β #Switzerland has the best public transit in the world.β π¨π
Thatβs what many transport experts told me when I was researching my book #Straphanger.
After 6 weeks of getting to know the countryβs network, Iβm beginning to think they have a point. Hereβs whyβ¦ π§΅πͺ‘
I'd been to Switzerland a few times before, and was duly impressed with its rail network, and the transit in its larger cities...
...esp. #Zurich, with its trams. "There's little reason to travel in an automotive cocoon when, for a fare of only a few francs, an efficient, stately tramway will provide transportation from point A to B at a level of comfort an emperor might have envied."
βAlain de Botton
Exactly one of the reasons I decided not to include #Switzerland in #Straphanger:
π¨πIt's a rich nation.
π¨πWith its mountains, and lack of coastlines, it's a geographical oddity. Central, but also isolated.
π¨πSmall: 8m people, about the pop. of #Quebec.
π¨π Few immigrants.
For those reasons, and others, I considered Switzerland an anomaly, hardly a model to be extrapolated to other nations. But I see its fantastic non-car transport options have a lot to teach the world.
I was staying near a village with a population of 780 in the canton of Vaud, in the foothills of the Jura Mountain. To get there from the #Geneva airport, I hopped on to a high-speed train, an escalator ride away from the baggage carousel...
I changed trains in #Morges, leaving the SBB network (state rail) for a smaller, private network called MBC, which stands for Morges-Bière-Cossonay, after 3 towns it serves. This is the system I got to know best, and it astonished me...
I changed trains in Apples, which has a population of 1,220. It's a branch point for trains to L'Isle (pop. 900) and Bière (1,400)...
This train stops at villages along the way, spaced about 2 to 3 miles apartβ¦but many stops are request only. If you donβt buzz, the driver skips the stopβ¦
I arrived in the station of Montricher, which is straight out of the 1950s...and has a quite useful outhouse...
The train went on to L'Isle. Here's the thing: there was a bus waiting for me and the handful of passengers on the train, which then took us uphill about a mile to the village of Montricher, making a half dozen stops + delivering me to my door...
You could also get off at the Parc Jura Vaudois, the regional park in the Jura Mountains, where you can hike (or cycle) for hours. As the late Paul Mees pointed out in Transport for Suburbia, transit in #Switzerland serves places whose population density is essentially 0...
The crazy thing, for a North American, is the reliability, frequency, and esp. *span* of service. I could get on the train from 6 in the morning to almost 2 am. Here's the schedule:
This overachieving rural transit company, MBC, also ran buses to local schools, in the morning and afternoon...
Often there weren't many people on the trains. Farebox obviously wasn't a big revenue generator. I asked how they kept going. Turns out they make a lot of money transporting goods and supplies, for example, feed to farms, loads of gravel...
They also serve a village near one of Switzerland's larger military bases. I often rode the trains with soldiers in fatigues carrying machine guns. The trains also transport tanks to prevent wear-and-tear on local roads.
They also generate revenue by running vintage trains where you get served wine, burgers and beer, alpine cheese...I took one, it was a fantastic three-course meal in vintage carriages, some from the 1890s...
As I said, #Switzerland is a rich nation. People can afford cars. But car ownership is surprisingly low: 604 vehicle per 1,000 population, vs. 756 in Italy and 837 in the US. With transit options this good, you don't need to rely on cars. And gas is now $8.65/gallon here...
There's more to this π§΅, but I've got to run...Γ demain.
One last point thoughβan active rural public transportation network also feeds and maintains a healthy, vibrant, and prosperous farming systemβand makes it possible for people of all ages to live, work, and go to school in a rural setting.
β’ β’ β’
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This is a map of western part of the network of just one Canadian passenger railway in 1955.
You could really go a lot of places by train then.
And fast: 71 hours, 10 minutes from #Montreal to #Vancouver. (It's 94 hours, if you're lucky, from Toronto to Vancouver today.)
π€οΈπ§΅
There were two express trains across the country that year: The Canadian (CP) and the Super Continental, run by Canadian National Railways, the "People's Road."
Your freedom of movement was impressive, especially if you lived in eastern Canada. From Montreal, you could go to Chicago via Detroit; you could ride from Quebec City to Boston; Atlantic Canada was served by a very dense network of tracks.
Great-grandfather: allowed to walk 6 miles on his own Grandfather: could walk 1 mile
Mother: could walk a half mile
Son: could walk 300 yards (to end of street).
What happened? *Cars* happened.
A flood of traffic shrunk the geography of play and free-roaming.
π§΅
(Thanks to Shrinking geography of childhood in UK, thnx to @timrgill and @drwilliambird for the research and graphics.)
What's the solution? One way forwardβplay streets.
The UK once had 700 of them; closed to traffic, but open to kids.
@timrgill @drwilliambird A century ago, Play Streets were common in NYC, closed to cars by order of the police.
Watch out for "stations fantΓ΄mes," now closed, but which you can see flashing past on some lines. I got to visit St. Martin, which still has beautiful tile ads from the 1950s.
That sums up complex research that showed how social interactions diminished on streets with more automobile traffic. (Appleyard focused on 3 residential streets in San Francisco in the 1960s)
One year after his research on how cars erode real-life urban social networks, Donald Appleyard was killed by the driver of a car in #Athens. He was 54.
In the 1660s, this French philosopher came up with an invention that solved the problem of urban transport forever.
It had nothing to do with Robo-taxis, flying cars, or Tesla Tunnels.
π§΅
His name was Blaise Pascal (he of the famous Wager). After inventing one of the first mechanical calculators, the Pascaline (below), he turned his mind to the problem of traveling around #Paris ...
Paris was then the most populous city in Europe, and the most densely settled. The wealthy got around in private carriages, drawn by horses, which they paid vast sums to maintain. The poor walkedβbut nobody got around very fast. Pascal conceived a system...