How This Country Might Have the Solution to Suburban Transit
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 11 ก.ค. 2024
- Special thanks to Ferdinand Steinkrueger and Declan Martin for the footage used in this video!
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Hi, my name's Reece. I'm a passionate Creator, Transportation Planner, and Software Developer, interested in rapid transportation all around my home base of Toronto, Canada, as well as the whole world!
If you enjoyed this video you should check out my in depth explainers on -
Sydney:
th-cam.com/video/B_Iq5zJjyXE/w-d-xo.html
Melbourne:
th-cam.com/video/iwiAxppxGaU/w-d-xo.html
And Perth:
th-cam.com/video/AH1kvXxnBiQ/w-d-xo.html
What was the demystified video you referred to at ~3:35
Just a note: Public Transport in Australia are run by the states, and probably have a higher budget than individual cities as you do in the U.S.
NB: There are private operators running services (especially buses), although under franchise/contract from the States to meet certain criteria, charge the same rates, look similar, et cetera...
There's definitely a difference between public transport that just issues contracts/licences to operators where they can have their own, incompatible fare and ticket system, with lax service requirements and can look different, with users ruing why there are so many different operators that need different tickets or the super expensive combined tickets... , to actual public transport that requires a standardised fleet and pricing system, with unprofitable services running regularly, and the user not really noticing a difference between (usually) buses...
@@AndrooUK if you check the statistics, subsidies of PTV go up to 70%.
Also note - around 50%, and often much more, of the state's population resides within the capital city and suburbs for Australia
Public transport in Victoria was privatised in the 1990’s.
@@KM-qd4kf funding and organisation is still done by the states.
I’m from Australia, and I actually consider our transport systems to be quite slow and infrequent. Our regional rail especially, we have so many lines through places that are long served by freight lines and I personally believe that we should be trying to upgrade our lines to be capable of passenger traffic. Awesome video though, brilliant!
That sounds very specific to your situation, I don’t think that represents much of broader Australia, definitely doesn’t represent Perth
Most of them can (or sometimes even do occasionally) have passenger services if Vline decides to do it. For trips such as those to Mildura however its due to rail guages requiring a super indirect route.
@@nolestrono No thats pretty general - Perth would indeed be different but it would be the outlier. Australia just doesnt have the population density for rail except for the 4 reasonable size cities.
The Trucking industry has long lobbied against the upgrade of our rail system Used to be a time where roll on roll off was the normal. Since then, most of the network that spanned rural NSW and Vic has fallen into disrepair and been abandoned. We did amazing things like the Lithgow Zigzag Switchback rail to get over the escarpment of the mountains and allow a train to run from the inland through to Sydney.
They have actually stopped many passenger trains in Victoria over the years and changed them for buses. It was due to poor numbers on the train system unfortunately.
First time I've realised that your "regiona rail" is actually the suburban, not interurban, system! Regional to me means eg Newcastle, Wollongong, Blue Mtns, or the Velocity VLine network in Victoria (Geelong, Ballarat, Bendigo, Traralgon, Seymour).
Yeah, had me pretty confused for a few minutes. Thought he had mixed up VLine and Metro!
Someone just named the most of the vline network...
I thought the same! What we call regional rail isn't very good (at least not in NSW)
The difference here in terminology is probably a function of the size of the states, so a trip like Sydney to Newcastle would be interstate for most of the US, i.e Texas is a large state for the US, it's about the same size as NSW, even Alaska is smaller than QLD, so a trip like Brisbane to Townsville same state "regional rail" for Oz would be more like a multi state trip in most of the US (and multi country in Europe).
I thought regional meant 'country" . It does in Australia
Note for non Australians/Kiwis - “suburb” is closer in meaning to “district” or “neighbourhood” and can refer to any portion of city, including dense inner city or industrial areas.
Paramatta is an example of somewhere that would def not be called a “suburb” in NA or Europe!
I think most people nowadays would consider Parramatta above a suburb. I would even err on calling it a city.
@@ThomasNing oh I agree with you - it’s clearly the 2nd CBD of the Sydney “region” - but that’s not what Wikipedia says 😂
@@JamesScantlebury I think it would probably be considered like a “edge city”
@@ThomasNing It is still a 'suburb'. Sydney CBD is a 'suburb'. Suburbs really have two meanings in Australia. The usual, international sense and those that are just a geographic subdivision what other places would call a neighbourhood (although Australia's have defined, official boundaries.)
@@tobyb6248 yep I know and I agree, I'm just talking about the general sentiment with which people consider population centres/communities.
'Australian cities do often struggle with last mile transit.' - understatement of the century.. :)
If you don't work or live within 10 minutes walk of a train station here in Melbourne, you're going to have a rough time. The bus network here is appallingly unreliable and infrequent; buses have to (more often than not) compete with regular car traffic, and trams only go so far out of the CBD.
@maddog142 don't bring Brisbane into this. How many bus routes run alongside the rail line for 5 or more suburbs? Instead of building a major interchange when they renovated certain stations they kept the buses running into the city.
What they should have done is ocused on buses getting people to the train station then onto trains. That means there would be more frequent bus services as they don't sit in stop start traffic for half an hour to go 4 suburbs.
@maddog142 Ok I don't live there anymore and I did not have a drivers license when I did. It was still a problem when I moved in 2012.
You are only talking about cost of transferring from one service to another. I am talking about how buses run beside the railway line into the Queen st bus station going past multiple train stations.
@maddog142 Mate, unless you’re inner city brisbane, public transport fucking sucks.
Granted, it’s not too bad for such a large area size, but having Buses darting everywhere is confusing and inefficient.
Agree, used to be a bus driver in Melbourne, most days I’d have 69 to 70 passengers all sitting in bumper to bumper traffic try8ng to compete for the same peace of road.
I used to live in Pascoe Vale and had to catch a bus for ~15 minutes to the station, and honestly I never had issues with it. I took it every morning and evening, and the bus was only late or cancelled a few times in 3 years.
Love the unexpected Chatswood mention! I am a bus driver at the Willoughby depot and drive in and out of Chatswood every day. Although we need Victoria Ave to become a bus only road to stop the sometimes 30+ minute delays due to bad traffic on friday/saturday nights.
I agree. Victoria Avenue has become untenable for car traffic now. Chatswood has become and is being developed as a major transport and shopping hub now so, it makes sense to take cars out of the centre of it.
yeah I stay away from Victoria ave when I can
same here, head to school every day via chastwood interchange
What about a Light Road down Victoria Ave to Penhurst and then onwards to North Sydney or city?
Gotta get on the beers I say
Sydney’s suburban train network is extremely effective at moving peak hour traffic - it really is viable to live in many suburbs and get the train to the city when needed. The problem is the last 5km connection.
For sure, though as mentioned this should be fixable with investment in better bus service and active transport links as well as TOD!
I think it depends on where you live. Honestly, I'm really impressed by the bus coverage in sydney. There are few places you can't get to that isn't covered by at least an hourly bus. If I was relying on that hourly bus for a daily communte and missed it for whatever reason? That is indeed not a good experience. (albeit many double to every half hour during peak, and many suburban services run every 20-10min.) And, if you live along a corridor with 2 or more routes (not extremely uncommon), your effective frequency could be every 5-2min.
In inner/middle ring suburbs in Australian cities the vast majority of housing is within walking/cycling distance of a rail station. The problem is in the post 1960s suburbs where rail development did not keep up with housing. And recent attempts M1, Leppington branch have been so badly managed and over-priced it is unlikely that will ever be possible to catch up.
Also their new Metro, it shows a new standard of how an Australia Metro is in 2020's.
@@ulysseslee9541 Tech, faciltiy and service wise it is fantastic, world class. But it's being used in the exact same way as the suburban trains, rather than as a metro, and wasting many of its advantages (that came at great cost). Hence Reece's remark about 'a metro that ins't really a metro' in the video.
one huge benefit of regional rail is the independence of kids, if you live in a suburb that's far away from anything kids can't really go anywhere by themselves until driving age. but if there is a train station near you even if it takes you 30 mins to walk there it means as a kid you have access to a major city nearby, that you can go with your freinds to without needing be driven anywhere. and as a kid you learn a lot of skills doing this, how to plan a trip with other people, learning how to navigate a city by yourself. being able to travel to a major city by myself for cheap was amazing as a kid
Me and my friends rely heavily on the public transport networks to get around, and it works quite well. We're all more then willing to cop a short walk to where we want to be and most busses connect everything. The frequency of the busses isn't the greatest in the world but tram frequency is typically great.
I'm a substantially more independent person because of this and without it I'd of likely ended up a NEET. I dropped out of high school and went into tafe to pick up some certs.
@@chaineddepths9523 What certificates did you get at TAFE? I have vaguely considered going to TAFE but I am not sure what I would study or train for.
@@fishofgold6553 I'm currently completing VCAL before going into either carpentry or civil construction
To put it simply: For a mostly car-oriented country, Australia surprisingly does really well with public transportation, especially with suburban sprawl compared to other countries that the US could learn a lot from.
If the US government has less corruption they probably can.
@@1mol831 Australian gov is pretty corrupt, especially the liberal party and national party
@@jordanmason7127 true, it has gotten more and more corrupt because there is no external threat to rally the people against corruption.
Actually, American cities had pretty good rail based public transport infrastructure it was bought up and ripped out by big oil and the carmakers
@@anthonyj7989 yep, but Melbourne kept its trams 😄
We Australians use our “regional rail” like metro. That’s why no one here see them as regional rail. Stations are usually no more than one kilometre apart and most suburban activity centres evolved around the stations. Service frequency is reasonable even outside peak hour (5-20 minutes inter-peak). There are a lot of suburban short trips throughout the network. You can see people with shopping trolley travel only a few stops to go to the closest shopping area for grocery. Trains are part of daily life for a lot of people here.
Sorry, in particular to reduce confusion for those not from Australia this is just plain wrong for Victoria at least. We don't use our suburban rail network like a metro at all, the train service outside peak is 20+ minutes and much of the network shuts down later night. Perhaps in the inner city people use it with "shopping trolleys" on short trips but that does not happen elsewhere. Most stops outside the inner city are at least 1 mile apart and often 2 or even 3. The reason we don't see our suburban network as "regional rail" is because we have a actual distinct regional rail system that we would use to travel to say Ballarat. It's nothing to do with how we use our suburban train network.
