So what’s this fascination with tunnels? In Chicago, there are overhead elevated train tracks, and they work just fine. They seem a lot cheaper to build and maintain than tunnels. You can even build them over existing avenues. Why don’t we have more of that?
Have you ever lived near an elevated train? They're not pleasant areas, especially compared to subway stations. The area under the tracks aren't very usable, except as a roadway and parking lots. They're loud as hell, people on the trains can see into your home, the spaces around the elevated tracks are great places for people to do drugs and have crusty hobo sex. These criticisms apply equally to elevated roads.
Most times it rained or snowed in New York City when I lived there, New Jersey Transit and PATH would have problems because of the issues of weather on outdoor trains. It only affected NYC's subway when there was flooding (which also affected NJT and PATH).
The fascination with tunnels is that they're a much more ergonomic way to build infrastructure for the humans that have to live near them.
I used to take the U2 at Eberswalder Straße regularly, and agree it's a lovely station and blends in nicely with the charm of the neighborhood.
I think the main issue in the NYC metro area is that the offending trains/platforms do not seem to take noise pollution (let alone neighborhood flavor) into account at all. The result is that the platforms and trains are unfortunately more like alien oppressors than helpful neighbors.
It's also worth pointing out that today's Berlin is enjoying the fruits of an unique opportunity to rebuild their urban infrastructure post-ww2 (Gleisdreieck was an industrial train yard, for example). Much of the city was leveled, and then shortly thereafter occupied by East/West Germans with fiscally-backed ideological incentives to compete over who could build the most impressive X "for the people".
Lessons learned: Maybe we should tear down NYC, split each borough in half down the middle, and give one half of it to liberals and the other half to conservatives?
The area under elevated lines is unusable only if you make it that way. Tokyo is great at using space below bridges and elevated lines: https://images.app.goo.gl/zpq5T3m5FPSr4eoN6.
Yes and Chicago's stock is super old. The Orange Line is newer and is also much quieter and smoother. New rail in America, elevated, can be pretty quite and enjoyable. I like living near trains personally. It's relaxing to watch them go by in the evening, while sipping on some whiskey or wine.
Your mind will eventually tune out the noise of a track. Our house was near a freight rail track that had a run all night. Never woke up after the first couple of days.
This is the first time I've ever heard of Metra referred to as "light rail". Metra uses enormous diesel locomotives and runs on freight rail ROW (for the most part)--there's nothing "light" about it.
To be fair, most European commuter rail does the same thing. They just use electric heaters, so it doesn't look like their tracks are on fire. Chicago was built up with a big natural gas infrastructure for some reason (like every home seems to have gas heat/dryers) so I guess it made sense to put gas heaters on the rails.
> The spaces around the elevated tracks are great places for people to do drugs and have crusty hobo sex. These criticisms apply equally to elevated roads.
Tbf, the reason people use it for those purposes is because they are the most sheltered, out-of-the way places available.
When they stop being available, that activity moves to the next most sheltered, out-of-the-way place available.
I love Chicago's elevated trains. There are plenty of people who live around them. I grew up next to a freight train track out in the boonies. You get use to it.
They are way cheaper if you can build them. Look at how long it's taking Seattle to build ST3 (although it's going to be amazing when the Redmond corridor opens; I agree).
America needs good transport now, in many more cities. Musk's tunnel ideas are just really impractical and will cost the tax payers more than the benefits of other types of standard/existing rail.
Apartments with windows opening directly onto El tracks are discounted in line with the unpleasantness. If you’ll put up a fight over an apartment building 2 blocks away casting a few hours of shade, you’ll definitely put up a fight over frequent clattering metal 2 feet from your bedroom window forming a permanent roof over the street.
I once lived on the corner of Lake and Wells, where the Brown, Purple, Green, Pink, and Orange line trains all transit a frog patch. (It is supposedly the busiest rail intersection in the world.)
Even though I was 25 floors up with "soundproof" windows, it was jarringly noisy at all times of the day and night because of the way the sound waves travel up a building.
The El was built along with the city's expansion (often by developers who wanted to make new tracts of land accessible). That doesn't work for infill, where the intrusion and space the elevated tracks require aren't accounted for in current prices and expectations, and where right of way isn't established.
If we had a Robert Moses of transit, then it could happen, just like the highways happened. There are no Robert Moseses of transit. Now the best we can do for new lines is shadow the highways.
Elevated lines like in Chicago also seem very uncommon now, I suspect they aren't actually that great? They certainly take a lot of maintenance and don't have great trip times. I think putting an incredibly large and heavy vehicle on metal stilts isn't a good approach. There have been people who want to instead put relatively light vehicles on stilts [1], with many benefits, but that's been met with almost no interest from people who can make these things happen. (Personally I think it's a missed opportunity.) Though in a sense what's being built here is along those lines, but underground.
Personal rapid transit is just a waste. You can transport A LOT of people by rail ... orders of magnitudes of people more than cars, even if you had a highway full of self driving cars all moving at 120kph. There's not even a comparison. Self driving and even personal transport does not compare to the capacity of standard rail stock:
Public transport also forces you to see people every day. Even this very bare minimum interaction is vitally important. It changes the way we see and treat people.
There was an executive at Lehman Brothers who had a private elevator he used from his condo to take him to a car with a private driver, which took him to another elevator that took him to his office. Most days he could go from home to work without interacting with a single person. That changes the way you see and treat people, and we need less of that.
