24-Hour Service is More Attainable Than You Think 

Notable absence from the 24hr network discussion: Tokyo. When the clock strikes midnight, the trains stop, and you’re likely staying the night where you are.

London's night buses and 24-hr bus services (yes there's a difference) are very extensive and run from central London to most of what is covered by Greater London's rail network and due to low traffic, they can be quite fast. I would assume most night workers take those.

Thank you Reece for an extremely interesting and very persuasive video. One point about London. The night bus network is now VERY extensive. I think there are now something like 70 routes which run 24-hours-a-day. They cater for both the work and leisure market.

I like what Philly does. They run it on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday nights, and at night, there are no station attendants, you pay the train operator. And since it runs relatively infrequently, they can single track it if they want to do repair work on a weekend for whatever reason, especially with a lot of the network having four tracks.

5:18 - “How does New York do it?” Duhhh they just backlog their maintenance and upkeep for the next generation to solve. Lol great video

The NYC Subway temporarily stopped 24/7 service from May 2020 where the subway is closed to all passengers from 1-5am. And yes, as you said, there isnt enough space to store the trains so some of them have to run as if it were a normal service.

I have to agree with the points Reece makes and add a few more data to strengthen the possibility and feasibilty maybe of a 24-hour service. 1. Copenhagen, apart from switching their tracks on and off as they see fit to maintain them, also run Buses which replace the Metro service on the parts where maintenance happens. This means they can keep moving loads of people, and even close those Metro parts to allow for full maintenance. 2. Lausanne, Switzerland has a single-track Metro line, M1. However, there are passing loops/switches at 12/15 M1 stations. This means that trains can pass each other and achieve headways of every 7-8 minutes. While it only operates during the day, this single-track service pattern shows that even if demand is sky high during the night it is totally possible to run day-style services in the night and do maintenance as well. 3. During the 2019 Patras Carnival, maybe the biggest festivity my hometown is famous for, our local bus company decided, for the first time, to run buses during the night, every half an hour. The point that Reece made about speed and less traffic on the roads is valid. The journey was almost as fast, if not faster than the day, and it had to do with less people on the road, double parking their cars everywhere. This trip was on Line 2 of the network, which is notorious for the tight roads it uses. So, to sum up, a) single tracking with modern signlaling and switches at every station and b) buses that replace trains can certainly help maintain and run a system 24 hours every day.

I'd love to see you cover my hometown of Hamburg, Germany. We have 24h (subway, s-bahn and metrobus) service on weekends and night busses during the week, like Toronto. The system also has plenty of quirks, new extensions being built and all that good stuff that makes up a video :D I really value the level of detail and your ideas/opinions on system improvements 👍

NYC's system also has many separate lines that serve the same major areas, so a whole line may be shut down overnight for weeks/months/years at a time for major work. For example, in the early 2010's, the gray "L" line was shut down overnight for years while the tunnel under the East River was rehabbed. If you went to a concert in Brooklyn & wanted to get back to Grand Central or Penn, you had to take the G crosstown up to Court Square, then x-fer to the purple 7 line to Manhattan. Right now, it's the opposite, the purple 7 is closed overnight for East River tunnel rehab for a long time, so riders either take the gray L, or the blue M lines to get from Brooklyn to Manhattan.

I was Clubbing in vienna. And One of my frends literly said: "Let's the Cab because the Metro (at night) comes only evrey quarter Hour."

Thanx Reece, you just implied an advantage for overhead power. No need to turn power off when servicing tracks.👍 Cheers.

I think 24hr metro service does run the risk of allowing the transit system to over focus on the metro to the expense of buses, as some systems seem to already want to do. Night buses seem like a good way to encourage the city to put money into both networks.

New York doesn’t even run at full strength overnight; many of the local trains (like the C) shut down and their express counterparts (like the A) run local, and service frequency drops to, like, 20-30 minutes in many areas. Also most projects are concentrated shutdowns for a weekend or so.

Here in Melbourne we have 24 hour service on suburban trains on Friday and Saturday nights, despite having very poor network flexibility and track redundancy. Most of the network is signalled uni-directionally, and crossovers are generally infrequent, so running a double track line as single is extremely rare. However the night frequency is a fairly useless hourly. Low level maintainance in between trains is common here anyway, even during the day on 10 or 20 min frequencies. When we have weekend track work, it's common for a total occupation to begin ~9pm on the Friday night right through to Monday morning.