I don’t know where you live. In Perth, most stations are upwards of 4 km apart and can be much more (one is over 20 km from the next). You simply can’t get an average speed of around 84 km/h if you stop every kilometre. No one here grocery shops in the city, let alone via trains that don’t really go directly to any other shopping centres. People here mostly use the train for commuting, and that’s reflected by the 5 min between trains only occurring at peak times. At night you’d be lucky to get one per hour.
@@basketcase6999 You need to come to Melbourne or Sydney to see it yourself. Some stations are even only 500 metres apart. Some sections enjoy 5-10 minutes frequency even late at night. Only 40% of passengers are peak hour CBD commuters. In Sydney, I can’t name one major shopping area not adjacent to a train station.
@@Ash_18037 You obviously don’t travel on train often enough. There are a lot of short trips in the middle suburbs and even in outer suburbs. Almost all major train lines in the East and South East run every 10 minutes outside peak during the day. In the case of Dandenong line 10 minute frequency ends as late as 10pm for the suburbs and 20 minute frequency until midnight. Dandenong, Springvale, Clayton, Oakleigh, Carnegie, Caulfield have heaps of short trip passengers travelling between them. Dandenong also sees a lot of people travelling from the outer suburbs like Cranbourne, Narre Warren, Berwick. On the Frankston line they have Frankston and Southland as major short trip generators. On the Ringwood line they have Ringwood, Box Hill, Camberwell. Ringwood is also a major destination for people travelling from the outer east like Boronia, Ferntree Gully, Croydon. On the north side trains don’t run as frequent (20 minute frequency in the middle of the day) but you can still see some short trips at Broadmeadow, Glenroy, Essendon, Moonee Ponds, South Morang, Epping, Thomastown, Preston. The train lines that get almost no short trips are the Werribee line and the Upfield line. The former falls victim to the car-centric suburban planning with no major shopping precincts located around stations and residential areas not within walking distance to the stations. The latter faces competition from the Sydney Road tram.
@@Ash_18037 Also with regard to distances between stations in Melbourne, most lines have short distances (500-1500m) between most stations well into the middle suburbs (around 20km from CBD) or even into the outer suburbs in some cases, with the exception of Werribee line and Sunbury line.
Though it does exit the highway median at strategic places as mentioned, Perth's Mandurah-Butler corridor does still have a lot of highway median stations. One of the methods used in Perth to reduce the accessibility issues associated with this type of station was to locate the bus interchange directly on top of the station, which is the case at Murdoch, Bull Creek, Stirling, Warwick and Whitfords.
Yep, and that helps a lot. Buses are going to pull in more riders than walk up in suburban areas.
Yeah I think Perth does bus/train interchanges particularly well. There are a lot of very sprawly cities that could take some transport lessons from Perth.
It's still not a great solution to building T.O.D's, very few residential houses are in comfortable walking distance to those Perth freeway median stations, to the point they're actually detrimental to the success of attempted presincts. Canning Bridge station is on the opposite side of the river from its precinct's activity node, that they're actually talking about building a Ferry terminal on the Applecross side of the river. Cockburn is pretty awful. Murdoch has a lot of development but it's a dull, uninviting walk to the Hospital's and most will still jump on a connecting bus to Murdoch University than walk there. Stirling is painfully disconnected and has been for 30years, hopefully that successfully changes with the Stirling redevelopment area.
@@PjRjHj When Australian cities are discussing how to optimise their existing systems and the best way to expand, most North American cities are still at the stage of moving from no effective transit solution at all to some improvements.
@@PjRjHj Cockburn is not awful, there's a lot of pretty high density stuff to the west of the station.
Just a head's up: in Australia, "regional rail" is more like rail between Melbourne and Geelong or Ballarat, not say between the Melbourne CBD and Sunbury or Cranbourne. We had a huge project upgrading the regional rail links to non-Melbourne population centres in Victoria, enabling more of the V-Line (diesel) passenger trains to run.
Nice to see Perth on the channel. Their public transport system is mighty impressive - and there's no better ad for mode shift than seeing a shiny train overtake you at 130 km/h every 5 minutes when you're stuck in traffic. The level of forward thinking is impressive too - things like pre-building the underpass for the Thornlie-Cockburn link years in advance.
Just to be clear, the Glen Iris tunnel was built for the original alignment of the Mandurah railway before a change of government saw the plans change to following the Freeway all the way to the city. Effectively, the Thornlie-Cockburn Link just fills in the bit of the Mandurah railway that was not build as a result of the aforementioned change. So it was not so much forward thinking as a late change in plans, and the change was so late that completion of the tunnel seemed logical. True forward planning would have been building a tunnel to link the Airport line to the future Ellenbrook line whilst the TBMs were still in situ. Alas, not done.
One issue I did notice whenever I've visited Perth is that there's not a lot of interconnections between different rail lines - if you want to go from a station on one line to a station on another line you usually have to go through the city.
Er, Perth is not an example of good public transport. I am very surprised that some think it is. As for forward thinking? I beg to differ.
@@Design_no better than NA at least, but yeah
In the 1960s and 70s, Perth & Brisbane suburban train services were in danger of complete closure, but electrification chnged things out of sight!.
Perth was down to only 2 routes @ one stage. Brisbane had many locomotive hauled suburban trains. Even Adelaides DMUs gave you a noisy rough experience, but I don't think there was ever talk of closing it down?
@ this time, in the early 70s, most Sydney EMUs were a 1920s design & most built decades ago while 2/3 of Melbourne's fleet was a 1900s design, most built by the mid 1920s. There were even a few older Swing Door cars still running. Great from a railfans viewpoint, but very run down for everybody else. The whole rail infastructure was a working museum, with Melbourne & Victoria still having dozens of interlocking & hand operated level crossing gates.
I travelled in Australia for about a month, mostly near the cities of Melbourne and Sydney several years ago. It was easier travelling exclusively by public transit in these two cities than many urban sprawl prone US cities I have lived within or near. Good enough bus service also linking these rail networks helped make it even easier.
I'm a Sydneysider thinking of moving down to Melbourne when I'm able - if the two were competing, which do you think would stack up better? I've had good experiences here and don't hear great things about Melbourne's system, but they seem more politically committed to supporting and upgrading their network than we are.
@@bright0nsounds What? no Melbournes train network is privatised dogshit. Get ready for far more cancelations.
@@bright0nsounds i was only there a couple of days but I found the sydney system to be better. the services on Melbourne's lines are really unbalanced so depending on where you live it could be the best in the country or fairly bad in comparison. Plus the city loop is a lot more confusing. but yea vic gov is doing a lot to fix things
@@bright0nsounds The others said it best. If public transit is a key criterion for you then Melbourne is quite a downgrade on Sydney. The Melbourne trams make for nice folklore and Instagram snaps, when it comes to getting you to your destination on time it's another story.
@@oldskoolmusicnostalgia honestly I've never had too big of a problem with Melbourne train punctuality, main thing with them is that the lines are continuously getting upgraded ATM so trains are down quite frequently.
Come back in 3-4 years when we've finished up with our rail crossing removals and have the CBD tunnel and city loop completed and beginning work respectively.
When you said "regional rail" I was sure you were going to be talking about CountryLink. But you're right, Sydney "suburban" trains go to Woolongong, Newcastle and Katoomba - roughly 100km from the CBD in every direction (the sea is on the fourth side. We don't have trains there... yet)
And the Brisbane Suburban trains go almost 200km to the North and almost 100km down to the Gold Coast.
@@dosaussiethai2127 60km to the west also. (rosewood)
@@catprog They should extend it to Toowoomba.
@@dosaussiethai2127
I was going to say it was slower for the train then the bus but having a look at the westlander time table. It takes 1 hour and 10 minutes to go from ipswich to roma street. Which is very slow for an express train.
Anyway you can go toowomba -> ipswich in 1 hr 12 minutes on bus. Busqld BQ201
Towomba to ipswich on westlander is 3 hrs 12 minutes.
Technically Katoomba is part of Greater Sydney. So is Gosford. Would explain why Sydney trains go to these areas
I agree with you, but I'm somewhat familiar with the Aussie rail networks. A few maps would presumably have been useful for anyone who isn't.
That's what my other videos are for
@@RMTransit That's like saying "Just Google it."
I can't link all the maps here (might edit the links in later), but some summaries:
- Sydney is a city with a relatively straight but slanted coastline on its east, whose CBD is actually far over to the east near the water rather than being centered. It has a cohesive and highly connected network which extends westward from Central station, the lines converging and connecting to each other after they split out. In the other direction into the CBD is a turn-back loop with five stations; two lines just take one side of this loop and split to their own paths beyond the city, one going east just short of the shore and the other crossing the river north of the CBD and heading to the north.
- Melbourne, a downward-pointing crescent wrapped around the top side of a large bay, has a radial network centered around a circular loop with five stations in the CBD right on the northern coast of the bay. Each line flings out from a corner of this loop and extends outward, splitting but never reconverging after leaving the city loop.
- Brisbane, another coastal city with water on the eastern side but with a more centered CBD further down its primary river, has a set of south-north lines which all converge into a single 'spine' through the CBD. In each of the two directions, the lines split out at various points but never join back onto each other, like Melbourne but with a single through line instead of a loop.
- Adelaide and Perth are both coastal cities with water on their _west_ sides and roughly centered CBDs, and they both features networks of single lines converging into a terminus in the CBD. Adelaide's lines all extend out to the west, whereas Perth has a 'starfish' network of lines that go out in all different directions but still meet at a central point in the CBD.
- Darwin, Canberra, and Hobart do not have passenger rail, excluding Canberra's one streetcar tram line from the city to the north.
@@bright0nsounds adelaides lines mainly go to the massive populations north and south of the city, also Newcastle has light rail and the train connection
@@RMTransit That's one thing I would like to say about your videos! More maps, and longer map-time needed, especially considering the complex subject matter we're talking about, and they're easier to gaze at than staring directly into the face of Reece talking (and feeling them stare into your soul) and definitely more useful than the footage of trains/drone shots, even though those are of course great as well.
