This Tiny French City has a Better Metro than Yours | Rennes Metro
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- čas přidán 19. 06. 2024
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A lot of the discourse surrounding rapid transit systems, especially in North America, is that some cities are "too small" for a comprehensive transit system or a metro, but Rennes - a French city with less than half a million residents, disagrees.
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Ever wondered why your city's transit just doesn't seem quite up to snuff? RMTransit is here to answer that, and help you open your eyes to all of the different public transportation systems around the world!
Reece (the RM in RMTransit) is an urbanist and public transport critic residing in Toronto, Canada, with the goal of helping the world become more connected through metros, trams, buses, high-speed trains, and all other transport modes.
I’m French and I would have never thought that Rennes could be considered “tiny”
Same here, I was expecting a city with like 50k inhabitants or less
It depends on your point of reference.
I live in a city of half a million people but I usually think of it as small because right nextdoor there's a city with 12x the population. But if it were an isolated city instead of part of the world's 20th largest urban area, I would class it as a medium sized one.
Yeah. Rennes would be the second largest city in Denmark if it was located here.
For context our biggest city is Copenhagen (650k urban municipality, 1.6 million metro region) which has 4 automated metro lines (total length 36km) and 7 Suburban S-train lines (170km) along with a 28km long circumferential light rail line under construction.
Below that we have Aarhus with a population of 370.000 with a very new light rail network from 2017 of 2 lines, both of which have taken over service on regional branch railways and acting as tram trains, making for an astonishing 110km long system (of which 12km is new built as light rail), albeit with poor frequencies and low ridership. But it is still growing.
Below that is Odense with 205.000 residents which opened their very own light rail system with a single 14.5km long line last year (2022). Ridership is sadly quite low as of now, only about half of the projected ridership (yet still higher than Aarhus' annual ridership) part of which is caused by adjacent projects like a new hospital that has seen massive delays, and budget cuts to the buses one the light rail opened.
And finally there's Aalborg with 120.000 residents, which did have a light rail planned but which funding got cut for in 2015 by a right wing government. The project was revived in 2017 by an opposition coalition that found funds to continue with the project bus as a BRT line, which is nearly complete now and opening in less than a month (Sep 2023) as a 12km long BRT line.
Every other settlement in Denmark is below 100.000 residents. The only possible exception being the Tri-state area of Fredericia, Kolding, and Vejle. 3 cities close together with a combined population of 155.000 and zero rapid transit. And poor public transit in general. The dead center of the region is a highway interchange which might be the largest in pure size anywhere in Europe at the intersection of the E20 and E45 highways.
@@0megax788 i thought it would be something like 5000, but in that way it's uninteresting
If the City of Nordhausen with 42.000 People can have a Tram, then others are just Lazy
If Rennes were in the US, it would be the 81st largest metro area by population - right between Little Rock and Des Moines. I don't know if I'd call it "tiny", but it definitely feels small in a North American context.
From a German perspective it sounds absurd that someone could think that a city of a few hundred thousand people could be "too small" for public transport. One of the cities here which is famous for its good public transport is Karlsruhe with "only" 313,000 people.
I mean, some think that cities the size of Helsinki (600.000 in the city, 1,4 million in the capital region) are "too small" for anything other than maybe light rail or BRT, it's crazy.
Agreed from a british perspective. We may not have a real metro for Birmingham (it's actually shocking how bad Birmingham's Public Transport actually is for it's size) but if you look at cities like Edinburgh with it's tram system for 500,000 people, we do sometimes know what we are doing.
I live in Leeds which is the largest city in west and South Yorkshire, an urban area of 4 million similar to the NRW. Sheffield is city of 500,000 and has a small tram system but Leeds (population 750,000), Huddersfield (population 250,000) Bradford (population (400,000) and Doncaster (population 300,000) all have no mass transit. Also Sheffield and Huddersfield have no electrified trains and both Leeds and Sheffield were removed from high speed 2 on Cost grounds. The UK government cancelled a leeds stadtbahn which would’ve prevented the tram closure in 1959. They cancelled tram proposals in 1985, 2000, 2007, 2012, and 2016 and only granted £100,000,000 to build an entire tram network. It’s absurd
It still comes up from time to time in Germany albeit with smaller numbers, of course. For example, I remember a discussion about reintroducing trams to Kaiserslautern which has around 100k residents but some consider it too small to have a tramway even though there exist not that much larger cities with one as well like Darmstadt (around 150k res) and Ulm (around 130k res*), the various town tramways in East Germany notwithstating.
*Though strictly speaking, its the facto population is a bit higher than that as neighbouring city Neu-Ulm also exists which is only a separate city by the fact that it's on Bavarian grounds while Ulm is in Baden-Würtemberg. However, that side of the Danube still has no own tramway which IMO supports my statement.
But of course, the definitions of "small" and "big" are vastly different on both sides of the Atlantic even though the point of a tramway is to have a big town urban railway without building too expensive infrastructure.
To this American, a city of a few hundred thousand is a pretty big city. A small city would be 50-100k people. In my state there are only six cities bigger than this, and whole bunch that are smaller. Cities of this size are small enough to easily cross on a bike, and I suspect this accounts for some of the lack of transit-people who can’t afford a car are assumed to ride bicycles instead.
Interesting case: Toulouse with 1 million inhabitants is currently building around 30 kilometers of subway while it already has 20 km of light rail and 27 km of subway
Conclusion: Toulouse does not lose.
Toulouse has more like 1.5m in its metropolitan area
But no lgv :'(
I currently live in Toronto, but I find the Toulouse metro much more efficient.
And the TGV is iirc working it’s way there! Plus the gondola!
Rennes is a city with a lot of students (this explains why the metro runs late :) ). This is the same for my home town: Toulouse, we also have a Val metro system (larger than the Rennes one I think) with 2 lines and we are currently builing a new 23km long line.
Yeah, but sadly the 3rd line will not be a Val…
@@jd-dev I enjoy riding VAL on line A and B everyday to go to work in Toulouse, but these trainsets are a bit too narrow. Siemens proposed the NEOVAL for the 3rd line, but ultimately choosing more conventionnal Alstom Metropolis was probably a better solution. It also reduces some technical risk which is preferable considering the investment needed to built the new line as well.
@@jd-dev I think you meant "fortunately" because as practical as the VAL is, it is definitely too narrow. Wider trains like the Metropolis are the smarter choice IMO.
There are so many university towns around the world that would benefit from similar systems, even in Canada I can think of several!
I think if it will be frequent and automatic it is better to not be a VAL. There is the Alstom-VAL-saga in Lille, they are still have problems with integrating the new longer stock. 2016 was the deadline, but they still have software issues... (It is 2023 now...)
Hi RM Transit ! I'm French student and i'm living in Rennes. The opening of the second metro line in Rennes last September changed the daily life of thousands of Rennes residents. In addition to being very modern, its regularity, cleanliness and efficiency really make mobility a revolution. Rennes is a medium-sized city, so you can cross the 4 corners of the city in a very short time and thanks to very well thought-out connections. It is a real impact for everyday life, studies are being carried out but it is estimated that more than one inhabitant in two uses the metro for their daily journeys. It is important to note that the city is also very well equipped for cycle routes, which makes it a second factor in sustainable mobility. Rennes is a city whose good quality of life is partly due to mobility which is very accessible and developed. It's a huge cost for an average city which is not as big as other French cities, but it's an investment that pays off for the economic attractiveness and sustainability of the city !
