Very good point on keeping transit knowledge and experitse in-house, P3s as they were conceived in NA were mistake imo, especially the private sector taking on the construction risk, historically projects that have done that have usually been significantly more expensive then projects that did not
The main thing I took from this video is in the US it takes 20 years to build a single branch line out to the middle of nowhere. Meanwhile Madrid is on track to complete the line 3 extension by the end of 2024 which is also fully underground, just two years after approval by the city. It's astounding especially because Spain is considered "poor" by European standards. This country is bad at doing anything beneficial for its citizens but incredibly good at doing everything detrimental
@@TheFlyingMooseCA Thanks for reading and responding. Appreciate the video and the info btw. It just never ceases to amaze me how difficult and slow it is to build anything in NA.
We are still waiting for the metro to expand. It's incredible how Line 2 got announced in 2013 and it just ONLY opened 5 stations by 2024. Many of us joke that if our grandsons are lucky enough, they will be able to see the inauguration of the third Line. Sadly, the joke is just a glimpse of this inefficient reality.
Nice video! It is nice to hear encouraging stories of transit victories. I'd like to see you cover either the successful planning and expansion of the Taipei MRT or the politics around the Let's Move Nashville referendum.
Oooo Taipei would be fun, need to brush up on my mandarin 😎 and surprisingly enough nobody’s suggested Nashville yet but that’s been on my radar for a bit
Lima, South America’s LA as in lots of traffic, sprawl (via the hills) and the second largest city in South America outside of São Paulo. I wish the metro existed and went to where my mom and dad grew up when I went there years ago. Would’ve been much better than taking the combi or micro but then again, that’s a whole experience into itself. I’m glad Lima is finally having a Metro which is something long overdue for a huge city. Ironically, when I went to LA the first time around, I felt like I was back in Lima but Americanized. Where I live, I don’t have to go far and see the combis which exist in Paterson and Hudson County all going into Manhattan. Forgot to add, I remember somewhere in the outskirts of Lima seeing the sight of all the buses that were supposed to be the backbone of a public bus network all abandoned, something my uncle told me.
Somebody read that book "The Great Society Subway". Very well written on all the political drama and social (and racial) politics of the Metro. It's great to have Metrorail access to Dulles Airport but I do think the Tysons Corner section should have been put underground, so the city can be redeveloped to be more walker-friendly.
The video is good, but the guy is wrong about the buses having no routes. The guy who got out of his van at 2:34 is holding a sign and is probably saying where the bus is going next, and there is a route number on the top of the van.
I’m guessing Franco meant to say fixed routes in a formal sense ie the same route every day, no detours, a fixed timetable - seems like a lot of the smaller micro buses especially are more flexible
I suggest you to cover Delhi Metro as well. It's a behemoth and doesn't always get the praise it deserves. Plus the Delhi metropolitan area or the NCR as a whole has been investing in transit projects a lot (RapidX, Delhi Metro, tons of buses, airport express, etc.) and they tend to be done in time in most cases. Metro construction in India has picked up a lot in the last decade and many cities are opening or extending metro lines.
So to summerise: US local powerful elites (aka your owners) decided to jeopardise public transport and you cant do anything against it. Have fun with your "democracy"
great video as always! congrats on 10k subs, you deserve a ton more, excited to watch your channel grow! As for other systems to cover, i vote the medellín metro and specifically the metrocable, i may be a little biased since my family is from there, but i love the innovative methods medellín is using to address both transportation and poverty/inequality at the same time-i would also love to see you cover the Ohlone (SF) Bay Area but for the opposite reason lol i live here and the system isn't great tbh...it's honestly comically bad lol and it's so ironic to me since Silicon Valley is here and we're supposed to be the tech and innovation capital of the world and we don't even have decent trains-on weekends Caltrain runs 1 train per direction per hour and they're all "local" trains, which make all stops and have an average speed of like 25 mph, barely faster than biking speed. Seems like by the end of September this years they're going to be replacing the oldest trains with a different train set and that's supposed to help. idk for the sake of my mental health i hope it does lol im spending wayyy too much of my life commuting and as you said im at the point where im just about ready to buy a car even though just a couple of years ago that would have been unthinkable. anyway sorry for the rant lol thanks again for another great video and keep up the great work!
