Notable absence from the 24hr network discussion: Tokyo. When the clock strikes midnight, the trains stop, and you’re likely staying the night where you are.
Tokyo was terrible (particularly because it has 3 different companies and end at different times). Hong Kong could really use 24 hour service too, but the night busses worked so much better
I know I'm a bit late to the party here :) But, one of the main reasons the Tokyo network does not run between 24h00-05h00 is because the tracks and trains are manually inspected every night I believe (like RM said), which is why the Tokyo network is one of if not the safest and most efficient in the world. So it comes at a cost, but we can't have 24/7 services AND top level safety/equipment standards at the same time :)
I was in New York and I passed through a station that was 3ft underwater and leaking from the ceiling but it wasn’t even raining outside. Cut ‘n’ cover.
@@lemonade4181 That's not so much a problem with cut-and-cover subways in general and more with New York's style of construction in particular - Other cut-and-cover subways (e.g. in Rio de Janeiro) don't flood nearly as bad, even during storms that are just as intense as the recent one in New York
@@civ27 Think 1 issue with NYC subway stations is that their ventilation shafts terminate as pothole grates/covers on the surface of roads above. Meanwhile in my country (Singapore) the shafts always terminate a few meters above the road surface e.g. beside surface-level exits from underground stations, sited along pavements, making it less likely for water to run off from the surface down into the station
I like what Philly does. They run it on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday nights, and at night, there are no station attendants, you pay the train operator. And since it runs relatively infrequently, they can single track it if they want to do repair work on a weekend for whatever reason, especially with a lot of the network having four tracks.
I believe that the Philly system has quite infrequent trains at night ( 20 or 30 minutes or more), they run on a set schedule, so while it might be a tad slower, with timed connections between lines, riders can show up at station at planned times to reduce waiting.
@@haweater1555 Yes, they run less frequently at night, so it's better to plan ahead. But it's night time, what more can you expect. Not even New York runs their trains *that* frequently at night.
Ours does it with hourly services overnight on Friday and Saturday nights. Capacity and maintenance concerns aren't the sole answer. Having enough drivers that were willing to operate the service, and overcoming union and police concerns were the major factors. Currently suspended due to the lockdown and curfew in my city. When maintenance is required, we simply shut that section down and run replacement buses over the section, and the maintenance is done on absolute occupation of the section.
Thank you Reece for an extremely interesting and very persuasive video. One point about London. The night bus network is now VERY extensive. I think there are now something like 70 routes which run 24-hours-a-day. They cater for both the work and leisure market.
This was my point too - the night tube is there when the capacity on the buses is often exceeded i.e. when people are out clubbing on the weekend. Before the night tube the night time queues at the central bus stops was insane, to the point I sometimes just walked the 1 hour to my mainline station! (Heaven to Paddington)
London's night buses and 24-hr bus services (yes there's a difference) are very extensive and run from central London to most of what is covered by Greater London's rail network and due to low traffic, they can be quite fast. I would assume most night workers take those.
Many times, on weekday nights, a trip using a night bus can be much faster than the same trip but using a train, mostly because of the lack of traffic, fewer stops/passengers, and if you're lucky, they can get you closer to where you're going...
The NYC Subway temporarily stopped 24/7 service from May 2020 where the subway is closed to all passengers from 1-5am. And yes, as you said, there isnt enough space to store the trains so some of them have to run as if it were a normal service.
I have to agree with the points Reece makes and add a few more data to strengthen the possibility and feasibilty maybe of a 24-hour service. 1. Copenhagen, apart from switching their tracks on and off as they see fit to maintain them, also run Buses which replace the Metro service on the parts where maintenance happens. This means they can keep moving loads of people, and even close those Metro parts to allow for full maintenance. 2. Lausanne, Switzerland has a single-track Metro line, M1. However, there are passing loops/switches at 12/15 M1 stations. This means that trains can pass each other and achieve headways of every 7-8 minutes. While it only operates during the day, this single-track service pattern shows that even if demand is sky high during the night it is totally possible to run day-style services in the night and do maintenance as well. 3. During the 2019 Patras Carnival, maybe the biggest festivity my hometown is famous for, our local bus company decided, for the first time, to run buses during the night, every half an hour. The point that Reece made about speed and less traffic on the roads is valid. The journey was almost as fast, if not faster than the day, and it had to do with less people on the road, double parking their cars everywhere. This trip was on Line 2 of the network, which is notorious for the tight roads it uses. So, to sum up, a) single tracking with modern signlaling and switches at every station and b) buses that replace trains can certainly help maintain and run a system 24 hours every day.
I think 24hr metro service does run the risk of allowing the transit system to over focus on the metro to the expense of buses, as some systems seem to already want to do. Night buses seem like a good way to encourage the city to put money into both networks.
i mean if a 24 hour service can survive then it can survive. it wouldn't be good to just cut service for buses, especially when most people hate buses, and theyre a poor solution for aiding in our mountain of environmental concerns right now.
I'd love to see you cover my hometown of Hamburg, Germany. We have 24h (subway, s-bahn and metrobus) service on weekends and night busses during the week, like Toronto. The system also has plenty of quirks, new extensions being built and all that good stuff that makes up a video :D I really value the level of detail and your ideas/opinions on system improvements 👍
@@RMTransit While I don't have internal insight, from a passenger POV Hamburg doesn't seem to do any overnight maintenance -- they're shutting down sections of track, maybe three to four stations, for some while and provide a high-capacity temporary bus line in the meantime. Another thing I haven't anyone really hear talk about is Hamburg's type of line interlocking: For a very long time there was no ring line (and there still isn't really one), but intersecting "L"s or even "U"s (e.g. the U1 going from roughly north to the center and then north-east).
NYC's system also has many separate lines that serve the same major areas, so a whole line may be shut down overnight for weeks/months/years at a time for major work. For example, in the early 2010's, the gray "L" line was shut down overnight for years while the tunnel under the East River was rehabbed. If you went to a concert in Brooklyn & wanted to get back to Grand Central or Penn, you had to take the G crosstown up to Court Square, then x-fer to the purple 7 line to Manhattan. Right now, it's the opposite, the purple 7 is closed overnight for East River tunnel rehab for a long time, so riders either take the gray L, or the blue M lines to get from Brooklyn to Manhattan.
@@samuelitooooo Well for that it comes every weekday except Sundays and Public Holidays. Well your Viennese, you got to find something to grouch about in the face of an excellent transit system.
San Diego can't run 24 hour trolley service because a railroad uses parts of their ROW during the night. They are looking to start running limited overnight bus service, though.
New York doesn’t even run at full strength overnight; many of the local trains (like the C) shut down and their express counterparts (like the A) run local, and service frequency drops to, like, 20-30 minutes in many areas. Also most projects are concentrated shutdowns for a weekend or so.
Here in Melbourne we have 24 hour service on suburban trains on Friday and Saturday nights, despite having very poor network flexibility and track redundancy. Most of the network is signalled uni-directionally, and crossovers are generally infrequent, so running a double track line as single is extremely rare. However the night frequency is a fairly useless hourly. Low level maintainance in between trains is common here anyway, even during the day on 10 or 20 min frequencies. When we have weekend track work, it's common for a total occupation to begin ~9pm on the Friday night right through to Monday morning.
Your videos just hit next level today. IMO let's solve for the problem (late night transit options) rather than be hung up on mode. In other words, no need for 24/7 TTC subway service if the night buses can operate quickly, safely and consistently.
I liked the drawn examples, though I think they'd be better with some colour. Such as, when showing independent power switches, it'd be clearer if the zappy line was yellow.
As a music enthusiast who travels to many cities in the Northeast USA for concerts, & who likes to not have to drive after a concert for various & sundry reasons (wink wink), I always try to plan around each city's public trans system to get back to wherever I am staying from any concert venue I plan on patronizing. Certainly NYC is a cinch. Boston, Phila, & DC run their metro systems till 1 am, which is sufficient for most concerts, which end between 11pm & midnight. Transfers can be an issue, ie, if you have a long wait time for 1st leg, you can get stranded at x-fer point if you're dropped there after system shutdown of 1 am. Only NYC area runs their commuter trains late enough for concerts tho - most are "last train out at 1:40 am". All the other cities commuter systems roll up the tracks at 10 or 11 pm. So it's always nice if a system runs at least till 1 am rather than shutting down at 10 or 11, however, of course, this means the overnight maintenance window is shortened to almost not being worth having. Note I'm not a big fan of taxi's, uber, or lyft, as post concert they are high demand thus high cost & may have extended wait times.
Just to add to your comment on double deckered busses at night, in Hong Kong, where more than 90% of busses are double deckered, there’s a slightly higher proportion of night busses with *single decks* cause the capacity simply isn’t needed, reduces on maintenance and tolls. Plus single deckered busses have the same number of doors. Oh and a majority of night busses connect to the CBD in Central. Equally as important, Mong Kok on the Kowloon side has a very extensive (red) minibus network (the red minibuses are like shared taxi, though they have certain routes organised) to most locales in HK. That’s how HK does their night transit. Night bus if in Central or Minibus if in Mong Kok.
