Hello please talk about the purple line

Get well soon Alan.

A face with the voice .

Too many E-A-G-L-E-S and Go Birds chants?

Hello Alan Fisher, I think I have a interesting subject for you to talk about,it’s the Honolulu rail in Oahu,Hawaii,I think you will find this interesting,it’s been delayed for 14 years still under construction since 2009,and 11 Billion Dollars over budget.And how there was already and existing railroad,Hawaiian Railway Society, that had a right of way.

This comment deserves more likes

Im liking for the parody value.

Respected comrade: my guts derailed with laughs.

Imagine how hilarious it would be if this were really Kim typing away in a KZfaq comment section.

Aren’t the trams and all that used ones from former East Germany???

Amen!! I love that California is investing in solar but I hate that my state is also shutting down nuclear. We need both to stop using fossil fuels.

@@PASH3227 Exactly! And my state's doing the opposite problem, badly and expensively building a new nuclear plant (not an inherent problem with nuclear just a particular problem of how this project is a massive give-a-way to Georgia Power) while cutting it's program for letting home solar users sell back to the grid. Choosing just one of these undermines the advantages of both and lets the gas and coal companies laugh all the way to the bank.

The *GREENS* in Germany shut down all the nuclear power plants, so last year with the energy crisis, they (THE GREEEEENSSSS!!!!) had to fire up the COAL plants again and in fact needed so much extra COAL that they had to screw over PASSENGER TRAINS aka PUBLIC TRANSPORT in order to MAKE WAY FOR MORE COAL TRAINS to the power plants! I almost died of irony following that debacle (I am Dutch) and it's the perfect example of what you're saying lol

Oh no! I love the beltline, I wish that this vision existed

@@l3gacyb3ta21 The first stage of the light rail line is the Atlanta Streetcar extension that's currently being planned. There's a bit of NIMBY resistance but the real problem right now is those noting the street car's current failings (because it largely goes around pretty dead parts of downtown) but Mayor Dickens so far still backs the LRT going to the Beltline.

Yeah the Prairie path and similar are all the skeletons of old rail lines. In many cases, they were electrified railways. We want more rail but we love having the trails too

So... You want them to be what they used to be.

Funny you mention those towns- I grew up in Plainfield and moved away 5 years ago. Those downtowns used to suck... Full of empty buildings and a little urban decay- are they looking a little better now?

Staten Island has a classic case of this twice over. The North shore line has been varyingly abandoned, allowed to wash out into the bay/kill, and built over, while the South Beach Branch was simply sold-off and build over as housing. Neither would be all that ideal for transit anyway(North Shore running right on the coast, a replacement would be better place cut-and-covered under Forest Avenue or Victory Boulevard, the Beach Branch probably better replaced by a bus lane or maybe some trollies), but had they been preserved they could have been useful, even if just as bike paths.

@@F4URGranted I live in Plainfield currently and the downtown has stayed almost completely the same except an extension of the electric park path under the bridge.

Massachusetts resident here... I would assume that rural rail trails are much easier to get approved. They are also a lot less likely to be blocking potential rail transit, which will never be relevant in those areas due to low potential ridership. A lot of them replace 19th century industrial lines, which are as permanently gone as the industries. In these cases, despite being primarily recreational, I would argue that they are an effective transit alternative for at least a few people who choose to use them that way. And they probably keep a few parents from driving their kids around the neighborhood.

@@brianw1620 yes, I was hoping to hear about the Northampton/Hadley/Amherst rail trail and how it began plus the many other connecting town projects. I recall when it started but don't really know the extent of how much it's grown.

I did get that feeling when I was exploring some of Chicago's rails to trails last time I visited. Everyone on it was there for recreation, not because they were commuting to a place of interest using the trail. Some exits off the rail would be hard to do trying to get your bike down the stairs too so a grocery store run would have been difficult.

Transit alternative isn't their purpose. It's just a place to bike and walk. We snowmobile on many in the winter.

Bikes are NOT transportation, JUST recreation! Between snowy weather all winter and rainy weather, not to mention hot weather in the summer, there are relatively few days that a bike can be used to commute. I wouldn't want to work next to a stinking bike rider who rode into work on a 90 degree day.

