For those of you who enjoy learning and thinking about the costs and efficiencies of suburban rail and metros, there is this from Works In Progress. The Magic of Through-Running.
By the 1920s, the shortcomings of the system were becoming increasingly obvious. The population of Munich increased sevenfold between 1850 and 1930, with most of the growth in newly built suburbs. But the capacity of the suburban network could not be easily increased to meet rising demand. For the reasons explained above, the two central termini were the key constraints on capacity. There was also continued discontent at the fact that suburban services did not reach the city center, a fact that had been made more obvious by the development of trams that could do so.
On the other hand, there were fewer capacity constraints in the termini at the suburban end, because they usually only handled one type of service (i.e. just a single suburban service, not multiple suburban and intercity ones). This meant they could handle more trains per hour without major risk of generating chains of delays. If they did face capacity constraints, it was normally easier to solve them through expanding termini, since suburban termini are surrounded by less development, and land is cheaper.
I didn't find the map density much fun, but I think it is necessary to absorbing the concepts.
I am less willing to invest any pain in my learning as I get older. I like to be spoon-fed delicious and high-energy concepts at this point.
1 comment:
Didn't read the article but I think you buried the lede here. Unlike the usual vision of mass transit authoritarians now, it's clear even from the excerpt that transit systems were built to enable people to escape unlivable central cities for the more pleasant life in suburbia, not to enable living in high density communities with occasional forays into green space.
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