Thank you for this! I’ve been confused by these comments about no we can’t operate 24 hours but this makes a lot of sense now. I also had no idea of the options others use. The night bus in Toronto is definitely a cool idea.
Even though the idea of having 24h metro seems attractive, I think it'd require a lot of work for a quite low impact. Having a real, integrated night-bus network is not only cheaper but also better in terms of connectivity and possible trips. And it doesn't take anything exceptional: 10-15 min intervals on trunk lines, maybe 20-30 on local lines, connecting on safe and well-kept terminals of transit centers. São Paulo did that a few years ago and, gosh, that was BEAUTIFUL! You could go anywhere in the city using a reliable, frequent bus even at 3am. So much better than maybe just a couple of metro segments operating downtown.
In Berlin we do it that way, that the important Tram and Bus lines (with the prefix „M“ for MetroTram/Bus) have 24h service, if even only every 30 minutes. Additionally, before Weekends (so FRI->SAT, SAT->SUN), all U-Bahn and S-Bahn lines are running. U-Bahn every 15minutes (replacing the night busses of cause), S-Bahn lines at least every 20 so there is a dense service on the core routes as they usually overlap. Metro services also run way more frequently depending in how important they are for Partying (M10 Tram runs every 10minutes till ~3am!). I would actually not like to see the 24 hour service be extended to the S and U-Bahn, as they are doing lots of maintenance work at night and routes already have to shut down for weeks often for maintenance.
Madrid used to have a 24h bus system that substituted the metro and sadly closed in 2013. Now the only night transit there is in the city is the "Owl" buses which are quite inconvenient because to do transfers you ALWAYS (except N27 and N26 I think) have to go all the way to Cibeles in the city centre.
Night tube actually ends up working really well because the lines that operate at night are all deep level through the city centre. Weekend works on the tube are normally ballast track replacement works on sub-surface or above ground sections of line, so there was rarely heavy engineering works on the night tube lines on Friday and Saturday nights beforehand. The only shift that had to be made was light maintenance and that's much easier to organise.
Sydney does the same thing as Toronto - we have night busses that run very quickly, and on events such as new years, trains run not only all night, but routing and timetabling is optimised to absolutely maximise frequency in the city circle. In addition, because there is significant sextuple(!) and quad track corridors, on weekends when service is already dialled back, tracks can be closed for maintenance with no or little impact on service frequency, just some different platform routing. And in urgent maintenance scenarios that cannot be completed overnight on dual track sections, the rail bus (train replacement bus) system is quite fleshed out and way finding and information is very clear through signage, station (and additional) staff, apps and online. Although in my experience, it's not the most reliable.
Las Vegas doesn't even have any rail. The bus system is going 24/7, and only really slows down for one hour a night to help switch out busses and drivers.
I think the key is late night frequency. More systems need to 1)reverse signal and 2)add more crossovers to allow for single tracking so that say between 10pm and 5am you can run trains every half-hour or so and shut down one track at a time.
After doing some minor research and thinking about the timetable again, the Rhine-Main S-Bahn does run the S8/9 all the day when typically, regional railway lines (including other lines on this S-Bahn) have their service suspended during the night. It helps that they're connected to the airport so 24-hour service is justified there.
About maintenance and stuff. When Stockholm metro upgraded it's signalling on its green and then later red line, they of course made it so that it's really "simple" to have single track operations on sections of the lines. The switches between the tracks has always been there. This has been very beneficial when there's a problem on one of the tracks, service can hopefully operate around the problem, day or night.
In Hanover when you living suburban, you have to care not to miss the last bus at half to 11 pm. But in the night to Saturday and Sunday there are suburban bus lines that are on request. You tell the bus driver your bus stop, he creates a route depending to the passengers. The goal isn't to be in time, but to come home. So the bus covers 10 different lines.
Singapore ran its MRT (subway/metro) overnight previously on special occasions e.g. the morning of the StanChart Singapore Marathon (usu on the 1st wk of Dec), so that participants could reach the start lines on time (@ 0500h in downtown; there're different ones for different distance categories e.g. 1/2 vs full marathon, _Ekiden_ relay marathons), or to meet the high travel demand to pay respects at the wake of our 1st PM Lee Kuan Yew in 2015 at the downtown Parliament Hse (~500k people visited the wake over its 5-day period). Besides these we have late-night buses, & interestingly we have a bus stop that's only served by such buses - Opp Unity St along _Md Sultan Rd_ - probably since there're quite a lot of bars & clubs there, which you might say is ironic as the road's eponymous person is Muslim, who don't drink. We previously trailed an on-demand scheme for 1 of the night buses (NightRider 7 (NR7)), where the route changes depending on passenger demand to/from different bus stops (which they signalled to the bus driver via an app), but it failed as the gov't felt it too expensive to implement
It works best for New York City because of the mass redundancy between the subway lines and bus routes that often run above/below the trains and the massive shuttle services ran when sections of lines are shut down (like the A and 1 train does every other month)
I believe that an all-time rapid transit operations is possible on other rapid transit systems. It is suitable for some rapid transit systems in the world, depending upon the amount of people who would frequently use them. I do agree that two hours is too short a time to start and complete major maintenance jobs. At least four hours a night, or a weekend should be sufficient time to do any maintenance work, except station cleaning, revenue collection, and other lighter work.
I happen to live in NYC, the king of 24/7 subway service, but I'm studying two other transit/subway systems that could benefit from round-the-clock service: Chicago and Los Angeles. Part of the Chicago "L" system (Red and Blue lines) do run 24 hours a day, but parts of three other lines (Purple, Brown and Orange) that can benefit from 24/7 service. Until around the late 1980s, part of the Purple Line used to be 24/7. The CTA could bring back 24-hour service to the Purple Line; likewise, have part of the Brown Line (shortened between Kimball and Belmont to connect with the Red Line) and introduce a 24/7 Orange Line that would operate between Midway and Roosevelt (also to transfer with the Red Line). As for Los Angeles, former mayor Antonio Villaraigosa has stated publicly that he wants to see LA have 24/7 subway service in the future. The key phrase is "in the future," because the City of Angels may have it as soon as the 2028 Olympics (which will take place in LA). I don't know the future before and perhaps after the 2028 Los Angeles Olympic Games, and for all transit lines, but I would imagine the two subway lines would run round-the-clock service (Lines B and D). Line B (the former Red Line) runs between Downtown LA and Hollywood. Line D (the former Purple Line) would operate between DTLA and, now under construction, the Miracle Mile, Beverly Hills, Century City and Westwood. Don't have the LA Setup down pat yet, perhaps it might be temporary, but whatever plan they implement, having 24 hour service would be worthwhile.
The L used to be entirely 24hrs until the ‘80s. Currently the lines that don’t run 24/7, stop running for about 3 hours each early morning. The stations are still staffed during this time, but I guess there isn’t enough money to pay for the trains to run.
One reason is the resistance of the resident population not wanting to have the noise level you have with 24 hour services. At least I think that's a big reason why some cities have a different night service network. Because where you have transport there will be shops and bars and overall can make the area busier.
Interestingly enough, on a list of cities who's trains operating 24 hours over the weekend you might not expect, Melbourne Australia. They're not right now due to the city being in lockdown, but for a few years before covid our trains and trams were actually running overnight on weekends. I'd imagine it has to do with the bar/club scene in the city being gigantic. Crap frequency though. Not unlikely you'll get caught in the city for 20 minutes waiting for a train, but it's still a nice option.
Something we do in Philly is we run night trains on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday (roughly 20 - 30 minute headways). On the other nights we do something a little different. Yes, it's a night bus service, but it's one that I don't see too often everywhere. It's the Owl buses. For the Market-Frankford Line and the Broad Street Line, when it's night time, SEPTA runs the Market-Frankford Owl (MFO) and the Broad Street Owl (BSO). They are rail replacement shuttle buses that run at night to keep the system moving at night without trains. Headways are okay (for what you expect) and they run multiple buses at a time to serve as one train. They are mostly express buses and don't go from end to end, but we some of out buses are 24 hour services, so it's fine. The Market-Frankford Owl follows the Market-Frankford Line to a T till it gets to Front (we don't have a 1st Street or a 14th Street, Broad Street is our 14 Street) and Girard (where it turns onto Girard and goes down to 2nd Street and continues till it gets to 2nd and Market, then continues to follow the line). The BSO is just follows the line perfectly. The MFO is usually articulated, the BSO isn't. Cities probably have this, but I honestly don't know.
In Berlin some lines are available 24 hours, but in the night maybe all 30 minutes. I can't remember a time, where Berlin never had night service. Different lines, maybe some additional switches and it takes longer, but I could go home, when I was visiting someone till 2 am.