As a music enthusiast who travels to many cities in the Northeast USA for concerts, & who likes to not have to drive after a concert for various & sundry reasons (wink wink), I always try to plan around each city's public trans system to get back to wherever I am staying from any concert venue I plan on patronizing. Certainly NYC is a cinch. Boston, Phila, & DC run their metro systems till 1 am, which is sufficient for most concerts, which end between 11pm & midnight. Transfers can be an issue, ie, if you have a long wait time for 1st leg, you can get stranded at x-fer point if you're dropped there after system shutdown of 1 am. Only NYC area runs their commuter trains late enough for concerts tho - most are "last train out at 1:40 am". All the other cities commuter systems roll up the tracks at 10 or 11 pm. So it's always nice if a system runs at least till 1 am rather than shutting down at 10 or 11, however, of course, this means the overnight maintenance window is shortened to almost not being worth having. Note I'm not a big fan of taxi's, uber, or lyft, as post concert they are high demand thus high cost & may have extended wait times.

What a great channel! You take already interesting material and make it even more entertaining. Some channels out there do the opposite.

Love the new animations/drawings Reece! They do a great job of helping explain things.

I liked the drawn examples, though I think they'd be better with some colour. Such as, when showing independent power switches, it'd be clearer if the zappy line was yellow.

Your videos just hit next level today. IMO let's solve for the problem (late night transit options) rather than be hung up on mode. In other words, no need for 24/7 TTC subway service if the night buses can operate quickly, safely and consistently.

Just to add to your comment on double deckered busses at night, in Hong Kong, where more than 90% of busses are double deckered, there’s a slightly higher proportion of night busses with *single decks* cause the capacity simply isn’t needed, reduces on maintenance and tolls. Plus single deckered busses have the same number of doors. Oh and a majority of night busses connect to the CBD in Central. Equally as important, Mong Kok on the Kowloon side has a very extensive (red) minibus network (the red minibuses are like shared taxi, though they have certain routes organised) to most locales in HK. That’s how HK does their night transit. Night bus if in Central or Minibus if in Mong Kok.

In Berlin we do it that way, that the important Tram and Bus lines (with the prefix „M“ for MetroTram/Bus) have 24h service, if even only every 30 minutes. Additionally, before Weekends (so FRI->SAT, SAT->SUN), all U-Bahn and S-Bahn lines are running. U-Bahn every 15minutes (replacing the night busses of cause), S-Bahn lines at least every 20 so there is a dense service on the core routes as they usually overlap. Metro services also run way more frequently depending in how important they are for Partying (M10 Tram runs every 10minutes till ~3am!). I would actually not like to see the 24 hour service be extended to the S and U-Bahn, as they are doing lots of maintenance work at night and routes already have to shut down for weeks often for maintenance.

Really great video - and it has generated a lot of insightful comments, too.

Thank you for this! I’ve been confused by these comments about no we can’t operate 24 hours but this makes a lot of sense now. I also had no idea of the options others use. The night bus in Toronto is definitely a cool idea.

I love the new animations!

Even though the idea of having 24h metro seems attractive, I think it'd require a lot of work for a quite low impact. Having a real, integrated night-bus network is not only cheaper but also better in terms of connectivity and possible trips. And it doesn't take anything exceptional: 10-15 min intervals on trunk lines, maybe 20-30 on local lines, connecting on safe and well-kept terminals of transit centers. São Paulo did that a few years ago and, gosh, that was BEAUTIFUL! You could go anywhere in the city using a reliable, frequent bus even at 3am. So much better than maybe just a couple of metro segments operating downtown.

I love all the new graphics! I don't recall seeing that on prior videos.

About maintenance and stuff. When Stockholm metro upgraded it's signalling on its green and then later red line, they of course made it so that it's really "simple" to have single track operations on sections of the lines. The switches between the tracks has always been there. This has been very beneficial when there's a problem on one of the tracks, service can hopefully operate around the problem, day or night.

