Rapid transit
A
rapid transit,
underground,
subway,
tube,
elevated, or
metro(politan) system is a
railway system, usually in an
urban area, with a high capacity and frequency of service, and
grade separation from other traffic.
See also Passenger rail terminology.There is no one term that all
English speakers use for rapid transit or metro systems. This is a reflection on national and regional usage and differing definitions of what exactly a ‘metro' system is.
A common definition would be:
*an
urban,
electric mass transit
railway system;
*totally
independent from other traffic;
*with
high service frequency.
The terms "subway" (American) or "underground" (British) additionally specify that the tracks and stations are mainly:
*located
below street level. In some cities the word 'subway' applies to the entire system, in others only to those parts that are actually underground.
The terms "rapid transit" or "metro" tend to view this as a less important characteristic and include systems that are entirely elevated or at ground level (
at grade).
Rapid transit systems that are above street level may be called "elevated" systems, often shortened to
el or
L, as in
Chicago 'L'.
For a more comprehensive listing showing names of this kind of system in cities around the world, see the
list of rapid transit systems.
In larger metropolitan areas the underground system may extend only to the limits of the central city, or to its inner ring of
suburbs, with trains making relatively frequent station stops. The outer suburbs may then be reached by a separate
commuter,
suburban or
regional rail network, where more widely spaced stations allow a higher speed. These trains are often more expensive, less frequent, and, in some cities, operate only during
rush hours periods. Sometimes, for political reasons, commuter lines are operated by a separate authority that tends not to co-operate with the city's transit authority (except in
Japan, where the commuter routes are frequent in
suburbs and form the backbone of the networks).
Many of these regional railways were first built to operate in one direction from a city centre terminus, but some have been extended across the city centre, sometimes running in tunnels. By making multiple stops in the city, they can offer suburban passengers a choice of stations and also provide useful
transportation within the city. A notable example is the
Paris RER system, where (in co-operation with the city's transit authority) several pairs of existing suburban lines running in opposite directions from the city have been extended in tunnel to join up and form new through routes across the city. They are provided with frequent service and, within the city, the same fares as the
Métro are charged, providing an integrated network. In
Tokyo and
Osaka, Japan private companies operate the world's most extensive suburban railways, each with their own fare system that integrates with the entire system. In
German-speaking countries, the Paris style system is called an
S-Bahn. In
Italian-speaking countries such a system is called Linea S or Treno Suburbano, where as in Spain it is referred to as
Cercanías.In some cases, such as the
San Francisco Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) and
Washington Metrorail systems, the rapid transit system runs to the suburbs and effectively functions as a regional rail service as well. (Note, however, that the Washington, DC, area has two regional rail services as well:
VRE and
MARC, and the San Francisco area has three:
Caltrain,
ACE and the soon-to-be-developed
SMART.) Where there are separate systems, the rapid transit system is typically a self-contained service with its own dedicated tracks and stations and technologically incompatible with other railways. Suburban rail services, on the other hand, often share tracks and stations with long-distance trains (historically they were usually operated by the same company, which also owned the rails and ran freight, although this has become less common) and are subject to the same standards and regulations. There are exceptions; some
London Underground lines share tracks with suburban rail services. In some cases, underground railway lines have been extended by taking over existing regional rail lines, notably parts of the Central and Northern Lines in London. The
Athens Metro's Blue Line shares tracks with suburban rail services in order to connect the metro to
Eleftherios Venizelos International Airport, but does not stop at the suburban rail stations because the platforms of the stations are a lot lower than the train's floor. In
Hong Kong and São Paulo, Brazil, metro-like frequent service is provided by electrifying existing railway lines, while continuing to share the tracks with the much less frequent intercity and freight trains. The
KCR West Rail in Hong Kong is designed to accommodate intercity and freight traffic in future, whilst at present provides only metro-like service.
Elevated railways were a popular way to build
mass transit systems in cities around the turn of the
twentieth century, but they have fallen out of favour; and many elevated lines were later demolished, being replaced by subways or
buses. Elevated rail saw something of a resurgence in the late
twentieth century, with the construction of a number of new lines such as the
Docklands Light Railway in
London and the
Bangkok Skytrain and
Vancouver SkyTrain; in the
United States a few such lines have been built, including the Atlanta's
MARTA, New York's
AirTrain JFK and the
Las Vegas Monorail, but these are typically seen as more
futuristic, and are not representative of the overall trends in U.S. transit development.
