What If Every City Had a London Overground?
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Urban Planning
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London Overground
The article discusses the success of London's Overground rail network and its potential as a model for other cities, sparking discussion on the benefits and challenges of replicating such a system.
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Prior to this starting, I used to get some other temporary error for each subpage I loaded within a session. Geofenced caching issue maybe?
The overground came under TfL management in 2007, before then it was silverlink. The routes had unofficial names (north London line, Watford dc, goblin etc), they’ve had swanky new names now and the old names weren’t used officially very much, but were on the most part obvious (goblin being the Gospel Oak to Barking LINe, the rest being more obvious)
Chicago is almost entirely above ground. Very little of the network is below the city.
Out of 224.1 miles of track, only 11.4 are underground (5%).[1] Only two out of the eight lines run that 11.4 miles and the majority of their time is spent on elevated tracks above street level.
That said, a ring around the city would be great. The hub and spoke layout dramatically limits Chicagoans ability to get around.
[1]: https://www.transitchicago.com/facts/
edit: we do desperately need a circle line, or failing that, dedicated bus lanes imitating one. Instead we get less and less service every year since the year they decimated "owl" (night) service.
Designed to get you downtown or out of downtown.
Let's say you're in Lakeview and need to get to O'Hare.
It often can be easier to Uber downtown and then ride the Blue line to O'Hare vs Red line to Blue line.
Given how expensive new metro lines are, a few express busses could do wonders.
Even just a dedicated bus lane can work.
Also compared to London or many metro systems, Chicago’s is not deep underground at all. As a Chicagoan I was very surprised the first time I saw some of the escalators in London or Washington.
In some parts Chicago’s is almost literally just basement level with nearby buildings.
tunnels are bored depending on the soil, length, diameter. Most projects I have seen use TBMs and the New Austrian Tunneling Method. Explosives are quite the minority (not many tunnels are in solid rock), even the Gotthard tunnels were dug with TBMs
https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/p00sc29t/how-they-dug-...
Same approach as TBMs just manual AF. Dig a bit, put in supporting structure. Rinse and repeat.
They've been at it since 1890 though so that helps
The reason that the Underground uses small tunnels was because expensive even then to pay people to dig out tunnels by hand.
It's so obvious that a ring around the city train is pinnacle of urban transport similar to London Circle line and Tokyo Yamanpte line, and every city and metropolis should has one of them.
They mention repurposing existing underused lines, which certainly many cities have, but how did they manage to actually get the project off the ground?
I don't know if many other cities have this kind of infrastructure sitting around and not being used to its full potential. Philadelphia's SEPTA Regional Rail is probably one. Toronto's GO has the trackage and the stations, but hundreds of route km need to be electrified.
[1] The ELL was a "subsurface" Underground line, like the District Line, Metropolitan Line, and others. Those lines use basically full size commuter trains, and have air conditioning. This is in contrast to deep-level tube lines like the Central Line and Bakerloo Line that have narrow trains with a round cross-section, in narrow tunnels.
The thing which TfL broggght was sprucing up the trains, adding staff to the stations, increasing reliability if I think frequency, and branding it so people considered it “new”.
Oyster, and later contactless, makes things far easier to travel. I’ve just been on a u-bahn and bus trip in Nuremberg, had to download an app to buy a ticket, no idea whether I got the right one or not.
Maybe. There are definitely cases where the re-brand is accompanied with physical works that make access legal, but I couldn't find cases where those works change practical access. If I have an Oyster card, and I walk up to a station with no barriers and board a Silverlink train that "doesn't take" Oyster, it does work it just wasn't legal. A month later with new "Overground" branding, that's legal and they've installed a barrier-less validation terminal so I could and should tap it with the Oyster as I pass.
I looked for, but couldn't find, pre-Overground stations where there's a NR style gate line which is physically capable of reading Oyster, but Oyster is forbidden and so you can't enter until - with the re-branding - TfL turns on the Oyster mode. I think it's likely that did not happen because it just seems pointlessly annoying, but I can't prove it.