Madrid used to have a 24h bus system that substituted the metro and sadly closed in 2013. Now the only night transit there is in the city is the "Owl" buses which are quite inconvenient because to do transfers you ALWAYS (except N27 and N26 I think) have to go all the way to Cibeles in the city centre.

I think the key is late night frequency. More systems need to 1)reverse signal and 2)add more crossovers to allow for single tracking so that say between 10pm and 5am you can run trains every half-hour or so and shut down one track at a time.

Sydney does the same thing as Toronto - we have night busses that run very quickly, and on events such as new years, trains run not only all night, but routing and timetabling is optimised to absolutely maximise frequency in the city circle. In addition, because there is significant sextuple(!) and quad track corridors, on weekends when service is already dialled back, tracks can be closed for maintenance with no or little impact on service frequency, just some different platform routing. And in urgent maintenance scenarios that cannot be completed overnight on dual track sections, the rail bus (train replacement bus) system is quite fleshed out and way finding and information is very clear through signage, station (and additional) staff, apps and online. Although in my experience, it's not the most reliable.

A lot of systems simply operate buses from mid evening early in the week. eg 9pm to 5am shut-down on a Monday and Tuesday nights. Melbourne has 24 hour service on Friday and Saturday. but it does mean weekday night works more often.

Great channel, I'm in love with the Vancouver train network, so efficient, my city Edmonton has a joke of a train system, aka goes nowhere lol

Night tube actually ends up working really well because the lines that operate at night are all deep level through the city centre. Weekend works on the tube are normally ballast track replacement works on sub-surface or above ground sections of line, so there was rarely heavy engineering works on the night tube lines on Friday and Saturday nights beforehand. The only shift that had to be made was light maintenance and that's much easier to organise.

In Hanover when you living suburban, you have to care not to miss the last bus at half to 11 pm. But in the night to Saturday and Sunday there are suburban bus lines that are on request. You tell the bus driver your bus stop, he creates a route depending to the passengers. The goal isn't to be in time, but to come home. So the bus covers 10 different lines.

Las Vegas doesn't even have any rail. The bus system is going 24/7, and only really slows down for one hour a night to help switch out busses and drivers.

I believe that an all-time rapid transit operations is possible on other rapid transit systems. It is suitable for some rapid transit systems in the world, depending upon the amount of people who would frequently use them. I do agree that two hours is too short a time to start and complete major maintenance jobs. At least four hours a night, or a weekend should be sufficient time to do any maintenance work, except station cleaning, revenue collection, and other lighter work.

Hard for second shift workers in hospitality.

Interestingly enough, on a list of cities who's trains operating 24 hours over the weekend you might not expect, Melbourne Australia. They're not right now due to the city being in lockdown, but for a few years before covid our trains and trams were actually running overnight on weekends. I'd imagine it has to do with the bar/club scene in the city being gigantic. Crap frequency though. Not unlikely you'll get caught in the city for 20 minutes waiting for a train, but it's still a nice option.

Singapore ran its MRT (subway/metro) overnight previously on special occasions e.g. the morning of the StanChart Singapore Marathon (usu on the 1st wk of Dec), so that participants could reach the start lines on time (@ 0500h in downtown; there're different ones for different distance categories e.g. 1/2 vs full marathon, _Ekiden_ relay marathons), or to meet the high travel demand to pay respects at the wake of our 1st PM Lee Kuan Yew in 2015 at the downtown Parliament Hse (~500k people visited the wake over its 5-day period). Besides these we have late-night buses, & interestingly we have a bus stop that's only served by such buses - Opp Unity St along _Md Sultan Rd_ - probably since there're quite a lot of bars & clubs there, which you might say is ironic as the road's eponymous person is Muslim, who don't drink. We previously trailed an on-demand scheme for 1 of the night buses (NightRider 7 (NR7)), where the route changes depending on passenger demand to/from different bus stops (which they signalled to the bus driver via an app), but it failed as the gov't felt it too expensive to implement

Very well done, night bus could work better but certain adjustments would need to be considered

It works best for New York City because of the mass redundancy between the subway lines and bus routes that often run above/below the trains and the massive shuttle services ran when sections of lines are shut down (like the A and 1 train does every other month)