The volume of passengers a metro train can carry is often quite high, and a metro system is often viewed as the
backbone of a large city's public transportation system. In many cities passengers beginning their journeys on a streetcar/tram, bus, or suburban rail system must finish their journey into the city center on the metro as their first
mode of transport will terminate at a metro station to avoid congesting the city center above ground.
Budapest is a perfect example where the two more modern metro lines connect with buses and trams and also with two circular streetcar/tram routes (one closer to and one further from the city center) that allow travel between suburbs and also into the centre of the city by changing onto the metro.
In some cities, the urban rail system is so comprehensive and efficient that the majority of city residents use it as their primary means of transport.
London,
Moscow,
New York City,
Madrid,
Paris,
Seoul,
Tokyo and
Osaka are such examples; these cities have the most extensive and convenient
metro systems in the world. In greater
Tokyo, by far the world's most extensive rail system for any
metropolitan area, the region's 15-line subway network is a mere fraction of the over 75
heavy rail lines, transporting well over 20 million people daily, where the majority of suburban residents in addition to city dwellers do not own automobiles and depend on rail as the primary means of travel.
Osaka, Japan is similar to Tokyo's system except about half as big, but still has a ridership exceeding that of New York City. In Europe,
London (in 1st place) and
Madrid (in the second one) have the biggest metro systems.
Car-oriented cities in the
United States have very low rates of transit usage. About one in every three users of mass transit in the United States and two-thirds of the nation's rail riders live in just one city: New York (see
Transportation in New York City). Older cities such as
Chicago,
Washington, D.C.,
Boston, and
Philadelphia follow New York distantly, while the rest of the cities in the United States have only partial or poorly-used systems, especially in
sunbelt cities such as
Los Angeles,
Atlanta,
Dallas,
Las Vegas or
Houston.
In the
Western Hemisphere,
Mexico City also has a large system. In Canada, only
Toronto and
Montréal have extensive metro networks serving their urban centers (see
Toronto subway and RT and
Montréal Métro);
Vancouver's
SkyTrain also provides high-grade service, but at present acts primarily as a connection between Vancouver and the surrounding area. This will change by 2009, when two new lines will be completed.
|
Greenbelt station, the terminus of the Green line on the Washington Metro, is a typical example of the entrance concourse of a metro station. |
Most underground systems are for public transportation, but a few cities have built freight or
postal lines. One example was the
Post Office Railway, which transported mail underground between sorting offices in
London from
1927 until it was abandoned in
2003. Similarly, until the 1970s the
London Underground's Circle Line (originally the Metropolitan Railway) transported goods as well as running passenger trains. Another example was the
Chicago Tunnel Company, which had a dense grid of tunnels under downtown
Chicago.
During the
Cold War an important secondary function of some underground systems was to provide shelter in case of a nuclear attack.
Urban rail systems have often been used to showcase economic, social, and technological achievements of a nation, especially in the
Soviet Union and other
Communist countries. With their marble walls, polished granite floors and splendid mosaics, the metro systems of
Moscow and St. Petersburg are widely regarded as some of the most beautiful in the world. Modern metro stations in
Russia are usually still built with the same emphasis on appearance. Similarly, the
Independent Subway System in
New York City was built to compete with the private
IRT and
BMT systems.
See also
Metro station.
Most rapid transit trains are
electric multiple units. Power is commonly delivered by a
third rail, or in systems without much length in tunnel, by
overhead wires. Most run on conventional steel railway tracks, although some use
rubber tires. Crew sizes have decreased throughout history, with some modern systems now running completely unstaffed trains. The method of tunnel construction used varies from place to place, depending on the situation.
Cut-and-cover tunnels are constructed by digging up city streets, which are then rebuilt over the tunnel. Alternatively,
tunnel-boring machines can be used to dig deep-bore tunnels.
|
Millennium Underground old phase at Heroes square in Budapest, Hungary (1896) |
Before any plans were made for transit systems with underground tunnels and stations, several railway operators built tunnels for their trains, usually to reduce the
grade of the railway line. Examples include
Trevithick's Tunnel from
1804, built for the
Penydarren locomotive[
1].
The
London Underground, usually referred to by Londoners simply as "the Underground" or more familiarly "the Tube", began operations on
January 10,
1863 on the
Metropolitan Railway. The Underground currently serves 274
stations and runs over 253
miles (
408 km) of lines. There are also a number of stations and tunnels that are
now closed, some of which can be seen from trains.
A major breakthrough in the development of modern electrically-driven rapid transit occurred when the American
inventor Frank J. Sprague successfully tested his system of
multiple-unit train control (MUTC) on the Chicago L in
1897. MUTC, which allowed all the motors in an entire train to be dependably controlled from a single point, freed rapid transit systems from dependence on
locomotive-hauled coaches.
