Prologue Pittsburgh’s light rail may look like a classic 80’s system from afar, especially with its core subway and extensive utilization of railroad right of way, but it is in fact a transformed first gen system, and contains a rich and varied history. With lots of bridges and tunnels, light rail vehicles faithfully serve the […]
Prologue Philadelphia, the city of American freedom and independence, tourists randomly being attracted to a broken bell (the city hall is arguably cooler), the city that embarrassingly gets left out when listing major northeast US cities when it is probably bigger than Boston, has a robust transportation network famous for trackless trolleys trolleybuses, and its […]
Prologue Why? What’s wrong with you? Why are you reviewing a cable car?!?!? In the “mission statement”, I said that I’ll review everything that’s mechanically or linguistically a tram, and yes, that includes aerial trams, as those are trams for some reason. So, the next time you build a cable car (or any kind of […]
Prologue So… first review outside the northeast! 🥳 Anyway, as part of our tour of first-gen systems in North America, we will turn to Cleveland next. Frankly, Cleveland has a fairly unusual system in that it does not derive from the city’s streetcar system, but rather from a unique semi-interurban operation. Overview At 29 kilometers, […]
Prologue The Newark City Subway… do you mean the New York City Subway? Well, no, and it’s not a tram, so why would I be reviewing it? Anyway, when listing the “famous 9” systems in North America, you always forget about either Pittsburgh, Cleveland, or Newark. And it’s a bit hard to imagine Newark, an […]
Prologue The previous post was about Boston’s quirky little isolated light rail line, the Mattapan Line, so naturally the next post will cover the real light rail system of Boston, the Green Line. The Green Line has the highest ridership per mile of any light rail system in the country, and was also the first […]
Prologue Why on earth did you choose a quirky line in southern Boston as your first review!? Well, I don’t know actually, maybe because I’m currently in Boston… Maybe because I like PCCs… But from a practical standpoint it’s a short line that can be quickly described and serves as a template for myself, and […]
Post Contents: Each system review will contain the following elements, though this is not final, and you may suggest your ideas in the comments. Prologue Entry System location System overview and statistics Systems complemented Frequency Fares History Pictures Analyzation Frequency Intermodality Character Type Hopefully this will provide a full and thorough overview of the system […]
