Metra Exemplifies Everything Wrong with American Passenger Rail

The intro is heavily inspired by this video: https://youtu.be/ogB7VtxrkQI

As a Swiss citizen, I have always been fascinated by the fact that a country is able to launch people into space just for fun and at the same time have a third-world transport network

Wow. In Tokyo a train comes about every 5 minutes, on every line. You need a line map but not a schedule. You might have to wait 15 minutes out in the boonies of metro Tokyo. There are no ticket collectors, the ticketing is automated at the station. That was 40 years ago.

I took this everyday for over a year, my dad took it everyday for like 10 years I never realized our double decker train cars were weird. I love them cause I can always have a single seat to myself on the upper level

I live in Japan and here we have "tourist railways" that are only famous for how irrelevant and obsolete they are. It has better schedule than Heritage Corridor.

The Glorious Republic of New Jersey appreciates your praise.

Other rail systems: Replacing their older locomotives Metra: Tis but a scratch

As a suburban of Chicago, when I saw the title of the video, my first thought was " oh hell no - this guy is not about the shit on my Metra." But as the video progressed I couldn't help but realize he's right about everything on the list 😅 nonetheless some of my fondest memories growing up were taking the train to Chicago being a train lover when I was a kid

As a German former living in acity called karlsruhe, which is often pointed to as very innovative in Local Passenger Service, i can tell you that one lesson learned is: demand comes with frequency. You need to run your service at least any 20 Minutre, and you need to expand the dayly operating hours, than you will notice a massive increas in usage.

If our highways were run the way our rail system is, it would just be a string of lots for paid parking connected end to end across the country.

Another core problem with Metra is that Metra and CTA are run as completely separate agencies with separate constituents and separate goals despite the fact that the people of Chicagoland travel within the region and often need both services. As such, unlike in European cities, there is little connectivity between the commuter and local rail services. These systems are not integrated very well at all. The downtown Metra terminals don't even directly connect with the CTA rail lines downtown (except Millennium Station). This severely limits the options of Metra commuters to transfer to CTA rail for destinations not in the Loop as well as Chicago commuters going into the suburbs. There are only a few direct connections between Metra and CTA rail. This just underscores the lack of regional planning, vision, or purpose between Metra and CTA politically and functionally to the great disservice of the people of Chicago.

I can't imagine the infuriating rage Alan will get into, if he even glances at the road history of my country, Nepal. It took us a decade to build 40mile of highway on a hilly terrain 😭😭

From a UK perspective, our high speed rail links from south to north (probs equivalent size to state length rail) where there is a train every 15mins running from 5am until 12:45 at night. If you miss a train you’re so likely to manage to get on a different one it’s superb

As a German, I was already very upset with our own railway, but now after watching this video I think its actually amazing! Thanks a lot Edit: Wow thx for all the likes, just to explain for those who didnt know if I meant that last bit sarcastically: Yes I did.

I can't blame them for liking 2 stroke EMDs so much. Once you've worked on one, they're pretty much all the same. Parts availability is great and they're simple.

Metra's locomotive needs: - EMD prime mover -Easy to maintain -Will last for ever if you're stubborn enough. Clearly the answer is to repower some RS-3s. /s

When you talked about no one taking the train because of fear of missing one, it really hit me why America’s transit is so bad. In the UK, on most routes if you miss a train it’s 10-20-30 minutes for another depending on the time and the route, e.g. my town to London can be every 5 minutes during rush hour, but on a Tuesday morning a few hours after it’s only every 20 minutes, and if the train got cancelled, then I could always take a different route and catch a different train back to one of the 3 train stations in town, and if all the trains got cancelled? I’d just catch a coach or bus, or at the worst take a cab, and if I really couldn’t travel I’d just need to stay at a travelodge or something overnight. In a world where if I miss that 6pm train I’m literally screwed, I think I would just drive everywhere, much like everyone does…

The Metra Electric line honestly has the best case for operating as rapid transit with a bit more frequent service. Unless all the other Metra lines can operate like this we're doomed to keep expanding highway lanes like on 294

To make a big correction, EMD does still exist, it was just sold by GM in the mid 2000's. 645 and 710 series diesel engines are some of the most cheap and easy to maintain in the industry, if not the easiest and cheapest. Parts are still made to this day and are cheap/easy to come by.

I just spent a month in Chicago, took the Union Pacific North line into town every day and honestly it was really good, they had trains running frequently and you would buy tickets on their app and it was pretty smooth