Agreed! I’m a big fan of Melbourne’s level crossing removal program - both drivers and train drivers benefit from reduced journey times, reduced congestion and improved safety. In some cases, lines are getting new or rebuilt stations. Politically very popular!
The trains need to be more frequent though. Otherwise, it's largely a waste of money.
@@leehaber freeing up the city loop will increase suburban capacity quite a lot.
The idea of removing the level of crossings here in Melbourne has been around since the late 70’s/early 80’s. Whist some here may believe it’s politically popular, I suggest that you actually look at which political party was the one who was constantly pushed back on the idea for all of those years up until recently….ie; Daniel Andrews is only doing it to buy votes 🙄
I use to have to wait 30-40 minutes sometimes when crossing at Clayton.
How does it benefit train drivers? A complete waste of money that will _never_ have any payback and only puts more cars on the road.
I love the transport system here in Perth, very cool to see my city get a mention on this channel!
One thing that does annoy me is that our buses are very vulnerable to traffic jams. While a few bus-lanes exist, most places either don’t have them, or drivers ignore them, leaving buses stuck in traffic. Makes me wish we had a light-rail system (which we’re apparently getting ‘sometime’).
The bus lane occupation by regular motorists issue can easily be solved by policing. Hand out fines to those who choose to break this law and put the money towards transport projects.
No one follows the bus lanes in Perth. I live on a street with a bus lane and often can't get in the left (bus) lane when I need to turn into my house because it's backed up with regular motorists. Does my head in. It needs to be better policed.
I don’t think light rail is going to happen any time soon - neither major party even has a current plan for it, let alone funding commitments or anything like that.
However, councils like Stirling keep talking about so-called “trackless trams” (aka very long articulated buses that could be served by dedicated “stations” for Smartrider tag on and off rather than upon entry and exit to the vehicle), so I think they’ll be more likely to trial these.
I used public transport for a while when I had to head up to Perth for tafe. I didn't have my licence for the first year of my apprenticeship, so I ended up taking the train from Armadale to Perth and then the Bus from Perth to Balga. That's about a 1.5 hour trip. In the car it was around an hour up the highways, though that did work out a bit more expensive. In any case, I'm glad I get to live in a town that isn't Perth.
When I visited Australia for the first time in 2019 for a friend's wedding, I was floored by the quality of their transit systems. The city where the ceremony was being held - Wollongong - had a commuter rail connection to the airport in Sydney, and free buses throughout the city. Sadly, the city I currently live in - London, Ontario - doesn't have anything close to rivaling those transit systems, and likely never will due to the deeply entrenched favouritism toward car-dependent infrastructure. *sigh*
You can have hope! I live in Sydney, and we still have massive, insane investment into roads and highways. It is only in the last 10-20 years that we have actually properly started re-investing in transit after half a century of letting it deteriorate horribly.
Sydney has by far the best rail system in Australia, in my opinion.
I’ve heard nothing but bad things about transit in Fake London
FAKE LONDON
Sadly the only thing I know about London, Ontario is that youtube channel Not Just Bikes frequently pans its terrible transport choices.
In Melbourne there are three big problems that need to be tackled to have a great transport network. 1st. While regional trains are great getting to and from the train is difficult, requiring slow and infrequent busses, or even taxis in off hours. The other major problem is travelling anywhere else but to and from the CBD. Due to the spiral deaign of the network you are almost always forced to use the CBD as a connection point to go anywhere else. This increases the need for space in an already heavily populated and trafficked area. It also significantly increases total travel time.
Fortunately the SRL is getting built along with the airport rail so that will reduce the reliance on the city loop
What was the third issue? I don't know the system well but from what I can tell the Trams are generally built around the same kind of CBD commute as the rail, hopefully the success of Trams will let them be built with more emphasis on connecting suburban rail stations and providing last mile connection instead of this CBD spoke style development, for example if line 6 (in the north) could keep going east and connect all the way to the Hurstbridge line, and west to Essendon (again not knowing the city).
I agree and think most of these problems would be well solved with better local transit connectivity. As well as perhaps some circumferential branches.
@@neolithictransitrevolution427 the third issue is mainly cost and frequency. To make public transport a viable alternative to the car it needs to be financially competitive. When i lived in Melbourne the cost of public transport was considerably higher compared to for example commuting by motorbike.
It's been a while since I lived in Melbourne, but from memory there were a number of decommissioned tram lines that used to connect the radial routes
A lot of the success of Australian networks depends on city planning history. Suburban shopping and office developments since the 1960s were permitted/encouraged in existing centres rather than on greenfield sites. These centres were located on rail lines so what you call TODs happened by accident. In Sydney this is not just Chatswood but Parramatta, Hurstville, Bankstown etc etc.
You could call it built by Westfield (major Australian mall chain that is now part of URW Unibail-Rodamco-Westfield, and the Scentre Groupvin Australia)
It's interesting the different terminology regional rail vs suburban rail. In the context of Australia’s two largest states, we tend to talk about regional rail as those services connecting larger regional centres to the main city, such Intercity Trains in NSW (mainly electrified) or Vline's services within the Myki zone in Victoria.
These services have improved considerably over the years. Geelong a city of 250,000 75km from Melbourne has 20 minute frequencies for most of the day, more during peak. In the early 90s, Bendigo, now a city of 100,000 some 150km from Melbourne had 5 trains services on weekdays, the last train departing at 6:30pm (except Fridays, with a sixth service at 8pm) . By the early 2010's that had increased to about 16 or 17 (from memory), now it is 23, with the last departure at midnight. These sort of services are starting to shape where people live, especially coupled with flexible working arrangements. But of course they too suffer from poor bus coordination, or lack of bus services.
I feel there is some overlap but regional rail would generally try and cover a state or province or a region within that. Suburban rail is often more local although some suburban or commuter services span more than 100 km which could be thought of as regional rail as well. BART in the bay area is often referred to as regional rail because it covers distances of 40 or more miles. Similarly, there is Rapid Regional Rail coming up in the National Capital Regional of India (Delhi) which is like a speeded up metro with longer station spacing.
* cries in Upfield *
@@emporioalnino4670 the Geelong line running more frequently than the upfield line (and with newer and more comfortable trains might I add) is probably the funniest thing about the Victorian transport network
@@UnitedKingdomGovernment I guess the Upfield large really only serves the City of Moreland - (and not all of the City, some of the city is closer to the Craigeburn line), which has a substantially smaller population than Geelong/Tarneit/Truganina/DeerPark...
@@davidj4626 The main reason for the poor patronage and hence the poor frequency of the Upfield line is due to Tram 19 running parallel to the train line for half of its length. The tram also takes a more direct route into the city whereas the train takes a detour via West Melbourne.
I live in Perth Australia, and the city is added "metronet" an extensive upgrade to our train lines. It includes a new rail line to our airport, track extensions into new suburbs and elevating train lines over roads in highly populated areas
Technically, the airport rail line predates Metronet as it was planned and started under Barnett. The Thornlie-Cockburn link was also agreed-upon by both parties (due to most of the infrastructure already being there due to being the original route for what became the Mandurah line), so I don’t think that counts as part of Metronet proper either.
I would consider Metronet to mostly include the Midland line spur Morley-Ellenbrook line (as opposed to the Liberal proposal for either a tunnel or a light rail system), electrification to Byford, elevating many areas of track, and level-crossing removals.
@lwf51 Has anyone said that? I’ve never seen any official documents or news articles or anything suggesting that at all.
It seems more like the last Labor’s public transport project program - “New MetroRail” - which led to no rebranding whatsoever. It was just a way of having a unified management and planning team for various public transport projects, and the name was retired after all the projects were completed.
Bondi Junction is another example of a large integrated business/shopping and residential area that has developed extensively due to being a major public transport hub. The train network only reached Bondi Junction in 1979. Since then it has become the most prestigious of Sydney’s satellites centres simply because of its position as the hub for bus and rail in Sydney’s affluent Eastern suburbs.
Bondi Junction... a little taste of the Western Suburbs right in the heart of the East! If you ever feel the need to be surrounded by unruly teenagers, have a craving for fast food, or need to stock up on another dozen $10 H&M shirts there's no need to drive 45 minutues away. Just take a 5 minute drive to the prestigious Bondi Junction.
@@goaway9977 Even the residents of Bondi Beach see Bondi Junction as "Westies". That's why they consistently block any transport connection between them 🤣
And when will we see a Bondi Beach station, pray tell?
@@xar987 I doubt it will ever happen.
I think it's also because it's close to the beach
Glad you mentioned Chatswood, what with it's easy platform transfers, but also it's density. A key factor in its success is that the rail line preceded most of the neighboring pacific "highways" expansion, and that the pacific highway is so garbage (2 very narrow lanes + parking and turning) along the line that it is faster just to take a train to Chatswood any day during daytime
That's not necessarily a bad thing, having people move on rail is really really beneficial
@@RMTransit Definitely agree, but I find it amusing that where I live, in SUBURBAN northern Sydney, it's faster to catch a train than drive (unless the state locks out its workers or the rain drowns the signalling).
Definitely confuses me how Sydney has so much transit, given it followed a North American style of suburbanism; perhaps the significant non-partisan opposition to freeways may have helped, as well as how difficult it would have been politically for any government to rip up rail lines, cementing rail travel as something sydneysiders feel is a good thing.
@@onnajeda7534 Whatever the reason, I'm happier for it.
@@onnajeda7534 I was living in Turramurra for a while, and you can't drive anywere, getting to Hornsby is almost as quick on the train. That's even more so for the city/North Sydney.
Another aspect of the Brisbane Airtrain line is that once it passes through the city, it becomes the Gold Coast line. The Gold Coast is one of our more popular tourist spots.
Brisbane Airtrain is great. Never once had to catch a cab to the airport in Brisbane thanks to it.
I lived near Chatswood for a couple of years (96-98) and did not need my car for months at a time. Although it was pre-metro, I was able to travel by train almost anywhere - or just walk into chatswood for groceries.
