this video is brought to you by repido keep watching or check the link in the video description to learn more one of the simplest rules of ukian geometry is that a straight line is the shortest distance between any two points if I want to go from here to there the shortest distance is just the most direct path but surprising as it is public transit systems don't always obey this law sometimes the fastest way from A to B is by way of C it's a sort of irrational geography but how does that work an
d how do we make sense of what can be one of the most confusing elements of Transit networks in today's video I'm going to present you some examples from Toronto and around the world where that's just the case so let's dive in hey I'm reys and this is RM Transit a Channel about the Dynamics of public transportation my interest in the issue of shorter routs that take longer started when I was laying in bed thinking about Toronto's future line five which will run across the city from Kennedy to Mo
unt Dennis station a distance of about 19 km in 40 minutes based on the projected average travel speed what's rather interesting is that Kennedy and Mount Dennis are both stations on the through running kitner stov Suburban rail line and although the distance between them on the main lines is quite a bit longer at 26 km once Mount Dennis station opens the travel time should be around 35 minutes it's actually faster that means in the future as go Trin service in Toronto gets faster and more frequ
ent a passenger taking the trip across town from Kennedy to Mount Dennis station will be better off skipping the Eglington cross town and taking the longer less direct route now yes that faster route will cost more money a big issue with Toronto's rather impractical Fair scheme that I'll talk about in a future video but you'll also probably get a seat and a much more comfortable ride but still a longer route being the fastest routee seems kind of crazy think about how that changes the geography
of the city now if you're watching this video you probably like Subways Suburban Railways and rapid transit systems the same as I do and maybe the Toronto subway system in particular so when I found out that redo a well-known modeling company that has given you the model GO train might be producing a model G-Class subway car from the Toronto subway system I really wanted to see it come to fruition especially because if the transit Model Market turns out to be a big hit who knows what other kind
of models could come in the future however they'll only be producing a model if they get enough orders and so while I already pre-ordered a model before any of this sponsor stuff I wanted to see how I could partner with redo so that we could make sure they get enough orders to actually make this thing so if you want a piece of Toronto Transit history on your model train layout or on your desk or bookshelf even as a momento of a city you once lived in consider placing an order so how is it that l
onger Transit trips can actually be faster well it all comes down to average speed well the journey across Eglington benefits from directness the GO train journey benefits from less stops and higher top speeds which means you'll be moving faster for more of the trip and these kinds of situations aren't even all that uncommon around the world for example if you want to go from the airport to the city center in Copenhagen it's often just as fast to take the much longer order Regional trains as opp
osed to the less comfortable Metro and in Hong Kong a trip from Diamond Hill to Mayu on the twin M line is actually just as fast as on the much shorter Urban lines and you won't actually have to transfer despite it being a longer trip and for some trips crossing the ring bond in Berlin it's actually faster to go around the city as opposed to through it on the uban and once you open up the options to trams and trains there are a lot of examples where a longer train route rout is faster than a sho
rter tram route from Frankfurt to Geneva and Amsterdam there are some basic rules which you can discern from these situations which roughly go like this one a slightly longer trip can still be faster if it has much higher travel speeds two a longer trip can actually be faster if it has less stops so a passenger will spend more time moving and less time stationary three and of course a longer route might be faster if it's much more frequent than a more direct but much more infrequent one that ext
ra time you get because the train comes sooner gives you extra time to catch up on the longer route essentially what really matters for public transit is the distance you're traveling and the average travel speed that's quite different from for example walking where average travel speed is generally going to be very similar no matter what route you take and so you're generally best off taking the most direct one now this might seem like a minor thing but it really isn't because of the skeletal n
ature of rapid transit systems they literally changed the structure and shape of our cities that is when you think about distance in terms of Transit travel time as opposed to well actual distance Rapid Transit leads to time space compression where places that used to be far apart in distance are now close together in time and the differential impact of this on a place can be enormous you might ask is this a disaster I mean Toronto is building a new Cross Town Line and it won't be the fastest wa
y to cross town and to be fair to some extent I do agree that this is a problem but it's worth noting that Toronto's line 2 which is a proper Subway also might not compete with Suburban trains between Main Street Danforth and Dundas West blor if such a train service actually existed the truth is travel time isn't entirely out of the hands of Transit agencies if we added a bunch more stops to these Suburban lines well the travel times would go up but at the same time if the Eglington cross toown
was the fastest way across the city in the long term that might lead to severe crowding which is a lot more expensive to manage on small underground tram trains than it is on above ground Suburban trains all of these things need to be considered in the long term to maximize the value of the transit Network and it's important to remember that the success of a public transit system isn't only measured in how far it moves people but how many people it actually moves even if Eglington is slower for
Journeys across the city a dense web of interconnections and lots of destinations along the line might still allow it to move more people if for each train journey across the line several different trips can be served optimizing both the ridership numbers and the passenger kilometers on a transit system is a complex science and one that doesn't just involve the transit system but the shape and design of the city itself I think that while the answers to these questions can be really complicated w
e at least know where to look what's really interesting are the problems we don't have great solutions for for example how can we tell a passenger at a St which route to take so they get to their destination fastest without them having to pull out their phone and use Google Maps how might Maps be redrawn to reflect travel time comfort and costs as opposed to just Geographic proximity and the layout of lines these are questions I spend a lot of time thinking about thanks for [Music] watching
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Unrelated, but my brain doesn't like the fact that the Lakeshore East and Lakeshore West lines isn't just a singular Lakeshore line
Same reason that ring roads were built around cities. A longer drive but higher average speed with less congestion (at least at first) than driving through the centre of the city.