I find it so hilarious that an isolated, car-free mountain village like Wengen, Switzerland, has trains that run more often and more reliably than anything in the US or Canada 😂
I remember planning my trip to Switzerland, seeing pictures of Lauterbrunnen and thinking that I might have to rent a car to get to a place like that, before I remembered that I was planning a trip to Switzerland and that there's trains there every half hour.
I mean there are several systems in the US and Canada that operate frequently and reliably - it’s just not most systems
London Ontario would not be on that list. The population here has exploded over the last several years. So much time and money has been squandered debating what system to build that we still don't have anything approaching adequate.
@@vanschaaykb Watch the channel "Not Just Bikes", a channel dedicated to better urban planning. The owner of the channel is from that city (which he hilariously calls "Fake London") and he knows quite a lot about it. ^^
Switzerland has the most efficient train network in the world, it seems to me, extreme frequency, excellent coverage of the entire country, good subsidies, consultations with the population for projects. So Switzerland also has its faults like everywhere else, nothing is perfect in the universe. It's a country that I love very much. Trains leave Switzerland to go to France, Germany, Italy, etc. Geneva is a very special case, a Swiss City with its suburbs made of French territories, with efficient cross-border urban transport as if Geneva and surrounding France were one! Only customs can show that there is indeed a border!
Rennes line b cost US $1.4B, only $100M/km! Despite being 85% underground. In comparison, Montpellier, France, built its 60km long system for the same cost. Rennes chose to have less but higher quality transit coverage, which is as valuable.
Fun fact, 30 years after the initial opening of its system, Toulouse, another French city smaller than Edmonton AB with 2 VAL metro lines just started the construction of its first 27km 80% underground heavy metro line, it is set to open in 2028. A 2.7km 2 stations extension is also under construction on one of the existing line to allow better connections with the new one! So Paris isn’t the only French city doubling the size of its existing metro system !
Rennes is quite a dense city though, it makes it the perfect use cas for a metro as land is highly valuable (so going underground is really worth it) and there are more than enough people to use the metro
@@pierrethetrex6106 Yeah, in the same idea and conversely, I think the issue in NA is not to be "big enough" but to be not "dense enough", due to urban sprawling, stroads, and ubiquitous parking lots
that's nice to know! Does Bordeaux offer a better public transit system than Toulouse ?
@@GustavoVS11 Not at all, Bordeaux has a shitty TS with trams running at a frightening average commercial speed of 18 km/h...
@@4starshotel I think they can't get metro (or very pricey options ?) because the ground is too wet or something like that. It has to be something like that otherwise I'm quite sure they would have a metro like every other big French city.
Brings back memories of a discussion I had with the deputy mayor of London (Ontario - population 400,000) 25 years ago about protecting a transit right-of-way when doing a major development project. His response: "We're not as big as Toronto. We'll never have a subway." Sigh...
and now basically every f**king road in the city is undergoing lane expansion 🤣
It's all just excuses to accept oil money and be corrupt
I lived in both places and the contrast is quite striking. But for London ON, having a proper train service to Toronto would be a good start already.
@@SpectreMk2 There's VIA, which isn't so bad. Bit pricy. They did try a GO Train program as well, but it seems it didn't work out.
Admittedly, if I'm going to Toronto, it's usually to get to Pearson and I use ONEX Bus. It's direct and cheaper.
@@DDRWakaLaka That's true, I forgot about VIA Rail.
I'm from Rennes, and let me tell you, we LOVE our metro. Everything is thought around it. When and where you go out, where you live, where you do groceries... I know maybe 3 or 4 people max that owns a car and it's for really specific reasons (a nurse, a delivery guy, etc). The metro runs till 1h30 on Thursday cause it's the day when students party, and it's like, a whole thing. And for the part of the city that's not covered by the metro, there's a huge bus system, and it's mainly big supermarket and things like that. God I love my metro. Thanks for talking about it
And here's the thing about Rennes doing all this: Mayor Henri Fréville wanted the return of the city's tramway which had been dissolved by his predecessor Yves Milon in the 1960s, but the public didn't like this because of it not being car-centric. And when Charles de Gaulle visited, he remarked "When you have a million inhabitants, you can have your metro". Then the 1980s came along and Mayor Edmond Hervé wanted a new system to solve congestion and after several studies, Line A opened in 2002. Rennes and other smaller cities like it show you don't need a million to have a good Metro system, no matter what de Gaulle says. Charles may have been a war hero and good strategist, but even a strategist like him underestimated Rennes.
If the Rennes Metro can move hundreds of thousands of riders a day, easily so could an American or Canadian small city. But what brings it all together is land use. With the right transit-oriented development, not to mention street design to handle excellent bus and bike lanes, a lot more people will switch to walking, biking, and taking transit!
The most appalling thing for me as a french person is that the plazas in front of the stations don't have enough trees. You might live in Brittany, but Urban Heat Islands are coming to get us all !!
I am from Slovenia. Our capital Ljubljana is about the same size (300.000 urban inhabitants, 500.000 in the wider metro area). Besides an outdated bus network it practically does not have public transport. It used to have a tram system in the early 1900's, but it was destroyed after WW2 because it was deemed uneconomical. There was a lot of talk about building a new urban railway system, but the ideas were put off since Ljubljana was always deemed to be too small for such a system. I wish we would take a look at examples such as Rennes and Lausanne and learn from them. Slovenia (and the wider Balkans area in general - think about the never realized projects for a Zagreb or Belgrade metro) really needs to step up efforts to enhace transit. Otherwise, we'll suffocate in endless traffic jams in the motorway - which are getting worse every year!
I have a lot of sympathy for Slovenia. Is a rare example of a country in eastern Europe without, metro, trams or trolleybuses. Belgrade is the largest city in Europe without a metro, but one is now being planned.
Ljubljana doesn't need a brand new metro network. It just needs to use the train network and stations the have.
modernising the train stations, electrify the tracks and buying new trains. That would change everything.
@@Markus-wr3urthat would be a good start, absolutely. Provide a half-hourly service on the corridor between say Medvode and Ljubljana Zalog, expand with time to 4 trains an hour, add a second corridor, say Dolgi Most to Rakovnik, extend the first corridor to e.g. Kranj... You'd have a pretty decent system already.
😲 I didn't even know there were trams anywhere in the 900's, 🤯 or for that matter anything called Slovenia. 🤔 The Slavs having freshly settled in the area. 🧐 But you live, and you learn. 😜
@@Sayitlikitiz101 I meant the 1900's. Typo.
Here in France, half the cost of your work season ticket/monthly or annual pass is paid by the employer, making it even cheaper
Ça dépend lequel, mon employeur ne rembourse pas mon transport donc heureusement qu'en temps qu'alternante que je suis étudiante et que j'ai les réductions étudiantes.
Ton cas n'est pas une généralité
That's because of your high taxes.
@@wayneslater1543absolutely not, the state doesn't give any pence for this
@@wayneslater1543 Nothing to do with that. This is paid by their employer, not the state (and not every employer offers this). Not every good thing we have has to do with the taxes, gladly. They already pay for our health and school systems and poverty allocations.
Having grown up in Rennes during the 1rst line construction, this video is very special to me. Thanks Reece!
I could add that one of the reason that so much of the metro is underground is that there was a very strong push-back from locals to have overground tracks. Additionally, VAL line A was constructed at a very low cost as the project seemed too ambitious for the city. Therefore the stations were designed very compact and the terminus station up north only has one platform (which allows train frequency as little as every 85s but not bellow).
