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Both Sydney Trains in NSW, Australia and Washington Metro in DC, MD, VA in the US function both as metros and suburban rail; Washington Metro functions a bit more like a metro system and Sydney Trains functions a bit more as like a suburban rail system. Both systems have headways on par with United States subway systems and both cover areas far from the core of the city.
Both of these systems do a phenomenal job as hybrid systems and to my knowledge aside from the Melbourne Metro Trains network and possibly the Vancouver Skytrain and BART, these are the only such systems outside of Europe and Asia.
Compare the two systems on service, ridership, share of commuters taking the system to work, usefulness for suburb to suburb commutes, development near the stations and other intangibles.
In terms of comfort and cleaniness Sydney is better. I use the north shore line (Sydney) every day to commute and it’s amazing, there’s a train to the city every 3 mins. However I had to go to the inner west (Peteesham) and there was a train every 30 mins! I think the stations in DC were cooler, it’s cheaper and very easy to use. I’d like to read comments of people from DC. I enjoyed my time there and how convenient and easy was to use PT for a North American city.
I've never been to Sydney so I can't compare. Easily in the top 5 of cities I've never been to though.
Anyway, just to speak to DC, the system is decent but hardly a model to follow on an international scale. It has decent coverage in the city but for suburban use it is limited to particular corridors and suburb-to-suburb is not advisable. Frequent delays and shut downs, as well as fairly early last trains are the other negatives.
I haven't really lived there since 2014 but I believe my criticisms are still fair based on my visits and what I hear from friends.
I've never been to Sydney so I can't compare. Easily in the top 5 of cities I've never been to though.
Anyway, just to speak to DC, the system is decent but hardly a model to follow on an international scale. It has decent coverage in the city but for suburban use it is limited to particular corridors and suburb-to-suburb is not advisable. Frequent delays and shut downs, as well as fairly early last trains are the other negatives.
I haven't really lived there since 2014 but I believe my criticisms are still fair based on my visits and what I hear from friends.
Well, in your opinion what system is a better hybrid than DC metro in North or South America or Oceania/Australia?
I actually think Sydney Trains is better than DC metro for the suburb to suburb commutes, just from looking at the map.
I don't know. Can you offer a complete list of possibilities? Do Montreal and Toronto count? Perhaps Boston? (though that wouldn't be the top choice) I've never been to Oceania or South America so I can't include any of those cities.
Sydney Trains. I’ve used both and found getting around in Sydney to be better though its system a touch less intuitive.
You can also look at ridership and see that its ridership is much higher than Washington Metro even if you combined VRE and MARC train ridership numbers.
If we consider Vancouver’s Skytrain a hybrid, then I think that system is great considering how small a city/metro Vancouver is.
I think these hybrid commuter/heavy rail rapid transit systems are basically what multiple NA cities, especially those with sizable existing commuter rail systems should be working towards.
I don't know. Can you offer a complete list of possibilities? Do Montreal and Toronto count? Perhaps Boston? (though that wouldn't be the top choice) I've never been to Oceania or South America so I can't include any of those cities.
Toronto or Montreal don't count since they're primarily city-oriented subways- Montreal's ventures a bit into the suburbs but isn't really a regional system. I wouldn't say Boston counts because even though it serves Cambridge, Malden, Quincy, Brookline and a couple other suburbs it's still far and away a city-focused system.
A complete list of possibilities would be: Washington DC, Sydney, Melbourne, Vancouver, Brisbane and Perth. I'd be tempted to include BART in the San Francisco Bay Area, but I'd still exclude it since it only has 7 stations in San Francisco and is largely a commuter rail (operating using subway infrastructure).
Sydney Trains. I’ve used both and found getting around in Sydney to be better though its system a touch less intuitive.
You can also look at ridership and see that its ridership is much higher than Washington Metro even if you combined VRE and MARC train ridership numbers.
If we consider Vancouver’s Skytrain a hybrid, then I think that system is great considering how small a city/metro Vancouver is.
I think these hybrid commuter/heavy rail rapid transit systems are basically what multiple NA cities, especially those with sizable existing commuter rail systems should be working towards.
Yeah, I'd vote for Sydney too- even though I haven't been. Looking closely at the Sydney Trains trip planner, the headways seem to be similar to those of DC throughout much of the network. The Sydney network is quite a bit larger and moves about 20-30% more passengers than the DC metro. Also- to go between suburbs- say Blacktown to Bankstown, or Strathfield to Carlingford- you needn't go through the CBD in many cases. One of DC Metro's pitfalls is that to go between neighboring suburbs- say Bethesda to Silver Spring, or Silver Spring to College Park- you need to go through the center of town.
The number of bifurcations in each of the Sydney Trains lines makes the system robust for suburb-to-suburb commuting.
I definitely agree with you that Sydney Trains ought to be the model for North American cities- since so many of them are polycentric.
Toronto or Montreal don't count since they're primarily city-oriented subways- Montreal's ventures a bit into the suburbs but isn't really a regional system. I wouldn't say Boston counts because even though it serves Cambridge, Malden, Quincy, Brookline and a couple other suburbs it's still far and away a city-focused system.
A complete list of possibilities would be: Washington DC, Sydney, Melbourne, Vancouver, Brisbane and Perth. I'd be tempted to include BART in the San Francisco Bay Area, but I'd still exclude it since it only has 7 stations in San Francisco and is largely a commuter rail (operating using subway infrastructure).
For Toronto, it wouldn’t be its subway system but the plans it has for its commuter rail system (GO Transit) where they are trying to convert it to run like Paris’s RER. Montreal also has a similar plan with its commuter rail system.
I think BART definitely counts as San Francisco as the system serves the metropolitan area decently well and with decent frequency. The sad thing about BART is that they chose a really odd broad gauge track system that’s incompatible with the mass of existing rail and rail infrastructure in the area. Right now they are electrifying a separate system called Caltrain which is unfortunately incompatible with BART. If they hadn’t made that idiosyncratic decision decades ago, then BART would have been serving Silicon Valley and San Jose with another pass through across the bay probably decades ago.
For Toronto, it wouldn’t be its subway system but the plans it has for its commuter rail system (GO Transit) where they are trying to convert it to run like Paris’s RER. Montreal also has a similar plan with its commuter rail system.
I think BART definitely counts as San Francisco as the system serves the metropolitan area decently well and with decent frequency. The sad thing about BART is that they chose a really odd broad gauge track system that’s incompatible with the mass of existing rail and rail infrastructure in the area. Right now they are electrifying a separate system called Caltrain which is unfortunately incompatible with BART. If they hadn’t made that idiosyncratic decision decades ago, then BART would have been serving Silicon Valley and San Jose with another pass through across the bay probably decades ago.
Wouldn't you say BART fails to serve well as a city subway though? It doesn't have the same level of service to core neighborhoods that systems in Sydney and DC do.
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