The first underground railway in continental Europe was the
Tünel, an underground 573-meter
funicular between the quarters of
Beyoğlu and
Galata in the European part of
Istanbul, completed in 1875 by French engineers on behalf of the
Ottoman Empire. It rarely figures as continental Europe's first metro, though, partly because of its limited length, partly because the cars were pulled by horses until the line was converted to electric operation in 1910. After the Tünel, the first underground railway to be completed in continental Europe was opened in
Budapest in
1896, after only two years of construction. It stretches from
Vörösmarty tér (the city centre) to
City Park and the local zoo, over a total length of 3.7 km (2.3 mi). It is now part of the
Budapest Metro and remains largely in its original state, with the original cars modernised and the stations restored in keeping with their original design, and with the route the same except for a very short extension north to
Mexikói út to connect with the city's tram network. It lays claim to a second title, that is the first electric underground railway with overhead cables, like the Newcastle system, rather than the more common third rail) in the world. The 10.4 km (6.5 mi)
Glasgow Subway in
Scotland opened the same year and used
cable haulage until it was electrified in
1935.
The first line of the
Paris Metro opened in
1900. Its full name was the
Chemin de Fer Métropolitain, a direct translation into
French of London's
Metropolitan Railway. The name was shortened to
métro, and many other languages have since borrowed this word. The Berlin
U-Bahn (for
underground railway) opened in 1902; because large sections of the line were elevated, it was also called
Hochbahn (
high railway) until the 1920s.
Boston has the oldest subway tunnel in the United States that is still in use, part of the
Green Line downtown, dating from
1897. The original construction was a short four-track tunnel downtown, with only two stations, built to take
light rail cars from outlying areas off the streets. Later subways in Boston carried full-size trains; the Green Line still operates with
light rail equipment. In
1901, heavy rail trains began to use the tunnel as part of the original configuration of the
Main Line Elevated, the first elevated railway in Boston.
The
New York City Subway, which has become the world's largest (by some measures), did not open its first section until
1904, but this was a fully independent four-track line, stretching 9 miles (14.5 km)[
2] from
City Hall to
145th Street. Extensions were soon built, reaching
the Bronx and
Brooklyn; this is now part of the system. Two major subway systems, operated by the and the
IND were constructed later, and many pre-existing
elevated railway lines were incorporated into the and systems. The
Hudson and Manhattan Railroad, which also opened a subway tunnel in
Manhattan in
1908 and connected with
New Jersey, remained a separate railroad company, and later came under the control of the
Port Authority of New York and New Jersey as the
Port Authority Trans-Hudson (PATH). New York City subway trains now run on right-of-way first used in
1863, and converted
R44 subway cars run on the
1860 Staten Island Railway.
|
Universidad de Chile station, in Chile, is decorated with works of art |
In
Italy the first line was built for the 1906
World Exhibition Fair in
Milan. It was an elevated light rail that linked the two main area of the fair. The line was dismantled eight years later.In
1907, the first line in
Philadelphia, now part of the
Market-Frankford Line, began running on both elevated and underground structures.
The oldest subway in the
Southern Hemisphere opened in
1913 in
Buenos Aires,
Argentina, which is also the oldest one in
Latin America and the
Spanish-speaking world. [
3] The system is now known as
El Subte.
Asia's oldest commuter
heavy rail lines are in Japan, with private companies
Meitetsu railways (
Nagoya) opening in 1895, and
Tokyo's
Keihin Kyūkō in 1896, both still serving dense urbanized areas. Asia's first cities to have subway lines are
Tokyo in
1927 and
Osaka in 1933. Japan's rail system is quite different from others in that the vast majority of its rapid transit is above ground, and privately owned and operated, and train stations blur the dinstiction between vast underground malls and corporate skyscrapers and gigantic high rise department stores. Train stations in Japan, like highways in the US, become the center and backbone of town and create their own skyline, especially in suburbs like
Saitama and
Fujisawa. Other major Japanese cities also have subway systems, including
Yokohama,
Nagoya,
Sapporo,
Kobe,
Kyoto,
Fukuoka, and
Sendai.
In the past 30 years, a number of cities in Korea have also developed modern and extensive subway systems. The largest,
Seoul, has nine lines over approximately 178 miles of track (approximately 287 km).
Busan,
Daegu,
Incheon,
Gwangju and
Daejeon also have subway systems.
China and
India are rapidly expanding their urban rail systems as well.