Yep the station had pretty great connectivity even before Metro opened especially with the Epping Chatswood rail Link which I don't believe was open at the time
@@RMTransit ECRL opened in 2009. bus links already serviced its route however, but it was certainly much better as rail. but chatswood has always had a good location on the north shore train line with bus links west to epping or east to the northern beaches. extra rail lines and dense development over the train station has just made things better. sadly i no longer live nearby as i used to frequent the place.
Until I had kids I lived in South Caulfield without a car. Bikes, trams and trains are totally doable in most of Melbourne.
Nice video, but could North Americans please stop calling Brisbane and Perth small cities, the big 5 cities in Australia are Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane, Perth and Adelaide. (Gold coast has grown quite alot recently). In austrlaia you would probbly get away with calling Hobart a small city, though Newcastle you wouldn't
If Hobart is a small city then Canberra must make the list
Huh, No, Newcastle is a small city, but Brisbane definitely isn't.
they are small cities though, especially by US standards as they've had an additional 200 years of growth in many cases. other countries city centres have been around for centuries more, just look at paris for example.
@@mr.jamster8414 I'd respectfully disagree Mr Jamster. The greater Newcastle area population wise is is quite large with over 600 000 people.
🤷♂️ ok, but most people I talk to even consider Adelaide a small city. Cities have to be 100K plus, yeah? So compared to what normally comes to mind, yeah, it is small. (I think what is considered a small city in Australia is larger than the US) With respect.
one place in Australia that doesn't have a very good metro is Adelaide where I live, its mostly bus oriented and the train lines only run into the city and there is only train lines that run out to urban sprawl areas like Seaford, Belair and Grange. there is absolutely no trains, trams or metro trains that run out east where i live and its quite hard to get anywhere in Adelaide without taking at least 2 or 3 busses and maybe a tram or train.
Australian here, one important thing you missed about having the trains run next to the highways is in peck hour the roads clog up & slow to a crawl. So drivers stuck in traffic see the trains whizzing by & that's a great motivator to get on the train.
The end result is less cars on the road, not having to deal with parking issues as people switch to trains that's a win, win situation.
Speaking to the head of Derivative trading platforms at ANZ bank Melbourne data centre a couple of years back - he was a v good client and a really good guy - he said his commute was cycle to station, put bike and himself on train, ride to city, get bike back on road, half mile, he's at work- His work mates thought he cycled the whole 15 miles from his house. Yep, Aussie transport basically v good, just not everyone seems to know how good
It all depends on the trip being done but indeed there's a lot of good infrastructure
Did he have a sticker on his bike saying "my other bike is a Porsche" ??
Not really when compared to Hong Kong, Singapore, Taipei or Tokyo. But for a car dependant city it’s quite good.
@@1mol831 I grew up in Hong Kong and later lived in Sing as an adult. Only a maniac cycles ANY distance on either cities Central districts, I also lived in Mumbai in the 90s, but I did cycle there, getting your bike on a train there, not possible cept on the long range trains
@@Cheeseatingjunglista yea obviously no one cycles in Hong Kong, there is no reason to
Perth has some really important advantages in place that makes public transport attractive and easy to use. For starters, the governing body has, over the past decade or so, placed considerable emphasis on consistency of wayfinding information at nodes, presentation of infrastructure and vehicles, and service planning quality. As you mentioned, the "last mile" issue is one of great concern and this is partially alleviated by a comprehensive bus network, including feeder buses that officially connect with trains at "interchange" stations. Most of the said feeder buses run between to interchange stations, often allowing cross-suburban travel in addition to providing easy to access public transport for more households. It's also worth noting that Perth's train system has the best on-time performance and passenger satisfaction rates in Australia and the network is set to grow significantly with the Metronet projects that in many cases are already either under construction or in the final planning stages.
Agreed on all points, those interchanges seem to work very well (though I've only visited Perth, not lived there). You could argue the fact Perth is spread out along a coastline is an advantage, especially for the Mandurah/Joondalup line.
This is gonna be a long post about Melbourne's suburban network and everything around it (which i'm writing at 12:30am in Melbourne right now so wish me luck).
Historically, Melbourne's suburban network had a few thing going for it that I don't think Americans and Canadians had in their cities, though I could be wrong. The reason Melbourne has such an extensive network was mainly due to a massive property bubble and expansion in the 1870's and 80's (called Marvelous Melbourne) which saw many lines being built out into what was then countryside due to the expectation that it would be built up in the future. Though that didn't happen immediately, the lines being there helped to essentially guide urban sprawl around these major corridors, rather than these corridors being built through urban sprawl. If you look at photos how how Melbourne expanded, you will see that all the new developments are built alongside the rail corridor, eventually expanding into the gaps between rail lines until it was fully developed.
Alongside this, Melbourne electrified early. REALLY early. Like, I'm talking 1919 early. Melbourne's suburban network was basically fully electrified by 1925 and being run by EMU's built off of old passenger cars, something unheard of in the rest of the world at the time. This had led to problems where the entire network is now running of 1500V DC due to it's age, but that's for another time. This helped Melbourne's suburban network and expand throughout the city.
On the focus of TOD's, though Melbourne doesn't have much TOD's in the traditional sense, (the closest I can think of is Box Hill), an extremely common practice in Melbourne is for some form of a commercial district to form around the train station, similar to a TOD. For example, if I get off at the station at Oakleigh, right next to me are buses on both sides, and a big enclosed and open air shopping area and mall with cafes, banks, all sorts of food shops and trendy places, and a shopping centre with two supermarkets. Anything someone could want. Another example is Glen Waverly. At the end of the station are a few high-rises, with a giant hotel facing Springvale Rd (mainly due to the fact that there is a massive industrial park not far from Glen Waverly. Near it is a massive shopping centre, supermarkets, bottle shops, food places up the wazoo on both sides, chemists, the library, the council offices, a big cinema, and one of the bigger high schools in the city, all within walking distance, not giant parking garages and stroads. This is all because this sprawl built out of the rail line, not roads.
The final thing I'd mention in Melbourne's favour is it's political system for suburban rail in particular. Due to historical reasons, and power grabs, there's not really such a thing as a Mayor of Melbourne, and the one we do have has basically no powers, so all the transport plans and infrastructure projects are run by the State Government and the Premier. We've had a really rail-friendly government over the last few years, (though they're extremely controversial for certain reasons I won't get into) and this government actually has the power, and the money, to A. properly fund suburban rail across the city to bring it up to a decent standard, and B. the foresight to be able to build big projects that are sorely needed in this city.
Melbourne's transit is by no means perfect. Though our pedestrian routes are only meh, our bike infrastructure is poor, and don't get me started on how godawful our bus network is (something we ought to look at Toronto for eh ;), and we have problems we very obviously need to face, such as building infrastructure to serve are large amount of infill development, and improving the service level of what we've already got, we're further along the development path than cities in Toronto. I look at GO Transit and see a great prototype that can get better for everyone in the GTA. And for your sake, I really hope they do! And if you need any tips on how it's done, come down here to Oz. I promise, you'll like it down here.
Anyway, those are my ramblings from someone who lives here in Melbourne and wants to add a bit of context. I hope you come down soon Reece, I think you're gonna like it here. Who knows, we might even convince you the SRL is a good idea! 😉
- Someone who should really be asleep by now
I don't disagree that better links in the suburbs are a good idea but the srl as a project has a ton of major issues
I appreciate the rambling - it was well written, despite the hour.
Great comment.
While I do agree the ped and cycle infrastructure is poor, I wouldn't see it as comparatively poor compared to other Australian or North American cities. In fact, I see it as well above average, as depressing as that is!
One slight correction re your comment about the original suburban trains: Only the Swingdoor (Dogbox) cars were converted from steam hauled passenger cars. The Tait sets (which were the flagship trains of the electrification program) were built specifically as electric trains. In reality the first ones were delivered 9 years before the electrification was commissioned so were steam hauled temporarily, but they were just EMUs waiting for electrical fitout.
I think also the point that it is the much bigger State Government that funds Public Transport in Australia is also important.
Versus Counties in most of the US, which is why the BART doesn't go to Santa Clara for example.
Enables much greater coordination of services.
Brisbane is probably the only exception, where the BCC is much larger.
I live in Perth Australia but grew up in Melbourne. Perth is great as they are expanding their rail (we just got rail to the airport). However, it still has some problems to iron out. 1. As most of the train stations are relatively new busses do not join up well with them to create transit hubs from train to suburbs you sometimes have a bit of a hike from the train station to the bus stop. 2. The new airport line is great but it's biggest potential customer base FIFO - fly in fly out workers to mine sites are not able to utalise it as their planes leave for work at about the same time the trains are starting for the day. Much earlier trains are needed. There are also planned about a 50% increase in stations and lines in the near future which will make the system even better. In a nutsell we are getting the train infrastructure here in Perth, now it needs to be tweeked to get a well oiled system.
Australia has the suburban sprawl of North American cities, yet with British-style traintrack alignments. An interesting sight to be sure
This video just goes to show that we Aussies LOVE whinging about how terrible everything is and how inept our planning and infrastructure performance is when really with a bit of perspective and dispassionate consideration you can see how good we really do have it over all. Yes, not every city/area/state is equitably serviced but in a country our size with such a dichotomy of population distribution i.e. dense, sprawling coastal mega-cities along with isolated micro towns it's pretty hard to expect even coverage. For perspective, Melb and Syd would be in the top 5 largest cities if they were either the US or the UK.
Can we improve? Of course and we should never stop striving to do so. However, maybe we shouldn't throw the baby out with the bathwater and sook it up any time someone mentions the words "Public Transport" 🙄. I mean, I've caught trains, a bus, trams, rode my bike along a dedicated raised cycling track all in the last 2 days plus used an e-scooter (lol) and caught a V-line (inter city train) to Geelong and back for a concert a few weeks ago.
Measured, deserved criticism and considered critique is great. It's a what drives a healthy democracy but whinging without perspective needs to get the lemon and sars.
