doorzone bike lane in front of lezipark, great job Zurich!

woah, Zurich urbanist content. How great is that?! Please produce more videos, they are great :-)

Informative video! Mercii ;)

the fountains also provide a vital role in providing the population with potable water during any crisis where the water pumps of the city dont work anymore. since some of them work only off of spring water ("notwasserbrunnen") they can be unlocked and a water distribution station can be set up very quick to provide the local population with fresh drinking water :)

Heres a cool thing that exist only in my city but likely doesnt exist any more bc at the time of this uplaod, it was already dead...

Too bad I can't just make a car free city in game and 3d print it to real life. Really want to get out of the US but a lot of things need to happen before I can do that....

I actually usually carry my water bottle anyway so I can take a sip while relaxing on the tram. Additionally some fountains are more convenient for filling a bottle than for drinking directly. But I can bring it empty and fill it whenever I like. This is one of the things I really love about living in Zürich!

And this water is also of a much better quality than tap water across most of the world! I still notice a difference between water from Zurich and my Swiss mountain village home town, but it's miles better than almost every other city in Europe.

I love this idea! This is a beautiful nexus of passenger mobility and freight transport through repurposing retired fleets and providing alternatives to the usual "Dump it in, smash it down, drive around the Trashy Town."

In Zurich much better train/bus connections at most major stops.

Those ticket vending machines cost $300 million U.S.A. taxpayer dollars.

What life could have continued being.

Nothing new...do the same with a map of Australia.

Yeah, but the difference is that Europe added rails while America got rid of them.

The UK has this in the 1850's 😂ish

It makes sense for a garbage tram. Modern cities have underground waste collection points. These points obviously don't move around, so waste collecting service follows a rigid predetermined path. So like a highly serviced bus line gets upgraded into a tram line, we should do this with garbage collection too!

Now everything is roads:(

Are you telling me this major metropolitan US railway is *not* electrified? Damn. Even the Trans-Siberian railway from Moscow to Vladivostok has been fully electrified since 2002, more than 20 years ago, all 9000km or 5600 miles of it. The last time I took a non-electrified train was the Trans-Mongolian, which traverses a sparsely populated desert. The fact that Americans think electrifying 1100 miles of rail in one of the busiest metro areas in the world is a pipe dream just speaks volumes to how broken US transit is. Also, I'm sorry but those cars look like they are from the 1950s! Very interesting to hear this perspective though!

nice

I think the conductor can give you a day pass... i'm not sure. I remember someone paying for a ticket in cash and he asked if it worked to return and the conductor said yes

4:31 you can wait for a train and be in the middle of the road at the same time? That's peak urban planning.

As someone from Toronto and recently visited Chicago and rode metra. Everything about metra reminded me of GO transit from 2 Decades ago, So it would cost all of money but if GO transit can do improve Metra can too.

Oh Hell

Come on this road sign is all over Europe not only Switzerland

Thats confusing

Swiss, nope European design man, European

They ate changing the fare structure

Get a vpn

Get a paper schedule

this vid is great and as someone who regularly takes metra, these points are valid. Having signs that show where your trains is going would be lovely, instead of having to get the app or ask someone. It's funny tho because some stations on the Metra Electric district actually have this. At van buren street station, there are E-signs that say which train is coming and all the stops it will stop at. It would be very nice if more stations could get this as it is the bare minimum.

swiss?? thats german

Your comments should be the first step in Metra's new announced goal to transform from a Metro Chicago commuter rail network into a regional rail network. This would help get public support to get real capital funding.

I wish LA's Metrolink was inproving to the degree Metra is.

Another one: Swiss train stations are hubs for schedule-coordinated bus feeders that raise ridership, whereas most Metra stops have few or no connections to buses. In almost no cases are the train and bus schedules coordinated for fast connections.

This was an excellent video. I agree with your criticisms. Nevertheless I am thankful that we have Metra and the CTA in Chicago. Metra and CTA help a lot with reducing overall traffic and pollution as well as just being very convenient. It may not be as nice as Euro transit, but I sure am thankful that we have it. Let's hope that on day we can catch up to where Europe is in terms of infrastructure. I hope your channel gets more popular.

Why do you keep saying "THE" Metra? It's Metra, that's all you need.

Some of the newer seats on Metra, the ones that don’t flip, I’ve only been in a car that had them once or twice but tbh, I don’t like them, I thought they were uncomfortable. Metra’s normal seats, the ones that do flip I’ve always found surprisingly comfortable. Sometimes keeping it simple is just better.

This is very well done! I appreciate the "here's some actual practical little things" vibe, since a lot of US-Europe comparisons focus on the big things which would be very hard to do!

I 100% agree with all your points. From my understanding the new Metra railcars rollout out over the next could of years will have information LCD screens/wayfinding screens throughout the cars

The first one should be the 1890s era locomotives. I live next to a UPN station at the north end. 24 times a day a smoky polluting locomotive belches smoke and greenhouse gasses and stench into our neighborhood and into our windows. For those that dont know, metra operates very old locomotives on this line that stay at high rpm even stopped at the station. Massive brown and black smoke like the 1950s. Its disgusting.

Eliminate region locking

Without frequent service your regional rail network is nothing

you should talk about Caltrain

Ticket machines are obviously good but it’s crazy to me that metra doesn’t have hand held devices to collect payments via credit card on board. Also sometimes metra at least on the RI will run on the wrong side inbound on weekends. I have no clue why this is.

On the bright side, some of the Stadler trains commonly seen in Switzerland (where Stadler is from) are starting to appear in the USA. FLIRTs can be seen in Texas and California and CalTrain is getting a bunch of KISS double deckers.

I think the lack of information encourages contact between the commuters at least lol

The clear information is so critical -- and you're right that it's something that shouldn't be difficult to provide. I was in London recently, and there was an overhead announcement in the underground saying that there were changes in the service -- and advising people to check the website to find out what those changes are. 🤦‍♀One thing I love about the Zürich tram network is that the minute there's any issue anywhere, they give a clear announcement in all the trams and stations explaining exactly which parts of which lines are affected and giving advice on alternate routes.

You're right about the seats, especially the newer trains are quite uncomfortable imo. Great video

I was in Montreal in July of this year, and I was pleasantly surprised to see an electric minitruck driving by with the logo of some business on it. I did not expect to see such a thing in Canada. It even had red turn signals, which was both good and bad; bad because red turn signals are stupid and should be abolished, but good because it was a sign that it was made specifically for the North American market.