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Underground metro style train systems

Started by Stoneage Dinosaurs, July 13, 2019, 12:41:07 AM

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alan nagsworth

Quote from: a duncandisorderly on July 13, 2019, 04:40:17 PM
let's see, now....

london. I was once in the habit of telling visitors that the london underground was a working museum for the entertainment of tourists, & that us residents used a newer, boring, state-of-the-art system only accessible to people who pay their council tax within the M25. its actual quality varies enormously, reflecting its provenance, but even the fairly modern & important bits of it are deeply unsatisfactory in terms of noise, comfort, reliability & so on. but it is very very old. something like 43% of it is actually underground &, like NYC, a fair bit of it is above street height in places. good map, but since the circle line changes of a few years back, it feels like it's been interfered with. one of the things I dislike the most about all of TfL's vehicular offerings is the upholstered seats. I'd rather they used plastic so it can be hosed down of a night, instead of this grubby worn industrial carpeted cushioning that soaks up piss & fart & then disgorges it again onto your clean strides. yuk.

how is it unreliable, do you think? as i mentioned above, i use it regularly every day, at least 5-10 journeys, and it's rare that i experience any sort of delay that lasts more than a couple of minutes. the victoria line trains are almost always every 90 seconds and pretty much all other lines often come between 3-5 minutes at a push. admittedly a couple of lines like the bakerloo are very dated and rickety but the district line by contrast had all its old trains replaced with brand new ones a couple years back and is now waaay more efficient.

the only issue i have with it is that it's hot as fuck, i think the reason they don't install air con is because ironically the electronics involved would cause even more heat to run when installing it with such limited space(?)

a duncandisorderly

Quote from: alan nagsworth on July 13, 2019, 05:04:20 PM
how is it unreliable, do you think?

district line. I travel to chiswick park (gunnersbury, in fact) & the richmond trains are pretty hit-&-miss. it's better than it was a couple of years ago, & the stock's fine, but I think their punctuality is affected by having to work with the overground service that shares the track.

alan nagsworth

yeah fair fucks, it does get quite irregular once the line splits into three going westbound. the district line is fuckin long! the longest in fact, with 60 stops.

Inspector Norse

Quote from: a duncandisorderly on July 13, 2019, 04:40:17 PM
[*edit- they added a station at the very far end of the line that I live at the other end of &, casting about for a name, someone suggested the recently deceased guitar maestro paco de lucia. so that's what the station got called. why the fuck can't we have that in london? stations named after artists, I mean.]

They do that a lot in Spain, don't they? It's great.

"'Ere Bictorrrr, we need a name for this new street. Read any good books lately?"
"Aye, let's call it Avenida Jeffrey Archer."

mothman

London - What is to be said, really? Is it what it is.

Brussels - Now, I lived here for many years so know it as a local would. I suppose that yes, if you're a tourist in the centre you'd probably never need to use it at all unless you went out to Heysel. But I lived the opposite side, out at the terminus at Stockel/Stokkel, and my word there are some lovely little stations out that way. Stockel itself is decorated with Tintin characters, and you could spend hours just trying to identify them all. Adjacent to that, Roosebeek, Vandervelde and Alma are all favourites. In the centre, the stations atre mostly interchangeable. Still a mystery to me why Maalbeek/Maelbeek station was the one bombed in 2016 when Arts-Loi/Kunst-Wet was next along and the major interchange for both lines.

Newcastle - Again, lived there for years (I think Blodders and I overlapped at uni there for one year, my last his first?) so the trip to and from Four Lane Ends was my daily commute. Most of the stations are interchangeable in style, so not much to say about them, Famously, the Bottom Inspectors in Viz were based on the ticket enforcement staff.

Nurnberg, Rome, Milan, Athens - limited experience of all these, as far as I can tell they're all carbon-copy metro systems yiou'd find in dozens of European cities. But then people with such limited exposure could say the same about Brussels...

Washington - again, one trip. It struck me as quite dark and cramped, and at the station we went from (way out to the east) it wasn't immediately obvious how or where to buy a ticket...

Paris - Alwaysa stuck me as very complicated, both in layout and ticketing. I suspect many in France feel the same about the London Underground!

Rio de Janeiro - limited exposure given how long I lived there. Didn't live anywhere near a station, hardly ever went anywhere that had a station. In fact my only memory of it was that there were posters for Full Metal Jacket everywhere, which tells you how long ago this was.

