Re:Tunnels in the US cost more than anywhere else
by jeffbee on Monday November 02, 2020 @06:28PM
(#24974691)
I was admittedly thinking of a place like Friesenberg, but also stations along the Sihltal like Manegg. There's literally nothing to Manegg beyond a sidewalk[1]. Compare and contrast the monstrosity of the Warm Springs BART[2], which is one of the least-used stations.
1: https://www.google.com/maps/@47.337124,8.5196172,3a,75y,4.85...
2: https://www.google.com/maps/@37.502989,-121.939301,3a,75y,19...
Re:Tunnels in the US cost more than anywhere else
by Drunk_Engineer on Tuesday November 03, 2020 @12:31AM
(#24976671)
Switzerland benefits from having POP ticketing, whereas US planners insist on faregates. The only reason the US builds mezzanines is to manage the faregate queues.
Re:Tunnels in the US cost more than anywhere else
by thaumasiotes on Tuesday November 03, 2020 @03:52AM
(#24977749)
Interestingly, Caltrain uses POP, and indeed it has some stations that amount to a sidewalk next to the train tracks. So this isn't quite a "US planners" issue; Caltrain and BART serve different halves of the Bay Area.
Caltrain manages to be much more dysfunctional than BART, sadly.
Do you mean a specific BART station? The average total BART daily ridership (400k weekday, 100k weekend) is roughly comparable to the total daily Zürich S-Bahn network ridership (400k-450k in one figure I found).
I'm not sure that Zürich has the most popular network in the country but I would assume it's up there. Bigger stations here are definitely smaller than that SJ monstrosity, and I really like how efficiently they're laid out, but which popular stations are you thinking of that are just a signpost and a place to stand? Even the most popular space-constrained ones in the city (Hardbrücke, Stadelhofen) are way more than that, and the only I can think of in the city that are basically just a signpost are those with relatively infrequent service (Seebach, Friesenberg, etc.).
In any case, I think Caltrain feels a lot more like the S-Bahn equivalent, and most of the stations aren't much bigger either. This seems to hold for several other commuter train services in the US, such as NJ Transit.