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there are no problems south of Paris, sorry. I take the RER B almost every week from Bures-sur-Yvette to Paris and it is VERY safe. Lots of students (like me) and people who are just minding their own business. But in case you continue your trip after Chatelet, you really notice a change of demographics in the train. I wouldn't like to go to the CDG Airport, it sure wouldn't be a pleasant trip.
It's the same thing heading out to Charles De Gaulle. It's people sitting down quietly on the train just minding their own business. The only difference is skin color. It's about as tame as the DC Metro with a few teenagers yapping, which teenagers tend to do.
Now if you want to see "ghetto," take MARTA in Atlanta on any given day of the week. That's ghetto. The train ride out to De Gaulle is often accompanied by the soothing sounds of an accordion player looking to make a few bucks off tourists. The ride on MARTA to Jackson-Hartsfield is often accompanied by the sounds of an aspiring rapper who's decided to serenade fellow train riders with profanity over 808 beats.
RER trains are generally clean. The only graffiti I have ever seen on an RER train was on the side of buildings heading north from Gare du Nord. I've never seen grafitti on the actual trains. And I never witnessed a gang fight after riding RER between Drancy/Blanc-Mesnil and Châtelet for an entire year.
And have you witnessed one on American public transportation? New York City? Philly?
As for weed, I've seen it on the London Underground (belonging to the person I was traveling with). Non-ghetto.
And have you witnessed one on American public transportation? New York City? Philly?
Well, there was the massive 70 person brawl on DC Metro that eventually erupted to street level from the subway station. And there was also the murder at the Adams-Morgan metro over shoes and a Helly Hansen jacket not long ago. And then you have ridiculously wild stuff like this in Philly with women getting dragged onto subway tracks.
Most of Latin America as well. Except for maybe New Orleans, no large American city has as high a murder rate as Honduras.
Yeah, those countries are pretty ridiculous, too.
I just laugh at the notion of anywhere in Western Europe being "hood" or "ghetto." By American standards, the 92 and 93 would be extremely mild even at their worst. When the son of the family that hosted me came to visit me in Philadelphia, he was scared stiff when we drove down Winghocking and then North Broad. The corner of Broad and Erie is sort of a scary place for a lot of people who've lived in South and West Philly all of their lives little less the relatively tranquil banlieues of Paris.
These are the main parts of Berlin's transit system. Pink is trams, which are often (always?) more like light rail than streetcars, blue is U-Bahn, basically subways, and red is S-Bahn, basically long distance rapid transit. Buses and intercity rail is not included.
I don't think any city outside NYC can compare to Berlin, London, Moscow, Paris and Madrid. Chicago and DC's rapid transit systems are quite extensive, but they're not as dense as some of the European cities with similar sized networks (mainly Barcelona and Valencia) so I would think the population served is smaller.
How is the Transilien like in Paris? Does it compared at all to New York's commuter rail networks (like LIRR)?
Of London, the London Underground seemed similar in quality to the NYC subway (but outside the city center, the London Underground tended to run with greater stop spacing than local NYC subways, and extended radially outward more, but the network was less dense and lines intersected a bit less). In fact, I'd give an edge to NYC. Where London comes out ahead is the non-rapid transit rail. Far better than the NYC commuter rail, coverage and frequency was very high. This partly due to the type of development, but places such as eastern Queens / western Nassau might have been able to support a similar system.
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