Because line A was such a success, line B could secure a lot more funding and was constructed with much larger stations, longer platforms and additional track switches along the line to improve reliability and train operations. The terminus station on line A will also get a second platform by 2028 in order to increase train frequency to reach 65s headways.
Le 35 on est là 🤌🏼
Yaaaaay Rennes ! I take both line everyday and they're very convenient.
I lived in Rennes before line 2 was opened. St Anne was just a big old hole in the ground. I loved taking the metro 🚇
I’m jealous, it’s a great system!
@@happy_capybara you would love the newly recreated saint-anne !
4:47 the Korrigo card is even better ! It work with EVERY transit option in Brittany. From bus to train and ferrys. Many french régions have cards like that, and it extremely cool.
I've been 10 days there and it change so much your transit experience
*When I say EVERY transit option in Brittany it's real. City's far smaller and hours of trains away use this card on the buses of there local agency
And you get a price on the bus / metro if you buy a train subscription.
And there's talk to unify them on a national level, like Netherlands did
A few facts to complement this interesting video
* When line A was build, I heard Rennes was the smallest city in the world to build a subway line
* Line A was very successful and attendance actually exeeded the forecasts, thus accelerating the building of line B
There has then be some few smaller cities with a metro line. But they then made a 2nd metro line and now it is the smallest city on earth with 2 metro lines ^^
Victoria and Halifax have a similar metro population size as Rennes, and I think they would both benefits from a two line automated metro! In the case of Victoria, one line could connect downtown Victoria to Langford via the Uptown area of Saanich, which that municipality has designated as its urban core. The second line could connect central Victoria with the airport and ferry terminal via UVic with a transfer station at Uptown!
Agreed
the video was released 3 minutes ago how is your comment 11 hours ago
@@ChetNotJetIt was probably originally released as unlisted and made public 3 minutes ago
Leeds is about 2x the size of Rennes and has no metro 🫠
As someone who went to Victoria this summer, trains to the airport would be very welcome.
I was a student in Rennes when the first metro line was built in early 2000s, at the time it became the smallest city in the world to have a metro line. The tram was not chosen because of the historic center, so an underground Val was chosen instead. The digging took years and cost lots of headaches to the engineers as some streets collapsed in some areas while digging, they had to be ultra cautious in order not to make old buildings fall to the ground. They also had to dig under the river and canal. Once it was finished, it was all joy for users, we had so much fun riding at the front window during the famous Thursday student parties. At the same time, they modernised the main place downtown and made most of the centre car-free. There were obviously opponents to this remodelling but they stayed firm. Before that, we also had free public bikes, the system was financed by JC Decaux, now all the bikes are rental bikes.
400 000 is BIG for Europe, in Poland id expect a city of this size to have at least trams and some sort of S-bahn
tiny would be like 5k
At 400k, I expect an large S-Bahn, trams, a huuuge main train station with connections to other European cities and an international airport ;-) (talking about you Zurich and Geneva)
@@___lzcatand even at 5k you get a train station with intercity trains
Basel Switzerland has a population less than 200,00 and has wonderful public transportation! I was so impressed!
Zurich, Basel, Geneva, and even smaller: Lausanne, Berne, Lucerne, Zug, Winterthur.... the list of "tiny" (less than 150'000 people) swiss cities with amazing transport is endless (if you are a Swiss city with more than 200'000 people, you even get an international airport, in Canada, at best, you get a suburban train)
Basel hotels give you a day pass for public transport. It’s seemingly included in your hotel rate - in consequence, you never need to use your car.
@@kerriar its par of the Kurtaxe .. a tax added to the accomodation price. Fairly common in most Swiss towns and cities
This kind of thing happening in a tax haven is not surprising...
@@J0HN_D03 Former Eastern Germany still has tram systems in every city above 100.000 inhabitants and many cities under 100.000 Inhabitants. Some of those systems were in a very bad condition at Reunification and almost all of them where restored even in tiny cities like Nordhausen. The City of Witten in former Western Germanys industrial area with only 96k Inhabitants has preserved it's most important diametrical tramline as part of the tram network of Neighboring Bochum and this Region is neither rich nor got solidarity funds after Reunification.
I don’t know to what extent this is actually true, but I remember hearing that one of the main reasons why Rennes built a metro rather than a tramway system is because the streets in the historic city centre of Rennes were considered too narrow for trams. I suppose they could’ve built a tram line underground in the city centre and above-ground elsewhere, but then they would have spent money to dig the tunnel without getting all of the benefits of automated metro.
I also once read that Rennes doesn’t sprawl out much further from where the metro lines were built, so there wouldn’t be any need to build (expensive) extensions of existing lines. In other medium-sized French cities with tram networks like Strasbourg and Montpellier, they often open new extensions of existing tram lines every few years, and this can be done affordably since trams are cheaper to build.
That is true, the narrowness of some of the downton streets was a problem (among others), which led the city of Rennes to choose a metro system rather than a metro.
Also the policy of Rennes is to not extend the city beyond the peripheral road
The metro of Rennes (more like 1h30 by TGV to//from Paris) is GREAT !
The thing with VAL systems is that they can have extreme frequency, like 60 seconds, which even with the best regular types of metro trains is quite difficult to achieve (and without reducing speed).
The rubber wheels also help to gain several seconds of travel between each station. They offer more precise stopping and given the much increased acceleration and braking capabilities, it enables very short train spacing while maintaining speed.
The VAL lines in Lille, Toulouse or Rennes can move tons of people with 1 minute frequencies at peak with small trains.
A "normal" steel wheeled train would require a larger infrastructure and longer trains to move the same number of passengers.
"Normal" trains would also be heavier, as the rubber wheels on a VAL allow for less axles to be motorized while retaining better acceleration.
So, VAL : snappy, precise, lightweight and small footprint. That's the right choice for a metro with frequent stops, winding path (in all dimensions, they climb easily high gradient ranps from tunnel to elevated) and smaller tunnels in an old city.
Paris metro can go as low as 80 seconds between departures on some of its automated rubber lines. But the steel wheel ones are limited to 100 seconds (1min40) at the very best.
Toulouse's 3rd line currently being built will use Alstom Metropolis trains on steel because station spacing is increased, the line is less winding, will serve as a semi-circular / tangential link and it will not require such high frequency as the 2 lines with smaller footprint that run in the center.
Most underground parts will be semi-deep bore and turns have a wider radius than the 2 first ones.
As for the acceleration, I've recently used Paris M11 with the new MP14 trains : tourists have the ride of their life... It was a strike and quite amusing to see a whole group losing balance due to the strong acceleration. They then help onto bars like koalas onto an eucalyptus tree.
For a frequency of 60 seconds you'd need to get people on and off in probably 45 seconds. Which to be honest is absurd. Though with that kind of frequency delays don't matter anymore
@@jan-lukas Dwell times are much less than 45 seconds. Lille runs its two VAL lines with 61 second intervals at peak hours for example. Other cities too, between 60 and 70 seconds at peak.
It simply works!
Trains are rather short and with platform screen doors there's a much reduced risk of people blocking the doors. It doesn't take long to deboard / board passengers, and people know the next one is right behind.
45 seconds of dwell time is pretty long, you don't need that much, even with accessibility in mind.
Although sometimes the extremely short dwell times on Paris line M14 during hyper-peak can be a problem for accessibility, but that's far far far shorter than 45 seconds. Like the last time I used M14, the dwell time at Gare de Lyon was only a few seconds and that was a problem. The train was probably a bit late and the autopilot reduced the stop to an "exit only" duration, which wasn't even enough for me to deboard. It felt like HAL was in control of the train 🤣
But that's rather an exception.