Something we do in Philly is we run night trains on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday (roughly 20 - 30 minute headways). On the other nights we do something a little different. Yes, it's a night bus service, but it's one that I don't see too often everywhere. It's the Owl buses. For the Market-Frankford Line and the Broad Street Line, when it's night time, SEPTA runs the Market-Frankford Owl (MFO) and the Broad Street Owl (BSO). They are rail replacement shuttle buses that run at night to keep the system moving at night without trains. Headways are okay (for what you expect) and they run multiple buses at a time to serve as one train. They are mostly express buses and don't go from end to end, but we some of out buses are 24 hour services, so it's fine. The Market-Frankford Owl follows the Market-Frankford Line to a T till it gets to Front (we don't have a 1st Street or a 14th Street, Broad Street is our 14 Street) and Girard (where it turns onto Girard and goes down to 2nd Street and continues till it gets to 2nd and Market, then continues to follow the line). The BSO is just follows the line perfectly. The MFO is usually articulated, the BSO isn't. Cities probably have this, but I honestly don't know.

After doing some minor research and thinking about the timetable again, the Rhine-Main S-Bahn does run the S8/9 all the day when typically, regional railway lines (including other lines on this S-Bahn) have their service suspended during the night. It helps that they're connected to the airport so 24-hour service is justified there.

Stockholm does the same thing London does, Friday and Saturday, and only every 30 minutes on each service. I remember when I was younger (like 90s) there was a time when the night service had been suspended, it was a fairly big issue, I don't remember exactly when it was brought back though, but it was something like 20 years ago.

I happen to live in NYC, the king of 24/7 subway service, but I'm studying two other transit/subway systems that could benefit from round-the-clock service: Chicago and Los Angeles. Part of the Chicago "L" system (Red and Blue lines) do run 24 hours a day, but parts of three other lines (Purple, Brown and Orange) that can benefit from 24/7 service. Until around the late 1980s, part of the Purple Line used to be 24/7. The CTA could bring back 24-hour service to the Purple Line; likewise, have part of the Brown Line (shortened between Kimball and Belmont to connect with the Red Line) and introduce a 24/7 Orange Line that would operate between Midway and Roosevelt (also to transfer with the Red Line). As for Los Angeles, former mayor Antonio Villaraigosa has stated publicly that he wants to see LA have 24/7 subway service in the future. The key phrase is "in the future," because the City of Angels may have it as soon as the 2028 Olympics (which will take place in LA). I don't know the future before and perhaps after the 2028 Los Angeles Olympic Games, and for all transit lines, but I would imagine the two subway lines would run round-the-clock service (Lines B and D). Line B (the former Red Line) runs between Downtown LA and Hollywood. Line D (the former Purple Line) would operate between DTLA and, now under construction, the Miracle Mile, Beverly Hills, Century City and Westwood. Don't have the LA Setup down pat yet, perhaps it might be temporary, but whatever plan they implement, having 24 hour service would be worthwhile.

One reason is the resistance of the resident population not wanting to have the noise level you have with 24 hour services. At least I think that's a big reason why some cities have a different night service network. Because where you have transport there will be shops and bars and overall can make the area busier.

New York’s 24-hour service has been a decade-old tradition, as well as a necessity (considering the shortage of yard space to store all trains), but it’s also a trade-off. When the system was actually closing its doors to passengers in order to be cleaned during the pandemic, it was evident how beneficial the LACK of 24-hour service can be: in the morning the trains’ smell reminded me of that in my original hometown of Minsk, Belarus, whose metro system is incomparably younger, smaller and, surely, cleaner. But, in spite of all that, I believe that New York City Subway should keep 24-hour service and look for creative ways to tend to cleanliness without nightly shutdowns.

Would love to see a video on Barcelona’s metro! Just spend a few days there and tbh it was a little confusing and I think therefor that it would make for a great video

I like addition of the animations!! How did you do them?

Hi there. Very interesting to know the issues about night operation and maintenance. I have some curiosity and questions which I would like to ask and maybe someone can answer me. Milan use for metro lines 4 and 5 the same trainsets (and I guess infrastructure) of Copenhagen. Though the service has a quite reduced operation hours. Even the line serving the airport. Could it just be a political financial reason, or the infrastructure does not allow it, though the same of Copenhagen. Maybe they did not build the same junctions between the two tracks often enough? My second question regards the maintenance of the Torino - Milano railway line, which is not a metro. There is a schedule hole between 9.30 and 11.30 in the morning due to maintenance. It's quite a odd moment. Do nigh busses have some technical issues due to they are not convenient, or the city just want to save money. During the summer on weekends there are night busses...