The planning idiots in Brisbane decided to build busways that directly compete with trains, instead of Buses feeding to trains. There is no plan to add more train lines to service areas that have to use cars, and these areas are not far from the CBD. The solution to Brisbane's worsening traffic is just add more lanes, build tunnels, and toll people that want to bypass the CBD, yet people that want to add to congestion don't pay. The geniuses in government charged to much to use the tunnels, that so few people used them, and the entity running the tunnels went bust, and the State Government had to step in and use pension money to offset the colossal debt. Now these intelligent idiots are building a subway to connect part of the CBD to the Gabba. According to these super smart idiots, spending $6 billion is going to fix issues with the rail network. Sure it is. A subway that is built below an existing major Bus Hub is going to fix all the issues. So $6 billion to support 20 events that occur at the Gabba every year, so the other 345 days of the year, the Gabba subway does Fuk all. Yeah, we sure do whinge, about idiots that don't listen to advise.
We Aussies shouldn't whinge, we should just shut up and accept the Fuk wits that make more and more idiotic decisions.
Yes, absolutely. We are world champion whingers when it comes to basically everything, but on the whole this is a fantastic country to live in with some actually pretty decent infrastructure.
@@adam872 New Zealand has better internet and quality of roads than we do, so it depends on what your definition of ''pretty decent'' is.
@@MrRadialdrift maybe in parts, but I don't live in NZ so I don't really care. I've driven and used the Internet over there, so I have some experience. It's fine but not light years ahead IMHO. They also have a much smaller land mass (yes, they also have mountainous areas that are challenging) for which they need infrastructure built.
I think Sydney and Melbourne's metro population are each somewhere around 5 million, which would rank somewhere around 12th in the US, putting them behind places like Dallas or Atlanta, but ahead of Portland, Denver, or Minneapolis - in the company of cities like Detroit, Seattle, and Phoenix.
Most of the US cities I mention above do have rail transit of some sort, but it's not nearly as extensive, useful, or well used as in Australia's major cities. You have to get to larger cities in the US, like Boston, Philadelphia, or San Francisco to get something that can even remotely compare (and even then, the comparison is not favorable.) Does New York, have better transit than Sydney - on balance, yes, probably. Not sure I could say the same about anywhere else in this country.
I live in Perth.
The expantion of the train network is really exciting.
I'll get a new station (Morley) just around the corner from my house.
Yeah same, you don't ever hear people talk about Perth
@@illiiilli24601 I was happy he mentioned Perth.
Yeah the metronet expansion is exciting, it’s a shame it’s been running at a snails pace though.
I love transperth and think it definitely is underrated when compared to other services like PTV. Excited to hear RM transit wants to talk more about transperth.
Agree, great to hear Perth mentioned ... even a tad funny for foreigners to say the name :) Am out towards airport link, whilst I don't have a need to use it currently, it's a bit frustrating how long the line is taking - tunnel has been "complete" for surely over 12mths now, mostly tied up with Bayswater rebuild I can only assume.
@@sbm1978 yeah mate. I’m currently in wanneroo but travel on the midland line every day for work and they have barely erected the concrete walls for the station.
Good news they did the first set of test trains on your line yesterday, so progress is being made.
Perth also has the CATs. Central Area Transit buses that run every few minutes, on circular routes in the CBD. The CATs are free and some are at other nodes, such as Joondalup, Rockingham and Fremantle.
Heck yeah! We love to see workable SOLUTIONS!
Isn't car workable solution? Why don't you move to China or Japan, you can ride the train to the point of when you're bored with it and then you can get a good car and you'll be happy.
@@rododendronkrakatoa8633 that's the point. In Japan it is much more fun to drive because there is no traffic congestion, mainly because most people are riding the trains.
In terms of car congestion, China is just as bad as the US. But at least you can ride the train if you want.
@@rododendronkrakatoa8633 if we don't have alternative transport, then we get a bunch of drunks on the roads because taking away their license would be "too cruel".... I think for everyone's sake, it's better that there are other options. My girlfriend has ADHD and she made the responsible decision not to drive because she could not focus well enough. I know others who have similar issues but drive anyway, and it would be better if they wouldn't.
I think the number of people moved per dollar spent advantage of suburban rail is really key for US cities. Their budgets are often way too small, so it really provides an opportunity to kickstart transit development in their regions.
Perth native here, very cool to see our smallish city getting some recognition, anyone living here will tell you just having someone mention the name Perth is surprising! Seeing we're I think the 3rd most sprawling city on Earth by area per capita, our rail expansion plans could easily warrant a demystified by themselves, seeing they're including general network expansions, grade seperation of historical lines, direct tunnels to the airport and the beginning of a suburban loop. Future is looking bright here
Perth is just an airport and a mine. 😉
@@AndrooUK Perth is just about to overtake Brisbane within 5 yrs for 3rd largest city in Australia.. You can look that information up on government bureau of statistics
@@psychedelicprawncrumpets9479 You could look it up yourself. Perth hasn't been growing faster than Brisbane since 2012.
@@AndrooUKAh, A British Spy Came Here.
@mabamabam Perth 2.3 million Brisbane 2.5 million ..if Perth hasn't been growing faster than Brisbane, then how is it only 200k behind Brisbane population then ? Just magically closed the gap but without growing faster lol
In Australia our regional rail is like V/Line in the Myki zone in Victoria or the Intercity trains in NSW. What you call our regional rail is really like our suburban/metro system. This video really shows how much we whinge when put into comparison to other cities in the US. Great video though, I loved having another Australian based video!
I loved that shot at New Jersey's air rail link, where the exact same authority (PANYNJ) is both replacing the current people mover monorail and extending their own metro (PATH) to the other end of that people mover instead of just continuing the PATH directly into the airport.
I think the path extension isn't happening?
@@RMTransit The PATH extension is still very much chugging along. They did a study about extending it even further into the airport itself instead of replacing the AirTrain with another people mover, concluding it was not feasible.
What is interesting is that when Newark Airport was reconstructed in the late 1960's/early 1970's, two of the three new terminals (A and B) were constructed so that the lowest level of the terminals would be PATH stations. Why PANYNJ never followed through and extended PATH to Newark Airport I don't know. But at that time (and probably still today) the last thing the Port Authority ever wants to be involved with is mass transit projects. The latest snafu with the Airlink project at LaGuardia Airport is the perfect example.
Having lived in Sydney Australia all my life, I assumed all cities have an extensive train system serving their suburban regions. The US doesn't? How backward!
Tasmanians getting triggered about now !
@@splashpit Like no one lives there a tram network would be cool but it's honestly not worth it with such a low population lol
I used to live in Perth as a kid and I thought the train network there was brilliant. One of the main reasons we started using the train to get from our town of Rockingham to Perth was because when we used to drive on the freeway we saw the trains fly past us. We had no idea when we moved out there how good the system was and this compelled us to use it whenever we went into the city. They also used to do deals with sports fans where you got a train pass for weekend use with your club membership which made it a no brainer to use the trains to get to and from the games. Plus you could use it even if you weren't attending the games. I also recall even without having a bundled in ticket the prices were pretty cheap atleast compared to where I live in the uk where a 2 hour journey is upwards of 60 quid booked a week in advance. Buses were also pretty decent in Perth but mostly its a really walkable city so we never used them.
The trains are literally the only thing I miss about Perth.
@@castorchua Same for me, and kings park aswell that was a nice park.
We moved from the US to Australia in the early 90's and were AMAZED at how easy it was to get around without a car. Sure it could be better and a fast link up MEL / CBR / SYD & beyond is tragically overdue but I am still amazed in 2023.
Well I never thought my country (Australia) and city (Perth) would be mentioned as examples of mass transit done well. That said, in spite of all the complaining we do about it, our systems aren't too bad. I cycle to work and it's very easy to do so, mainly because I live near a freeway. That freeway has cycle paths and rail lines all moving in the same direction and I think this was an excellent piece of town planning. There is now under construction the Metronet project that will link the different lines together in certain places, including the airport. I don't think the commercial case for it really stacks up but I'm actually OK with it. Good mass transit systems that operate in the areas where people are and want to go are a good thing.
Perth actually some good ideas. Running the Mandurah/Joondalup South/North continuous line along freeways is hella efficient (as the video stated). Add in there the rail link now open and the metronet project and Perth is punching well above its weight in terms of PT for such a ridiculously sprawled city
I live in rural SA & I've visited every capital city bar Sydney. Perth had by far the most efficient public transport, for the cheapest, and it was the CLEANEST.
id consider taking the train to work if i wanted to pay twice as much and double my commute time lol
@@graog123 where you can travel more than 100km for only $5... ! :)
"Subway's can't reach highway speed"
Me, sitting still on the 401 on a Sunday for 10 minutes only to find there was no accident.
Love the video, Regional rail provides a huge range extension for people in the city and a less expensive option for suburbanites going downtown.
With suburban Tram ways coming out as spokes, going through suburban "downtown" core areas and extending into areas which can build new development, this could effectively remove the issues around sprawl.
Pair that with 0 parking TODs at stations also housing paid Park&Rides that share space with ride shares, and from a transportation prespective you would effectively urbanize entire metro areas.
Ontario moment
Regional rail done effectively is a game changer. But development really needs to be shaped around it.
In Ohio, people will stop to observe accidents that have occurred in the other carriageway
I think I get why he said that though, saw a video of trains in a toronto tunnel at full speed and it didn't even look as fast as the trains here go when they leave the station. Perth has an overground metro that goes well past highway speeds. Average of the one in Sydney is 60kph, top speed I think is about the same as a highway, and I believe one of the plans for the Parramatta line is speeds of 160.
@@mr.jamster8414 It's true, GO can be painfully slow. Just a joke about how much worse the highways are, amd how little is needed for transit to win, 401 is the busiest freeway in North America.
Interesting to hear that we have such interesting rail. Thanks for the clarification about "regional" and "suburban" rail, I just thought of ours as the latter. I'd say perth has the same problems as ones like Melbourne, it's difficult to go the last bit of distance, especially as the buses don't run often / at all during night time. Plus the spoke nature of the train system does make for interesting routes to get to places sometimes.
@Me I hadnt heard of the night buses, but that makes sense. Also, yeah, that sounds like a good idea for the other cities to adopt.
@Me Also nice choice of name
As an Australian, what I loved about NYC and London was that there was always a train station within walking distance. Because Brisbane is all suburbs, most people drive to the train station or take a bike.