It wasn’t valid to say Watford though.
When PAYG was introduced it was not valid on trains (other than a couple of exceptions)
But You’re right, Oyster PAYG came in the day TfL took over from silverlink - 11 November 2007. It was 2010 before it came out across the whole travelcard area on rail services. That was because the other TOCs didn’t like the idea and felt they’d lose out on revenue.
I don't think this can be correct. One of the early Oyster "problems" was that people who'd routinely made some particular journey on their travelcard, perhaps for years, would get locked out of Oyster and be unable to start a second journey. The reason was that their Travelcard had never been valid for their journey but it was valid for both the entry station and exit station and before Oyster it had no way to connect the dots, now Oyster could see the journey route wasn't allowed and so it charged them, making their balance negative, whereupon they can't start a second journey until they pay for the first.
Edited to add: Oh wait, maybe you meant only on (what would be) Overground stations ? That seems very weird, but I guess I can't prove you're wrong.
If you had a z1-3 travelcard you could travel to zone 6 with Prepay as long as you had a positive credit and would have the allroaite fare deducted. For travel on train you had to buy an “extension ticket” though. That I think might have extended even past payg availability on trains for a while.
It’s amazing in hindsight how quickly things changed, but I remember the various messes were quite notable for the first 10 years of oysters existence.
I do think Overground is a great case study in the value of both branding and service. Quite a bit of the Overground was already operational passenger rail, but it was fragmented under different operators, names, and service patterns. TfL wisely brought it under a single brand, making it simple to understand, especially as part of the larger London transportation network.
TfL also arranged consistent service, newer rolling stock, and full electrification and made the service pretty reliable. Turns out if you offer good frequency people will make use of it. Wild.
Here in Ontario we've been watching Metrolinx try and fail miserably to build out an RER/S-Bahn system out of the GO network. We're 8 years into the GO Expansion plan and Metrolinx has yet to raise a single catenary pole. It's beyond shameful. We're getting tons of shiny stations with huge capacity, but no real service has emerged (or shows any sign of emerging) to get value from all the dollars spent.
Metrolinx has been unwilling to make the leap to metro operations with line isolation and high floor platforms. They are also unwilling to move to electric multiple units to realize acceleration gains. They are trying to cling to scheduled service and commuter-oriented patterns, just because that's how it's always been done.
This means building new stations, connecting them to existing metro stations where possible, unifying the payment system, upgrading trains and so on. Since 2019 five lines like this that all run overground have been opened: https://ru.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D0%9C%D0%BE%D1%81%D0%BA%D0%...
You can see how they connect to the larger metro network on the general metro map: https://www.mosmetro.ru/metro-map
There have been a few similar projects, like reporpusing an unused underground rail cargo tunnel network as another metro line (the turquoise ring around the centre in the map).
In much smaller cities like London or Paris you could probably also find some more lines like this and integrate them, but it needs the political will of course.
For what it's worth, I lived in London for some time and its commuter rail system is much less integrated and much more confusing (with different companies, incompatible tickets and so on). In the city it's fine, though the tube isn't very comfortable (except for, ironically, its oldest lines which have luxuries such as ventilation).
They have all been using the same tickets for a while now, and of course it has been all Oyster for more than a decade as well. I’ve been commuting using Thameslink or Southeastern without trouble for about as long.
Paris’ RER is a mostly aboveground suburban rail network, it’s only underground when it reaches the city center. And it’s far from unique, that’s a common feature of commuter rail.
And while the metro is mostly underground, about 20km (out of 245) is aboveground.
Honestly did the author visit any of the cities she's talking about? I don't see what's special about London here.
Sadly we combine the worst of two worlds, in the summer the train takes on heat though radiation, but since track is tunneled they can't run AC which would heat up the tunnels (we haven't developed on/off switches in Sweden yet).
We only have 65 miles of track compared to Londons 225 but ours is uniquely cool by being bedrock excavation instead of dig & cover.
https://www.mynewsdesk.com/se/sl/news/daerfoer-blir-resan-va...