Chicago has two lines that run 24 hours. Up until the late 1990s there were like three other lines that ran 24 hours. So you know it is possible.

My transit operator, VTA, as much hate as it gets for its poor service (mostly due to lack of funding), was very honest as to why they chose to use buses at night instead of 24hr light rail service. They said very openly: we use nighttime for maintenance and its important to keep the system in good shape, buses can do the job for night service easily.

The Vancouver SkyTrain has the infrastructure in place to run all night. Or change the night buses to more closely mirror the SkyTrain network and to improve their frequency. It just comes down to cost.

"The City That Never Sleeps". Keeping their lines running 24/7 makes perfect sense in New York City... 😏

Honestly more than just running all night, a bigger hurdle is safety. I know any public transit stop, be it bus or train is can be a very sketchy place to be after dark. I wouldn't want to be waiting at 3am for a train.

What's a night bus? In my city there is no bus service between 8pm and 6am.

Suprised you didn't mention the CTA Red & Blue lines which are either partially or fully 2 tracks and run 24/7

What do you think of the PATCO Speedline from NJ to Philly as a 24 hour line? I think it's pretty unique :)

In Denmark rail lines get shut down for maintanence from a few days to a few weeks at a time due to the need to run 24 hours on some lines . In the old days freight and sleeper trains ran all night on single track . Not anymore and it makes people not rely on trains anymore and either buy a car and drive or take a bicycle with a slow loss in passenger % wise in the country . Transit has to be as reliable as a car .

In France de have 1 bus Line (in the whole country) who has a 24 hours service (Line 191-100 Yerres RER to/from Orly airport).

I love your content. What literature do you recommend on this subject matter?

A couple weeks ago I was in London and I was out until 2 the tube was closed so we took the night bud and it was PACKED like I was pressed up against the door and the bus couldn’t accept more people it was crazy

Trains are 24 hours on weekends in Melbourne

There are several hours at night when Pittsburgh doesn't even has bus service at night.

Ironically NYC shut down 24 hour overnight service for about a year after quarantine began, and some subway lines were replaced with night bus service. That didn't turn out to be satisfactory from what I hear. I'm not sure whether it's because buses just aren't as fast as the subway. But the island of Manhattan presents a geography problem; we have more, and spread out, East River crossings (tunnels and bridges) built for our subway than there are allowing buses (and bikes) to cross, so many substitute trips are gonna be indirect. Cities like London with many river crossings allowing buses - or simply put, any city with few major geographic barriers in any potential bus network - are at an advantage. (And yes, NYC just ran the trains empty during the overnight shutdowns, only allowing cops onboard. Many believe it was merely an anti-homeless measure.)

writing from Tokyo. I found this video more nuanced and less objectionable (I commented recently on your Tokyo video). Tokyo does not run a 24hour service except for NYE. Before the 2020 Olympics were delayed, there were plans to have trains run 24hours during the games but with COVID it was nixed. The philosophy behind public transit in Japan and what I notice in N.America is that in Japan public transit is about moving the public for the purpose of livelihood vs other things such as entertainment. Extending the train service during the Olympics was not about the revellers but about those working who would need to stay late in jobs related to the games and their ability to return home after work. So first trains start prior to 5 a.m. and last trains depart around 25:00/25:30. So maintenance times are quite short. Train companies also run night buses along their train routes with just a handful of stops. Train companies in Japan also tend to own taxi services too. Since the arrival of the pandemic though, train companies have been pushing first train times later and ending service earlier in the night, one reason, a drop off in the number of commuters, another, staffing shortages amongst their maintenance/train staff due to COVID outbreaks within the train companies. The last point, I thought it was funny what you said about NYC transit not having the yard capacity. I live along the KEIO line and it too doesn't have yard capacity (in recent years) so trains are parked at stations along the lines. Not all of the stations but at the terminals and others along the way. Sometimes when they need to work on a particular stretch that has a train parked at the station they move the train to the next station further down the line for the night. It's very interesting to watch at 2 a.m. You are pumping out a lot of videos in short order, thank you for all of your hardwork.