Some RER lines frequently have dwell times under 45 seconds at major stations during peak, and that's for double decker trains. When RER lines operate at 2 minute frequency, it's divided like that: 1 minute spacing, 45/50 seconds dwell time, 10/15 seconds buffer time in case of delay. But trains can enter the platform while the previous one hasn't cleared the platform yet at the height of the peak (like it can be seen on RER A).
30 seconds or even 20 seconds on a VAL is long enough for passenger movements.
With platform screen doors, passengers wait aligned on each sides of the doors, so on-board passengers deboard and platform passengers board quickly.
It's been working like that for decades...
That's precisely the point of VAL systems : it's a noria of trains at high frequency, that can move very high numbers of passengers with a small infrastructure.
@@jan-lukas The VAL cars are very narrow and have a lot of doors, this means there's a lot of door opening per floor square meter (or per passenger) so the dwell times remain short. Also when a rain is full, most people don't really mind letting it go because the next trian will come in under 2 minutes (with a 99.7% reliability).
Line b, despite it's not-so-impressive ridership (80 to 90 000 trips per weekday before the holidays) was already overcrowded in the morning (with trains every 2 minutes 15 seconds), sometimes you had to let pass 1 or 2 full trains to get on. They'll try to increase the frequency a bit for now without buying additional rolling stock.
PS : the whole "rubber-tire trains are faster" thing is a scam. It's perfectly feasible to reach the same acceleration rates with steel wheels as long as enough axles are powered (and this rate is limited for passenger confort).
@@joriss5 No it's not a scam, only "full adherence" steel wheel metro trains (all motorized) can approach the acceleration / deceleration capabilities of rubber tyred metro trains that have much less motorized axles, while still not really equaling them.
Peak acceleration can be reached faster and is maintained longer on rubber, same for deceleration. A similarly steep curve on steel would cause slipping.
I've traveled the world over and never ever have I seen a steel wheel metro with similar acceleration and deceleration and snappiness as a rubber tyred metro, never!
The acceleration and especially deceleration curves can be much steeper on rubber than on steel, while it is more linear / progressive on steel.
Steel wheeled trains tend to start decelerating earlier and more softly, while rubber tyred ones reach speed earlier and brake later, thus they stay slightly longer at a higher speed, shaving seconds off between stations.
They are also great for gradients, less motors are needed for a better adherence.
Paris once recently contemplated the reversion of one of its rubber lines to steel, but quickly decided against, as it would have required full adherence / full motorization trains and even then, with all their extra motorized axles, they'd still add 8 to 10% of travel time, thus reducing the line's capacity and throughput.
Lines with frequent stops, short to mid station spacing, winding path, very high frequencies or gradients are where rubber tyred trains excel.
There's no secret: the shortest frequencies (between 60 and 110 seconds) with frequent / close stops and speed are only realistically sustainable with rubber and automation. Steel wheel trains tend more frequently to slightly overshoot their stopping location, needing to reverse a bit, because they slipped. (Cf Sydney's Metropolis, or others...).
The latest rubber trains in Paris are even sometimes a bit too "sporty" for comfort, first-time tourists tumble like bowling pins.
Rennes alreayd operate the A line within 75 seconds at peak hour, next upgrade should bring it to 55 sec. the stops last around 15 sec, it's not absurd, the trains are not really big and feature many doors for easy access.
@@jan-lukas
3:00 Party in Rennes ? Not a single chance your heard that Rue de la Soif (nickname of Rue St Michel, namely Street of Thirst) in Rennes had the denser Bar packed in a single street of France I presume 😂 So going there and getting by public transportation is mandatory 🎉
Après c'est une petite ville. Même de Villejean en 20min à pieds ça se fait
Romania isn't known for good transit, but Cluj a similarly small city started building a metro line.
Historically virtually every city/town in America with a population greater than 10k had at least a streetcar of some sort.
The fares are low in France, but some of the costs are transfered to the private sector. By law, half of the cost of a public transport subscription paid by and employee must be paid by the employer. That's why in Rennes or anywhere in France these subscriptions are pretty low.
The population is a bit low (200'000) but Rennes is also one of the fastest growing city in France. Large universities and a lot of tech companyies have changes the city and its suburbs in the last 40-50 years. So you build for the city, but you also take into account population grow.
One last aspect, population density is key when making the choice between bus/tramway/metro. I'm not sure comparing the population of a city in Canada and in France is relevant. City centers are heavily packed in France.
The fares shown here are what the transit agency receives (it's the total, and the employer pays half of that, rather than "you pay this and your employer also pays this"); so the employer contribution isn't why they're that low. I assume economies of scale (due to high ridership numbers) and taxpayer money.
@@frenchguy7518 That's what you can find on Keolis website :
""Les voyageurs participent au fonctionnement des services STAR à hauteur de 37 % (soit 47 M€ de recettes)
Le budget Transports et Mobilité fait l’objet d’un budget annexe : il est financé à près de 70% par le « Versement Transport » (VT), impôt payé par toute entreprise du territoire de plus de 9 salariés. Le budget global de la Métropole finance les 30% restant.""
So yes, taxpayer money is a big part of the budget, but local companies pay a big part of it.
@fyhuel9339 yeah the part about fare prices isn't true though. The actual fare prices are given before any kind of employer discount. So, if the fares already feel low, they are indeed even lowest after that deduction (for an employee) or after reductions (like benefits for the umployed).
As a Frenchman, I can confirm that. Most provincial cities are pretty dense while american cities (except historical ones like Boston, NY, SF maybe...) are very spread out.
Rennes choose VAL deliberately. On this occasion rubber tyre or low vibrations was a key planning rule.
The core thing to remember above Rennes VAL is a Medieval city and a city of pre roman heritage. A tram system was considered but decided against. VAL isn't really gadgetbahn it prooved itself in Lille and Toulouse. It is a more cost effective micro metro than say the Scarborough RT line in Ontario or Vancouver's Skytrain both of which have their merits. I think Rennes prooves that VAL works as solution to an issue (small city, small trains, less vibration, shallower tunnels) like an airport people mover Rennes VAL shifts people across the city efficiently and given it is a city with a young demographic there's a large percentage of non drivers in town and its only 2-3 hours from Paris with onward connections leaving Rennes University and businesses very accessible to the rest of France and it's Northern neighbours (even London is within 8 hours by rail, or an overnight Ferry and less than 2 hours by rail connection. The port of St Malo being virtually an outer suburb of Rennes less than an hour away by TER train)
For its first line Rennes made the choice of a Métro an not a Tram because :
- Tiny streets in downtown (near the city hall and St Anne place)
- 10m difference in altitude between the north and south of the main SNCF station
A tram would have been underground for several stations like in Rouen.
“Hour of TGV ride” should be the new standard unit for distance.
Thank you for an extremely informative video. Perhaps the most important point is the cheap fares completely integrated with other modes of transport including buses, local trains and even hire bikes!
Almost every urban 'agglomeration' in France over a quarter million population has some form of railed rapid transit, usually modern tram or metro + tram. The only exceptions I can think of are Toulon, and Metz. (Metz has Bus Rapid Transit.) Nancy has ordered 25 double-articulated trolleybuses to replace its ill-fated TVR 'gadgetbahn'.
It’s sad that Nancys transit was set back for so long by the GLT, live and learn I guess!