Late to the party on this one--the video is 3 years old! However, I hope that Reece and others benefit from these comments; re big non-24 H systems like Tokyo, Lodon, Moscow, Paris, while the actual formal down time may only be ~4 hours, there is always a phase in / phase out, typically 60 minutes in the late night; 30 minutes in the early morning. That is, the headways are low enough that work can start while trains are still running and continue before they fully ramp up. The key is good planning; making sure that your maintenance units are pre-staged where the night's work begins. You don't send crews out only after revenue service ends, they prepare beforehand. All of Chicago's system used to be 24 H--little of it is now. I grew up there when it was and had obdd jobs that required night use. A legacy feature of Chicago (and I believe also NY) are frequent cross-overs that were added back when the subways were built and also on the Ls. This makes it easy to regularly isolate sections. The only issue then is keeping the public informed as to which platform to use.
My transit operator, VTA, as much hate as it gets for its poor service (mostly due to lack of funding), was very honest as to why they chose to use buses at night instead of 24hr light rail service. They said very openly: we use nighttime for maintenance and its important to keep the system in good shape, buses can do the job for night service easily.
It's absolutely true that 24 hour service isn't possible..... if you're unwilling to adapt your transit system to do it. That is the exact type of philosophy leading American metro areas with populations in the millions to have pitiful public transit systems as is. Coincidence? I think not. These are top-down strategic failures being sold to denizens as impossibilities from the bottom-up. It's important that we do our best to inform those around us of the potentiality of well-planned, well-funded public transit. P.S.: Great and informative video as always, RMTransit! Thank you!
New York’s 24-hour service has been a decade-old tradition, as well as a necessity (considering the shortage of yard space to store all trains), but it’s also a trade-off. When the system was actually closing its doors to passengers in order to be cleaned during the pandemic, it was evident how beneficial the LACK of 24-hour service can be: in the morning the trains’ smell reminded me of that in my original hometown of Minsk, Belarus, whose metro system is incomparably younger, smaller and, surely, cleaner. But, in spite of all that, I believe that New York City Subway should keep 24-hour service and look for creative ways to tend to cleanliness without nightly shutdowns.
writing from Tokyo. I found this video more nuanced and less objectionable (I commented recently on your Tokyo video). Tokyo does not run a 24hour service except for NYE. Before the 2020 Olympics were delayed, there were plans to have trains run 24hours during the games but with COVID it was nixed. The philosophy behind public transit in Japan and what I notice in N.America is that in Japan public transit is about moving the public for the purpose of livelihood vs other things such as entertainment. Extending the train service during the Olympics was not about the revellers but about those working who would need to stay late in jobs related to the games and their ability to return home after work. So first trains start prior to 5 a.m. and last trains depart around 25:00/25:30. So maintenance times are quite short. Train companies also run night buses along their train routes with just a handful of stops. Train companies in Japan also tend to own taxi services too. Since the arrival of the pandemic though, train companies have been pushing first train times later and ending service earlier in the night, one reason, a drop off in the number of commuters, another, staffing shortages amongst their maintenance/train staff due to COVID outbreaks within the train companies. The last point, I thought it was funny what you said about NYC transit not having the yard capacity. I live along the KEIO line and it too doesn't have yard capacity (in recent years) so trains are parked at stations along the lines. Not all of the stations but at the terminals and others along the way. Sometimes when they need to work on a particular stretch that has a train parked at the station they move the train to the next station further down the line for the night. It's very interesting to watch at 2 a.m. You are pumping out a lot of videos in short order, thank you for all of your hardwork.
In Denmark rail lines get shut down for maintanence from a few days to a few weeks at a time due to the need to run 24 hours on some lines . In the old days freight and sleeper trains ran all night on single track . Not anymore and it makes people not rely on trains anymore and either buy a car and drive or take a bicycle with a slow loss in passenger % wise in the country . Transit has to be as reliable as a car .
I really feel like a video on the PATCO speedline would be great, its a 24 hour service that is a partial metro partial commuter rail service that serves the Philly area. Its just one of the most interesting services IMO
Would love to see a video on Barcelona’s metro! Just spend a few days there and tbh it was a little confusing and I think therefor that it would make for a great video
What was a bit confusing? The only thing I can think of is if you need to use one of the FGC lines (which is a different system) but most tourists don't. Any way it is a great and extensive system and also completely integrated with one fare system for all transport means (including changes of course). The metro closes at midnight Sun-Thu, at 2am on Fri/eve of holidays and runs all night on Saturdays (now, due to Covid, it closes at 2am on Saturdays). There is also a night bus service that works year round.
@@AL5520 definitely the different systems were confusing! Especially since they are classified as normal lines. Then stations sometimes have very long walking distances. I think the best example is when you want to go from diagonal to barceloneta. You would think L3 and L4 would be the fastest way but it’s easier and faster to take the “longer” way with L5 via Verdaguer. You also have the interesting situation (that I haven’t really seen before) that metro lines cross each other multiple times. Plus different gauges and driverless cars (which leads to a widely diverse vehicular park) Don’t get me wrong, the metro was great, especially after you got the hang of it. But it was confusing at first (and the lag of English on the trains and platforms was also not really helpful if your not familiar with Spanish)
Honestly more than just running all night, a bigger hurdle is safety. I know any public transit stop, be it bus or train is can be a very sketchy place to be after dark. I wouldn't want to be waiting at 3am for a train.
Ironically NYC shut down 24 hour overnight service for about a year after quarantine began, and some subway lines were replaced with night bus service. That didn't turn out to be satisfactory from what I hear. I'm not sure whether it's because buses just aren't as fast as the subway. But the island of Manhattan presents a geography problem; we have more, and spread out, East River crossings (tunnels and bridges) built for our subway than there are allowing buses (and bikes) to cross, so many substitute trips are gonna be indirect. Cities like London with many river crossings allowing buses - or simply put, any city with few major geographic barriers in any potential bus network - are at an advantage. (And yes, NYC just ran the trains empty during the overnight shutdowns, only allowing cops onboard. Many believe it was merely an anti-homeless measure.)
Stockholm does the same thing London does, Friday and Saturday, and only every 30 minutes on each service. I remember when I was younger (like 90s) there was a time when the night service had been suspended, it was a fairly big issue, I don't remember exactly when it was brought back though, but it was something like 20 years ago.
TransLink study actually did say if you want to run it 24/7 you'll need to shut down sections several times a year for maintenance. New York does this but has enough routes to provide redundancy. They can divert trains. TransLink looked at Saturday and Friday night 24 hr service and concluded need to shut system down earlier in the week or later in the day. Again, not considered best. New York hasn't kept up with maintenance which raises the question if 24/7 running is really feasible for them too. I think the main reason is cost. The volume of traffic at night can be handled by night buses. And this is the way TransLink is going. Night buses are being extended to cover the times trains are not running.
Night buses aren't really being extended in Metro Van, at least they haven't been since I last lived there. Shutting sections down slightly earlier seems like a very different issue than it not being possible and should probably be taken to a vote
The Vancouver SkyTrain has the infrastructure in place to run all night. Or change the night buses to more closely mirror the SkyTrain network and to improve their frequency. It just comes down to cost.
Also of note to overnight service in NY, they run that service after midnight until 5am on roughly 20 minute headways, and commonly do work on routes in operation, with workers clearing out for passing trains which pass at a reduced speed. Their tunnels even in two track areas usually have space to safely clear the trackbed with some notable exceptions, where they will sometimes do a single track operation. Additionally, with the reasonable redundancy in Manhattan, it's not uncommon for them to shutdown an entire trunk line (what they call fast track) for a period of weeks overnight, where riders simply need to use a different route several blocks away inatead. Ultimately, a 20-30 minute headway in the overnight seems feasible on many systems. I think the big factor is cost of operation ultimately, and operating busses is probably the best bet for most cities for the reasons you describe. NYC has 8 million people, with that population it makes sense. But the London approach, is probably the better fit for smaller cities and systems.
@@RMTransit Yeah most definitely, in general you're not going to have a significant portion of the population traveling overnight, but when you have large cities like NY, even that portion of the population traveling at night is significant. I've been on jam packed trains in NY at 2AM, and this is a line with 11 car trains. Alternatively, I'd say London is probably underserved at night given its significant population as well.
All of the heavy rail transit systems in North America built in the second half of the 20th century have bidirectional signaling systems. Another issue you failed to address, those crossover used for single track operations also need to be maintained requiring single track operation over longer distances.
But then, Tokyo extended their maintenance windows all day, reducing services both in early morning and late night, all days of the week, just to do the same amount of maintenance work with dwindling amount of maintenance staffs
3:47 pour les travaux , ça reste une exception, sinon il faudrait développer l'offre de bus de nuit express pour les banlieues et la périphérie comme à Londres ou à Paris.
