lines in zones one and two, was compiled by TfL officials to identify areas most in need of cooling, but it will be a handy aid for travellers anxious to avoid the worst spots.

The hottest parts of the Central Line were above 30C (that's 86 in 'Merican numbers) on the hottest day of 2008. Notes the Times: "In previous tests, temperatures in some carriages during the summer have exceeded 35C [95F], which would make the network officially unfit for transporting cattle." Upon reading this line, the hooved population of Texas collectively burst into derisive laughter, rolling gaily among the prickly pears and bullnettles for some hours. (They're big readers of Times Online, oddly.)

My point: that's not all that hot, especially for the hottest day of the year. How did the Brits ever manage to stick around India long enough to comprehensively exploit the place?

BART vs. Metrorail: How (and How Not) to Build a Subway

Yesterday's post reminded me of a question I've had occasion to ask myself: what's the deal with BART? That's the urban rail system in the San Francisco Bay area; it's always noted as one of the most significant urban rail systems in the US, it has a huge number of track-miles, and supposedly the 5th highest ridership in the country, and yet... I've been to the Bay Area several times, and BART just doesn't seem very present. It's not a great way for visitors to get around the city and you rarely come across stations unless you're seeking them out. So what gives?

Christof Spieler atIntermodality, the blog of Houston's Citizen's Transportation Coalition, may have the answer:



San Francisco's BART is on the left; DC's Metrorail is on the right. They're shown at the same scale, which reveals both the similarities and differences between the two systems. Says Spieler:

Rail transit projects don’t come with control groups — we can’t clone a section of a city, build two different rail lines, and compare the results. In this case, though, there’s an interesting comparison to be made between two remarkably similar rail systems.

San Francisco is in the 5th largest metropolitan area in the country. Washington DC is in the 4th largest. Both cities have old, urban cores with major employment centers surrounded by extensive post-war suburban development. In the 1960s, both decided to build a heavy rail system. And not only do those two systems use very similar technology, they are nearly the same length (104 miles vs. 106 miles).

There is one significant difference between San Francisco’s BART and Washington’s Metrorail, though: Washington has 2 1/2 times the ridership (902,100 average weekday boardings compared to 338,100.) Why? I’ve lived in both places, and I’ve ridden both systems. And I think the difference is that BART is primarily a suburban system while Metrorail, even though it serves the suburbs as well, is at its heart a urban system.

Spieler explains the difference:

BART serves the suburbs. Metrorail serves the suburbs and the urban core.
BART’s furthest station is 25 miles from downtown SF as the crow flies, across two small mountain ranges. Metrorail’s furthest station is 15 miles from the center of DC.
BART has a single line through the city of San Francisco. It serves Downtown and one urban neighborhood, the Mission... Metrorail has 5 lines through Washington, serving many neighborhoods in all parts of DC. Metrorail also serves many more suburban employment centers than BART does...

BART saves money by using existing rights of way; Metrorail maximizes ridership by puting lines where the transit demand is...Only the San Francisco subway, a two-station subway in Downtown Oakland and a three-station subway in Berkeley [don't use existing rights-of-way]. The latter — which serves the University of California along with Downtown Berkeley — was built only because the city contributed money; BART planners wanted to put the station a mile from the edge of the UC campus. Metrorail uses some existing rail lines and a Virginia freeway corridor, but the majority of the system is in subway alignments that serve neighborhoods and employment centers...

BART stations are where the cars are; Metrorail stations are where the people are. The vast majority of BART stations are car-oriented. The “typical” BART station is an elevated structure surrounded by park-and-ride lots in a low-density neighborhood. Over half of Metrorail stations, by contrast, don’t even offer parking. These stations serve employment centers (urban and suburban), universities, neighborhood crossroads, and residential areas...

Spieler posts a couple more maps to illustrate this last point:



I've used both systems, and there's just no competition: the Metrorail is a lot more convenient for getting around DC. And it actually extends significantly into the surrounding suburbs, so it's not like it's useless for commuters; but that seems to be the primary function of BART. And that's how you end up with systems of similar lengths, but one of which has 2 1/2 times the ridership of the other: one was built for people, the other was built for cars.

Actually, considering that pretty much everything we've done in the US to develop our cities since WWII has been designed primarily for the use of cars, rather than people, it's sort of miraculous that the DC system got built the way it did. Here's hoping that the designers of future mass transit systems are receptive to the lesson that the differing histories of BART and Metrorail provide.

Subways of the World, United (at the same scale)

One of my favorite maps that I've covered here has been this map from radical cartography showing the mass transit systems of North America at the same scale. Recently, via Matt Yglesias, I came across a similar project: this one is by Neil Freeman and it shows subway systems from around the world at the same scale. Here are some of the subway systems he's got, though there are many others.



I - an American who detests the standard mode of American urban development of the last 60 years - tend to think of European cities as walkable utopias with comprehensive mass transit systems. I don't know if that's quite a fair judgment, but one thing you notice from these maps is that, other than New York City, there are very few American cities with a subway system that forms a dense web like Paris' or Madrid's. Even Washington, which has a very good subway system, is sort of spread out, and then it goes downhill from there. But a bunch of cities in Europe and Asia have very dense systems, and it seems that that's what you need to have truly comprehensive rail mass transit: the ability to walk to the nearest Metro stop, and then to get from pretty much any point in a city to pretty much any other point on the subway. You can do that in New York City; I don't know if you can do it in any other city in North America.