@@RMTransit I agree. And, of course, Nancy (and Caen) spent a lot of money on a gadgetbahn which did not work properly, while the VAL works very well in Rennes and several other places.
Line B is the first urban implementation of Neoval, marketed by Siemens today. That technology incorporates the Translohr single rail guidance system, but the central guiderail sits proud of the roadbed unlike the embedded street track version used elsewhere. The two rails either side of the guiderail are power conductors carried on insulated supports. The vehicles have moderate capacity traction batteries onboard which allow them to negotiate quite large conductor rail gaps through junctions, saving cost and complexity. They can also move around depot yard areas safely without the need for comprehensive conductor provision throughout and the reliability of the system as a whole is boosted by this feature as they can move through significant lengths of track where the power has been isolated, either deliberately for maintenance or during failure or emergency scenarios.
I actually think Neoval feels like a real improvement and simplification on the older VAL tech, which is good because a light cheap metro is what Val did best!
@@RMTransit Living in Rennes, Neoval improved VAL on almost every aspect except one: ride quality. It is very very bumpy and interior elements are vibrating inside like in a bus. Older VAL ride quality is VERY good for a rubber tire metro. That said, it is for a small distance so it remains acceptable. Also, despite these being wider, Neoval has less doors and it may take a little bit longer for passengers to onboard (and for the doors to open or close).
In my opinion, the design of these trains is just great, look at how much glass surface there is! I think it's almost unseen to have a "panormaic" subway train like this.
@@RMTransit I think you need to make a video about it! :)
@@equilat Coming from Lyon, I think neoval is absolutely fine ride quality-wise
I've never been a huge fan of the line A's Val, mostly because of how narrow it is, so it gets really uncomfortable at rush hour - at least there's frequency to make up for it. The only little caveat I can find about the neoval is that it accelerates really fast, so fast that if you're not prepared you can get flung back !
also it does have fewer doors but they're wider so I don't know if it's really that big of an issue
A tramway was initially proposed before the construction of line A, as it was cheaper than VAL. But it was eventually discarded because of height differences around the main train station, which made it difficult to integrate a tramway there, as well as the city center streets being too narrow.
The French Wikipedia article on Rennes' metro has a good explanation on the topic.
I'm from Rennes, great to hear about the city on your channel ! In France all cities are trying to ban cars out of city center because of pollution (visual, noise and air) so we try to have bus, bikes and metro/tram even in "small" city. As public transport are public : no shareholders, no profit expected = the subscription fees are not too expensive
Is saw comments saying 400000 is big for Europe. That's right BUT it is not big for the USA. However, 400000 inhabitants, overall (it takes account the urban area, not just the city) is unusual for a metro system, even in Europe and I think that's the most important. Rennes managed to build a cost effective and efficient subway system adapted to its size and requirements, which is great. Rennes metro is one of the most reliable automated metro in the world: 99.7% of reliability for line A (which is the best score in the world with Turin) and 97% with line B after only one year of operation. Line A only got this score at its fifth year!
The Brescia Metro is a little jewel. You should try also the Perugia mini metro. Perugia also sports a dense network of public escalators, hosted in medieval vaults under the hill the city is built on. Spectacular.
Brescia itself is a jewel ! Been there ! Loved it ! I am deeply in love with Italy ! Love and friendship from France!
I lived in Lille for about two years. And they have the same automatic system. I NEVER waited for transport for more than 5 minutes. Ever. Was super happy with it. (Yes it didn't cover the entire city) but it worked well for most trips I would want to make.
VAL (for Villeneuve-d’Ascq - Lille) is the first automatic metro system in the world, it started in 1983 !
Sure the metro doesn't go everywhere, and a tram would be hard to build in the case of Lille (the metro was already a headache due to the nature of the soil. There are permanent salvaging ops ongoing to save historical buildings and stuff because everything is sliding around). That being said they are supplemented by buses that go as far as Belgium twice per hour via major towns all around the city and along the border in the larger metropolitan area.
@@k.v.7681 Lille has a tram it's one of the few tram in France which weren't ripped out.
@@futurerails8421 sure but it isn't extensive considering the wider area that has to be covered. It's extremely well compensated by bus mind you.
Reminds me of Bilbao, in Spain. 350,000 inhabitants, 1 million in the greater metro area. Has 3 metro lines (97 million passengers in 2019 with 49 stations), a tram line, multiple suburban lines (narrow-gauge & broad-gauge) and even a funicular.
Bilbao is an impressive city, the metro line going straigth to the suburb all the way to the beach is such a good idea.
Toulouse is also a great example of almost exactly the same type of system. A third metro line is also in construction in addition to the existing 2, extensive bus and tram routes as well as the new aerial tramway. It was also the first city in the country to get full 4G metro coverage in 2017.
It’s not about the total population of a city or metro that drives ridership, it’s about the population within the catchment of the line. I’m not surprised that the Rennes metro lines have ridership similar to the Canada line, as it looks like they are pretty comparable in terms of length, capacity, and density of development it travels through. Sure, metro Vancouver has 3 million people, but no one down in south Surrey is riding the Canada Line between downtown and the airport.
All that is to say that you are exactly right, you don’t need to be a giant metropolis to make good use of a metro. Just make sure the line goes between places people want to travel to and from, and make the service fast and frequent enough to compete or exceed driving, and people will ride it!
I think Ann Arbor, Michigan would be great for a 2-line automated metro (if tunneling weren’t so gosh-darn expensive in the US that is.
Surprisingly many people from South Surrey ride the Canada Line!
Winnipeg really could use rail transit tbh
Great video! As a former Rennes inhabitant, I need to add also that Rennes has an efficient bus network with good frequencies, some buses at night which replace metro and a (kind of) BRT project with 4 lines! Initially, they wanted to build at least 1 tramway line besides metro but they transformed the project into a BRT network.
I don't love cities coming up with their own contactless fare cards. If only there was a way to have an anonymous pre-paid contactless card that works seamlessly everywhere contactless cards are accepted ... that that wouldn't be necessary. I mean, most of us (Europeans, at least) have one contactless card or app on the phone or watch (or more) and don't need another one, but some people may value the privacy or simply don't have the credit rating to get anything but pre-paid.
I’m going to write something about this this week
My city which now has an official population of 285000 in 2021 and is growing rapidly, had a very useful streetcar system that connected the industrial center to downtown to the suburbs where the owners lived, and to the worker neighborhoods, and to the local amusement park. This was in 1914 with a population of 56000. If this existed now my mother would be able to get it from her back door to half a block from my house. Instead now she has to drive the 1.5 miles(2.4km).
With massive population growth in our downtown this would be amazing now. Fun fact, many of the tracks still exist and can be seen in deep potholes which are caused by heavy cars and trucks driving these routes now. I say they tear up the layers of poorly laid asphalt and but those trams back!
The integrated regional ticketing is what makes the PASMO system so extremely useful in Tokyo: one fare card to access all the private railway, JR East and subway lines in that city. This is something the whole New York City metro area should adopt, with one payment card to allow access to all subway and commuter rail systems easily.
We have ok public transport in the Netherlands but every time I watch videos that name the price I’m shocked. For the price of the year pass of this metro you’ve barely felt one city for a month in the Netherlands. It’s crazy expensive.
The shot at 7:44 is so nice!!!
having lived here I can confirm that Rennes has a great public transit system. the metro is fast and clean, busses have a good range to outer neighborhoods with large Time schedules on morning and evenings and they have a revenue-based discount for young, students (there are about 50 000 students in rennes), elder ppl and poor families
We’re building our fifth tram line here in Montpellier! Two TGV high speed train stations and massive road building for bicycle lanes. 25 years of investing and never stops
I'm sure someone was shouting 'Leeds' in the background throughout this whole video...