Well I’m from Toronto it goes from 6am to 1:30 but mostly 2 tbh so it’s not 24 hours but I never had a problem ever like if ever I was downtown and couldn’t get home being downtown I go walk getting a snack & watching the sunrise isn’t so bad this is just a personal experience obviously but I don’t mind it because I know it’s for maintenance and cost etc
Another challenge for transit overnight is that cars are magic-fast at 3am when there's no traffic. It's the anti rush hour. That's not a definitive factor in a city where a sizeable part of the population don't own cars, but in Western North America, if you don't own a car you're probably either homeless or prefer to take the private jet. But here's the sucker punch. 2am Saturday morning is a time when most of the cars on the road have no business being on the road. Reducing drunk driving is an AWESOME reason to run the transit overnight on Fridays and Saturdays, and is really politically palatable to most everyone. Especially with how expensive a taxi or Uber ride can be at those hours with surge pricing. I feel like maintenance is a dumb reason to never have overnight service. Roads need maintenance too; we don't lock every car in their garages for 8 hours a night just in case there might be a pothole that needs filling in. If you need to do maintenance on a line, go ahead and close that line or segment, and run buses to fill in the gap. It's 1am, the SkyTrain won't be Tokyo Crush Full. "This isn't 'Nam, we expect results."
A couple weeks ago I was in London and I was out until 2 the tube was closed so we took the night bud and it was PACKED like I was pressed up against the door and the bus couldn’t accept more people it was crazy
But the key thing here is why does this have to be profitable? We don't ask highways to turn a profit at all. If anything, people in North America will gleefully accept new, expensive, road infrastructure with the knowledge it will be subsidized by their own tax dollars. We have a "our bridges are crumbling" conversation every other week and no one thinks critically that maybe certain road infrastructure shouldn't be built since it, by public transit standards, wouldn't begin to turn a profit. So the double standard here is trains bad, must find a way to fund the system some other way, but cars good, give us free roads????
I mean I don't think this is really the way most progressive cities are thinking (or cities with half decent transport) but clearly this is an issue of not looking at the whole picture - externalities and all
I feel the pain. No such thing exist in the San Francisco Bay Area be it BART or San Francisco MUNI Metro. My argument as well why buses seem to never be replaced.
In Metro Vancouver the Rail system was not designed to be 24/7 it is too late now to make changes. Need to return some of the cutbacks that were done to the Night Buses, ( see my brief in June 2019 to Vancouver City Council ) As usual Vancouver is behind Toronto, Montreal and even Seattle in provision of Overnight Bus Service.
@@RMTransit Metro Vancouver is not dense enough. Everything is possible if you want to spend the money. The cost per night passenger would be so high that it is more waste. It would be cheaper to run On-Demand Transit for these few passengers. Cost Benefit Analysis would be different for each city
@@nathandavidowicz3721 City of Vancouver can have 24 hr tram line in the downtown and East Vancouver areas. Surrey is becoming Vancouver satetille city.
@@garricksl Both Seattle and Toronto have a better overnight Bus services compare to Vancouver. Lets start with expanding our 24/7 bus routes , 24/7 rail might come much later.
Hi there. Very interesting to know the issues about night operation and maintenance. I have some curiosity and questions which I would like to ask and maybe someone can answer me. Milan use for metro lines 4 and 5 the same trainsets (and I guess infrastructure) of Copenhagen. Though the service has a quite reduced operation hours. Even the line serving the airport. Could it just be a political financial reason, or the infrastructure does not allow it, though the same of Copenhagen. Maybe they did not build the same junctions between the two tracks often enough? My second question regards the maintenance of the Torino - Milano railway line, which is not a metro. There is a schedule hole between 9.30 and 11.30 in the morning due to maintenance. It's quite a odd moment. Do nigh busses have some technical issues due to they are not convenient, or the city just want to save money. During the summer on weekends there are night busses...
Its quite possible the infrastructure was not designed for it, which makes things tricky! Junctions or tunnel arrangement could be the problem. With regard to a daytime window, that is somewhat unusual, but perhaps there is no way to do the work overnight!
What’s funny is that DART in Dallas, a very car centric city, runs 21-22 hours a day from 3:30 AM to 1:30 AM. If Dallas is doing it better than you are, you’re doing something REALLY wrong lol
@@kitchin2 Agreed, and if your flight comes in at 2:30 AM, you can wait a bit and get the first train out from DFW or Love Field. You'll be tired, but you won't be waiting long.
One thing that hasn't been mentioned for NYC was the melding of transit services to that of a social service. NY does not have to shoo away all its riders from facilities on a daily basis, accommodating the homeless on the subway seems easier than the city providing an alternative.
I agree. North America has a "it's impossible to build" type of attitude nowadays, and that's a huge part (mixed in with NIMBYISM) to why things don't get built fast or right here anymore.
Wouldn't another option be taking frequencies down to every 15 or even 30 minutes in order to run with less passing loops? This obviously wouldn't be ideal in larger metros, but could be a way for cities like Vancouver to accomplish 24hr service on the cheap.
You need a union to agree to drive trains or, worse, buses--because they require more labor--at night. A report on the feasibility of night service is not going to, excuse the expression, throw the union under the bus, and sour relations. They'll just say that night service is not possible for unspecified reasons. They're not going to publish the ins and outs of what it would take to get the union to agree to that.
Running trains 24/7 would put such a strain on the electrical grid if done everywhere in North America. The juice isn't worth the squeeze at all. NYC has it b/c the majority of its citizens get around via subway, meaning that there is a demand for it. Now, if electricity was generated independent of power plants, then of course I'd be all for it! And also, nothing good ever happens past midnight. No transit system is going to keep trains running for the 20ppl who need to get around at night. It's cheaper to have a bus line & it's just as fast in the wee hours b/c there's no traffic
24hr service is just too expensive to operate as well as too complicated logistically to justify. Plus the demand just isn't there. Think about it, even systems with high riderships, such as in Japan or Asia, don't offer 24/7 service. NY subway is an abnormality due to its uniqueness of its system and shouldn't be compared.
I think to a large extent its an issue of inducing demand as usual, no night train and bus service changes attitudes - I was a lot more willing to go out late at night in NY knowing I had an easy way home!
That would be abated with more housing. In fact, that homeless reason is just an excuse to not provide overnight service, which could benefit a lot of people
Notable absence from the 24hr network discussion: Tokyo. When the clock strikes midnight, the trains stop, and you’re likely staying the night where you are.
Yep, one of the weaker aspects
That’s probably why they invented the capsule hotels
Beuh I would never have thought we have better times in Stockholm than tokyo
Tokyo was terrible (particularly because it has 3 different companies and end at different times). Hong Kong could really use 24 hour service too, but the night busses worked so much better
I know I'm a bit late to the party here :) But, one of the main reasons the Tokyo network does not run between 24h00-05h00 is because the tracks and trains are manually inspected every night I believe (like RM said), which is why the Tokyo network is one of if not the safest and most efficient in the world. So it comes at a cost, but we can't have 24/7 services AND top level safety/equipment standards at the same time :)
5:18 - “How does New York do it?”
Duhhh they just backlog their maintenance and upkeep for the next generation to solve. Lol great video
I was in New York and I passed through a station that was 3ft underwater and leaking from the ceiling but it wasn’t even raining outside. Cut ‘n’ cover.
@@lemonade4181 That's not so much a problem with cut-and-cover subways in general and more with New York's style of construction in particular - Other cut-and-cover subways (e.g. in Rio de Janeiro) don't flood nearly as bad, even during storms that are just as intense as the recent one in New York
@@civ27 You’re right, but my point is that not covering it properly or maintaining it properly can lead to future issues. You’re right, it’s just nyc.
"How does New York do it?"
"That's the neat part, they don't"
@@civ27 Think 1 issue with NYC subway stations is that their ventilation shafts terminate as pothole grates/covers on the surface of roads above. Meanwhile in my country (Singapore) the shafts always terminate a few meters above the road surface e.g. beside surface-level exits from underground stations, sited along pavements, making it less likely for water to run off from the surface down into the station
I like what Philly does. They run it on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday nights, and at night, there are no station attendants, you pay the train operator. And since it runs relatively infrequently, they can single track it if they want to do repair work on a weekend for whatever reason, especially with a lot of the network having four tracks.
I believe that the Philly system has quite infrequent trains at night ( 20 or 30 minutes or more), they run on a set schedule, so while it might be a tad slower, with timed connections between lines, riders can show up at station at planned times to reduce waiting.
@@haweater1555 Yes, they run less frequently at night, so it's better to plan ahead. But it's night time, what more can you expect. Not even New York runs their trains *that* frequently at night.
@@tealmer3528 20-30 minutes for a subway, buses can be every 30-60 minutes. It sucks if you have to make transfers and it’s 5 am :(
lol
Ours does it with hourly services overnight on Friday and Saturday nights. Capacity and maintenance concerns aren't the sole answer. Having enough drivers that were willing to operate the service, and overcoming union and police concerns were the major factors. Currently suspended due to the lockdown and curfew in my city. When maintenance is required, we simply shut that section down and run replacement buses over the section, and the maintenance is done on absolute occupation of the section.
Thank you Reece for an extremely interesting and very persuasive video. One point about London. The night bus network is now VERY extensive. I think there are now something like 70 routes which run 24-hours-a-day. They cater for both the work and leisure market.
