#NUMTOT

[sleepy-bebby]

What did buses do?

[joy-haver]

_____________

Solidarity forever : IWW | Wikipedia article on railway abandonment | All used up : Utah Phillips | The commonwealth of toil : Joe glazer | We have fed you all for a thousand years : IWW | John Henry | I don’t want your millions mister: The Almanac Singers | The big steel rail : Gordon Lightfoot | Chattanooga choo choo | Paradise : John Prine | We have fed you all for a thousand years | I’ve been working on the railroad | We have fed you all for a thousand years | ballad of a Wobbly: David rovics | Ralph Chaplin Speaks | The MTA | Freight Train : Elizabeth Cotton | Freight train blues : Bob Dylan | The city of New Orleans : Arlo Guthrie |Hobos lullaby : Woody Guthrie | Night trian: James brown

[lichen-thr0pe]

[somanyants]

The thing about public transport is you’ll be minding your own business and then you’ll see someone wearing an outfit that permanently alters your brain chemistry. You have to try not to stare for like three minutes and then you keep thinking about what you saw in those glances for the next six years.

[very-gay-alkyrion]

Man fuck hostile architecture

[gopissgorl-dot-twitter]

[crazydiscoturkey]

im going the try communities

if ur gay (all types) and you like transit join my community

[bananarchy4ever]

"Chemical pollution from car tires is killing off salmon." - Nicolas Cage

[davros42]

Death rides the highways but you are safe in the trolley car.

[toast-oast]

views from hoboken light rail station

[minnesotacore]

The incredible Marlene Myles now has one of the best public art pieces I’ve ever seen!

(Photos credit to her as well! Here is where to learn more about her art!)

AND, the driver assigned to this bus is also indigenous! Specifically Ojibwe and Lakota!

(Read more about the driver here!)

[ashes-in-a-jar]

Karolina Gorka is a NUMTOT

[lichen-thr0pe]

[elimgarakdemocrat]

Exploitable version of the classic poster and example use

[kxantares]

In which I SkyTrain-post about: the Dunsmuir Tunnel.

Or, actually, why the SkyTrain network as a whole feels like a goofy little toy train, while also being a really cool example of quirky '80s technology being pushed right to its absolute limits. But first, some context is useful — specifically, the urban freeway plan for Vancouver, which, unlike many cities in North America, was largely aborted.

↑↑↑ This is what they wanted to do to part of the City of Vancouver…

…and this is the overarching plan that was mostly defeated by an organised left in Vancouver. (The few areas that weren't saved, well, those deserve their own posts.) So, with a massive freeway plan being shot down for the city centre, what was the plan going to be for transit? Well, after some amount of messing around with express buses throughout the '70s on the part of the regional transit network, which was operated by BC Hydro before BC Transit took it over… …Vancouver got chosen to host Expo 86. Which was themed around transportation, being named "Transportation and Communication: World in Motion — World in Touch".

Which meant: well shit, maybe now's a good time to make up for having dodged the whole highway bullet. However, using a normal heavy rail network, on entirely new infrastructure, with human drivers, was untenable, because: I guess I need to introduce the Socreds.

I'm not going to get into the ideology of social credit, which the Socreds never actually ended up being able to give effect to, or the somewhat unusual conservatism of WAC Bennett's long administration, but effectively, by the early '80s, the Socreds had pivoted to plain old neoliberalism, which meant: cutting costs all over and also keeping unions out of whatever they could. (As an aside, if you've ever got the time, read about the Solidarity protests of 1983 in BC, because the sheer intensity of the Bill Bennett administration's fuckery on that front is a pretty clear demonstration of shock doctrine.) And yes, if you're keeping track, that's William Bennett for 20 years → 3 years of not William &c. → Bill Bennett for 11 years → Wilhelmus Vander Zalm for 5 years. Lots of William happening. And all of those assorted Williams were Socred Premiers. But how do you cut costs and also keep unions away from a brand new metro system? Well, Urban Transit Development Corporation, a Crown Corporation (basically a state-owned enterprise, but Canadian) in Ontario had an idea:

A tiny train. But it runs frequently. It's also automated, and uses a linear induction motor for propulsion. That's kinda critical to the fact that the SkyTrain works whatsoever, really, given other constraints I'm about to get into. And what else can one do to save costs on a rail system?

Reuse old alignments, like the Central Park Line of the British Columbia Electric Railway.

But what saves even more money?

Reusing old infrastructure. Basically, until just a few years before the SkyTrain started operation, Canadian Pacific ran long-distance trains, all the way out to Toronto (and sometimes further), through the Dunsmuir Tunnel from Waterfront Station, which is now the "main" hub for TransLink, linking the SeaBus, Expo Line, West Coast Express. Canada Line, and many bus routes. But that got shut down, to make way for literally slicing the Tunnel in half height-wise — and thus letting two tracks use the same tunnel, which was built tall enough for old steam trains. Which means: you've got trains constrained to a fairly tiny loading gauge, which, sure, maybe you'd want to build longer platforms to compensate for that, but:

No. Hence automation. For example, try to find a precise timetable for the Expo Line anywhere on the Internet, without screwing around with APIs or whatever. You can't, last I checked. The design philosophy resulting from the "let's spend as little as goddamn possible while still having a grade separated rapid transit system" approach means that, well, we've got trains so tiny in loading gauge terms that you can fit two in a barely modified single-track rail tunnel, which are barely even 80m long, which still could carry 25,700 people per hour per direction, solely thanks to completely absurd frequencies. Like, TransLink deserves to be yelled at over the lack of redundancy in such a critical transportation backbone, and the provincial governments that they rely on for funding deserve it even more, but it's. Well. Kinda interesting how the most ridiculous possible political pressures resulted in, like, a fairly functional transit system, via the weirdest specifications possible. However, this is also why, not even 40 years after the Expo Line opened for regular service, it's already close to its limits. They were far too cautious and non-ambitious in their design for the system, chasing ideologies of Fiscal Responsibility™ instead of future-proofing, and now we've got transit infrastructure that's going to require redundancy to the tune of an entire extra metro line in the northwest/southeast direction eventually, even if other connections should be able to pick up the slack in the medium term.

[yungpilk]

Mexico City Orange Trains My Beloved etc