The first underground in the former
USSR (in Russian метрополитен
metropoliten or метро
metro) opened in
1935 in
Moscow. The first line — between
Sokolniki and
Park Kul'tury — was 11.2 km long. The
Moscow metro was built during the reign of
Stalin, and is one of the most elaborately decorated undergrounds of the world, with its stations often being called
underground palaces. (As of
2005, the Moscow metro has 278 kilometers of railways and 171 stations.) In Russia and other republics of the former Soviet Union as a whole, subways opened in
Saint Petersburg (
1955),
Kiev (
1960),
Tbilisi (
1965),
Baku (
1967),
Kharkov (
1975),
Tashkent (
1977),
Yerevan (
1981),
Minsk (
1984),
Nizhniy Novgorod (
1985),
Novosibirsk (
1986),
Samara (
1987),
Yekaterinburg (
1991),
Dnepropetrovsk (
1995),
Kazan (
2005). In
Volgograd and
Krivoj Rog in 1980s a "metrotram" opened – it runs underground, along with common city trams.
In
1949, A metro system was inaugurated in
Lisbon. It was the first underground rail system in the
Portuguese-speaking world.
The
Toronto Subway opened in
1954. One experimental trainset consisted of the first aluminum subway cars, which reduced weight and therefore operating costs[
4]. With the next car order in
1963, only aluminum was used. The new cars, at 75 feet/23 m, were at the time the longest in the world.
In
Brazil, the first underground opened in
1974 in
São Paulo, and now carries some four million passengers on an average weekday as part of the
São Paulo Metro. Part of it consists of converted older railways; some of its stations actually date from the
1880s. Underground lines have been built also in
Rio de Janeiro,
Belo Horizonte,
Recife,
Porto Alegre and
Brasília.
Metro de Santiago is the
metro system serving
Santiago, the capital of the
Republic of Chile. It is a network of five lines with a total of 85 stations.
The
Washington Metro in
Washington, DC opened in
1976, as part of changing attitudes towards transportation in the
United States, leading to subway systems in many cities that had done without.
In
1979,
Hong Kong's subway line, the
MTR, began operations. It currently has seven lines, including four that run underneath
Victoria Harbour. By
1982, the British section of the Kowloon-Canton Railway, now known as
KCR East Rail, started to provide metro-like service upon electrification was completed.
Recent developments in the New York City metropolitan area include new, elevated lines such as
AirTrain JFK in
New York City and surface lines such as the
Hudson-Bergen Light Rail along the
Hudson River in
New Jersey. These are often seen as
futuristic, or at least modern, and are compared favorably to old-style elevated railways.
1987 saw the
Mass Rapid Transit in
Singapore open. It was the world's first
heavy rail system to feature
platform screen doors. The country made news again by having the world's first automated heavy rail system. The network has three lines with another one to be ready by
2010.
The most recently completed fully underground heavy rail metro line in
North America is the
LACMTA Red Line in
Los Angeles, which goes from Union Station in downtown Los Angeles, through the mid-Wilshire area, East Hollywood, central
Hollywood, and ending 17 miles away in
North Hollywood in the
San Fernando Valley. Construction was started on this line in
1986 and completed in
2000. In autumn
2005, several politicians including Los Angeles mayor
Antonio Villaraigosa indicated a desire to complete the originally conceived subway route along
Wilshire Boulevard to
West Los Angeles and
Santa Monica.
Many early urban railways were constructed by
private enterprise, either independently as in
London, or under a government
franchise as in
Paris. Profitable suburban railways in
Japan are among the oldest in the nation, and were built and operated privately and cheaply through what had been rural areas, now often dense urban areas. Later, direct
government control and ownership became the norm worldwide as corporations found it difficult to maintain profitability, although in recent years, this trend has been reversed to some extent with moves towards
public-private partnership, as in Japan's spinoff of the formerly unprofitable
Japan National Railways.
One reason urban railways today cost so much to build is because they are built after a city has become dense and land values have become high, necessitating tunnels and elevated tracks. In Japan, where skyscrapers, corporate offices, malls, and departments stores are built beside and connect seamlessly to existing train stations, often stations create their own skylines and cities.
Whatever its original financing, any metro system requires ongoing expenditure to maintain and replace its trains, tracks, tunnels, and other infrastructure. Any under-financed system will become unreliable and unpleasant to use, and eventually unsafe, and thus will lose public support as it used to happen to New York's system between the 1970s through the mid 1980s, where its trains were infamous for graffiti and vandalism.