Indeed I was! I live in Leeds and regret leaving Rennes (where I used to live) every time I take one of the many horrible buses we have 😂😭
@@happy_capybara>I live in Leeds
I'm so sorry. 😢
It should be stressed that Leeds is the largest city in Europe not to have a rail-based URBAN transit system.
If Leeds could have a system like Rennes that would be really fantastic
What also makes mid-size European cities good for mass transit is that they aren't as sprawling as North American ones. To our american and canadian friends: a european city that you would call tiny or medium feels more urban than a North American one that's three or four times as populous, Rennes's urban core is probably as large as that of a US top 20 metropolitan area.
It's all in the city planning. North Americans ruined there cities from the planning. Now no good transportation system can be built. It's all for cars
A city of a similar population size with solid rapid transit is Jersey City with the PATH system, which also goes to Newark, Harrison, and Hoboken from NYC. It pre-dates the NYC Subway's first underground line as it was planned in 1874, but it was not possible at that time to safely tunnel under the Hudson River. Construction began on the existing tunnels in 1890, funding ran out, and then resumed and opened in 1908. The goal was to connect the NJ waterfront with NYC as before the dominance of NY Penn Station, railroad companies had their terminals on the NJ side of the river, and thus the H&M Railroad was meant to connect them all (a branch to Communipaw Terminal in what's now Liberty State Park was proposed but didn't happen) and make it easy to cross.
Jersey City has four stations on the PATH, and thanks to the convenience of the PATH to NYC on top of Hudson-Bergen Light Rail having multiple stops downtown, Jersey City's downtown district has experienced exponential growth. On weekdays, the PATH has four services, between Journal Square and 33rd Street (yellow), Hoboken and 33rd Street (blue), Hoboken and WTC (green), and Newark and WTC (red). However on weekends, there are only two services, with the blue and yellow services combined to go from Journal Square to 33rd via Hoboken, and the red line staying as is. So those in Hoboken who want to go to WTC would have to transfer at Grove Street.
I love your trivia under all those videos haha
Going to Rennes next year, thanks so much for this, I’m so excited!
I was born in a town of Most (North of Czechia) with 55 thousand residents. It has fifteen bus lines and three tram lines, two of them interurban - connecting the city with nearby town of Litvínov, population 27 thousand.
That sounds very pleasant indeed.
From Strakonice on South. 5 bus lines, I gues they go sometimes.
@@petrfedor1851Not bad for a town of 22 thousand. You still have a better public transport than some American towns with 500K residents. Zdravím do Strakonic.
That's the thing that bums me out about America so much, II don't exactly want to live in a bigger city, but there's basically no chance of having a remotely useful transit system unless you live in a big metro, and even then you should live closer to the center. I'd love to live in some kind of street car suburb or village that's got easy access to the big city nearby while being more peaceful and quiet.
Living in LA, I think if we re-zoned the entire metro area to have much denser city centers for all the cities in LA, and reduce road widths to prioritize buses and bike lanes to shuttle people to the center, then we could slowly but surely rework the city back to what it was before it got so sprawled out.
4:00 “double cross design” is definitely one way of describing that metro system’s shape
Nice video ! Although if I remember correctly being tiny was one of the reason given for a metro, Rennes being considered as more dense than many French cities like Bordeaux, Toulouse, especially new trams pioneer Nantes
From Hong Kong, this is really impressive, Hong Kong's metro doesnt run at midnights!
Another Banger! Great video
2:57 😂
What a beautiful system. I’m assuming those trains are quieter with rubber tires, no? Smoother?
Not really either, but less expensive!
Hey Reece, heard your talk on Newstalk 1010 and saw your CBC appearance about Canadian HSR/VIA.
Congratulations on the recognition!!🎉🎉
Don't take this comment too serious but you can really hear that he is from a large international city when he calls a city of 400,000 "tiny" or "small". Jason from Not Just Bikes also once called a town with 20,000 a "small village". I really don't get it. I grew up in a town in Bavaria/Germany with about 11,000 people that is 30 km from a city of 130,000 (Würzburg) which I consider a big city.
I would classify cities as follows:
0-1,000: small village
1,000-5,000: big village
5,000-20,000: small city
20,000-100,000: medium sized city
100,000-500,000: big city
every thing above 500,000: metropolis
I really enjoy your videos but you're a real "Großstadtkind" (literally a "big city child")
I grew up on a farm! That being said my channel overwhelmingly covers cities which have rail transport systems, particularly in North America these cities tend to have well over 500,000 residents - so maybe that’s why my brain is calibrated as it is!
By North American standards, I'd say a medium sized city would start at ~250k or 300k up to about 500k. If I was speaking about a large city, it would have to be 1m+, and even 1m may be a bit small.
"Metropolis" certainly 3m+
But this is all fairly arbitrary and anecdotal
@@michaelr.4921 I think you measure population size differently in NA. We in Germany just count the proper city while you count the whole metropolitan area and all smaller cities and suburbs around that officially aren't part of the city. By German standards LA would have 3,8 million instead of 12 million
Thanks for the video !
1:46 Actually, the city of Rennes which contains the metro is only 220 000 inhabitants.
The metropolitan area is indeed 450 000 inhabitants, but that would include many other smaller cities that are not directly connected to Rennes and can be as far as 15km .
North Americans almost never talk about city populations in terms of municipal population, but rather, metropolitan populations (since the majority of people who live in X-city in Canada/US usually live in the suburbs and not the city proper.
The smaller towns are actually connected by bus and are often used as dorm cities with the high rise of rents and gentrification (it's hard to find a flat here)
The urban area is actually 740 464. What you said is the "'Métropole", which isn't a geographical term but an economic one. So the correct number to use here would be 740 464. For example, in Toulon, the urban area is around 600 000 people, but the metropole is only around 400 000, and my suburban city, despite being in the continous urbanised zone (meaning it's basically connected to toulon by other buildings), isn't part of the "Métropole". It is part of the urban area only. That is because the métropole a city is part of, unlike the urban area, can be chosen by the mayor. My city isn't in the métropole because it created its own group of cities. But it is still in the urban area of Toulon. Actually, La Ciotat, a city further from Toulon, is part of the urban area of toulon, but is part of the Métropole of Marseille-Aix.
Bonjour, non.
Le chiffre que vous avancez correspond à l'"aire d'attraction" de Rennes. Le terme français désignant une aire urbanisé continue regroupant une à plusieurs villes est "l'unité urbaine" pour Rennes c'est ~360 000 personnes pas 740 000.
J'argumente cependant que ce chiffre est un peu trompeur. Rennes a eu un modèle d'extension spécifique visant à préserver une ceinture verte entre la ville centre et ses villes périphériques (on parle de ville archipelle), il n'y a donc pas de tissu urbain continu entre les communes de son unité urbaine. Pour s'en convaincre, Google maps et wikipédia.
L'échelon métropolitain cité dans la vidéo peut avoir du sens car c'est l'échelon qui finance les transports en commun.
Métropole ça se traduit par Metropolis en anglais ;) @@Yoshi-wt4lg
So glad RMTransit finaly talk about my hometown! 😃
The point about flexibility hits a nerve. In the UK, we were told that when the state rail network (British Rail) was privatised, the new companies would have the flexibility to be responsive to local needs.
