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Except a boost in ridership is absolutely not what you’d want in an overpopulated city like Paris. Subway is so bad i’ve already witnessed people waiting for tr
by bsaul 8y ago
Except a boost in ridership is absolutely not what you’d want in an overpopulated city like Paris. Subway is so bad i’ve already witnessed people waiting for trains from outside the station itself.
in the peak hours you often have to skip two or three trains because they’re packed.
- tzs 8y ago> in the peak hours you often have to skip two or three trains because they’re packed What's the interval between trains at peak hours?
- jimktrains2 8y agoA few minutes.
- niea_11 8y agoI used to take the metro line 3 from station saint-lazare. At peak hours there was a train practically every minute. As soon as one train leaves another one enters the station a few seconds after. So I often did what parent said. skipping two or three trains isn't that bad when there that many trains.
- bsaul 8y agotry line 13
- niea_11 8y agoThat is a line that I always try to avoid :). I was forced to use it for a short period of time, but I was lucky, I traveled only on the section from Montparnasse to Chatillion which, I think, is not as busy as the rest of the line because most passengers transfer to other lines at montparnasse.
- bsaul 8y agoi used to do place de clichy / st ouen at 7pm a long time ago, and i sometimes had to stay on the dock for 20 minutes letting train pass.
- moorhosj 8y agoParis had 2.9 million people in 1921 and 2.2 million today. Is it really overpopulated?
- dorfsmay 8y agoYour numbers are from the city of Paris. Most people riding in the metro during working rush hours are not from the city of Paris, but from the suburb. The suburb population in 1921 was 4.8 M in 1921 and 12.2 M in 2010. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Paris#Historical_population https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Paris#Historic...
- moorhosj 8y agoThe RER was created in the 60s for this purpose and continually expanded since, no?
- kathe-rine 8y agoThe RER brings riders from the suburbs into the city, but doesn't add to the infrastructure for transporting them once they're in Paris.
- dorfsmay 8y agoThere are RER stations within Paris: everything within zone 1 is in the city of Paris: https://parismap360.com/carte/image/en/paris-rer-map.jpg https://parismap360.com/carte/image/en/paris-rer-map.jpg But even if cutting prices is within Paris only it will probably affect suburb-Paris traffic, because it changes the cost of a trip to Paris, possibly now cheaper than driving. The article is light on details, but it looks like these measures are taken by the city of Paris with the aim to reduce the traffic within the city.
- bobthepanda 8y agoThe RER contains the western world’s busiest train line with over a million passengers a day. It’s become a victim of its own success. In fact moving block signalling was invented to boost capacity on the RER. The government is currently investing $25B in building more relief capacity, but who knows how much investment you’d need to handle the unlimited travel demand caused by a free fare.
- SparklingCotton 8y agoThen at least make it free for off-peak hours.
- adrianN 8y agoThe alternative to a boost in ridership is a boost in car commutes. You want that even less in a city like Paris.
- entity345 8y agoOnly 30% of people have cars within Paris and public transport is cheap. There is little point in making public transport free there. This is still money to be paid one way or another.
- bsaul 8y agoat this point, Paris needs to either massively transform itself ( higher buildings, larger roads, etc), which means destroying buildings in the center, like haussman did in the 19th century, or motivate people to just go live elsewhere.
- julienfr112 8y agoAnne Hidalgo is actively working on the second point.
- gerrard23 8y agoParis is losing people because the lodging costs are too high anyway
- darkpuma 8y ago> The alternative to a boost in ridership is a boost in car commutes. Or walking... Do you walk a quarter mile or do you ride the bus? If the bus is free the number of able bodied people using the bus for trivial distances could increase.
- adrianN 8y agoThe metro is full because people commute to their workplace. I don't think a significant fraction lives within walking distance of their job.
- louiskottmann 8y agoPlease don't take this as a general rule for the subway in Paris. While it is true that some lines (13 is infamous) at some hours are really packed, most of the time it is fine. I was born in Paris and have lived there for 30+ years, and the vast majority of the time I can take the subway just fine.
- bsaul 8y agoif you work in IT chances are you’re going to the office a bit after peak hours and coming back home late. 13 is a mess indeed but 4 is also bad , 7 has a lot of trouble, 12 has crack addicts on the dock menacing passengers, etc.. i’m also born and raised in Paris, and lived there for 40 years, but once you take the subway in other crowded cities ( honk kong, tokyo, shanghai, sf , london, etc) you realize having a subway that smells urine and shit , has technical issues every single days, and simply can’t handle the population flow at all, isn’t « normal ». We can live with it, the whole society has adapted to it, but i wouldn’t call the situation «fine».
- louiskottmann 8y agoAgain, I disagree here. I take the 4 all the time as it is right next to my place, without any issue. In fact I cannot even remember the last time it was packed. I also traveled and did not find other subways to be considerably better in every aspect. Subway in Japan is horribly complicated for example, with different companies operating the various lines of some major cities! London's tube is known to be overcrowded as well, and I feel like technical issues happens everywhere but in Paris the driver actually tells you what's going on. People like to romance what happens in Paris, don't be fooled, in reality it's just safe and fun in my opinion.