5 ms·

"headway through the core area" The core area of West Oakland, SF, and Daly City has service from all lines, so it's the sum of tph of all lines. Of course, t

"headway through the core area" The core area of West Oakland, SF, and Daly City has service from all lines, so it's the sum of tph of all lines. Of course, that does not help you at all for commuting outside the core area - which is where the length comes into play. The GP wasn't wrong, just disingenuous.

avianlyric 2y ago
If you’re going to take that view, then you need to be comparing the BART system to the entire London Metro system (The Tube, overground, Lizzie line, and suburban rail). There are many services that run parallel to the Lizzie line in central London. But they don’t share track, because that’s a terrible way to operate a metro service. If you take that approach, then BART looks like a toy compared to its equivalent in London.
- mjg59 2y ago
  If you're making that comparison then you need to count the frequency of Shenfield services separately from Abbey Wood services.
ta1243 2y ago
On different lines? By that definition there's about 300 trains per hour in the core of London across each underground line, elizabeth and thameslink. That's in each direction. That's one train departing from the core of London every 6 seconds, before you even consider surface rail.
- AnimalMuppet 2y ago
  I think you have a different definition of "different lines". BART is like a tree. The branches join together into one trunk. It's shared tracks into the same stations. So measuring the frequency of all the lines makes sense, as long as you only want to move between stations on the trunk. London is not like that (if I understand correctly). Elizabeth and Thameslink don't share tracks between common stations. So London has much higher aggregate than BART. But the statement about BART's train frequency on the trunk is not a nonsense statement.
  - ta1243 2y ago
    OK, so it's about 12tph on bart on the core stations? Disappointingly difficult to get a map of bart which wasn't geographic. So all the lines share track from Daly City to West Oakland, with some extending to Millbrae, and then branches on the east side of the bay? From the map, it looks similar to the Picadilly Line, or Central line, or as mentioned upthread the Metropolitan line, but BART has 12tph on the core, where those services have twice that. Each "line" is just a branch on a core service. The longest run is 53 miles (there's a completely separate service), which is a bit more than the Picadilly line (46) but not massively, and the frequency is under half that of the Picadilly. I think it's fair to compare BART with a single London Underground line (like the Picadilly, or the Central), just with half the frequency.
  - jmalicki 2y ago
    Another analogy might be the NYC subway, where in Manhattan you have lines like 1/2/3, A/C/E, B/D/F/M, N/R/W etc. that share a number of stops in southern Manhattan, so along the 1/2/3 or A/C/E, the sum of tph matters... but as they break from that "trunk" in the boroughs, or at the ends of Manhattan, the individual lines matters.
  - tialaramex 2y ago
    Some of London's Underground lines do share track along some of their length, like BART, but overall this is an exception rather than a rule, e.g. some of the District and Circle overlap, and indeed the Metropolitan also shares with the Circle. And I agree that for the purpose of a trip within this core, you'd only care about that 5 minute wait, which is pretty reasonable, much as often passengers won't care if this is a District Line train or a Circle, since the stop they're going to is served by both.
    - ta1243 2y ago
      Looking at the service pattern it seems the bart "routes" are more like separate branches of the same line. In reality there's not much difference between the Hammersmith/City, Circle, and District lines, especially the wimbleware part of the district line.

avianlyric 2y ago

If you’re going to take that view, then you need to be comparing the BART system to the entire London Metro system (The Tube, overground, Lizzie line, and suburban rail). There are many services that run parallel to the Lizzie line in central London. But they don’t share track, because that’s a terrible way to operate a metro service. If you take that approach, then BART looks like a toy compared to its equivalent in London.

mjg59 2y ago
If you're making that comparison then you need to count the frequency of Shenfield services separately from Abbey Wood services.

ta1243 2y ago

On different lines? By that definition there's about 300 trains per hour in the core of London across each underground line, elizabeth and thameslink. That's in each direction. That's one train departing from the core of London every 6 seconds, before you even consider surface rail.

AnimalMuppet 2y ago
I think you have a different definition of "different lines". BART is like a tree. The branches join together into one trunk. It's shared tracks into the same stations. So measuring the frequency of all the lines makes sense, as long as you only want to move between stations on the trunk. London is not like that (if I understand correctly). Elizabeth and Thameslink don't share tracks between common stations. So London has much higher aggregate than BART. But the statement about BART's train frequency on the trunk is not a nonsense statement.
- ta1243 2y ago
  OK, so it's about 12tph on bart on the core stations? Disappointingly difficult to get a map of bart which wasn't geographic. So all the lines share track from Daly City to West Oakland, with some extending to Millbrae, and then branches on the east side of the bay? From the map, it looks similar to the Picadilly Line, or Central line, or as mentioned upthread the Metropolitan line, but BART has 12tph on the core, where those services have twice that. Each "line" is just a branch on a core service. The longest run is 53 miles (there's a completely separate service), which is a bit more than the Picadilly line (46) but not massively, and the frequency is under half that of the Picadilly. I think it's fair to compare BART with a single London Underground line (like the Picadilly, or the Central), just with half the frequency.
- jmalicki 2y ago
  Another analogy might be the NYC subway, where in Manhattan you have lines like 1/2/3, A/C/E, B/D/F/M, N/R/W etc. that share a number of stops in southern Manhattan, so along the 1/2/3 or A/C/E, the sum of tph matters... but as they break from that "trunk" in the boroughs, or at the ends of Manhattan, the individual lines matters.
- tialaramex 2y ago
  Some of London's Underground lines do share track along some of their length, like BART, but overall this is an exception rather than a rule, e.g. some of the District and Circle overlap, and indeed the Metropolitan also shares with the Circle. And I agree that for the purpose of a trip within this core, you'd only care about that 5 minute wait, which is pretty reasonable, much as often passengers won't care if this is a District Line train or a Circle, since the stop they're going to is served by both.
  - ta1243 2y ago
    Looking at the service pattern it seems the bart "routes" are more like separate branches of the same line. In reality there's not much difference between the Hammersmith/City, Circle, and District lines, especially the wimbleware part of the district line.