Haha wow I don’t think I’ve heard such a detailed testimony of the pain of Caltrain - I’m not opposed to covering the anti success stories tho, and my next video will be talking about the issues with Chicago 😎 I’d definitely also love to visit Medellin and talk about their transit solutions - it’s something very innovative and I’m sure I’ll make it down there sometime :)
This is an incredible video! I love transit and watch it all the time on youtube but had never heard of Lima's metro. This was my first time watching one of your videos and I'm definitely watching more.
You could cover the Monterrey metro, right now it has 3 lines and 3 more are planed for 2026, of which 2 of those lines are already under construction, although they are gonna be monorails not metro. There's also an urban train under planning that would conect the most outwards parts of the metropolitan area
Brilliant video. What we need more of in the world is a more widespread understanding of how transit (or indeed any infrastructure) projects work, so that they can get the widespread support needed to be built in the first place. Like many things it's a self fulfilling prophecy; when transit gets built, people see how good it is and demand goes up. If it doesn't get built, people become cynical and believe it is a waste of money, so demand goes down. If construction becomes stagnant for many years, people become oblivious to the existence of transit projects at all and focus only on the suboptimal solutions that seem most obvious to their worldview - eg. they drive to work every day and get stuck in traffic, so the "obvious" solution is adding extra lanes of traffic. This problem applies more or less all over the world; sadly there are very few places that have gotten this right, and even those that appear to be doing well (eg. china) have their own unecessary but often extreme downsides in exchange for quick rapid transit development.
Agreed it feeds into itself - and agreed that there are always tradeoffs and few places can claim to have "figured it out". That's part of the fun I suppose - glad you enjoyed the video and hopefully more people see this :)
You should also talk about the case of Bogotá, first they built a brt network because some mayor promised it would do the same as a metro but cheaper (nowadays it moves 4 million people per day!! Its totally overcrowded). Now after 70 years of proposals of a metro line, they're building the first line. Hope you can come and give us your opinion and observations. Nice vid!
The Purple Line in DC could be a good one to do a story on. The metro, thats become Light rail, that DC wanted and then abandoned and Maryland is trying to pick up. that and the Northwest corridor Maglev from DC to Boston. That is a story too.
Interesting, I hadn’t heard of the maglev proposal 🤔 I’ll probably get round to Boston later this year and talk about the the green line, but the maglev is a fun idea - the Maryland purple line is a popular suggestion too!
Bureaucracy is such a pain in the @$$ of the citizenry. Anyhow, props to the forward looking leaders of that time who chose to build a city that is not car-centric.
From LA to Las Vegas, I really wanted to take a bus as we would only lose 1h compare to flying. But I got surprised how many flights options there was, like 10x more than schedule buses. And online comment about Flixbus and Greyhound were terrible, we also got our share of shadiness buying a ticket with them. Price wasn’t very competitive, as some flight tickets were priced pretty similarly. At the end, still took the bus and it was fine, but I understand why most people don’t. They need a competitive bus option.
Part of the problem is the screwed up way the state of Virginia pays for transport projects. Basically, the state doesn't pay, but the localities for the transport project must shoulder that burden. Hence the TID, and the $400M from the county (not the state--though there is some state money that gets slushed in there). A few states work this way, mostly the mountain West: small-state-government focus that doesn't make sense for a state with a large urban population.
I'm a diehard transit whore, and that means planning of it, traffic (road) and city planning. So I'll always be a fan of these topics! (Especially when it's the atypical ones who aren't just gushing about "how incredibly great and superior LRT" is)
Never donated to a video before but your in-depth coverage and passion for the topic was so enjoyable to watch! gonna go watch more of your channel! thanks for the interesting content!
Being a Peruvian, it's fun to see an English-speaking person tlaking about our metro and traffic networks. And regarding those other transport methods their names are "Mototaxi" and "Micro Bus" just like the one you pointed out, and also there's a ton of carpooling, that kinda acts like taxis, but for many ppl. Lov u.
I am not sure how much content you could make out of it, but I would be very interested to see a video about the abandoned Cincinnati subway project. My understanding is that there is still major cost in maintaining it and would be curious to see if there is anything that could be done to turn it into a functional system like outlined in this video!
I'd love to get round to a Cincinnati video at some point. The whole "largest abandoned system" in the US angle is very interesting + i want to watch the reds play again haha