Good for them, they can put a little more effort into pedaling and keep the 1% grades for real transportation.

@@JohnWilson-hb5qc Your response is emotional and stupid. Think critically and make a worthwhile argument rather than acting like you can't understand hypotheticals. There is absolutely no problem with unused rail lines getting converted to trails.

I would gladly ride steeper inclines if it meant not having to worry about some idiot in a car running me over because they were on their phone not paying attention or those people who feel bikes shouldnt be in the roads at all.

@@frankdoyle715 I have no doubt about that, but over distances it is much more comfortable to ride low inclines.

With just one small donation, you can help stop the infrastructure also funded by donations

Have Sally Struthers appear with a rusted out train car. "For only 5 cents a day, not even the cost of a cup of coffee, you can sponsor a poor dilapidated car like this."

This has happened in the maritimes and now suburbanites say: "I like the bike trails better!" but the rail lines are MORE USEFUL to a city without any!

I know the one and yes. Sauga planning is legendarily bad.

This the orangeville brampton railway?

I actually live not too far from the old OBRY and have been trying to work with Transport Action Ontario and others to try and have the line continue with rail service as opposed to being turned into a trail given the possibilities for both passenger and freight that were never fully realized (honestly haven't been spending as much time on it but Bill 23 caused Peel to delay their 2051 Transportation Master Plan which is a good way to get them to properly study the line instead of just going ahead with a trail). It would be useful to have other help in the fight but am unsure where best efforts are placed on it currently since the TMP is stalled until further notice

The ORBY section in Brampton is more than likely being kept as the city is growing at a rapid rate and it makes sense to keep this line for more transit options Not sure about Mississauga tho 😅

How would rail transit work there with only one track?

@@pizzajona With American transit frequencies? Easily. Passing tracks. Switzerland does it all the time.

@@MrAronymous do you know what frequencies they support?

@@pizzajona depends on the number of sidings

Santa Cruz is hardly a sure thing; yes, they fought off the a-holes who wanted to rip up the rails, but it isn't funded -- and until they get across the sloughs to Monterey or connection to trains to San Jose, Watsonville isn't exactly a large destination. What Santa Cruz really needs is to rebuild the line to San Jose -- but that is really really expensive.

Prairie Path Gang rise up

For someone from the Netherlands this so weird that this isn't the standard. It is just designing that way, without much additional cost. If I look on Streetview there are examples of a fence that can just be removed.

@@lkruijsw The problem is that the people moving into the suburbs in the 50s and 60s specifically wanted not to have this type of neighborhood connectivity. The specifically wanted "privacy" and cul-de-sacs. They actually paid, and still pay extra for _less_ connectivity. Ironically, you lot in Europe lucked out that you did not have the money in the 50s and 60s to make this suburban transition fast enough. By the late 70s, most people had already realized that car dependency is an insane concept and started reversing these things. In the US it was too late. But in Europe, a lot of this stuff was reversed if it was ever started to begin with. Sometimes moving a little slower can actually be an advantage.

This stuff is everywhere in suburban Vancouver. Power lines and nat gas lines usually have walking paths with access to culs de sac nearby.

@@alc3biades262 I wonder if the extra eyes and ears of passers-by helps catch niggling issues with infrastructure before they lead to disruption, thereby saving money and lives.

That would have required he do research for the video. Sometimes he does, but this was clearly just so he could have content to sell a bike.

Places like Marrietta don't want MARTA expansion, they have always voted against it

@@AdamSmith-gs2dv Screw those hicks. We need to expand MARTA in the city first before we expand out to the exurbs.

Yup, the Beltline in Atlanta is definitely on my list for this summer. If you have any suggestions where I should start, let me know.

@@NDCincifan - Hit me up when you're in ATL and I'll give you the grand tour. But, the spot to start is at Piedmont Park, specifically at the corner of 10th and Monroe.