I’d question the effectiveness: I stood opposite a young guy who just clean fainted on one of the hottest days. He fell like an axed tree-trunk in the heat.
After a few minutes he was fine again, but he’d slid on the floor straight into my bag from the alcohol store and broken my wine-bottle at around 4pm on a Saturday. Anyone who knows Sweden will understand who came out of the experience worse.
Probably not... but just a consolation...
People living in Spain and France just throw away their wine if they haven’t consumed it one hour after purchase?
I have no idea how long wine would be good in 30C+, I guess it would survive 1 hour.
I felt compelled to reply here, so this answer doesn't start a myth about Spaniards or French.
London has both. A number of lines (Victoria, Jubilee etc) were tunneled and hence have the smaller, rounder trains. The cut-and-covers (Circle, District etc) have larger, squarer trains.
[1]: https://www.epiroc.com/en-uk/products/drill-rigs/face-drill-...
What exactly does the US do that others don’t?
The overground connects suburbs to other suburbs, which realistically, isn't something people use or need nearly as much.
A few overground lines are usable for a work commute though. There is a branch going to Liverpool Street, and the connection to the DLR can be convenient for Canary Wharf.
Also if you leave very far, it might be your only option to take the overground to a better-connected area. But that usually means a one-hour commute which is stretching the limit of practicability.
Sure, but this was also true before central London became what it is now, so it seems orthogonal to my point.
Sorry, what?
Central London is still very much the epicentre of masses of cultural activity.
I like our trains here in Sydney for similar reasons. The lines are almost all aboveground, you get to see plenty of neighbourhoods and plenty of sunshine out the windows (you also get the full panoramic scenery when going over the harbour bridge). And they're double decker and have lots of seating, so there's not nearly as much shoulder jostling as on typical metro trains (although there is frequent squeezing past peoples' knees to get out of a window seat).
Ironically, there is a brand new "metro" line here in Sydney (and they're building more metro lines), and many people prefer it - even though it has less seating, is often crowded, and is more underground - because it's faster and more reliable. Opposite of the situation in London. I guess the grass is always greener!
You don't even the "Wombling free" grafiti they often attract.
The northern line, which is arguably one of the most useful lines for many people, is just not pleasant at all. The air is stale and full of soot particles, and you wait in a small cramped station perfect for claustrophobia. The trains are narrow and not air-conditioned. The central, victoria and piccadilly lines aren't much better.
The elizabeth or jubilee lines, newest of the bunch, offer comfort that is much more in line with the overground (wide and tall air-conditioned trains, large and well-ventilated stations).
Myself, I just avoid taking the tube and cycle instead. It's usually faster anyway.
The Metropolitan line, by contrast (the oldest Tube line and first metro line in the world, serving as the concept's namesake) is now air-conditioned - as are quite a few other older lines. The Piccadilly, Bakerloo, Waterloo and City, and Central lines are all slated to receive air-conditioning within the next 5 years. (Although the inevitable delays in delivery will probably push this back a bit.) There are no plans to add it to the Jubilee line.
Tokyo has been working to move several lines underground. not quite the same because they weren’t elevated. but, once the buried the trains they turned the old track areas into parks, walking paths, biking paths, indie stores, etc. it’s great!
It’s a logarithmic scale, which would you rather live by?
and the lines are heavily used by freight
The challenge, I suspect, is who pays for the sound proofing. I believe the city paid to retrofit my old apartment. I'd support similar effort around tracks.
The sentence which was reproduced in that comment does not talk about "passenger journeys".
Whether 'number of passengers' (the metric used in the relevant part of OP) is a useful metric is a separate question.
I was surprised that Wolmar, a Brit, would use the term "transit", rather than "transport" or "transportation". I wonder if this was an editorial change, or him adjusting to his audience of an American magazine (though being interviewed by a Brit).
Ans then hiding the "decline all" button. No thanks.