Australia's Impressive Rail Transport System | Adelaide Trains

[@biscuitinthesea]

I wouldn't call that network impressive.

[@festuskyalo2215]

Noted

[@biscuitinthesea]

And also Perth's

[@TheKnobCalledTone.]

@@leo1933 Hobart doesn't have a metro train system, yet even their train system is better than Adelaide's.

[@michaeleverett1479]

Adelaide suburban train network looks really impressive when compared to many cities in the USA of a similar population as Adelaide which typically only have at best, at-grade trams/light rail or at-grade busways/bus rapid transit (BRT is a poorly defined term which could mean any type of busway just like the equivalent confusing rail terminologies consisting of light rail or heavy rail, which have multiple meanings depending on local contexts in a country or between cities in the same country.), or at worst, very low frequency mixed-traffic buses running 30 minutes in peak hours. However, when looking at various train networks and public transport in general across many countries in Europe, Asia and Latin America, then Adelaide's suburban train network with the rest of the entire Adelaide Metro branded public transport system are rather average globally, but still decent if only going from the suburbs to Adelaide CBD and vice-versa (Adelaide's PT is very dependent on mixed-traffic buses, and are unreliable due to buses being stuck in traffic creating uneven frequencies, and even a short 6 km bus trip into the city can take up to 45 minutes at worst. The O'bahn busway serving Adelaide's Northeastern suburbs is an exception to this as the bus operating on sections with full right-of-way and grade separation where stations are 2 - 5 km apart under high frequency operations is more like a fast heavy rail line. The O'bahn's service characteristics are nearly identical to a heavy metro system, but using small buses with low-level curb boarding rather than trains with high-level vehicles on high-level platforms for accessible level boarding; To be honest, that's the only PT corridor in Adelaide where heavy rail makes the most sense. Cross-town public transport is abysmal in Adelaide as bus routes like the 361 running on most of Grand Junction Road arrive every 1 hour, but it should operate every 15 minutes throughout the day. This is a problem across all major Australian cities like Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane, and Perth as well.). There aren't many cities in Africa with fully-fledged fixed-route public transport networks (buses, trams, trains, metros and etc), so their main form of public transport (particularly most of Sub-Saharan Africa) are done taxis and minibuses/jeepneys, typically operated privately, or sometimes by the government (this is gradually changing on the course of several decades from now). Also, the ridership of Adelaide's entire train network for 132 km of track (single & double tracked sections) is only 40,000 passengers/weekday (2019), which is an embarrassingly low figure for a city of 1.4 million people. Most cities around the world with a similar population as Adelaide, and even with a relatively car-centric urban form like those in Canada and mid-sized European cities to name a few would typically have the ridership of their entire train network of at least 3 - 5 times what Adelaide is currently having at the bare minimum (The train system in Perth, Australia has around 167,000 passengers/weeksay, which is around 4 times the ridership of Adelaide's, despite the fact that Perth having a similar population has far more free flowing roads and motorways and more detached single-use housing than Adelaide.). Public transport in Australia is lacklustre due to successive governments from the 1950s after WW2 that incentivise car-centric policies through single land use with low density detached housing which are intentionally designed to be hostile for humans to walk or ride a bicycle, existing tram and train lines had their services cut and/or removed (if retained, are less accessible by foot or bicycle as the previously walkable area turned into an inaccessible car-centric area) to make way for road and freeway projects (Car, trucking and oil lobbies are very politically influential in Australia and destroyed most of extensive tram networks of major Australian cities besides Melbourne. The Australian road lobbies really wanted entire train networks to disappear by making way for freeways cutting vast swathes through neighbourhoods, but thankfully, that never fully materialised, unlike many less fortunate cities in the USA.), causing many parts of Australia to be one of the world's most car dependent countries (Similar issues of chronic car-dependency are seen in other Anglosphere settler countries like USA, Canada and NZ.). I would personally say that Sydney in Australia has the best train network (Consisting of Sydney Trains and Sydney Metro combined. Rolling stock for Sydney Trains are massive double-decker suburban trains built to mainline standards, whereas Sydney Metro are much smaller single-decker trains similar to ones typically found in heavy rail rapid transit/metro systems.) in the country in terms of frequency, reliability, quality of service and pleasure of journey under a relatively extensive network (Not perfect as it's too radial, and has congested interlined sections especially on the Sydney Trains system, but it's better than anything else in Australia, bar Melbourne on certain exceptions.) with good Transport Orientated Developement that has solid ridership (The best for Australian standards), although Sydney uses a complex distance-based fare system which is expensive (This problem of expensive PT fares in issue for all large Australian cities too.).