High speed light rail? This feels like the beginning of a "light rail doesn't actually mean anything" joke lol

@@seankaiser2505 it's a light rail line. A largely congestion free light rail line in separate right of way or in dedicated street lanes and signal priority. Its generally a faster and much longer route than any of the city's legacy tram lines, but the infrastructure and equipment is built to be cross compatible, making it one of the only under construction narrow gauge tram lines in the world right now

@@seankaiser2505 You know, the legacy trams in Helsinki are just about the slowest in Europe (averaging 14 km/h), so our standard for "high speed" isn't all that staggering 🐌

They're far, far better than it being lost, but they present a barrier to restoration once installed.

Putting a trail on top of an old right of way is not necessary to preserve it. For example, the PRR Octoraro Branch between Wawa, PA and Chadds Ford, PA for decades. SEPTA maintains ownership of the right of way. It would probably make a great trail, but hopefully it would make a better commuter line one day.

The only problem with this is that so far, no rail right of way that has been converted into a trail has ever been converted back into a rail line. The bike trails are usually super popular so ripping them out and putting a rail line back in is very unpopular and I don't think it would realistically ever happen.

Except for the fact that that has only happened once in the US. In practise, once you rail-trail an alignment, it's as good as gone

@@GearReview23 a solution might be to just take a bit of the adjacent land, like we do for car infrastructure all the time... Remember "the hitchhikers guide to the galaxy"?

the cyclists should have their cars taken away before they try to do this stuff ngl

Fortunately the majority or the Adirondack Railroad's line was ultimately saved for railroad use, although a key section that was used for passenger transportation to the 1980 Winter Olympics in Lake Placid has been bulldozed. Unfortunately trail advocates and politicians succeeded in forcing the removal of track from another heritage railroad in the eastern part of the state. "Railbanking" enabling legislation was sold to Congress as a way to preserve truly abandoned railroad rights of way for future re-use for rail-based transit when the demand justified reinstating rail service. It was agreed that in the interim, rights of way of abandoned railroad lines could be used for hike-bike trails, but that if the need arose, construction of rail lines would have priority and the trails would be subject to relocation or removal. For lightly used rail lines and rail lines that were "embargoed" but not abandoned, the Rails to Trails Conservancy promised that they would not advocate for removal of existing rail infrastructure for the purpose of creating recreational trails. However they have since reneged on that promise. In the matter of the Adirondack Railroad dispute, the Rails to Trails Conservancy refused to take a stand for preserving the railroad, claiming that their policy was to have no input on the activities of their local chapters and allied groups. I believe that we need new legislation that stipulates that "rail banking" can only occur if the railroad infrastructure is preserved in place. There are tens of thousands of miles of railroad rights of way in the U.S. which have been devoid of track for many decades and sit unused [except by trespassers]. I believe that construction of recreational trails should be limited to those rights-of-way.

Bingo. I was going to mention the Reading line to the Lehigh Valley if no one else had. I grew up in Bethlehem and rode that train to Philly a few times before it was discontinued in the 80's. Now, getting from Philly to Bethlehem via transit is difficult/clumsy (there is infrequent Greyhound service to Allentown and then you take a LANTA bus to Bethlehem).

I frequently ride on that path. I would guess four times the number of runners/walkers to cyclists. I can't imagine trains getting anywhere near the multiple multimillion dollar homes and multi billion dollar country club in this wealthy area of the state.

Lehigh Valley is starting research to see if it feasible/ has an interest to bring connecting rail to Philly back

Right and the issue in the states is people try to use rails to trails an excuse to not make city streets safe for cycling. The Netherlands has it all.

We really should have gotten the proposed light rail that would have run from Kenosha to Milwaukee along the UP (formerly C&NW) lakeshore route. This would have connected with Metra in Kenosha.

I was so sad that they didn't end up building the "blue line" light rail between Fishers and Indy 😭 but I feel torn because the Nickel Plate trail is one of the only places you can ride in Fishers without the constant threat and stress of cars. Ultimately like he said, we just need to make room for both... stick that light rail in the highway median or something 🙃. Ultimately though, it's Indiana... so...