This was my point too - the night tube is there when the capacity on the buses is often exceeded i.e. when people are out clubbing on the weekend. Before the night tube the night time queues at the central bus stops was insane, to the point I sometimes just walked the 1 hour to my mainline station! (Heaven to Paddington)
Thanks for mentioning, London definitely deserves credit for it's fantastic night bus network!
London's night buses and 24-hr bus services (yes there's a difference) are very extensive and run from central London to most of what is covered by Greater London's rail network and due to low traffic, they can be quite fast. I would assume most night workers take those.
Yep
Many times, on weekday nights, a trip using a night bus can be much faster than the same trip but using a train, mostly because of the lack of traffic, fewer stops/passengers, and if you're lucky, they can get you closer to where you're going...
The NYC Subway temporarily stopped 24/7 service from May 2020 where the subway is closed to all passengers from 1-5am. And yes, as you said, there isnt enough space to store the trains so some of them have to run as if it were a normal service.
yh the mta got too many cars to store them all in the yards n layups
@@annabelholland why didn't they just park them at empty stations
I have to agree with the points Reece makes and add a few more data to strengthen the possibility and feasibilty maybe of a 24-hour service.
1. Copenhagen, apart from switching their tracks on and off as they see fit to maintain them, also run Buses which replace the Metro service on the parts where maintenance happens. This means they can keep moving loads of people, and even close those Metro parts to allow for full maintenance.
2. Lausanne, Switzerland has a single-track Metro line, M1. However, there are passing loops/switches at 12/15 M1 stations. This means that trains can pass each other and achieve headways of every 7-8 minutes. While it only operates during the day, this single-track service pattern shows that even if demand is sky high during the night it is totally possible to run day-style services in the night and do maintenance as well.
3. During the 2019 Patras Carnival, maybe the biggest festivity my hometown is famous for, our local bus company decided, for the first time, to run buses during the night, every half an hour. The point that Reece made about speed and less traffic on the roads is valid. The journey was almost as fast, if not faster than the day, and it had to do with less people on the road, double parking their cars everywhere. This trip was on Line 2 of the network, which is notorious for the tight roads it uses.
So, to sum up, a) single tracking with modern signlaling and switches at every station and b) buses that replace trains can certainly help maintain and run a system 24 hours every day.
Great comments, especially about that trial night bus service!
I think 24hr metro service does run the risk of allowing the transit system to over focus on the metro to the expense of buses, as some systems seem to already want to do. Night buses seem like a good way to encourage the city to put money into both networks.
Yes, having night buses alone would be a huge improvement.
i mean if a 24 hour service can survive then it can survive. it wouldn't be good to just cut service for buses, especially when most people hate buses, and theyre a poor solution for aiding in our mountain of environmental concerns right now.
Imo buses are Toronto's centerpiece.
Thats a very valid concern, I think it probably applies to a city like Melbourne!
I'd love to see you cover my hometown of Hamburg, Germany. We have 24h (subway, s-bahn and metrobus) service on weekends and night busses during the week, like Toronto.
The system also has plenty of quirks, new extensions being built and all that good stuff that makes up a video :D
I really value the level of detail and your ideas/opinions on system improvements 👍
Hamburg is super interesting, especially with it's elevated trains! I will absolutely talk about it eventually!
@@RMTransit Sweet! Really looking forward to it :)
Let me know if I can help 👍
@@RMTransit While I don't have internal insight, from a passenger POV Hamburg doesn't seem to do any overnight maintenance -- they're shutting down sections of track, maybe three to four stations, for some while and provide a high-capacity temporary bus line in the meantime.
Another thing I haven't anyone really hear talk about is Hamburg's type of line interlocking: For a very long time there was no ring line (and there still isn't really one), but intersecting "L"s or even "U"s (e.g. the U1 going from roughly north to the center and then north-east).
NYC's system also has many separate lines that serve the same major areas, so a whole line may be shut down overnight for weeks/months/years at a time for major work. For example, in the early 2010's, the gray "L" line was shut down overnight for years while the tunnel under the East River was rehabbed. If you went to a concert in Brooklyn & wanted to get back to Grand Central or Penn, you had to take the G crosstown up to Court Square, then x-fer to the purple 7 line to Manhattan. Right now, it's the opposite, the purple 7 is closed overnight for East River tunnel rehab for a long time, so riders either take the gray L, or the blue M lines to get from Brooklyn to Manhattan.
I was Clubbing in vienna. And One of my frends literly said: "Let's the Cab because the Metro (at night) comes only evrey quarter Hour."
Odd how that’s almost standard in America for many heavy rail and light rail systems
Dude, a night metro every 15 minutes is a dream.
(I live in NYC so I have that. Every 20 minutes. Problem is the bus connections aren't great.)
🤣
Sounds like someone is made of money! Haha
@@samuelitooooo Well for that it comes every weekday except Sundays and Public Holidays. Well your Viennese, you got to find something to grouch about in the face of an excellent transit system.
San Diego can't run 24 hour trolley service because a railroad uses parts of their ROW during the night. They are looking to start running limited overnight bus service, though.
New York doesn’t even run at full strength overnight; many of the local trains (like the C) shut down and their express counterparts (like the A) run local, and service frequency drops to, like, 20-30 minutes in many areas.
Also most projects are concentrated shutdowns for a weekend or so.
The exception is 6th Avenue D train is Express in the Queens Boulevard Line F train one of the express trains the E train becomes local late nights
Here in Melbourne we have 24 hour service on suburban trains on Friday and Saturday nights, despite having very poor network flexibility and track redundancy. Most of the network is signalled uni-directionally, and crossovers are generally infrequent, so running a double track line as single is extremely rare. However the night frequency is a fairly useless hourly. Low level maintainance in between trains is common here anyway, even during the day on 10 or 20 min frequencies. When we have weekend track work, it's common for a total occupation to begin ~9pm on the Friday night right through to Monday morning.
Thanx Reece, you just implied an advantage for overhead power. No need to turn power off when servicing tracks.👍 Cheers.
Definitely a benefit, but still needs to be turned off for lots of work. Safety is a huge part of why OLE is good.
@@RMTransit For example, it has to be turned off if you're working on the wires themselves.
Love the new animations/drawings Reece! They do a great job of helping explain things.
Thanks Joey! I will do more (and more refined ones) in the future
I want to push back on TransLink saying that it “wasn’t possible”. They determined it was possible, but not worth the costs
Your videos just hit next level today. IMO let's solve for the problem (late night transit options) rather than be hung up on mode. In other words, no need for 24/7 TTC subway service if the night buses can operate quickly, safely and consistently.
Thanks Jonathan! Indeed buses can always be a good solution, and there's lots of work to make our night bus services better.
I liked the drawn examples, though I think they'd be better with some colour. Such as, when showing independent power switches, it'd be clearer if the zappy line was yellow.
Good comment
As a music enthusiast who travels to many cities in the Northeast USA for concerts, & who likes to not have to drive after a concert for various & sundry reasons (wink wink), I always try to plan around each city's public trans system to get back to wherever I am staying from any concert venue I plan on patronizing. Certainly NYC is a cinch. Boston, Phila, & DC run their metro systems till 1 am, which is sufficient for most concerts, which end between 11pm & midnight. Transfers can be an issue, ie, if you have a long wait time for 1st leg, you can get stranded at x-fer point if you're dropped there after system shutdown of 1 am. Only NYC area runs their commuter trains late enough for concerts tho - most are "last train out at 1:40 am". All the other cities commuter systems roll up the tracks at 10 or 11 pm. So it's always nice if a system runs at least till 1 am rather than shutting down at 10 or 11, however, of course, this means the overnight maintenance window is shortened to almost not being worth having. Note I'm not a big fan of taxi's, uber, or lyft, as post concert they are high demand thus high cost & may have extended wait times.
Just to add to your comment on double deckered busses at night, in Hong Kong, where more than 90% of busses are double deckered, there’s a slightly higher proportion of night busses with *single decks* cause the capacity simply isn’t needed, reduces on maintenance and tolls. Plus single deckered busses have the same number of doors.
Oh and a majority of night busses connect to the CBD in Central. Equally as important, Mong Kok on the Kowloon side has a very extensive (red) minibus network (the red minibuses are like shared taxi, though they have certain routes organised) to most locales in HK.
That’s how HK does their night transit. Night bus if in Central or Minibus if in Mong Kok.
In HK the MTR closes around midnight, some buses operate throughout the night and other buses run at night and not day.
@@PatheticTV yup, there are separate day and night routes cause of the fare and some night routes have more stops.
Thank you for this! I’ve been confused by these comments about no we can’t operate 24 hours but this makes a lot of sense now. I also had no idea of the options others use. The night bus in Toronto is definitely a cool idea.
Thanks for watching! There are lots of ways to move to all night service, so it's really dependent on context!
Even though the idea of having 24h metro seems attractive, I think it'd require a lot of work for a quite low impact. Having a real, integrated night-bus network is not only cheaper but also better in terms of connectivity and possible trips. And it doesn't take anything exceptional: 10-15 min intervals on trunk lines, maybe 20-30 on local lines, connecting on safe and well-kept terminals of transit centers.
