Re: Wheaton Metro Escalator; 2nd Longest Anywhere?

[Sandy Smith <smiths@pobox.upenn.edu>]

David McLoughlin wrote:
> 
> No, the nature of the Sydney system is the heart of it. Many cities
> outside North America have rail systems Americans would call subways.
> Sydney does not. It has a suburban electric railway with some
> underground stations. So do Melbourne and Brisbane but neither of them
> are "subway" systems as the term is known in North America, Asia and
> Europe.
> 
> Just by way of a left-field example, Calcutta in India has both a
> suburban electric railway system like Sydney's, plus a subway which
> Americans would recognise as such. Ditto with Hong Kong. Ditto with
> Munich. Ditto with London. Ditto with Paris. Ditto with many other
> cities.
> 
> Sydney has a suburban railway system (and a very good one) but apart
> from service frequencies it shares almost nothing in common with the NYC
> subway or other "subway" or "metro" systems.

I guess this is the Down Under equivalent of the "What is light rail?" argument.

And since it's been previously established that what folks in Australia and New
Zealand call "suburbs" is more expansively defined than what North Americans
call "suburbs" (rough distinction:  in North America, if it lies within the
corporate boundary of the central city, it's not "suburb" even if it looks like
one, while in ANZ, if it's not close to the CBD, it is one even if it's within
the corporate boundary of the central city), then maybe we ought to allow for
differences in what constitutes a "subway" too, especially given that at least
four US cities have "subways" that are worked by trams.

However, David's original point holds.  In North America, an underground rail
line that is serviced by regional or mainline rail equipment would not be called
a subway.  The fact that Sydney's metropolitan rail loop is serviced by bilevel
coaches with 3+2 seating on their main sections (I have visions of Chicago
"gallery cars" or GO/MBTA/LA Metrolink coaches in mind; only the Chicago cars
have center doors, whereas all rapid-transit "subway" cars in the US have three
or four doors on each side) would argue against the North American definition of
the term, no matter how frequent the service.

You may argue that passenger comfort level should not be a determining factor in
defining the type of service.  In which case, we should turn this entire thread
over to the Miami Valley Rail Authority and have Dawn Sizemore pass final
judgement.

-- 
Sandy Smith, Exile on Market Street, Philadelphia    smiths@pobox.upenn.edu
Pennsylvania Current, yadda yadda           http://pobox.upenn.edu/~smiths/
This is the condensed version of my .sig.  I'm too tired to put a quote in.