@@een_schildpad I agree, biking on the monon and the nickel plate is lovely, but I really wish we had the opportunity for better transit options that we would've had connecting the downtowns of the Hamilton county cities to Indy.

@@calebstone8260 I couldn't agree more!!! That would be so great for everyone involved. What a missed opportunity it is not to have that 😞 Maybe someday 🤞

tbh it takes a lot away because the inherent flaws in freeway median alignments make them objectively worse than a downtown station. Additionally, reactivating it as a grade separated VRE line with trail space parallel would be nice to speed up travel times.

@@applesyrupgaming They could've been similar to the CTA ground-level stations (see Brown or Pink Lines for examples). But it just wasn't "meant" to be.

@@brianhenderson9124 well to be fair virginia at the time wasnt this built up and sprawly but 3 years later wmata went to build the orange line or planned it

i mean didnt it get destroyed in the civil war, also you're forgetting the most egregious rail trail: the w and od

@@applesyrupgaming No the VC got shortened shortly after it got converted from narrow gauge in the 1930s and yes I do know about the W&OD Ether it should be a regional rail line, a high floor LRV, or automated light metro.

@@erikgustafson9319 i think a grade separated regional rail line would be good for that distance

@@erikgustafson9319 but that would duplicate the Washington Metro Silver Line that now extends out to Ashburn. What put another rail line in when another has been built to serve the same route?

A BIG stupid movement.

@@MarceloBenoit-trenes Well I guess to Singapore's gov't, its sovereignty matters more than rail connectivity. It has long felt that the railway that formerly existed, being operated by peninsular Malaysia's railway operator KTM, was undermining its sovereignty, especially as Malaysia has setup its immigration facilities @ the Tanjong Pagar railway station, deep inside Singapore's territory & on the edge of our downtown, rather than along our international borders. & in an act of protest, since the 1990s, Singapore had moved out its immigration facilities frm Tanjong Pagar railway station to Woodlands Train Checkpoint (WTCP) at the international border, & forced passengers on Malaysia-bound trains frm Tanjong Pagar to alight at WTCP for immigration. A conspiracy theory is that Singapore has little incentive to improve rail connectivity to Malaysia (& the former HSR project agreed between the 2 countries might've just been Singapore trying to play nice, while secretly being pessimistic that it would ever take off) as it'd encourage Singaporeans to visit Malaysia more frequently & spend money there (where costs of living are lower) instead of locally, causing an outflow from Singapore's economy. Meanwhile the high commuter demand of Malaysians working in Singapore is likely to be inelastic anyway; because as salaries in Singapore are significantly higher, they're unlikely to be deterred by subpar connectivity across our international borders e.g. frequent traffic jams there, which has also reportedly caused buses that connect WTCP to the nearest MRT (subway/metro) station (which you'll need to get to downtown Singapore from Malaysia, now that this rail to trail thing has already happened) to skip WTCP sometimes. A side effect of this rail to trail thing (which happened on July 1 2011) is that rail cargo into Singapore was also ended, as WTCP, the new terminus for Malaysian trains running into Singapore, was too small to handle cargo (yes, WTCP is all the way out of town at our international border crossing, but public housing has also built up beside it since the 1970s, as people were attracted to move there by the area's connectivity to Malaysia, as there're land/road crossings there too, unless you want to deforest a swamp on the other side of the station). In 2021 the end of rail cargo came back to haunt us as that made Singapore more reliant on road trucks, & during the pandemic, the gov't required truckers to wait a few hrs for PCR tests before they could enter the country, intensifying jams at the border crossing. If rail cargo was still used, fewer drivers & thus tests would've been needed. In the end the gov't had to give truckers more priority for CoViD vaccination to avoid paralysing our economy. To compensate Malaysia for scrapping the Railway Act, Singapore also allocated 6 plots of land in its downtown to be developed by a joint-venture (M+S) between the 2 countries investment companies (Temasek & Khazanah). 2 of them have since been completed - DUO & Marina One - as office-cum-luxury condominium skyscrapers with a smaller shopping mall (plus an Andaz hotel in the former). In hindsight, if the Downtown MRT Line's stage 2 (the western segment) was built a few years later (& after this rail-to-trail thing happened), it could've been built along the rail-to-trail, instead of having to be tunnelled beneath Upp Bt Timah Rd that runs parallel to it, saving money. Unlike other park connectors in the country, this rail-to-trail also has a lower speed limit for bicycles - just 10km/h (~6.2mph) instead of 25kph (~16mph) - probably as its unpaved. You could run even faster than that. There was even a photo circulating online of a speeding ticket/summone that was indeed issued to a cyclist there, a sign that the speed limits there might actually be strictly enforced. Also recently, environmentalists were up in arms over our gov't's long-term plans to replace Clementi forest, which is adjacent to this rail-to-trail, with apartments, to house a growing population. Maybe this will unite the environmentalists with those who've opposed the country's 2013 Population White Paper (due to overcrowding fears), which planned for a 40% population increase to around 7m in 2030, or a population density of ~10000 people/km^2. Opposition lawmakers who'd counter-proposed a watered-down version of the White Paper were quite brashly refuted by our PM as 'irresponsible' I remember. Or maybe the apartments could be built above the rail-to-trail instead (~8-10m wide) to spare the forest from having to be cut down