São Paulo did that a few years ago and, gosh, that was BEAUTIFUL! You could go anywhere in the city using a reliable, frequent bus even at 3am. So much better than maybe just a couple of metro segments operating downtown.
I love all the new graphics! I don't recall seeing that on prior videos.
Thanks!
In Berlin we do it that way, that the important Tram and Bus lines (with the prefix „M“ for MetroTram/Bus) have 24h service, if even only every 30 minutes. Additionally, before Weekends (so FRI->SAT, SAT->SUN), all U-Bahn and S-Bahn lines are running. U-Bahn every 15minutes (replacing the night busses of cause), S-Bahn lines at least every 20 so there is a dense service on the core routes as they usually overlap. Metro services also run way more frequently depending in how important they are for Partying (M10 Tram runs every 10minutes till ~3am!). I would actually not like to see the 24 hour service be extended to the S and U-Bahn, as they are doing lots of maintenance work at night and routes already have to shut down for weeks often for maintenance.
Great info! Berline certainly dials in service based on demand really well!
Madrid used to have a 24h bus system that substituted the metro and sadly closed in 2013. Now the only night transit there is in the city is the "Owl" buses which are quite inconvenient because to do transfers you ALWAYS (except N27 and N26 I think) have to go all the way to Cibeles in the city centre.
Really great video - and it has generated a lot of insightful comments, too.
Thanks Rick!
Night tube actually ends up working really well because the lines that operate at night are all deep level through the city centre. Weekend works on the tube are normally ballast track replacement works on sub-surface or above ground sections of line, so there was rarely heavy engineering works on the night tube lines on Friday and Saturday nights beforehand. The only shift that had to be made was light maintenance and that's much easier to organise.
Thanks for the insights!
I love the new animations!
Sydney does the same thing as Toronto - we have night busses that run very quickly, and on events such as new years, trains run not only all night, but routing and timetabling is optimised to absolutely maximise frequency in the city circle. In addition, because there is significant sextuple(!) and quad track corridors, on weekends when service is already dialled back, tracks can be closed for maintenance with no or little impact on service frequency, just some different platform routing. And in urgent maintenance scenarios that cannot be completed overnight on dual track sections, the rail bus (train replacement bus) system is quite fleshed out and way finding and information is very clear through signage, station (and additional) staff, apps and online. Although in my experience, it's not the most reliable.
Indeed swapping services around at night is a common sense approach to adjust to different travel patterns!
What a great channel! You take already interesting material and make it even more entertaining. Some channels out there do the opposite.
Las Vegas doesn't even have any rail. The bus system is going 24/7, and only really slows down for one hour a night to help switch out busses and drivers.
Well, the Monorails are rail, albeit not very good rail!
I think the key is late night frequency. More systems need to 1)reverse signal and 2)add more crossovers to allow for single tracking so that say between 10pm and 5am you can run trains every half-hour or so and shut down one track at a time.
It would absolutely help, even with daytime resiliency. But it does need to be balanced with reducing overall maintenance cost.
After doing some minor research and thinking about the timetable again, the Rhine-Main S-Bahn does run the S8/9 all the day when typically, regional railway lines (including other lines on this S-Bahn) have their service suspended during the night. It helps that they're connected to the airport so 24-hour service is justified there.
About maintenance and stuff. When Stockholm metro upgraded it's signalling on its green and then later red line, they of course made it so that it's really "simple" to have single track operations on sections of the lines. The switches between the tracks has always been there.
This has been very beneficial when there's a problem on one of the tracks, service can hopefully operate around the problem, day or night.
In Hanover when you living suburban, you have to care not to miss the last bus at half to 11 pm. But in the night to Saturday and Sunday there are suburban bus lines that are on request. You tell the bus driver your bus stop, he creates a route depending to the passengers. The goal isn't to be in time, but to come home. So the bus covers 10 different lines.
Singapore ran its MRT (subway/metro) overnight previously on special occasions e.g. the morning of the StanChart Singapore Marathon (usu on the 1st wk of Dec), so that participants could reach the start lines on time (@ 0500h in downtown; there're different ones for different distance categories e.g. 1/2 vs full marathon, _Ekiden_ relay marathons), or to meet the high travel demand to pay respects at the wake of our 1st PM Lee Kuan Yew in 2015 at the downtown Parliament Hse (~500k people visited the wake over its 5-day period). Besides these we have late-night buses, & interestingly we have a bus stop that's only served by such buses - Opp Unity St along _Md Sultan Rd_ - probably since there're quite a lot of bars & clubs there, which you might say is ironic as the road's eponymous person is Muslim, who don't drink. We previously trailed an on-demand scheme for 1 of the night buses (NightRider 7 (NR7)), where the route changes depending on passenger demand to/from different bus stops (which they signalled to the bus driver via an app), but it failed as the gov't felt it too expensive to implement
Hard for second shift workers in hospitality.
It works best for New York City because of the mass redundancy between the subway lines and bus routes that often run above/below the trains and the massive shuttle services ran when sections of lines are shut down (like the A and 1 train does every other month)
I believe that an all-time rapid transit operations is possible on other rapid transit systems. It is suitable for some rapid transit systems in the world, depending upon the amount of people who would frequently use them. I do agree that two hours is too short a time to start and complete major maintenance jobs. At least four hours a night, or a weekend should be sufficient time to do any maintenance work, except station cleaning, revenue collection, and other lighter work.
I happen to live in NYC, the king of 24/7 subway service, but I'm studying two other transit/subway systems that could benefit from round-the-clock service: Chicago and Los Angeles.
Part of the Chicago "L" system (Red and Blue lines) do run 24 hours a day, but parts of three other lines (Purple, Brown and Orange) that can benefit from 24/7 service. Until around the late 1980s, part of the Purple Line used to be 24/7. The CTA could bring back 24-hour service to the Purple Line; likewise, have part of the Brown Line (shortened between Kimball and Belmont to connect with the Red Line) and introduce a 24/7 Orange Line that would operate between Midway and Roosevelt (also to transfer with the Red Line).
As for Los Angeles, former mayor Antonio Villaraigosa has stated publicly that he wants to see LA have 24/7 subway service in the future. The key phrase is "in the future," because the City of Angels may have it as soon as the 2028 Olympics (which will take place in LA). I don't know the future before and perhaps after the 2028 Los Angeles Olympic Games, and for all transit lines, but I would imagine the two subway lines would run round-the-clock service (Lines B and D). Line B (the former Red Line) runs between Downtown LA and Hollywood. Line D (the former Purple Line) would operate between DTLA and, now under construction, the Miracle Mile, Beverly Hills, Century City and Westwood. Don't have the LA Setup down pat yet, perhaps it might be temporary, but whatever plan they implement, having 24 hour service would be worthwhile.
The L used to be entirely 24hrs until the ‘80s. Currently the lines that don’t run 24/7, stop running for about 3 hours each early morning. The stations are still staffed during this time, but I guess there isn’t enough money to pay for the trains to run.
One reason is the resistance of the resident population not wanting to have the noise level you have with 24 hour services. At least I think that's a big reason why some cities have a different night service network. Because where you have transport there will be shops and bars and overall can make the area busier.
Interestingly enough, on a list of cities who's trains operating 24 hours over the weekend you might not expect, Melbourne Australia. They're not right now due to the city being in lockdown, but for a few years before covid our trains and trams were actually running overnight on weekends. I'd imagine it has to do with the bar/club scene in the city being gigantic. Crap frequency though. Not unlikely you'll get caught in the city for 20 minutes waiting for a train, but it's still a nice option.
Melbourne indeed does operate 24h services, though on more of a mainline rail focused network!
Something we do in Philly is we run night trains on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday (roughly 20 - 30 minute headways). On the other nights we do something a little different. Yes, it's a night bus service, but it's one that I don't see too often everywhere. It's the Owl buses. For the Market-Frankford Line and the Broad Street Line, when it's night time, SEPTA runs the Market-Frankford Owl (MFO) and the Broad Street Owl (BSO). They are rail replacement shuttle buses that run at night to keep the system moving at night without trains. Headways are okay (for what you expect) and they run multiple buses at a time to serve as one train. They are mostly express buses and don't go from end to end, but we some of out buses are 24 hour services, so it's fine. The Market-Frankford Owl follows the Market-Frankford Line to a T till it gets to Front (we don't have a 1st Street or a 14th Street, Broad Street is our 14 Street) and Girard (where it turns onto Girard and goes down to 2nd Street and continues till it gets to 2nd and Market, then continues to follow the line).
The BSO is just follows the line perfectly.
The MFO is usually articulated, the BSO isn't.
Cities probably have this, but I honestly don't know.
Chicago has two lines that run 24 hours. Up until the late 1990s there were like three other lines that ran 24 hours. So you know it is possible.
In Berlin some lines are available 24 hours, but in the night maybe all 30 minutes.
I can't remember a time, where Berlin never had night service. Different lines, maybe some additional switches and it takes longer, but I could go home, when I was visiting someone till 2 am.