Very accurate, I lived in Brisbane for 2 years and it was super convenient to travel around the city by rail even all the way to the Gold Coast beaches.
Another city I feel like you haven't talked about much is Munich - you tend to use Berlin for all German examples ;) although our transit solutions might not be very unique or special, there are some interesting developments like the new 2nd tunnel for the S-Bahn.
Berlin probably has more public transit modes so it's a "lazier" choice. San Francisco would be the "example" US city too!
he did San Fran (Bay Area Transit) video already. Munich would be a cool video.
@@vincentng2392 Munich has just as many modes as Berlin if we discount Berlin‘s few ferries, which Munich doesn‘t have as far as I know.
I'm from Australia. You raise many good points about our public transport infrastructure. One dumb problem we have here in Australia is that the rail track gauge is different in Queensland, N.S.W. and Victoria. N.S.W uses the standard gauge used in N. America and most of Europe. Victoria's is wider and Queensland's is narrower. So it is currently impossible to take a train from Brisbane to Sydney to Melbourne. There's a proposal to solve this with an inland link but it's going to be expensive and tricky. It hasn't happened yet.
Wait, then how is the NSW Trainlink between Sydney & Melbourne able to operate? I don’t think it switches track gauges mid-way.
i remember being told that to catch a train to Brissy-Sydney back in the day you have to get off the train and Wallangarra and switch trains bc the gauges were different. Then they ripped up the rail so you can't go north than Armidale.
It is technically possible to link all three cities by rail, as there are sections in QLD and VIC that are dual gauge, that allow SG trains to operate with no issue in BG/NG corridors. In fact, both Roma Street in Brisbane, and Southern Cross in Melbourne can accommodate for standard gauge trains. The only issue is the length of the train; the Indian Pacific for e.g. (Sydney to Perth service) has to be broken up upon arrival into Central, and the Great Southern (Adelaide to Brisbane service) doesn't go to Roma Street for the same reason; it terminates at Acacia Ridge instead.
I'm impressed with your knowledge about this. I agree with all you say and give it a thumbs-up. And do we have our pre-1901 forefathers to thank for this mess?@@iwenttobunnings7868
Great video Reece! What excites me about the projects being done in many Australian/NZ cities (including Melbourne where I live) is how the tunnels are being used to kill 2 birds with 1 stone. Suburban lines are transferring into the tunnel to offer more capacity in the core AND service inner areas that are crying out for rail access. This results in a unique Suburban/Metro hybrid where branch lines converge to offer greater frequency and capacity in dense areas then diverge again to service outlying areas. Something like this could definitely be replicated in NA. I've spent a lot of time in Chicago for work and always felt that tunnels could be used to connect Metra terminal stations and provide a through run service.
This video was my introduction to your channel, and I have to say that I absolutely loved seeing so many clips of Melbourne's train network, especially Flinders Street station
You should definitely do some more videos on Perth, from the Joondalup and Mandurah lines that run down highways, to the historic Fremantle and Midlands lines that are much more focused on walking instead of connecting buses, to new projects in Metronet like the airport link, we are a city that combines a lot of different formulas to create a system that really works!
As an Australian from Melbourne, having just moved to Toronto, I commend you pretty much nailing the pronunciation of Melb'n and Brisb'n
What a great video. So informative and to the point. Amazing stuff. New subscriber here!
I’m 40 years old and grew up in Sydney. I remember Chatswood as a village centre with one or two large shopping malls in the 90’s, it’s amazing how it’s turned into it’s own CBD!
Great video. We very much operate a similar system for our two largest cities here in New Zealand too, but just at a slightly smaller scale
I wouldnt say smaller, Aucklands is about the same size as Perths, other then the western shunting at Newmarket, Penrose station being split and No airport link, it's actually a good system. It's easy to get around, while on holiday used it to get to Henderson shopping center (though they really need a Pedestrian path into the center from the station) from Albany.
As an Australian that moved to Europe, your praise for back home has me terribly nervous for the state of PT in the US
Ditto. Those youtube time wasters called things like '10 things to know about OZ' are informative. The ones written by Europeans are full of 'nice weather but the public transport sucks' and the ones written by North Americans all say 'awesone transit dude'.
@@jack2453 And if a North American says public transport in Australia sucks, you know that they’re a New Yorker
As a 10 to 13 year old I used to walk to the train station and take it two stops to school near Brisbane. It was great!
As someone who lives in Perth, Western Australia, there's a couple of things that I would like to point out. One of the things that makes our "regional" rail system work so effectively is the way that all public transport is integrated with one another. To use an analogy, if you think of the train lines as the arteries and veins, our extensive bus system is like the capillaries branching out from the main arteries and veins which effectively services the whole "regional" area.
Also, like what you have been talking about with regards to Brisbane's airlink, here in Perth, we are almost finished building our own air/rail link to transport people directly to and from the major airport.
On the negative side, there's a lot of issues with regards to connection between major "regional" areas. For example, in the area I live, which is a major population hub, there's no direct public transport to many of the major employment and industrial areas making commuting to work very difficult to downright impossible. A lot of the major areas of employment would require me to start catching public transport before public transport has started running for the day in order to get to the employment area in time to start work.
I guess no system is perfect but we do have a lot of positive going for us
With the Brisbane rail network, a lot of work has been focussed on southern and western areas. There are still problems on the northern line going to the Sunshine Coast that haven't been addressed in years (e.g. rail line duplication - currently only a single line on most of this). With the Olympics in 2032 maybe we will see something happen here finally other than the light rail system to Maroochydore.
Everyone in Australia always complains about the public transport here, but they stop complaining when they go to the US and realize how good we actually have it
As one of your fans living in Brisbane, I wanna add something for you is that the public transport system in Australia is quite diverse, which is colourful in terms of the format of vehicles. The BRT system is extensively utilised in many cities in Australia, which offers semi-mass rapid transit services and can be very reliable and flexible. These special-purpose busways are used mainly by public buses, but emergency vehicles and long-distance coaches can also use them. Adelaide's O-Bahn is even more interesting which uses a guide-wheel bus solution to allow buses to drive on the "track" at a high speed without the concerns of safety.
My local service is transperth and I always get exited hearing people talking about it because it’s super underrated imo.
The secret to Perth’s public transport success ultimately I think comes down to how our “suburbs” are relatively dense, our population is pretty low and our bus system is very well connected. Also there’s only the one city and the rest of WA is country. We have lots of bus stations strewn around the city. We’re lucky to be a relatively small city in area despite having a vertical sprawl nearly 110km (68 miles for yanks) we currently only have 6 train lines servicing 72 train stations around perth (30 of which have a connecting bus station), with 8 standalone bus stations. We also have a circleroute bus (999/998) which is very handy for getting to lots of different places you wouldn’t expect. Also CAT buses for central area transit which I guess are our cities answer to trams? We also have a ferry with a single line at Elizabeth Quay to South Perth but it’s more of a gimmick honestly.
Our government has made up a program called Metronet to introduce the airport line, thornlie cockburn link, ellenbrook line and an extension to the Joondalup line. But this has been very slow to get to work.
Now when I hear you talk about regional rail what my mind instantly went to was TransWA services which are what we consider regional rail because they are services that take you over large distances to regional communities such as Kalgoorlie & Bunbury.
Anyway sorry just wanted to gush
Wonder of you could do something on smartphones, online timetables and real-time updates and how they have revolutionised public transport. When I was a kid, you knew your local buses and might even have a map or timetable of some nearby routes. Outside of your area, you had no idea. Now, I feel very confident going to any corner of the city by bus, train, light rail or ferry, knowing exactly what the transport options will be. Seeing your chosen bus inch along a roadmap towards your bus stop is also wonderfully reassuring.
I do really like sydney's train network, and have few complaints. Except one thing. When it works, it works fantastic. But if anything goes wrong at all near any major interchange, such as central CBD/city circle or parramatta CBD, the entire network literally stops, and needs to be micromanaged at a crippled capacity (like, 5% capacity with 4 hour delays) until the issue can be resolved and traffic clears. There have unfortunately been a couple incidents in recent memory including a couple police operations (no need to go into details, but it's not just police stopping a train for a suspect), and recently/currently with severe weather knocking out signalling and entire alignments.
The network being efficient and effective is fantastic, but it comes with a downside - it operates at the absolute bleeding edge. When planned work needs to happen, it can be supplemented reasonably effectively with busses and redundant tracks allowing for special services. But when anything unexpectedly goes wrong, the chain reaction is catastrophic.
Well I think that's why like other systems in Australia reducing interdependency between different services is a really important thing to do
Once the new metro systems come in we will have very little track sharing between lines, which will hopefully mean future incidents will only affect one line at a time. I believe that was one of the biggest factors in converting the Bankstown line rather than building a new line from scratch.
@@rhubarbisdead it's true the Bankstown line will be freed of track sharing, but there will still be a lot. It is at least one of the city circle lines, but I wouldn't be surprised if that extra space was filled by other services.
T4 already survives pretty well compared to the others as it practically on its own. I often see moat drama on the T1, T2 lines because of the direction west and north west, add the bridge then you can be in a real pickle
I've experience of both Sydney and Melbourne. The "last mile" problem is really significant - you can see that reflected in the house prices. If you happen to live near train stations the service is actually pretty acceptable; if you're further away from the train lines then buses usually aren't an option and not everybody have the appetite for cycling. Good luck finding parking after 7:30am or so at the station carparks.
Love this video, mate. I am a maintenance electrician on the rolling stock in Sydney and yeah and I think the Network is pretty great here. I live about 15 minutes from the CBD and 20 minutes from work by train (opposite directions) and almost never use my car any more.
As you mentioned, there seems to be a major rail project happening in every major city almost, I'm super excited for Melbourne's metro rail tunnel, airport rail link , and eventual suburban rail link, as well as the current releasing hcmt's (which I noticed you showed in the thumbnail).
Are they actually building a railway to tellamarine airport.
@@Paul77ozee yeah, fully completed by 2029, construction starting late 2022
@@jackalcrackle well it’s about time. Cheers for this.