Bike paths are great next to both rail lines and roads. The way I see it, the more the better.

Bike paths under powerlines would totally transform my town. A light rail would be even better if it connected to local centers but just wide safe bike paths would be fantastic.

my city uses power lines right-of-way to built a light rail line on

@@Banom7a Which is pretty much going back to a grade-separated interurban line.

Unless the power lines are low hanging, you could also just build the bike path underneath the power lines. That's what Plano does for some of it's trails

Sports cyclist commenting here. Making everything about "utilitarian use" is something which is kind of absurd. Cycling, walking and other things which occur on these trails is quite useful even if it isn't for "commuters" or "commerce." Cycling and running as a sport should be praised because it is probably better than motorsports or driving to a field/gym. It also exposes people to bicycles who wouldn't normally bicycle and adds them to a group of people who are bicycle friendly (or aren't hostile...like the people who roll coal at cyclists). Racing bikes also help keep the bike industry alive and promote huge amounts of development like proper fitting, saddle comfort, helmet safety and expertise. All these things flow from the sport cycling industry. Please don't hate on sport cyclists.

@@thegeneral333 i absolutely agree and yeah, outdoor recreation space is super important to a healthy & happy community. I gravel bike on the trails where I live, it's just that in a lot of places, it's only the recreational users that are catered for, leaving the more society-changing work of increasing overall ridership neglected.

Fun Fact: The South Shore line Dyer branch trail is being converted back to railway ROW

As a Bay Area techie, I am so sorry that we're shipping our a$$hole millionaires to Santa Cruz county to mess with you locals and create this type of nonsense issues. We're not all moneybags a$$faces, I promise! This is just the managerial class running wild. The lowly grunts are normal good people, even in tech.

@@TohaBgood2 lolll no blame to you. It’s an interconnected area. I commute into the Bay Area for work, our local businesses rely on Bay Area tourism. I wish there was better public transit between Santa Cruz and the bay so that traffic was reduced, it’s unbearable.

The part of queens it would serve is not necessarily a transit desert it has the A train as well as J/Z, but Queenslink would create a direct ride to mid-town manhattan and also create a rail link between the area the jamaica bay area and queens blvd, a major business district. But the MTA doesnt want to explore it because it would render the NY/NJ Port Authority boner called JFK AirTrain redundant.

I wouldn't say almost completely. The entire(?) northern section is the Ohio and Erie Canal Towpath Trail, at least to Massilon.

UK rail infra sucks. I used to live there and moved to France. Now realise how bad it is and expensive.

@@murphy7801 I have heard the same but I was talking about the "Abandoned" rail infrastructure (tunnels, viaducts and track beds) that has been repurposed into hiking and biking trails.