Quote from: mothman on July 13, 2019, 05:25:43 PM
Washington - again, one trip. It struck me as quite dark and cramped, and at the station we went from (way out to the east) it wasn't immediately obvious how or where to buy a ticket...

Washington DC is surely the worst because something like half the cars have gross 1970s carpeting (?!) that gives off an overwhelming stench of black mold on rainy days. The only carpeted (?!) subway I've been on.

Dr Rock

No mention of Asia you racists?

Tokyo - perfectly fine, but far too many signs and stickers everywhere telling you to give up your seat for old people. Not against the idea but it doesn't need to be everywhere you look. And it's largely ignored anyway (so I was told, I never saw an old person not getting a seat).

Taipei - a bit grim because where there would be adverts there was nothing, apparently because the government had fallen out with the advert people or something. Get the hang of capitalism if you want to be  real country. Also lots of signs saying no spitting because visiting Chinese people would otherwise gob everywhere.

Dr Rock

Google image search reminds me that Taipei has hard plastic seats while Tokyo has slightly cushioned ones.

Lots of people in Japan wear surgical masks in public and especially in trains, because they are scared of chemical attacks or pollution or something. It's weird and makes the journey less fun.



London will always be my favourite.

a duncandisorderly

Quote from: Dr Rock on July 13, 2019, 05:43:22 PM
Tokyo - perfectly fine.....

yeah, between this (pic) & the unwanted frottage that one hears about, I think I'd take my chances at street level.


alan nagsworth

yes my girlfriend lived in japan for three years and said the rush hour crush in london is laughably tame compared to over there. i'm able to swallow my claustrophobia enough to tolerate the london underground as long as the train doesn't stand still inside the tunnel for any longer than a minute or so, but you would fucking not get me on one of those japanese trains in heavy commuting hours.

bgmnts

Looks like a Nepali bus at any time of the day.

Captain Crunch

I don't know why he's bothering to push, surely they could get that shrill, scraggy blonde woman from Blackheath station to just wail "could you move down please?"  That always does the trick. 

pancreas

Tag: Let us look under this stone sitting in a stream of effluent from a sewage treatment plant. MAYBE there is something good under it.


BlodwynPig

Quote from: pancreas on July 13, 2019, 07:42:20 PM
Tag: Let us look under this stone sitting in a stream of effluent from a sewage treatment plant. MAYBE there is something good under it.

^^^^^ Howdon stop on the metro

Shoulders?-Stomach!


Stoneage Dinosaurs

Pancreas I take it you are not a fan of underground metro style train systems?

studpuppet

I've used London, Munich, Berlin, Hamburg, Moscow, San Francisco, Mexico City, Singapore and Hong Kong.

Mexico City metro trains HAVE TYRES.



From memory the Singapore MRT has a couple of loop lines that mean you can see the rest of the island without getting off the train.

The BART is a cool name, plus it used to have trains that looked like they'd previously been used on the set of Logan's Run/Rollerball/Moonraker.



If you get pushed onto the tracks in Munich, you can roll under the platform and save yourself (learned that from The Odessa File).

Bazooka

Busan, South Korea: Lived there 2 and a half years and pretty much used it every day as did many, efficient, cheap and never overcrowded, lots of advertisements for cosmetic surgery. 10/10.

Beijing: Again very very cheap and efficient, yet unless you've been living under a rock, you've probably heard China is human heavy, which means body temperature from people can sometimes beat that of the sun. The Chinese don't sweat though, so I'm slipping and sliding in my own salty juice as they stand zombified with an IPhone glued to their faces. 8/10.

popcorn

#49
Tokyo trains are indeed crammed during rush hour, though I'm not sure if they're much worse than other countries. The trains are much bigger than the London tube.

Quote from: Dr Rock on July 13, 2019, 05:56:38 PM
Lots of people in Japan wear surgical masks in public and especially in trains, because they are scared of chemical attacks or pollution or something. It's weird and makes the journey less fun.



Japanese people wear masks when they're sick because the idea is it stops spreading germs around. Or at least that's what they think they do - I'd love to know exactly how effective these are outside of controlled medical environments - but really it's a cultural thing. I also have female Japanese friends who say they use them when they can't be bothered to put on makeup that day, or have a gigantic zit, or something.