I am super horrified at the suburban rai link cost. Should be scrapped
@@bigboy9983 I mean I think we do need the SRL, but the $100 billion price tag is just a joke. Like, are they going to gold plate the rails or something?
I work on the perth train system and I can say that we do have a great network, unfortunately our culture and governance leans towards use of the car which means any infrastructure project that doesn't aid cars is immediately behind the eight ball.
I think its a cultural issue, similarly with bikes and now electric scooters thats holding us back
Mate! You need to look at Adelaide. We have Trains, trams, busses, great push bike tracks, E-Scooters and best of all the O-Barn track.
Adelaide has trains?
Ohhh love the thumb nail of the train station near me 😆 they're busy fixing that train line crossing right now!
Of course transit-oriented societies have cars, everyone has cars! A car is a tool and like any other tool it has benefits and drawbacks. The simple truth is in a majority of places where people live a car is a bad tool at what it's supposed to do and it seems natural to use the most efficient tool for the job where possible 🤷♀️
Haha the grass is always greener I guess, I remember thinking how amazing the Metro in Paris was compared to Sydney trains (Metro had far more frequent trains, I don't think I waited longer than 10 mins at any point for the Metro).
Lately suburbs have been getting developed with high density apartments (5+ floors) situated within 5-10 mins walking distance from train stations and I think this is positive and logical, since it helps bring more foot traffic to revive the "main streets" which have lost a lot of customers to indoor shopping malls. It also means all of the residents get the benefit of easy public transport.
One limitation in Sydney is the issue of "right-of-way" the existing rail lines are great but it's obvious a challenge if the government ever wants to expand the rail network to cover other suburbs. So there are two kinds of suburbs in Sydney, the ones with train stations and the ones covered by weird zig-zagging bus routes.
Sydney also has a train line that directly connects the city centre with our airport. It even has TWO train stations, named "Domestic" and "International" (no prize for guessing where they lead to) this train line is part of an existing suburban train line and receives trains every 15 mins each way during most of the daytime. There's another train line that leads from a suburban train station directly to our Olympic Park, that train line only operates when special events are occurring at the Olympic Park such as concerts, festivals or sporting events.
The biggest downside to the setup of the airport line in my experience is that its a mistake to book a flight anywhere near peak hour... Me, hubby, 2 (very young) kids and 2 bags for the family... Our packing was in no way excessive but felt very awkward in a train full of commuters 😬
@@sangle120I agree, it's annoying having regular trains on the line. They should have some modified ones for luggage. But even then, the line usually isn't full enough to have people stand for long periods of time or even at all, compare that to my line (T4) I am always standing for over 20 minutes while travelling home from school. This is also after another half an hour on the train on T8
Olympic park station operates every day as normal but has extended operating hours after midnight on nights when there are special events....
In the outer suburbs in particular you require a car to get to the rail station and then a car-park at the station. I used to park at my nearest station until it was full before my 6am arrival time. I then had to travel to the next station and eventually the one after that. In Melbourne all lines head directly into the Central Business District, like spokes on a bicycle. A few merge at stations about half way to the CBD. If you want to go to outer suburb on another line , except for the few that merge, you have to go all the way in and then out of the CBD. It is faster to drive in that case. There is a new outer line being built between some of the spokes allowing future travelers to avoid the CBD. Melbourne also has the worlds largest light rail systems in terms of track mileage ( USA Streetcar ).
Living in Brisbane basically my entire life I can say that figuring out and utilising public transit was such a smooth and formative experience in my life. It made it way easier to hang out with friends as I didn’t have to ask my parents to drive me around anywhere so going and hanging out was super easy and fun as a kid. I’ve never had any problems with the trains but buses do sometimes range from super frequent and quick to painfully inconsistent and slow. But overall I really like the transit system here in Brisbane.
I'll be impressed if they make it work in Canberra. That place is almost as messed up as Brasilia.
something something, arterial-road-aligned median strip light rail (that does at least have effective signal priority, full speed through most intersections).
If only it had Burley Griffin's original density, tram lines, and rail links...
@@ThomasNing Which was built in the wrong place, to give the government an excuse to redevelop the government housing blocks along Northbourne Avenue.
It does have a growing light rail network..
But even the Canberra intercity rail station is an afterthought and in a poor location.
@@mark123655 The Canberra Train Station used to be in the city center, just outside what is now the Canberra Center shopping district.
Flooding 100 years ago washed out the rail crossing over the Molonglo River, and the bridge was never rebuilt, leaving Canberra with the "temporary" station in Kingston.
There are segments of old unused track left in Reid behind the CIT campus.
The line was meant to go through Fyshwick and Pialligo, past what is now the airport, then into the CBD via the War Memorial.
I live in a small regional town outside of Melbourne and about halfway between two Regional Fast Rail (RFR) routes.
The reality of RFR is very far from 'utopian.' It has the effect of easing issues in the city and transferring those issues to the regions it serves but those regions don't have the supporting infrastructure.
Firstly the property prices in all towns along the corridor rapidly rose, immediately gentrifying those towns causing locals to leave because they could no longer afford the rent or if they owned sell up. All of a sudden properties went from $65k to $465k from 2006 to 2007 when one route opened. Since Covid now not less than a million bucks in most of those little towns.
For the record AUD and USD have approximately the same buying power domestically, the difference being in the exchange rate for the most part (with some exceptions).
One route the Bendigo line was double tracked since 1862 Wikipedia quote: "The Melbourne, Mount Alexander and Murray River Railway Company built the line between Melbourne to Bendigo, finishing the fully double track line in 1862." When the RFR went through they single tracked the route between Melbourne and Bendigo. How ridiculous!
It's hot here in summer, sometimes really hot and when that happens RFR trains run to a heat effected timetable at reduced speed negating the benefits of high speed. The rail entry into Melbourne is a mixture of electric suburban, interstate and intrastate freight and RFR. Only recently has there been separation for the RFR. For over a decade the RFR in Victoria had to crawl into the CBD and all the corridors were long.
The service is not particularly frequent either especially the flagship express service that actually meets much promoted short travel time between the regional city and Melbourne. Not all services are fast in time, most stopping at many stations. The flagship services are often crowded with standing room only and leave at times that are too early in the morning and too early in the evening for most.
Single track for fast rail is always problematic. On top of that there is almost no connecting public transport at towns along the corridor only the regional centres the RFR serves. Since RFR the rise in regional population has severely stressed services like phone and internet at those small towns it serves. Internet and phone is completely sub standard in most parts of Australia outside of a city. Now however it is made far worse by the population increase in those small towns - what else? - there are many level crossings (mostly controlled I admit) but I ask in all this decentralization, where are low income people supposed to live in this state now?
The RFR is fine if it works for you. I'm not actually against it per se, what I am against is creating a big infrastructure programs like the RFR without addressing, phone, internet, public transport, health services, rubbish collection and recycling, sewer issues and of course water.
City people move to the regions only to realize that you can't work from home because there's no fast internet only slow 1.5mbs internet, no free recycling, limited health services, poor mobile coverage if any, expensive fuel and groceries, and almost no public transport of any kind for their cheap by Melbourne prices $1.1m house on 5 or 10ac of land.
That's the reality of it. Careful what you wish for.
As an Aussie who went from Sydney to California I’ve definitely missed the ease of having a functional train system. There’s even old tracks near where I live that could be repurposed to create something that would be highly beneficial at connecting the different suburbs together but people are just so afraid that it would destroy car culture so are always rallying against it.
I was in Chatswood this morning, doing some shopping. I travelled there from North Sydney by train. I've lived in this area for most of my life and haven't owned a car since 1986. The public transport is good enough that a car isn't necessary.
"Animals who have a penchant for making your life miserable",
I think most Australians would agree that no number of kicking kangaroos can make your life miserable, because obviously we have evolved kick-proof stomachs.
But seriously, Australian nature is one of (or the best) the best things here.
*literally*, I'm sure we all know that one human punching bag that lets you hit him in the gut ad hard as you want and doesn't even flinch.
@@mr.jamster8414 Yeah, either you need to find this guy a therapist, a trainer, or a harder puncher, or all of the left.
From the comments, seems Perth has it better off than most other Australian states. We have train lines, with buses at most stops at each train line, on consistent schedules and routes assigned to individual numbers. Meaning if you’re in the relative area of a train station, you can use the app the state goverment set up and see the best way to go from your location to your destination.
The network in Perth is by far the best in the country, and really should be used as a benchmark for other cities, especially Brisbane where I live, where travelling anywhere outside of the City/Inner City is harder than trying to get out of a sleep paralysis episode.
So awesome to see places I know in an RM transit video! I went through Engadine station in a Tangara (like at 4:00) just yesterday!
Good video. Lots of fellow aussies here in the comments too. A lot of us must watch this channel.
I'm still somewhat confused by your terminology regarding "regional rail". From my German perspective, you seem to be conflating two rather different types of railways: S-Bahn and Regionalbahn/Regionalexpress. The former is generally tied to a city, so you can see them as a part of that city's transit infrastructure. The latter are a national network of trains that connect different towns and cities to one another, and, like long distance trains, they are a part of the national tranportation infrastructure, just at a finer granularity than IC/ICE trains.
I get that the coarsest granularity of local transportation infrastructure and the finest granularity of national rail infrastructure can look similar, but they serve different purposes. Regionalbahn/Regionalexpress usually go from one city (generally the main station) through many smaller towns (and sometimes other cities) to another city. S-Bahn trains usually go from the outskirts of one urban area into the core, and out on the other side.
A region in North America is usually considered to be the urban core and suburbs / suburban towns. That said the distinction is really a spectrum anyways
In Australia (afaik), suburban rail serves the metropolitan regions (so 'high' frequency, electrified, sub ~1hr30 trips); and regional rail serves areas you wouldn't conisder part of the city, or 'regional areas' (so moderate to low frequency, sometimes electrified but sometimes diesel, >1hr trips).
Most cities (afaik) seperate their suburban and reigonal service brands/operations, even if they are closely interwoven and interoperated. For exmple, sydney has Sydney Trains and NSW TrainLink, and melbourne has Metro Trians Melbourne and V/Line. NewSouthWales and Victoria are the states the cities are in, hence the naming.