In fact, the complete opposite happened. For example, in the olden days, when there was a big sports event, BR would lay on more trains. The new companies simply close stations and reduce availability, so they are not overwhelmed.
There is an annual London-Brighton bicycle event (not a race - at least not for most of the participants!). BR used to lay on extra trains the next day, so cyclists could get home. The new, flexible, companies just banned cycles from their trains on the relevant two days. Everyone had to make very complicated arrangements to get themselves and their bicycles home. The private companies are monolithic, and unresponsive - the old state railway adapted to people's needs.
Big up to the "economist" who denounced the excessive costs of line B by comparing the costs with the number of users, as if the line only lasted one day.
MAn, it really puts some scale into perspective when you can hear someone talk about Rennes like some quaint, quiet, tiny town when here it's like...
One of the ten largest cities in the country, one of the most economically and culturally dynamic cities as well, one that has the more active university in the entire area, by far.
Really goes to show how little of an excuse "our american city is too small for transit" really is. If Tours, Le Mans and Angers can all have trams despite the largest of the three being 150 000-ish inhabitants, then a 500 000+ city in North-America can have more than a few bus lines.
I mean despite being one of the biggest cities in France that isn’t saying much, Paris doesn’t have any competition at the top
i've been waiting so long for you to talk about rennes thank you so much
Thank you for this. Your postings are enormously informative and so well researched. On top of being so smart, you are articulate and even good looking. What's not to like.
I think it might be good to do a video looking at some of those North American cities that are "too small for transit" and examining the extensive transit systems they used to have before they were ripped up.
I think we are supposed to get around town by pulling ourselves by our bootstraps, and let free market take care of us regular folk. Taxes should not exist. Taxes should subsidize shareholder value. 😂🤢
Did I properly capture the Republican discourse on the topic of common good?
It's really funny that a city with 200 000 people is "too small" for public transit...
For example:
Tours and adjacent urban area
-has tgv connections because it's on the Paris Bordeaux line
-has light rail connecting the two halves of the city by crossing the Loire river
-Has a really comprehensive bus service
-Is easily accessible to border towns thanks to the TER trains of sncf linking the Loire valley towns and cities together
HOW IS THIS INAPPROPRIATE IN ANY WAY?
Thank you for bringing us these videos Reece. It's a real privilege being able to learn about metro systems around the world that many of us would not have heard of. I'm still astounded that a Canadian knows so much about public transport in my own country (Australia).
We almost have the exact same metro system in Toulouse, and right now they are building a third line with huge works going on
line B is also built to accommodate 3 car trains even though it currently runs 2 car trains, that way they can increase capacity if needs be. ligne A already does so they are buying more trains, and doing upgrades to increase frequencies to 66 seconds. They're dedicated to good service in Rennes!
Don't go thinking that the UK is a perfect example of universal city metro systems either. Two of our cities, Bristol (pop 707,000) and Leeds (pop 812,000) are egregious examples where trams, LRT or a heavy rail commuter network of any size are missing. Not that the cities haven't tried, though, with plan after plan for six decades for heavy rail metro systems, trams and light rail, and even in the case of Leeds, trackless tram/trolleybuses. Government funding has been conspicuously absent in these cities, although vast amounts have been spent over the years on consultants, public consultations and transport planners, with very little result.
We need more of this. Both video and trains.
I did a little checking. Of course, Rennes has a better metro than the tiny city I live in. We don't have a metro. However, if we were to build a single line metro stretching the widest dimension (east-west) with station spacing similar to Rennes, it would have six stations over around 5 miles of track. There would be one station for every 3000 residents (not passengers, residents). The only thing making a metro anything close to reasonable here is the existence of several rail lines; however the lines through town are all active freight lines. What we have is a single bus loop (run with converted vans) and an on demand, ride share/paratransit type service (though open to all). While I'm sure it could be improved, it's pretty good for a city under 20k.
By the way, calling Rennes, or any city with a six figure population, "tiny" is stretching that word a little far. Rennes should probably be considered a medium sized city. Sure, it's not as big as Paris, London, Amsterdam, or several German cities. But there are plenty of cities smaller than Rennes and yet large enough for some substantial public transit.
Rouen is like 115,000 people and has a respectable metro that carries about 80K people per day, pretty impressive. (600K people in the metro area.)
IDK what the French are on but we need it in so many places.
Man that sure is fresh content ! I'm a french student living in Rennes and the second metro line opened just about a year ago !
You could make a video on Nuremberg in Germany. It has only 500,000 residents, but has 3 underground metro lines (2 of which are automated), 5 tram lines and 6 S-Bahn lines
I'm from Brescia, Italy and we are the smallest city (200k inhabitants) in Europe with a metro system. It would be nice if you could review
or cite it!
Another little city with a good transit system in Brescia,Italy, with a population of only 180000 in city boundaries and probably around 300k in the surroundings.
As of today it has one automated light metro line, inspired by Lille metro (then the same type of light metro has been transponded to m4 and m5 in Milan). Its route resembles the A route of Renne metro, so from south east to north west, while its stations more or less look like the ones featured in this video and the sales can be said of both the viaducts and the underground parts (of course with some differences being a proper metro and not a gadgetbahn).
It costed around 1 billion euro to be built if I remember correctly, which it’s definitely a lot (and in fact a second line has been proposed but it has been rejected) for a city of this size but I think they’ve been worth it since the city center has very little traffic and it keeps being pedestrianized.
To put an end, its ridership is between 50 and 60k a day, which is definitely good for a city of this size.
What you have to understand about Winnipeg is that is very, very small ... psychologically. While apparently the metro population is 834,678, the business and political leadership want to run it like it's 100,000, and they do.
By comparison when Edmonton made the decision to build light rail in 1974 the city was 450,000 and the metro was 530,000, but Edmonton was not small ... psychologically. It was ambitious and dreamed of a future as a "big" and "important" place.
0:16 In 1959, Winnipeg hired Norman Wilson of the Toronto Subway to design the Winnipeg Subway. All that's left now is to build it 😅
I lived in Rennes for a year and can say it has a fantastic transit system especially considering it's size. It's also a beautiful city well worth visiting.
Nice video. Leaving aside political and economic issues, two things (among many) that I think are different for similar-sized North American cities: 1). Population density is usually much lower in NA vs. Europe. For example, Boise, Idaho is about the same size as Rennes in terms of population (in both its urban core and metro area) but Rennes is 4 times as dense. 2). These European cities tend to have a “pedestrian culture”. I don’t think mass transit works well unless you have this element, which is why L.A. struggles despite its relatively high population density (for the US, anyway) and large total population. Transit essentially is a force multiplier for walking (and cycling to a lesser degree). When “nobody walks”, transit use will suffer, no matter how extensive the network is. There’s a chicken-and-egg thing happening here, but in most places that have great transit they had density and a culture of walking places first, and transit came later.
Great explanation, and as far as solving the chicken or the egg problem, the first step is just getting proper sidewalks on all streets within cities. (Including stroads, but they are lower priority because even with a sidewalk they will remain unwalkable)
Just make the walking experience relatively pleasant and safe and people will start to actually do it.
Although eventually this becomes a zoning and land use issue to encourage density and decentralized usage types.
Up until the late 1950s, London, Ontario had an electric streetcar line running along Oxford Street, which is a major west-east artery. At the time, London's population was about 125,000. The streetcars were removed, and the tracks were ripped up. GM diesel busses replaced the streetcars, and to sweeten the deal, GM built a bus manufacturing plant in the city's east end.