Fun fact: It's actually faster to crawl from Mount Dennis to Kennedy than it is to take the Crosstown across town.
To answer your last question, many transit maps that I have seen use line thickness to indicate speed, going from thin lines that represent regular buses to thicker/double lines for rapid transit
Never clicked so fast on a thumbnail--ever since I was a little kid, I've always felt that TRANSIT = PORTALS, and it is what made me interested in physics and relativity as I grew up. Never thought I'd hear another transit enthusiast mention "time-space compression" but I'm so, so here for it
I’m surprised that shorter =/= faster is confusing. Every satnav system I’ve used gives a choice of shorter or faster route.
I think the Crosstown being slower is not that much of an issue because many people probably want to leave the train along the trip. There are cases like this in many large cities if i am not mistaken. But the fact that Crosstown is more tramlike is the biggest issue i think.
As much as we love bashing on the crosstown, it’s already faster to take the GO train from Kennedy to Dundas West than Line 2. So subway or LRT, this would have always been the case for Eglinton too
Nothing makes me appreciate the Ringbahn in Berlin more than when they have to do maintenance on it and replace it with a bus. The distance for an urban environment is enormous, and is easily twice as fast as driving.
You showed Thameslink and Elizabeth Line in your video. The experience there, and also with the CrossCountry network is that people prefer a single train that takes them to their destination without changes to taking two trains that have a combined faster journey time. That is part of the reason why passenger numbers on those lines is so much higher than expected. I certainly do that myself, I could save about 15 minutes on my journey if I took a faster train to an Elizabeth line station closer to my destination, but I just prefer to get on the Elizabeth line, and not have to deal with the hassle getting off the train mid-journey and going downstairs to the Elizabeth line platforms. If it is off-peak, and I find my self having to wait about 29 minutes for a slower direct Elizabeth line train, then I will consider the alternative option.
When I lived in Switzerland, there were multiple routes to the same destination. When there was a delay, I knew the network and clock-face timetable well enough to know which connections I would make and beat the arrival time of the route suggestion on the app as I used the system over 60,000 trip km. Sometimes, the app redirects passengers to avoid overcrowding. It's possible to have a main line rail map showing the time between destinations on map as long as trains have roughly the same frequency as in Switzerland (I have created one), but an urban system will be harder to do since the stops are very close together. The GO and TTC subway operate on different frequencies, for example, distorting true travel time.
I'm surprised I haven't seen more model train ads throughout urbanism/transit youtube. It seems like such a natural fit. And I've met model train people, they've got money to spend on more trains.
It's not just transit. When traveling by car, there is often a choice between a shorter route with stoplights vs. a longer route along a freeway. Or, traveling by bike, there might be a choice between a shorter route that goes up and over a steep hill vs. a longer route that goes around the hill and is flat. For air travel, sometimes a route that is shorter in distance might have a long layover at a connecting airport, while a route that is longer in distance might have a better-timed connection and get you to the destination more quickly. Even walking, there are some situations, usually caused by extreme crowds, where a longer route can be faster, for example, in New York City, detouring a block around Times Square is often faster than trying to walk through it.
0:16 not sure how many flights there are from Tokyo to pyongyang tbh
That model train by rapido in the sponsee would’ve been a wet dream for even 10 year old me 9 years ago, especially if it was the mark 1 in Vancouver. You guys should make them blender models so I could get ideas to make my own subway car
Great video! It's so true... My friend's neighbourhood seems much closer if I take the longer route that has fewer stops, since the journey takes less time.
Sort of off topic but when a transit agency decides to build a tram subway they should seriously consider a light metro or a regular subway instead. This from one who is familiar with the American fiasco known as the MBTA Green Line in Boston, Massachusetts. It's so slow it's often faster to take the somewhat parallel Orange Line subway a block or two away or simply walk.
Something worth considering is that from the perspective of Metrolinx, they might rather have riders spend 5 extra minutes to get to their destinations rather than create additional demand on packed Union-bound trains. This is partly reflected in the current fare structure.
I hit upon this principle while house hunting. One of the criteria was that "door to door commute from home to office in central London should be about an hour". When I started measuring journey times on Thameslink and other commuter routes, I realised that many towns had a shorter overall journey time than suburban London (I could also find much cheaper and larger houses which was nice). All because mainline trains are faster and have fewer stops than Tube trains. Taking this principle further, there are some people who commute into London from the town of Kettering, 80 miles away, because the journey of 50 minutes isn't that onerous and compares well with commuting from Uxbridge. A lot more comfortable too (but also a lot more expensive!)