RMTransit: "it makes me so angry" Allen Fisher: "ItS sO FuCkInG StuPiD, ThEy ShOuLd JuSt dO 24 HoUr SeRvIce"

What’s funny is that DART in Dallas, a very car centric city, runs 21-22 hours a day from 3:30 AM to 1:30 AM. If Dallas is doing it better than you are, you’re doing something REALLY wrong lol

you mention potential use of double-decker buses as part of night service, why the preference for double-decker rather than articulated buses?

Well I’m from Toronto it goes from 6am to 1:30 but mostly 2 tbh so it’s not 24 hours but I never had a problem ever like if ever I was downtown and couldn’t get home being downtown I go walk getting a snack & watching the sunrise isn’t so bad this is just a personal experience obviously but I don’t mind it because I know it’s for maintenance and cost etc

It's absolutely true that 24 hour service isn't possible..... if you're unwilling to adapt your transit system to do it. That is the exact type of philosophy leading American metro areas with populations in the millions to have pitiful public transit systems as is. Coincidence? I think not. These are top-down strategic failures being sold to denizens as impossibilities from the bottom-up. It's important that we do our best to inform those around us of the potentiality of well-planned, well-funded public transit. P.S.: Great and informative video as always, RMTransit! Thank you!

TransLink study actually did say if you want to run it 24/7 you'll need to shut down sections several times a year for maintenance. New York does this but has enough routes to provide redundancy. They can divert trains. TransLink looked at Saturday and Friday night 24 hr service and concluded need to shut system down earlier in the week or later in the day. Again, not considered best. New York hasn't kept up with maintenance which raises the question if 24/7 running is really feasible for them too. I think the main reason is cost. The volume of traffic at night can be handled by night buses. And this is the way TransLink is going. Night buses are being extended to cover the times trains are not running.

I would say, It is possible; just at what cost.

All of the heavy rail transit systems in North America built in the second half of the 20th century have bidirectional signaling systems. Another issue you failed to address, those crossover used for single track operations also need to be maintained requiring single track operation over longer distances.

okay then what are we waiting for DC? because yall be spending half the year single tracking im sure you can do this :)

In Berlin we run it 24h on Friday and Saturday so people can party. On other nights night busses run. So you can do maintenance on those nights

DC would be a great city to do it in at least on Friday’s and Saturday’s but no. Last train is around 1AM when bars close 3/4.

Wouldn't another option be taking frequencies down to every 15 or even 30 minutes in order to run with less passing loops? This obviously wouldn't be ideal in larger metros, but could be a way for cities like Vancouver to accomplish 24hr service on the cheap.

In Metro Vancouver the Rail system was not designed to be 24/7 it is too late now to make changes. Need to return some of the cutbacks that were done to the Night Buses, ( see my brief in June 2019 to Vancouver City Council ) As usual Vancouver is behind Toronto, Montreal and even Seattle in provision of Overnight Bus Service.

Where I live we have autonomous fully unattended metros... that stop all service at 1 AM. Go figure.

Talking about night tube they are night bus that run after the day buses end at 1 am. Not only that some day buses 24 houses every day

can sky trains operate 24/7?

I want to push back on TransLink saying that it “wasn’t possible”. They determined it was possible, but not worth the costs

I feel the pain. No such thing exist in the San Francisco Bay Area be it BART or San Francisco MUNI Metro. My argument as well why buses seem to never be replaced.

liked video

Another challenge for transit overnight is that cars are magic-fast at 3am when there's no traffic. It's the anti rush hour. That's not a definitive factor in a city where a sizeable part of the population don't own cars, but in Western North America, if you don't own a car you're probably either homeless or prefer to take the private jet. But here's the sucker punch. 2am Saturday morning is a time when most of the cars on the road have no business being on the road. Reducing drunk driving is an AWESOME reason to run the transit overnight on Fridays and Saturdays, and is really politically palatable to most everyone. Especially with how expensive a taxi or Uber ride can be at those hours with surge pricing. I feel like maintenance is a dumb reason to never have overnight service. Roads need maintenance too; we don't lock every car in their garages for 8 hours a night just in case there might be a pothole that needs filling in. If you need to do maintenance on a line, go ahead and close that line or segment, and run buses to fill in the gap. It's 1am, the SkyTrain won't be Tokyo Crush Full. "This isn't 'Nam, we expect results."