​@@murphy7801 I suspect it depends very much where you are in each country. Lot of investment in London and Paris. France started earlier and has gone faster with new high speed lines, but as I understand it, frequencies and general upkeep on classic lines can be nothing special, especially on lines not radiating from Paris.

not the one in virginia which actually almost stayed rail had WMATA used their brain or the dickerson power plant be built in VA. The result? WMATA runs trains in the freeway median when we coulda had a VRE line with more rolling stock built for regional rail. It was very much useful as a passenger ROW.

Not true on the Purple Line--they will be upgrading and expanding the Capital Crescent Trail along with construction of the rail line all the way to Silver Spring.

@@onorebakasama yes but thus wasnt the purple line, i was talking about stuff in virginia

Those rails were only useless because the misapplication of laws have destroyed the railroads ability to operate properly (like they used to). Started with the Firestone thing, then tort law hit it pretty hard, and thats all i remember specifically, but there was alot more.

@Apple Syrup Gaming I was referring to the original post (which stated the trail was being turned back into rail), not your comment.

If the track is gone, the corridor is lost. Congratulations for handing the suburban NIMBYs a VICTORY. :-(

I will personally fight Eric Adams to put a subway up there. If he wants a bike path take some parking off Woodhaven.

I'd rather have separate bike infrastructure instead of being turned into chunky marinara by a car

Haha, literally ctrl f for the katy trail and found your comment

It isn't just about removing the railbed and converting the land back to the farm use. It is more about people walking and biking through your farm and leaving their trash behind. Imagine your back yard becomes a shortcut for the general public to walk to a convenience store. I would imagine that you would not want the foot traffic.

FWIW, I had to be in Iowa and Wisconsin last summer, rode many rails to trails through farmland/repurposed rails, roads, gullies, etc. Both reclamation and trail design were excellent in general. The thing that melted my brain was that some of the rail to trail paths were dead-on straight lines. I did a century out of Des Moines one day, and there was a 60 mile stretch through farms that was perfectly straight. I almost fell asleep at 20+mph on my aero bars.

THIS

True rails can't do hills. But at the Santa Fe Rail Trail, bikes don't go over the bridges. So it is up and down -- with a sand trap at the bottom. Big disappointment.

@@robinrussell7965 This is a pet peeve of mine. Many young kids, elderly folks and people with disabilities can't move a bike up a grade of more than 4-5%. If an old rail line is converted into a bike trail, but bridges and crossings are removed and replaced with 10% up-and-downs it makes the trail useless to this huge array of potential users. These folks are also people who are definitely not going to be comfortable sharing a road with cars. If a bike path is made, it should be made appropriate for the wide range of cyclists, not just fit racers and people on ebikes. I've seen some insane 15-20% grades in otherwise flat bike trails. What were the designers thinking? Have they ever tried to ride on the trail they designed?

Sorry but not correct. They converted old narrow AND broad gauge lines and also FORMER MAIN LINES into "vias verdes", which is an stupiid nonsense.

@@MarceloBenoit-trenes ok. But I still find it very enjoyable for cyclists.

LOLOLOLOLOLOL!!!!!

I ride my recumbent bike on the Leelanau trail in Traverse City. I it’s like sitting on my couch, looking at the scenery. And connecting all these trails to other bike, Transportation routes makes an efficient transit bike system. If we could make our cities more bike focused, instead of built around cars, we would have a much better way of getting around. That’s healthy and easier on the Environment

@@bladerunner1458 LOLOLOLOLOLOL @ U!!!!! Recreation, NOT transportation!!!!!

Its helpful that the land rights of the corridors stay intact...one day we'll get rid of these hipsters and build things in the USA again. On that day, we'll convert these back to rail lines. Basically, as soon as a serious world conflict happens, it will be "Trails to rails". Then hopefully it will be Trails AND rails after that.

Yeah i second this! Sadly we can’t rebuild on a blank slate in most places, so retrofittable solutions are key.

@@ericlotze7724 3th

I thought it would have been neat if there was a commuter line that started in Union Station that went up Kingsbury St on the east side of Goose Island then turned onto what's now the 606 and went up the old Dunning line and ended Forest Preserve Dr. Similar to the Rock Island's Beverly Branch.

Sounds like you're just incredibly biased against dual use, then.