Late to the party on this one--the video is 3 years old! However, I hope that Reece and others benefit from these comments; re big non-24 H systems like Tokyo, Lodon, Moscow, Paris, while the actual formal down time may only be ~4 hours, there is always a phase in / phase out, typically 60 minutes in the late night; 30 minutes in the early morning. That is, the headways are low enough that work can start while trains are still running and continue before they fully ramp up. The key is good planning; making sure that your maintenance units are pre-staged where the night's work begins. You don't send crews out only after revenue service ends, they prepare beforehand. All of Chicago's system used to be 24 H--little of it is now. I grew up there when it was and had obdd jobs that required night use. A legacy feature of Chicago (and I believe also NY) are frequent cross-overs that were added back when the subways were built and also on the Ls. This makes it easy to regularly isolate sections. The only issue then is keeping the public informed as to which platform to use.
My transit operator, VTA, as much hate as it gets for its poor service (mostly due to lack of funding), was very honest as to why they chose to use buses at night instead of 24hr light rail service. They said very openly: we use nighttime for maintenance and its important to keep the system in good shape, buses can do the job for night service easily.
Very well done, night bus could work better but certain adjustments would need to be considered
It's absolutely true that 24 hour service isn't possible..... if you're unwilling to adapt your transit system to do it. That is the exact type of philosophy leading American metro areas with populations in the millions to have pitiful public transit systems as is. Coincidence? I think not. These are top-down strategic failures being sold to denizens as impossibilities from the bottom-up. It's important that we do our best to inform those around us of the potentiality of well-planned, well-funded public transit.
P.S.: Great and informative video as always, RMTransit! Thank you!
New York’s 24-hour service has been a decade-old tradition, as well as a necessity (considering the shortage of yard space to store all trains), but it’s also a trade-off. When the system was actually closing its doors to passengers in order to be cleaned during the pandemic, it was evident how beneficial the LACK of 24-hour service can be: in the morning the trains’ smell reminded me of that in my original hometown of Minsk, Belarus, whose metro system is incomparably younger, smaller and, surely, cleaner. But, in spite of all that, I believe that New York City Subway should keep 24-hour service and look for creative ways to tend to cleanliness without nightly shutdowns.
writing from Tokyo. I found this video more nuanced and less objectionable (I commented recently on your Tokyo video). Tokyo does not run a 24hour service except for NYE. Before the 2020 Olympics were delayed, there were plans to have trains run 24hours during the games but with COVID it was nixed. The philosophy behind public transit in Japan and what I notice in N.America is that in Japan public transit is about moving the public for the purpose of livelihood vs other things such as entertainment. Extending the train service during the Olympics was not about the revellers but about those working who would need to stay late in jobs related to the games and their ability to return home after work. So first trains start prior to 5 a.m. and last trains depart around 25:00/25:30. So maintenance times are quite short. Train companies also run night buses along their train routes with just a handful of stops. Train companies in Japan also tend to own taxi services too. Since the arrival of the pandemic though, train companies have been pushing first train times later and ending service earlier in the night, one reason, a drop off in the number of commuters, another, staffing shortages amongst their maintenance/train staff due to COVID outbreaks within the train companies. The last point, I thought it was funny what you said about NYC transit not having the yard capacity. I live along the KEIO line and it too doesn't have yard capacity (in recent years) so trains are parked at stations along the lines. Not all of the stations but at the terminals and others along the way. Sometimes when they need to work on a particular stretch that has a train parked at the station they move the train to the next station further down the line for the night. It's very interesting to watch at 2 a.m. You are pumping out a lot of videos in short order, thank you for all of your hardwork.
Thanks for the insights, especially about Keio moving their trains around!
In Denmark rail lines get shut down for maintanence from a few days to a few weeks at a time due to the need to run 24 hours on some lines . In the old days freight and sleeper trains ran all night on single track . Not anymore and it makes people not rely on trains anymore and either buy a car and drive or take a bicycle with a slow loss in passenger % wise in the country . Transit has to be as reliable as a car .
I really feel like a video on the PATCO speedline would be great, its a 24 hour service that is a partial metro partial commuter rail service that serves the Philly area. Its just one of the most interesting services IMO
Would love to see a video on Barcelona’s metro! Just spend a few days there and tbh it was a little confusing and I think therefor that it would make for a great video
What was a bit confusing? The only thing I can think of is if you need to use one of the FGC lines (which is a different system) but most tourists don't.
Any way it is a great and extensive system and also completely integrated with one fare system for all transport means (including changes of course).
The metro closes at midnight Sun-Thu, at 2am on Fri/eve of holidays and runs all night on Saturdays (now, due to Covid, it closes at 2am on Saturdays).
There is also a night bus service that works year round.
@@AL5520 definitely the different systems were confusing! Especially since they are classified as normal lines. Then stations sometimes have very long walking distances. I think the best example is when you want to go from diagonal to barceloneta. You would think L3 and L4 would be the fastest way but it’s easier and faster to take the “longer” way with L5 via Verdaguer. You also have the interesting situation (that I haven’t really seen before) that metro lines cross each other multiple times. Plus different gauges and driverless cars (which leads to a widely diverse vehicular park)
Don’t get me wrong, the metro was great, especially after you got the hang of it. But it was confusing at first (and the lag of English on the trains and platforms was also not really helpful if your not familiar with Spanish)
Barcelona is on my TODO list!
Great channel, I'm in love with the Vancouver train network, so efficient, my city Edmonton has a joke of a train system, aka goes nowhere lol
Edmonton has work to do, but the coverage is at least improving. I would visit more if there was a better link to the airport!
@@RMTransit 100% ya the new valley line should be open next year, goes from the south east to downtown using low floor trains
In Berlin we run it 24h on Friday and Saturday so people can party. On other nights night busses run. So you can do maintenance on those nights
Honestly more than just running all night, a bigger hurdle is safety. I know any public transit stop, be it bus or train is can be a very sketchy place to be after dark. I wouldn't want to be waiting at 3am for a train.
Ironically NYC shut down 24 hour overnight service for about a year after quarantine began, and some subway lines were replaced with night bus service. That didn't turn out to be satisfactory from what I hear. I'm not sure whether it's because buses just aren't as fast as the subway. But the island of Manhattan presents a geography problem; we have more, and spread out, East River crossings (tunnels and bridges) built for our subway than there are allowing buses (and bikes) to cross, so many substitute trips are gonna be indirect. Cities like London with many river crossings allowing buses - or simply put, any city with few major geographic barriers in any potential bus network - are at an advantage.
(And yes, NYC just ran the trains empty during the overnight shutdowns, only allowing cops onboard. Many believe it was merely an anti-homeless measure.)
They couldn't stop because there isn't enough yard capacity!
@@RMTransit There is a solution to that too. Just keep them on tracks at and between the stations that do *not* accept passengers at that time.
RMTransit: "it makes me so angry"
Allen Fisher: "ItS sO FuCkInG StuPiD, ThEy ShOuLd JuSt dO 24 HoUr SeRvIce"
Stockholm does the same thing London does, Friday and Saturday, and only every 30 minutes on each service. I remember when I was younger (like 90s) there was a time when the night service had been suspended, it was a fairly big issue, I don't remember exactly when it was brought back though, but it was something like 20 years ago.
I guess one more option could be to maintain one track and run services on the other one? With low frequencies, that could still work.
Suprised you didn't mention the CTA Red & Blue lines which are either partially or fully 2 tracks and run 24/7
"The City That Never Sleeps". Keeping their lines running 24/7 makes perfect sense in New York City... 😏
TransLink study actually did say if you want to run it 24/7 you'll need to shut down sections several times a year for maintenance. New York does this but has enough routes to provide redundancy. They can divert trains.
TransLink looked at Saturday and Friday night 24 hr service and concluded need to shut system down earlier in the week or later in the day. Again, not considered best.
New York hasn't kept up with maintenance which raises the question if 24/7 running is really feasible for them too.
I think the main reason is cost. The volume of traffic at night can be handled by night buses. And this is the way TransLink is going. Night buses are being extended to cover the times trains are not running.
Night buses aren't really being extended in Metro Van, at least they haven't been since I last lived there. Shutting sections down slightly earlier seems like a very different issue than it not being possible and should probably be taken to a vote
Trains are 24 hours on weekends in Melbourne
There are several hours at night when Pittsburgh doesn't even has bus service at night.
The Vancouver SkyTrain has the infrastructure in place to run all night.
Or change the night buses to more closely mirror the SkyTrain network and to improve their frequency.
It just comes down to cost.
In France de have 1 bus Line (in the whole country) who has a 24 hours service (Line 191-100 Yerres RER to/from Orly airport).
Also of note to overnight service in NY, they run that service after midnight until 5am on roughly 20 minute headways, and commonly do work on routes in operation, with workers clearing out for passing trains which pass at a reduced speed. Their tunnels even in two track areas usually have space to safely clear the trackbed with some notable exceptions, where they will sometimes do a single track operation.