@@RMTransit Perhaps @RMTransit is conflating the fact that regional rail services in Australia are undercut by having to stop at outer suburban stations due to lack of infrastructure servicing suburban sprawl. This has completely nullified any regional rail improvements (still all diesel trains btw) with extra stops meaning connection times haven't improved for 100 years and extremely uncomfortable overcrowded peak hour services (150%+ capacity). Meanwhile suburban trains rattle along at a snail's pace delivering hour+ long journeys for outer suburbs. Australia has no fast trains and certainly no electrified fast trains. Regions are effectively cut off from cities with infrequent, slow public transit options and high road congestion; a costly economic burden to advancement. Sydney is building a metro at a different gauge to its existing network; totally insane. Melbourne is building a suburban loop so far away it will not realistically service commuter transfers. And it is a totally overspecified heavy rail tunnelled solution likely to cost A$100+ billion to complete with low ridership and negative economic returns for decades. Better solutions are available, sooner, that won't bankrupt the State treasury. Is it surprising that Melbourne area is 6 times Greater London and 10 times Greater Berlin with less population? Australian cities are still hopelessly engaged in 1950s suburban sprawl; discredited for decades and costly to correct. With a population density 10-20 times less than London or Berlin, you can imagine how many people do not have a viable public transit option no matter how big the network. Australia is a model of mediocre public transit; not for anyone to follow but to observe and learn.
@@RMTransit I think the difference is that in Germany, "regional" trains aren't specific to a region, they are a part of a national network, but are meant for shorter distances within that national network.
So the national network would be ICE/IC/RE/RB, whereas the local network would be S-Bahn/U-Bahn/Tram/Bus.
I think that's why combining those two services under that one term feels so odd to me: it really blurs that big distinction between national and local infrastructure.
@@fritzp9916 inter-state train lines are each their own networks basically.
6:55 - I dispute the idea that heavy rail can go faster by default. The average speed of light rail systems is lower than heavy rail systems but that’s entirely down to the level of grade separation. The Siemens S70 (used in Seattle) can run as fast as 110km/h. More than fast enough for a highway alignment.
Not speccing up trains to full heavy rail qualifiers also makes sense if you want the trains to fit into tighter gradients and curves to fit into more situations. Especially along these retrofit highway tracks which you otherwise would probably not run freight or other services on.
It can though, 110 is the limits of what you'll see for an LRV but is lower than any proper regional train can go. The nice thing about highway alignments too is that they are so flat and straight!
You are technically correct, but there is more to consider. Light Rail Systems like Seattle's that use Low Floor vehicles have to struggle with all of the limitations that come with being low floor. Low floor LRVs like Seattle's are specifically designed to operate on streets where people can have level boarding onto the train from what is effectively a curb height platform. However, once you start grade separating the line and start building fully built stations, these design features become massive hinderences. Low Floor vehicles have far less capacity than their High Floor counterparts. This means that you are sacrificing how many people you can have per meter of the train for... no good reason really. Second, because Low floor trains need more space for bogeys, that often means they have to have much more eratic and distant door spacing. What this in turn means is that the train has to wait for much longer at each station in order to let people on and off the train. This in turn increases travel time since while the train can technically reach these high speeds, it has to wait at each station for a lot longer. This also doesn't lead to all of the other problems such networks have such as Low Floor LRVs being far more expensive to maintain than their High Floor counterparts, as well as higher risks of failure when constantly being pushed to such fast loads.
It really comes down to "best tool for the job" situation. While technically Light Rail can do all of the things Reece talked about in this video, in general they are far worse at accomplishing these tasks.
As for High Floor LRVs, generally those are fine, although they suffer from lack of standardization and options, and as such if you want to build a more regional rail system, it just makes more sense to use Heavy Rail.
@@RMTransit your exaple of Berlin is/was pretty bad though, almost the entire network is running at 80 km/h, making it one of the slowest S-Bahn-Networks in Germany...
@@RMTransit There are obviously heavy rail trains that can go faster than 110, but most suburban-style passenger services in places like Australia do not usually go much above that speed. In terms of the alignment specifications, the issue is often less on the motorway corridor itself but within an existing urban space like downtowns - that's where you want as much flexibility as possible in terms of your gradients and curves. Tunnelling and other forms of heavy rail-spec grade separation can come later when patronage requires it, otherwise they serve as huge upfront cost barriers.
@@Absolute_Zero7 I'm not suggesting people should build Siemens S70 systems everywhere in lieu of heavy rail. I'm just commenting on the suggestion that LRVs will be slower by default in motorway contexts. They have all kinds of downsides as you have pointed out. Best tool for the job is the right principle and there are plenty of circumstances where you're negotiating a tight budget, difficult urban geometry in city centres while still serving surbuban-style corridors - in those cases, you can find many LRV systems which are fast enough to compete in a motorway alignment.
Another thing that the Perth system (which, apart from the Perth-Fremantle line) illustrates is the "if you build it, they will come" argument is (or at least was in that case) actually true. When the extensive new rail system was first proposed, it was met with the usual "nobody will use it, we all have cars cars blah blah grumble" argument. But in fact it is very popular, and is much faster than diving cars into town, trying to find a park etc. Watching trains speeding down the freeway median at 100kph, past you - stuck in a static traffic jams of single-occupant cars - makes a fairly compelling argument, after a while :)
The tram system in Melbourne is just... so good. Like, I love it. I also catch the regional train line to make the 4 hour trip from the country to the city pretty often. It's good too, but we're having a lot of problems with the really hot days warping the tracks
You need trams, those can work like trains in the countryside, reaching 90km/h, but stop every 200 meters in city center and mix with other traffic. And they can operate on railway infrastructure too. Increasing capacity is easy, as you can connect up to three together, and transport capacity is huge. They are also much more comfortable than car or bus.
That's assuming you are using standard gauge rail which Melbourne and Victoria do not. The trams run on Standard Gauge 1435mm @ 600VDC and the Trains run on Broad Gauge 1600mm @ 1500VDC. The only standard gauge is for interstate freight and passenger services and is not electrified. its a bit of a mess with no solution.
@@fransdebruijn6763 That is more of a canadian problem, we have trains and trams on same gauge.
However if that is the case, nothing stops you from building tram only railway infrastructure. It is way cheaper than transporting same quantity of people via roads (and you can turn road into tramrails, and if you have those roads with median just upgrade). Like Bratislava (capital of slovakia) does, with their 1000mm gauge, and still tram based city. Tram trains are not really seen in EU, because the standardisation requires very high platforms for trains.
Sydney still has many suburbs in near the CBD that have zero train access. And Sydney's train lines lack any ring/loop or semi-ring/loop lines that connect the outer regions of the city to each other. The Sydney Metro system is clearly trying to address that issue but they still have limited line options.
Sydney has some circumferential (loop) lines. It's not really like Melbourne that way.
True. None of the beach suburbs have rail except for Cronulla (which is far) for example.
It's far from perfect - many trips absolutely suck, but there is decent suburb-suburb connectivity in some places.
T5 Cumberland Line connects western sydney north-south, yes the metro kinda does something, Strathfield, Lidcombe and Parramatta serve as good interchanges for going in different directions that aren't the city, the Randwick light rail provides some decent rail access for the eastern suburbs that previously relied on crowded busses, and the Dulwich Hill inner west light rail forms a circumferential line around the inner west, interchanging with the main western corridor and T3 Bankstown line.
You can get to any station in Sydney from any other station without going through the CBD. Of course, going from somewhere like Campbelltown to Nth Sydney via Strathfield and Hornsby will definitely be going the long way around. The exception is the Eastern Suburbs Line, but it is it's own line anyway, and doesn't share with the other City Circle services.
Hi! This video came up randomly in my suggestions but I really love what's explored. I live in the South-Eastern suburbs of Melbourne and use our train network to get to-and-from work (and to-and-from Melbourne itself) every day.
When I first started using the network frequently, the line was full of level crossings and the announcement of a train that goes to-and-from the Airport didn't exist yet. But now, my line has next-to-no level crossings, and an Airport rail link is in the beginning development stages!
The only major downside our network has is a lot of the tunnels and corridors the trains go through are quite tight, which means the existence and use of double-decker carriages is nigh-impossible here. I'm just glad my State Government is doing these major upgrades to our network (both rail and road upgrades are great) and cannot wait for it to be all finished and I can go from my home to the airport without having to catch a bus.
3:52 I just want to point out that THAT was a very interesting design for an elevated rail station.
My thoughts went to 60's and 70's concrete monsters that look cool for about a minute but then turned into the mess we have today.
But as i think about it, that design might actually be timeless.
Good job!
It's a tricky one. Australian (and Canadian) cities with reasonably good transit do much better than US cities of comparable density on the metrics you identify e.g. % of trips via transit, emissions. However, it is undeniable that they do much worse than higher density European cities. We can make marginal improvements to the performance of suburbia (which we should) but we really need to make more fundamental changes to our urban structure.
I'm not sure what you mean by "fundamental changes to our urban structure" sounds similar to what is happening in Sydney and Melbourne - the poor and working class are being shoveled into areas with high density apartment buildings with very little to no public green areas while the rich live in areas that keep their single dwelling houses with backyards and plenty of public areas like nice parks and sporting fields and ovals.
I think the lack of pedestrian and cycling infrastructure is by far the biggest enemy for transit... The UK is probably one of the best examples of a country where regional transit and particularly railways are crippled by lack of cycling infrastructure. A lot of stations that aren't right in the centre of pedestrian accessible areas struggle a lot in terms of ridership.
The UK train network is crippled because it's infrequent, overcrowded/uncomfortable, and expensive...
Nothing to do with bicycles. Also, buses (most of which are privately run under contract, which is probably from backhanders) don't really have much to do with bicycles.
What also makes the Australian rail system work well is that the suburban stations are generally well linked to bus routes that work to feed the rail. In Perth the trains run down the middle of the freeway but the buses drop you off on a bridge directly over the rail station.
In Victoria, we also have a very good integration between suburban rail (what you're calling regional rail) and rural rail (ie, to other regional centres several hours away). My home town is on the Melbourne line and has 100s of commuters travel to the city every day.