The European Transit System That Doesn’t Feel European

it's rare that I get to talk about a whole new country on RM Transit and when you think of Greece you might think of historic sites and beautiful islands but for me I usually think of it for the very interesting Athens Transit System as well as the Thessaloniki Metro is that still happening now since there seems to be some confusion I visited a solid super majority of the systems I talk about on the channel and when I visited Athens I was really impressed with how comprehensive the rail transit

system is and a lot of the interesting features that it has in some ways it doesn't even feel like you're in Europe so let's take to the rails of Athens to look at this very interesting transit system and where it's headed [Music] next this is RM Transit a Channel about cities and their public transit from Austin to Athens like many cities around the world not just in North America Athens ripped out its historic tram system but like so many cities across Europe Athens has rebuilt itself a really

nice beautiful modern tram system in fact for the Olympics in 2004 and it's actually quite an extensive system running 32 km with nearly 60 different stops like most modern tram systems the trams in Athens run on standard gauge track and are powered by 750 volt DC overhead lines the system consists of two different routes t7 which is a route along the coastline running to the port area of pareas where there's a one-way loop as well as to many beaches long wood is one of the most beautiful and S

cenic tram lines in the world there's also the T6 route which runs from Central Athens near the Acropolis all the way down to the coast to meet with t7 if you're curious like I was why the trams are number T6 and t7 it's most likely because the numbers 1 to 5 were used in an earlier iteration of the tram network with T1 and T2 representing truncated Services however 6 and seven also benefit from allowing a unified numbering scheme with the Metro the network is really attractive and there's quite

a few interesting spots on T6 in particular where the line splits in two to weave through tight Alleyways in historic areas of the city there's also a ton of green track throughout something which is still vanishingly uncommon in North America well the tram system only originally had kind of meh tram units from oneloa its newer trams from Stam citadis units look and feel modern seems like it's still one of the few Rolling Stock products which Stam does consistently knock out of the park running

deep underneath the trams is the Athens Metro Network which is run by the same op and moves well in excess of a million and a half people a day which is really respectable for a network with just 66 stations over roughly 92 km of track on Athens three different lines it should however be noted that because several of Athens interchange stations are really separate facilities that the actual station count is arguably higher I'll let you hash that one out in the comments though the Athens Metro i

s interesting from the first time you look at its map with a giant triangle transfer in the middle and all three lines starting near the coast and ending up further in land despite only having three lines the Metro effectively has five different interchanges since lines two and three both connect to line one twice and all of the lines actually connect with the Trans system which means there's a ton of Intermodal connectivity line one was the first line in the Athens Metro and it's one of the wor

ld's great Metro lines as so many line ones seem to be from Paris to Soul line one is actually formed of the remnants of a surface Railway with a short underground Central section meaning that most of the tracks actually don't run underf foot though they do run through some rather historic and attractive old stations some even claim that Athens line one is the oldest metro line in Continental Europe which kind of depends on how you define a metro line is it a metro line if it gets upgraded into

a metro line like Athens line one or is it a metro line if it was designed as a metro line like Budapest M1 it's really up to you to decide adding to the Intrigue of this sometimes above sometimes below ground Transit Corridor are a number of stations with Spanish solution boarding where platforms are on not just one but both sides of the trains I also really love the Southern Railway style Terminus in pus which is also home to a workshop and reminds me a lot of Hammer Smith on these subsurface

lines in London that being said the line given its age and infrastructure is rough around the edges especially compared to the newer lines now despite line one being built over 150 years ago and being electrified over 100 years ago all of athens's subsequent Metro lines have adopted the same technical standards with 750 volt DC3 rail relatively wide 2.8 M carriages and sixc car trains that are over 100 m long lines 2 and three are in many ways much less Charming they're both modern Metro lines t

hat opened in the 2000s and are entirely underground although interestingly with many curved platforms something which actually isn't so common on Modern Metro systems in many ways from these station designs to the Hyundai rhm Rolling Stock these lines remind me a lot of systems in Asia as well as of course Vancouver's Canada line which notably has the same same seats Athens also has platform edged lights which blink when a train is approaching just like in Washington DC and formerly in Taipei t

he Athens Metro is also growing and a new line line four is already under construction this line will actually be yet another with automated alen Metropolis trains alongside Paris Sydney South Paulo and Santiago and it'll initially form a u through Central areas connecting lines 2 and three the eventual goal for line four though is for it to become more of a cross town line connecting to very ious destinations around Athens Hills and also making many more connections to other Transit lines in th

e region having more Metro coverage is a good thing because Athens density is very uniform without much spiky high-rise development around stations it's more Paris than Vancouver the Metro master plan also calls for much more with an extension of line one to the north as well as a new Branch an extension to line two on both ends including South to t7 along the coast as well as a branch for line four that would parallel line two there's a lot of Rapid Transit planned finally there's Athens Suburb

an train system which is actually run by trenitalia and is quite underrated if also a little underdeveloped the Suburban train system currently forms a giant plus symbol through Athens with AN eastwest line on the north side of the city and a North South Line running through West Central Athens including to Athens station where it connects with line two and all the way south to Paras where it actually has a Terminus that's just a block over from line one a connection to line three as well and of

course to the tramps Beyond just serving Suburban trips the network also handles longer Regional Journeys and electrified inter city service to thessal eniki while the Suburban rail system doesn't have the best infrastructure or service core parts of it are included in the same standard ticket as with the metro and tramps something which much larger cities like Toronto still haven't managed to figure out there is no way to sugarcoat it the network needs a lot of work from more tracks to more gr

ade separations there are a ton of grade Crossings in central parts of Athens but when you actually look into it there's a lot lot of work going in to improve every part of the network and you can see a lot of it if you just go and look at images online including new and upgraded stations rebuilt and expanded rail corridors and far more already on the network today most of the trains are really nice Seaman dyro emus and apparently demand is high enough despite the rather low service levels that

there're already plans to introduce higher capacity trains for the future including buy Lev emus which are just lovely one really interesting element of the system is the line to the airport which is quite use in and of itself if a little infrequent but it actually also allows metro line 3 with its completely different High floor Metro trains to serve the Eastern suburbs and the airport directly this actually takes its route to nearly 50 km long to do this line 3 trains pop out of the Metro tunn

els onto the Suburban rail Corridor put up pantographs to accept the overhead power on the line and serve different platforms at the stations that are built at the appropriate platform height for the Metro trains there're separate ones for the Suburban trains this is pretty similar to how the rdam metro and rans said rail interact in parts of the heg allow this is a pretty unique way of connecting rails to the airport and having multiple different Rail lines actually directly serve it and so whi

le there is an extra Fair I'll always remember Athens for its relatively interesting air Rail Link though it should be mentioned that the frequency of airport services isn't all that great all in all Athens actually has a rather underrated public transit system from trams to Metro and Suburban rail as well as trol buses fairies and a fairly well-known panicular Athens also has basically every mode of Transit and the actual service offered is solid with good frequencies and smart integrated ticke

ting but perhaps what's most impressive is how new most of the system is from the creation of two out of three Metro Lions to the entire tram system the electrification and expansion of this sub Urban rail a lot has happened in just the last two decades and I think the future is even brighter the system is also very well connected with all major modes connecting to all of the others and the tightly interlined Metro tram and Suburban train system getting on the Metro nathens is a really great exp

erience and another example alongside cities like Warsaw and Helsinki that there are so many cities we can look to to learn about how to build better public transit and rail systems while Paris and Tokyo are great they aren't the only cities to learn from thanks for [Music] watching [Music]