Additionally, with the reasonable redundancy in Manhattan, it's not uncommon for them to shutdown an entire trunk line (what they call fast track) for a period of weeks overnight, where riders simply need to use a different route several blocks away inatead.
Ultimately, a 20-30 minute headway in the overnight seems feasible on many systems. I think the big factor is cost of operation ultimately, and operating busses is probably the best bet for most cities for the reasons you describe. NYC has 8 million people, with that population it makes sense. But the London approach, is probably the better fit for smaller cities and systems.
Great insightful comment, city size is a big factor
@@RMTransit Yeah most definitely, in general you're not going to have a significant portion of the population traveling overnight, but when you have large cities like NY, even that portion of the population traveling at night is significant. I've been on jam packed trains in NY at 2AM, and this is a line with 11 car trains. Alternatively, I'd say London is probably underserved at night given its significant population as well.
okay then what are we waiting for DC? because yall be spending half the year single tracking im sure you can do this :)
All of the heavy rail transit systems in North America built in the second half of the 20th century have bidirectional signaling systems.
Another issue you failed to address, those crossover used for single track operations also need to be maintained requiring single track operation over longer distances.
But then, Tokyo extended their maintenance windows all day, reducing services both in early morning and late night, all days of the week, just to do the same amount of maintenance work with dwindling amount of maintenance staffs
3:47 pour les travaux , ça reste une exception, sinon il faudrait développer l'offre de bus de nuit express pour les banlieues et la périphérie comme à Londres ou à Paris.
How does the CTA run the Red Line 24 hours a day? Is the red line quad tracked?
I like addition of the animations!! How did you do them?
Procreate on iPad!
Where I live we have autonomous fully unattended metros... that stop all service at 1 AM. Go figure.
Well I’m from Toronto it goes from 6am to 1:30 but mostly 2 tbh so it’s not 24 hours but I never had a problem ever like if ever I was downtown and couldn’t get home being downtown I go walk getting a snack & watching the sunrise isn’t so bad this is just a personal experience obviously but I don’t mind it because I know it’s for maintenance and cost etc
Another challenge for transit overnight is that cars are magic-fast at 3am when there's no traffic. It's the anti rush hour. That's not a definitive factor in a city where a sizeable part of the population don't own cars, but in Western North America, if you don't own a car you're probably either homeless or prefer to take the private jet. But here's the sucker punch. 2am Saturday morning is a time when most of the cars on the road have no business being on the road. Reducing drunk driving is an AWESOME reason to run the transit overnight on Fridays and Saturdays, and is really politically palatable to most everyone. Especially with how expensive a taxi or Uber ride can be at those hours with surge pricing.
I feel like maintenance is a dumb reason to never have overnight service. Roads need maintenance too; we don't lock every car in their garages for 8 hours a night just in case there might be a pothole that needs filling in. If you need to do maintenance on a line, go ahead and close that line or segment, and run buses to fill in the gap. It's 1am, the SkyTrain won't be Tokyo Crush Full.
"This isn't 'Nam, we expect results."
A couple weeks ago I was in London and I was out until 2 the tube was closed so we took the night bud and it was PACKED like I was pressed up against the door and the bus couldn’t accept more people it was crazy
Talking about night tube they are night bus that run after the day buses end at 1 am. Not only that some day buses 24 houses every day
But the key thing here is why does this have to be profitable? We don't ask highways to turn a profit at all. If anything, people in North America will gleefully accept new, expensive, road infrastructure with the knowledge it will be subsidized by their own tax dollars. We have a "our bridges are crumbling" conversation every other week and no one thinks critically that maybe certain road infrastructure shouldn't be built since it, by public transit standards, wouldn't begin to turn a profit.
So the double standard here is trains bad, must find a way to fund the system some other way, but cars good, give us free roads????
I mean I don't think this is really the way most progressive cities are thinking (or cities with half decent transport) but clearly this is an issue of not looking at the whole picture - externalities and all
I feel the pain. No such thing exist in the San Francisco Bay Area be it BART or San Francisco MUNI Metro. My argument as well why buses seem to never be replaced.
DC would be a great city to do it in at least on Friday’s and Saturday’s but no. Last train is around 1AM when bars close 3/4.
I love your content. What literature do you recommend on this subject matter?
More than I could list in a comment
I would say,
It is possible; just at what cost.
In Metro Vancouver the Rail system was not designed to be 24/7 it is too late now to make changes. Need to return some of the cutbacks that were done to the Night Buses, ( see my brief in June 2019 to Vancouver City Council ) As usual Vancouver is behind Toronto, Montreal and even Seattle in provision of Overnight Bus Service.
Its never too late! The question is about cost!
@@RMTransit Metro Vancouver is not dense enough. Everything is possible if you want to spend the money. The cost per night passenger would be so high that it is more waste. It would be cheaper to run On-Demand Transit for these few passengers. Cost Benefit Analysis would be different for each city
@@nathandavidowicz3721 City of Vancouver can have 24 hr tram line in the downtown and East Vancouver areas. Surrey is becoming Vancouver satetille city.
@@garricksl Both Seattle and Toronto have a better overnight Bus services compare to Vancouver. Lets start with expanding our 24/7 bus routes , 24/7 rail might come much later.
Hi there. Very interesting to know the issues about night operation and maintenance. I have some curiosity and questions which I would like to ask and maybe someone can answer me.
Milan use for metro lines 4 and 5 the same trainsets (and I guess infrastructure) of Copenhagen. Though the service has a quite reduced operation hours. Even the line serving the airport. Could it just be a political financial reason, or the infrastructure does not allow it, though the same of Copenhagen. Maybe they did not build the same junctions between the two tracks often enough?
My second question regards the maintenance of the Torino - Milano railway line, which is not a metro. There is a schedule hole between 9.30 and 11.30 in the morning due to maintenance. It's quite a odd moment.
Do nigh busses have some technical issues due to they are not convenient, or the city just want to save money. During the summer on weekends there are night busses...
Its quite possible the infrastructure was not designed for it, which makes things tricky! Junctions or tunnel arrangement could be the problem.
With regard to a daytime window, that is somewhat unusual, but perhaps there is no way to do the work overnight!
What’s funny is that DART in Dallas, a very car centric city, runs 21-22 hours a day from 3:30 AM to 1:30 AM. If Dallas is doing it better than you are, you’re doing something REALLY wrong lol
Anything that runs to the airport should open that early! Or have an obvious bus substitution
@@kitchin2 Agreed, and if your flight comes in at 2:30 AM, you can wait a bit and get the first train out from DFW or Love Field. You'll be tired, but you won't be waiting long.
you mention potential use of double-decker buses as part of night service, why the preference for double-decker rather than articulated buses?
One thing that hasn't been mentioned for NYC was the melding of transit services to that of a social service. NY does not have to shoo away all its riders from facilities on a daily basis, accommodating the homeless on the subway seems easier than the city providing an alternative.
I agree. North America has a "it's impossible to build" type of attitude nowadays, and that's a huge part (mixed in with NIMBYISM) to why things don't get built fast or right here anymore.
What's a night bus? In my city there is no bus service between 8pm and 6am.
What do you think of the PATCO Speedline from NJ to Philly as a 24 hour line? I think it's pretty unique :)
May have to sacrifice cleanliness, from a NYer
Wouldn't another option be taking frequencies down to every 15 or even 30 minutes in order to run with less passing loops? This obviously wouldn't be ideal in larger metros, but could be a way for cities like Vancouver to accomplish 24hr service on the cheap.
Yep that would absolutely work, and given night buses are mostly hourly in Vancouver would still be an improvement!
You need a union to agree to drive trains or, worse, buses--because they require more labor--at night. A report on the feasibility of night service is not going to, excuse the expression, throw the union under the bus, and sour relations. They'll just say that night service is not possible for unspecified reasons. They're not going to publish the ins and outs of what it would take to get the union to agree to that.
Running trains 24/7 would put such a strain on the electrical grid if done everywhere in North America. The juice isn't worth the squeeze at all. NYC has it b/c the majority of its citizens get around via subway, meaning that there is a demand for it. Now, if electricity was generated independent of power plants, then of course I'd be all for it! And also, nothing good ever happens past midnight. No transit system is going to keep trains running for the 20ppl who need to get around at night. It's cheaper to have a bus line & it's just as fast in the wee hours b/c there's no traffic
can sky trains operate 24/7?
24hr service is just too expensive to operate as well as too complicated logistically to justify. Plus the demand just isn't there. Think about it, even systems with high riderships, such as in Japan or Asia, don't offer 24/7 service. NY subway is an abnormality due to its uniqueness of its system and shouldn't be compared.
I think to a large extent its an issue of inducing demand as usual, no night train and bus service changes attitudes - I was a lot more willing to go out late at night in NY knowing I had an easy way home!
If it were 24 hours the homeless would be isotropically distributed and we the living would have no where to hide...
That would be abated with more housing. In fact, that homeless reason is just an excuse to not provide overnight service, which could benefit a lot of people