Capacity comparisons are no good in isolation. Here in DC Metro is close to capacity for what it does (taking people into the downtown core). But 95% of people in the metro area don’t take the Metro, because it doesn’t go anywhere they want to go. These people are commuting from Loudon to Reston or DC to Bowie. Almost 90% of jobs in the metro area are outside DC proper as is the bulk of housing. In isolation, none of these commuting paths warrant a heavy rail line. The capacity advantage of standard rail stock is completely irrelevant to almost everybody’s commute.
It’s not about being anti-social. Here in the Annapolis area (which has 200,000 people, with 40,000 in Annapolis itself), people commute from the Annapolis suburbs to jobs in the southern Baltimore suburbs or in Baltimore. They’d take a train if there was one, instead of sitting in I97 traffic But the volume of commuters comes nowhere near justifying building one. (Many Metro lines, though at capacity in the downtown core, are desolate in even the relatively urbanized suburbs of MD). A cheap, fast, point-to-point transit solution, that you could string up along an existing highway median or below one, would revolutionize transit because it would actually address peoples’ needs outside the tiny minority.
"Personal rapid transit is just a waste. You can transport A LOT of people by rail ... orders of magnitudes of people more than cars"
You're answering a question no one is asking. Cars and taxis (and imagined self-driving cars) get people from where they are to where they want to go. Roads are capable of serving any trip, and with a reasonable travel time. If transit could serve most trips then transit could be successful. Start from there, and see if you can work backwards to traditional rail mass transit. I don't see it happening, but maybe I'm missing something.
I should have been clearer, I meant general speed. The trains on traditional elevated tracks in Chicago are all pretty slow, and I think the solidity of the tracks is part of that. In comparison, the same trains on solid ground (e.g., the Blue line) run much faster.
there are overhead elevated train tracks, and they work just fine
No, they don't. They add a massive amount of noise and other pollution to the city, and block light and air, turning normal city streets into seedy alleys. (Ex: Wabash before the recent renovation)
They seem a lot cheaper to build and maintain than tunnels
Build, probably. Maintain, no. The elevated structures require a ton of maintenance that is ongoing constantly because they're exposed to weather, vandals, and other external forces.
These are electric trains—what pollution? Noise isn’t much higher once you’re even a block away. And light and air is a matter of setbacks. Lake and Wells are hardly seedy alleys. There is more light standing right under an L track than in NYC.
I suspect you've never been in a subway tunnel and noticed all the grime and dirt spewed all over the walls and ceiling by electric trains.
Noise isn’t much higher once you’re even a block away
Now I know you've never been in a city with an elevated train system. I once lived nine blocks away from an elevated train, and I could hear it all day and all night.
And light and air is a matter of setbacks
You can't set back a building that's already built, and you can't take away air rights from a property owner without massive compensation.
There is more light standing right under an L track than in NYC
More is not the same as optimal. Why should any of the public's light and air be removed if it's not necessary?
> Now I know you've never been in a city with an elevated train system. I once lived nine blocks away from an elevated train, and I could hear it all day and all night.
It is possible to build elevated rail that is much quieter than Chicago's and NYC's systems, so Chicago shouldn't be held up as an example of how noisy elevated systems have to be.
Plus Chicago's is super old. Use the newer Orange Line and it's much quieter. The high speed intercity/commuter rails in The Netherlands are also super quiet (and massive!). They move a lot of people too!
I lived in Chicago more than twice as long, and directly in the Loop for 90% of that time, not out in the neighborhoods. I lived for a year directly next to the Lake/Wells junction. I know about L noise.
In like 3 replies you've went from "elevated trains are as good as subways" to "elevated trains are better than nothing".
The noise is the thing. In New York you can stand directly over a subway station and not even know it, in Chicago you always know when you're with in a few blocks of a line.
One thing I've noticed in Chicago and NYC is that the old steel elevated structures are extremely loud. However, the few locations in NYC that are made with much thicker concrete structures significantly reduce the noise.
Elevated rail is not inherently noisy, but the majority of examples in the US are. This is why people are against them. If we could fix the noise problem, this could be the optimal solution. I personally think it is possible.
Old steel elevated tracks like the L are kinda crummy. You have to deal with weather both on the tracks and the stations, they darken whatever is below them, are incredibly loud, and wear out relatively quickly. Derailments can be catastrophic because trains fall from a great height (as happened in the Loop in 1977). Using concrete solves the noise problems, but requires more space and money.
Concrete adds a lot more bulk and makes them visually oppressive. I’ve always hated how they did the elevated Metro lines (hulking concrete structures high in the air, requiring climbing up long escalators with multiple mezzanines), versus the L lines which are organically integrated into the neighborhood.
My understanding of tunnels fascination is to create a 3D transportation space to mirror the 3D work/living space of cities. Yes, EL trains add one layer. However, the idea behind the tunnels is that they can make 20 layers, if needed.
I say this without commenting on the actual financial viability, since that is very much a matter of debate and I'm tepidly optimistic on it at best.
The upscale crowd doesn't like the audio/visual clutter.
There's nothing tunnels do that well planned overhead infrastructure can't do more cheaply (at the cost of being audible and visible).
Edit: Since I'm being down-voted, other than being less offending to the eyes/ears of non-users, what do tunnels do that overhead infrastructure doesn't?
Yes it does! Cost directly affects how much transit you can build. If it didn’t cost New York 5x as much money to build a mile of track as it does London or Paris, New York could build five times as much track for the same fares/taxes.
If you've ever dealt with public transit planning, at least in the US, you'll see that often the budget is 50%+ simply real estate. The way land rights work in the US this actually cuts massive costs out of a project. Its not too dissimilar from how airplane travel beats trains on cost.
Not an expert, but often with big costly new things the main issue is that nobody dares. Or rather, nobody has the belief in the idea, resources and power to decide (think city officials).