In the United States, the lack of metro, subway, or other rapid transit systems except in a few of the larger cities has been attributed to automobiles, buses, and advocacy of public road-funding to compete effectively against existing streetcar and trolley systems. In addition, an agreement between many cities, counties, and rich and poor communities to fund construction and obtain right of way must occur, often stalling or derailing the process. These went into decline early in the twentieth century due to a variety of factors including public preference, government regulation, corporate influence and decline in ridership due to failure of the operators to maintain their facilities. (The decline of rapid transit outside of major metropolitan centers gave rise by some to the
General Motors Streetcar Conspiracy, a
conspiracy theory that automobile and oil interests directly engineered the dismantling of tram networks and blocking rapid transit development.
In
Hong Kong, where land prices are high, new railway projects are financed by the development right of lands adjacent to the routes, depots and stations the government granted to the railway companies. Thanks to the high density of urban development and high ridership, railway operations are usually profitable.
There has always been some crossover between rapid transit and "lighter"
streetcar/tram systems. For example, some lines of the
Brooklyn Rapid Transit Company in
New York City were elevated in built-up areas and ran at street level, often along streets, in less crowded areas.
In many German cities, such as Hannover, the opposite applies, with
trams descending into tunnels to cross the city centre.
In the other direction,
interurban streetcars provided rapid transit-style transit from cities to suburbs and other cities, running mainly on separate
rights-of-way (sometimes sharing tracks with
intercity rail) but using
streetcar equipment. Most interurbans have been abandoned, but some (like the
Norristown High Speed Line near
Philadelphia) have been reconstructed to rapid transit specifications.
Additionally, many streetcar/tram systems include underground and (less commonly) elevated sections, in which everything about the system except the right-of-way is built to streetcar standards. Notably, the first subway in the
United States,
Boston's
Green Line, opened in
1897 to take streetcars off downtown streets, though it did carry elevated trains from
1901 until the
Washington Street Subway opened. Likewise,
San Francisco's
Market Street Subway carries
Muni Metro light rail on the upper tracks and
Bay Area Rapid Transit metro trains on the lower level.
The coming of modern
light rail in the
1970s brought new crossovers. New systems were built and old streetcar/tram systems were upgraded with higher capacity and speeds, but retaining some aspects of streetcars and trams. Some systems known as
light rail, such as the
Docklands Light Railway in
London,
Manchester Metrolink in
Manchester,
UK and
New York City's
AirTrain JFK, are rapid transit systems but commonly described as light rail (though some argue the
light rail in AirTrain's case may be due to its common use to describe the
Bombardier's
Advanced Rapid Transit). Indeed, in a many Asian countries,
light rail is usually used to refer to some sort of rapid transit system but not used to refer to street cars or trams. Other light-rail systems may use high platforms but otherwise run as streetcars. A few systems similar to
interurban streetcars have come back, such as
New Jersey's
River LINE, which operates over freight rails for most of its trip, and along streets on one end. The
KCR Light Rail, which runs as streetcars, operates with high platforms, with some of its sections elevated or street level right-of-way, and some at ground-level by away from streets.
*
All-four*
Bombardier Advanced Rapid Transit*
H-Bahn*
Light rail*
List of rapid transit systems*
Metrophile (A person with a devoted interest in these systems).
*
Metro station*
Monorail*
Public transport*
Rubber-tired metro*
S-Bahn*
Tram*
Transit fares*
U-Bahn*
Urban rail transit*
New York City Subway Resources, an extensive site that includes many photos and much information about rapid transit systems in the U.S. and worldwide, in addition to New York City.
*
UrbanRail.Net (formerly called metroPlanet) – descriptions of all metro systems in the world, each with a schematic map showing all stations.
*
rapidtransit.com, which includes links to operating companies
*
BOOK - Containing the official current map of every metro, underground, subway and U Bahn in the world*
Undistorted metro network maps, all at the same scale for comparison.
*
More undistorted maps, for all of the systems of North America.
*
Metro Bits Various aspects of the world's metros.
*
METROS - About Budapest Metro*
Monorail Society A group of monorail enthusiasts. Website has extensive resources: technical information, manufacturers, photographs, reports on current monorail systems around the world.
*
Mind the Gap "Mind the Gap" in Japanese, Cantonese and Mandarin.
*
Memoirs of a subway musician This musician played in the subway stations of NYC, Paris, Prague & Rome.
*
absence-of-fear.de, a German site with a focus on the architecture of the underground stations.
*
Departing subways Short videos from several cities.
*
PHOTOS - A young photographer with an obsession with the history written on the subway walls and windows and waiting areas*
CityRailTransit - real-distance metro maps*
iSubway Maps Put subway maps onto your iPod