It's actually about the only part of Japanese culture I find truly weird and alien. I hate talking to people while they're wearing masks. As an experiment once I put one on when I had a cold and it was bollocks, all hot and humid and uncomfortable.

bgmnts

I think its an Asian thing. I've only met Chinese and Nepali people who do that.

Who knew the one country that has been nuked would be paranoid about chemical attacks or pollution?

Can someone photoshop a surgical facemask onto Godzilla please?

imitationleather

My ex from Taiwan used to do it. Freaked me out, it did.

popcorn

Quote from: bgmnts on July 16, 2019, 12:59:28 PM

Who knew the one country that has been nuked would be paranoid about chemical attacks or pollution?


It's not to do with chemical attacks or pollution.

hummingofevil

Newcastle Metro is fine apart from they temporarily brought in a rule where you could take a bike on the bits out past the airport that are posh (and everyone has cars) but not through Byker and Walker up to the Coast which are pretty low-income areas as a rule and lots of kids have bikes. Think that has been resolved now though.

I am from Wrexham so used to use the MerseyRail a lot as a kid to go for days out in Liverpool but never again. It has a problem that it covered quite a large area with long journey times, trains aren't very frequent and their are no toilets. To cut a long story very short in all my life of using trains and public transport I have only ever had two run-ins in any way with staff and they were both in Liverpool stations. Both times got directed to the wrong station by cunty staff, both times got refused travel and both times managed to get on the train elsewhere (proving that I was fit to travel only I had just had a few pints so might have looked a bit rough as I was told to run half-way across the city). Genuinely never going back.

Lyon has quite a fun Metro. I used to to take you straight to the Stadium which is quite fun as the stop only exists for the Stadium and it appears to be in the middle of nowhere so it creates a mini city of football fans for the day. The most atmospheric out of town stadium I have been to. It also has a line which is basically a funicular up the Crois-roux

bgmnts

Quote from: popcorn on July 16, 2019, 01:04:47 PM
It's not to do with chemical attacks or pollution.

I was just responding to that comment on the original photo.

Although i'm pretty sure Chinese people do it because of the air pollution in some of the cities, at least according to a chinese girl i met, and in Nepal you literally have to use them.

So yes it is weird why Japanese people use them, as Japan looks clean as fuck. Although no Japanese person I know uses them but they arent in Japan now so I suppose its just when you live there.

hummingofevil

I am learning Japanese (very very slowly) but one vid I saw online said that the masks are mainly to stop the spread of germs if you are ill (as mentioned above) but also that blowing your nose in Japan is considered rude so people also wear the masks to stop then blowing their nose or be seen to have snot running down their faces.

a duncandisorderly

Quote from: bgmnts on July 16, 2019, 01:10:00 PM
I was just responding to that comment on the original photo.

Although i'm pretty sure Chinese people do it because of the air pollution in some of the cities, at least according to a chinese girl i met, and in Nepal you literally have to use them.

So yes it is weird why Japanese people use them, as Japan looks clean as fuck. Although no Japanese person I know uses them but they arent in Japan now so I suppose its just when you live there.

you see them a fair bit in london, & it's not only japanese who have them. but it mostly is. them & cycle couriers. if I have to wear one for ten minutes, I start to feel like I'm suffocating. maybe that's what they get off on- I've never been arsed enough to ask.

QDRPHNC

Quote from: BlodwynPig on July 13, 2019, 11:43:24 AM
I like Toronto's but only used about 5% of it. Brussels is populated by crazies and zombies and in Munich me and an old lady got stuck in overnight hoarding on a way to a job interview.

I like it too, although it's not without it's problems. Generally clean and works well though. Really needs a new line by this point, our population is growing like mad.

Love the streetcars here - people don't realize that they're not just occasional or touristy things, but as vital to the infrastructure as the subway. It's like taking the bus on a train. Lovely.

a duncandisorderly

Quote from: studpuppet on July 14, 2019, 12:34:02 AM
Mexico City metro trains HAVE TYRES.

exported from paris, this idea:

>>A feature is the use of rubber-tired trains on five lines: this technique was developed by RATP and entered service in 1951. The technology was exported to many networks around the world (including Montreal, Mexico City, and Santiago). Lines 1, 4, 6, 11 and 14 have special adaptations to accommodate rubber-tyred trains. Trains are composed of 3 to 6 cars depending on the line, the most common being 5 cars (Line 14 may have 8 cars in the future), but all trains on the same line have the same number of cars.<<

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rubber-tyred_metro#Technology

earl_sleek