oh nooooo i might get some elevated rail infrastructure in my photograph of the iconic chicago loop

photo median sacrificing the natural location for an elevator is a hell of a choice, but i suppose that would ruin the photos

bart has been ~GoA3 (as in, heavily automated) from day 1 and is installing cbtc—the train control system that forms the basis of almost every automated metro—as we speak. the gap between bart today and full automation is both not that large and not technical

don’t there used to be some septa involvement in the keystone service?

in the most recent (late 90s-00s) second av subway studies, one of the eliminated alternatives included a light rail line from USQ to the LES via 14 an Av D, presumably just to get ahead of the recurring “SAS doesn’t help the village” complaints.

yep! or the sixth av branch that…loops back on to the canarsie line. just in case the IND didn’t have enough wacky interlining for you already

the M14 is a feeder bus for the east village/alphabet city, which is pretty full of people and not super convenient to the subway. the east village “cuphandle” is a slightly deeper-cut, but recurring, subway crayon!

not disagreeing at all with the premise, but they’d surely run into some pretty serious platform work at those uptown stations especially (which should probably be happening anyway, the way the first/last cars “fit” the platforms at 9 and christopher is wild).

other than the branching, what about the type of service offered by rem is not metro-like? (not that having a branch is incompatible with being a metro, either!)

exactly! they could finally close the weird metro numbering gap!

montreal, truly the marriage of france (we will build a large, efficient metro system with rubber tires and automated trains) and north america (you will be required to understand local government divisions of responsibility to ride it)

(Map credit Jake Berman, via www.publicsource.org/mapping-pitt...)

With the coming of the Downtown-Oakland BRT, many of the Skybus corridors can be considered "addressed" with some form of upgraded transit. Busways do the heaviest lifting, but their total traffic separation makes them work. (Rapid transit > on-street BRT for Oakland is the biggest downgrade).

The full Allegheny County 60-mile rapid transit system, a.k.a. Skybus, doesn't perform half-badly

Other than the crosstown "urban line," the majority of Skybus miles were part of the group of "suburban lines," structured in a very S-Bahn-esque trunk-branch structure. (As such, I have given them numbers starting with S.) Only two short branches, to Etna and Carnegie, remain to be built.