I would take the bus at night... but its scary

But then, Tokyo extended their maintenance windows all day, reducing services both in early morning and late night, all days of the week, just to do the same amount of maintenance work with dwindling amount of maintenance staffs

May have to sacrifice cleanliness, from a NYer

Also of note to overnight service in NY, they run that service after midnight until 5am on roughly 20 minute headways, and commonly do work on routes in operation, with workers clearing out for passing trains which pass at a reduced speed. Their tunnels even in two track areas usually have space to safely clear the trackbed with some notable exceptions, where they will sometimes do a single track operation. Additionally, with the reasonable redundancy in Manhattan, it's not uncommon for them to shutdown an entire trunk line (what they call fast track) for a period of weeks overnight, where riders simply need to use a different route several blocks away inatead. Ultimately, a 20-30 minute headway in the overnight seems feasible on many systems. I think the big factor is cost of operation ultimately, and operating busses is probably the best bet for most cities for the reasons you describe. NYC has 8 million people, with that population it makes sense. But the London approach, is probably the better fit for smaller cities and systems.

Running trains 24/7 would put such a strain on the electrical grid if done everywhere in North America. The juice isn't worth the squeeze at all. NYC has it b/c the majority of its citizens get around via subway, meaning that there is a demand for it. Now, if electricity was generated independent of power plants, then of course I'd be all for it! And also, nothing good ever happens past midnight. No transit system is going to keep trains running for the 20ppl who need to get around at night. It's cheaper to have a bus line & it's just as fast in the wee hours b/c there's no traffic

But the key thing here is why does this have to be profitable? We don't ask highways to turn a profit at all. If anything, people in North America will gleefully accept new, expensive, road infrastructure with the knowledge it will be subsidized by their own tax dollars. We have a "our bridges are crumbling" conversation every other week and no one thinks critically that maybe certain road infrastructure shouldn't be built since it, by public transit standards, wouldn't begin to turn a profit. So the double standard here is trains bad, must find a way to fund the system some other way, but cars good, give us free roads????

I Hope it is Attainable (Both 🔴​🟡​Heavy, Light Urban rail and *🟢​​⚪️ Commuter) *Using 3 coach, 1 diner coach and 1 engine consist

Thank you for the once thought that I would do or I became the manager of the t in Boston would be the new Sun commuter rail routes that intersect with the subway the newseum as like overnight but also news a similar system like the Toronto bus Network during the

I agree. North America has a "it's impossible to build" type of attitude nowadays, and that's a huge part (mixed in with NIMBYISM) to why things don't get built fast or right here anymore.

You need a union to agree to drive trains or, worse, buses--because they require more labor--at night. A report on the feasibility of night service is not going to, excuse the expression, throw the union under the bus, and sour relations. They'll just say that night service is not possible for unspecified reasons. They're not going to publish the ins and outs of what it would take to get the union to agree to that.

Many tram systems run 24/7...

I really feel like a video on the PATCO speedline would be great, its a 24 hour service that is a partial metro partial commuter rail service that serves the Philly area. Its just one of the most interesting services IMO

Bold of you to assume that there is a night bus.

The warm up stuff is complete BS. You can have workers show up to the station before the last train runs. Heavy equipment can be brought in on flatcars on a MOW train that follows the last train of the night. The power to the third rail can be shut off after the last revenue train leaves the block. Also, “not possible” is probably actually “not possible with the current system”. Which it very much can be. You can’t do track work and still run the system unless you have enough tracks on the line to keep trains moving while one track and possibly the adjacent track are out of service. NY can do this because it has express lines that can be used to bypass many work sites. It also helps that the NYC subway is positively ancient and doesn’t have any of the computerized train control systems of modern networks. It’s essentially a surface railroad using analog technology from 1907. It’s so simple that there’s almost nothing that can go wrong to need fixing in the first place.