Today, that same plant is now owned by General Dynamics, which makes armoured fighting vehicles for the US and Canadian militaries, and is currently working on a contract for the Saudi government.
So yes, cities that have a population well under one million can have streetcars or trams.
I'm from Rennes and the second line is a world first and is experiencing serious problems (fires, emergency braking) and has been closed for several months. For the moment, the operator Keolis Rennes has made virtually no profit on it. During rush hour, buses and the first metro line take passengers from the second metro line. Fortunately, Keolis Rennes has redesigned the bus network to lighten the load on certain lines and the remaining metro.
The city also plans to build 5 trambus lines by 2030. These lines will link the communes of the metropolis to the city centre, with a bus every 5 minutes on privileged lanes with priority at intersections.
While *population* size is a factor, one of the biggest issue is that North American cities tend to be far more sprawling than European ones, making building high capacity public transit systems more difficult.
I'm not convinced. What one example city are you thinking of that would not be amenable to high throughput transit?
@@SianaGearz literally almost every North American city with few exception (usually the ones that grew before 20th century like Boston), they all have relative small urban cores and swathes and swathes of sprawling, low density suburbs comprised almost entirely out of single family homes, which are almost intrinsically unsuited for any kind of public transport, especially high capacity ones like trams and metros.
@@HidingAllTheWay No no give me ONE name. No handwaving.
Because almost half the people in a typical European urban conglomerate live in single family homes as well.
The big difference is that these aren't suburbs, they are villages or towns. They have a connectivity based road network, they have their own centre square with shopping, a cafe or restaurant, a handful doctors and a library, and the small town of several thousand grows from there. This gives you a focal point which you can easily connect by rapid transit to the mega city. Often times there didn't use to be such a focal point there until the train station appeared. So you can just start somewhere. It's a minor change from the suburb, you can just convert suburbs like that.
Furthermore you can just build P+R rapid transit stops, which the villagers reach by car or bicycle. If they're on a bicycle, they can take it on the rapid transit into the mega city. If they are on a car, they can just park the car included in the cost of their public transit ticket or subscription.
If you want the city and suburbs to be accessible, you can't get your head stuck in a chicken and egg problem. You have to formulate a political goal and then implement it step by step over the course of 20 years. It's not Cities Skylines, transit lines don't just appear the moment you draw them on a map, they take years to build, and in the interim, the environment changes to take advantage of them when they are built.
Just like building transit, sprawl is not set in stone and just like it was created it can be undone, and in some US cities they've managed to start this process. Build a transit system in the city core that extends to the closest sprawls while changing zoning laws for those areas. You can start with the "commercial area" (aka stroads) and than move into the residential area, where it will be mixed use but with height llimit (something like up to 4-6 story buildings).
@@SianaGearzwhen half of the people live in single family homes that often means row houses...
No, I'm from Singapore. But good for you Rennes, you guys actually have land and thousands of years of history
Coming from Rennes I can say that the subway had a tremendous cost for the city that habitants payed through tax increase and transportation ticket increase.
Rennes is, as said, a tiny city. Therefore a huge part of the work force comes from the outer skirt which is desperately lacking of public transportation forcing people to use car. The few transportation offered now stop at the relay parking far from the city center, and are operated by a different company. People have then to pay double tickets to reach the actual city which is around 4€ one way.
The relay parking also shows problems: They close at 1 am and every remaining car are taken away, making it impossible to leave your car for a night out, to visit someone or simply during a weekend if you used train to leave the city.
The consequences of that urbanism is a massive gentrification. It had as a main effect to keep suburbs habitants out (which means less access to higher ranked school, medical facilities, interesting job position, etc...) And pushing the lower class out of the city as the habitation tax, rents and transportation fees are getting too high.
The center indeed has less car but the peripheric road is now crowded increasing gas emissions.
Rennes successfully moved it's emission and modest population out of the city but unfortunately it is very far from "the solution" it is presented as...
Anything over 100k inhabitants can support an HSR station and good public transit (trams, S-Bahn, buses). Anything over 500k can support a metro/subway.
Great to see you finally covering small French cities. There are so many small cities in France, Germany and central Europe that have great little networks that could really be good examples for North American cities to follow.
As a Malaysian , im truly jealous with Klang Valley people for having extensive public transport coverage while us in Johor, our public transport seems non-existent except for some public buses 😩
ive never though of the VAL system as a gadgetbahn, its always been a cost efficient way to build lower capacity metro systems around france..
Btw, great seeing you on CBC! Love those two episodes!!!
It must be a question of scale, but, as a countryside girl, Rennes definitely feels like a big city, not a small one! Gémozac would be a tiny city!
I think it is a problem when transit passes cost nearly as much as a car payment
Yes, but don't forget that cars also need gas, insurance, and maintenance.
In France, public transit is paid via fares but also in our taxes, passengers don't support the complete cost. So it helps to keep low prices.
Our companies are also required by law to pay half of our transit fares if we use public transit to go to work which is very convenient. And yes, this also applies to monthly and yearly travel passes, not just for your journey to work.
In Scotland small towns like Bellshill (where I live), Suburbs (like Holytown nearby), villages (like Hartwood, which is tiny) not only get a generally decent bus service (although Sunday can be a pain in some areas due to privatization when crucialroutes were removed due to low profitability) but they all have their own train stations, Hartwood has fewer than 50 houses in it, yet it gets a station with regular trains to both Glasgow and Edinburgh- the council catchment area for Hartwood contains around 1250 people and the village proper even less, but it still gets a heavy rail station on the mainline between our two biggest cities!
Metro's are really something for big cities because they are expensive to build (a high quality tramway is about 60% cheaper). Speaking about tramway's. One of the finest examples of that, used in a small town, is the 18 kilometers long tram network in Nordhausen, Germany (41,000 inhabitants): two short lines, 1 and 2, in town (about 3 - 3.5 kilometer each), running every 10-15 minutes on weekday's (less frequent in the weekends), and an interurban, line 10, to Ilfeld, 11 kilometers long, which runs every hour (on Sunday every 2 hours) and is fully integrated in the timetable of line 1, so giving a direct service into town and the hospital. Line 10 is since it's opening served with hybrid trams, which run on 600V DC in the city and on a diesel generator on the rest of the line. Back in 2004, when the line to Ilfeld was converted for the use of trams (it is a branche of the not electrified HSB Harzquerbahn). Nordhausen was the very first tram company to introduce this concept to expand without the need of electrification. It's proof: you don't have to be big or tall to make your point...
Here in germany it's said that tunnels are 10 times more expensive than above-ground lines. And to be honest that sounds more like it than just 60%
Rennes line B cost was 100M€ per kilometer, 1.5B€ in total without any budget excess. This is VERY cheap for a subway system, and an accessible amount for town of this size if your funding plan is solid. Obviously, trams are still cheaper to build, but they do not respond to the same needs as subways.
Modern subways are designed to offer a fast ride between key points of cities while trams offer a proximity service, on highly frequented arteries.
Rennes has lots of narrow streets, so trams may have needed to take tunnels anyway, subway was more appropriate. Light rail would have been cheaper but a this point you may want to pay a bit extra money as subway will have a much better service.
American towns could go for trams, that's true but they would benefit also from a light metro as they are often not very dense, which means population is spread in a larger area which requires longer lines, and a higher commercial speed.
Łódź (650 000 inh.) Would certainly benefit from at least 1 metro line. There's already railway tunnel being built that many call "little subway", but real subway system might be a kay to finally unjam the traffic here
Lodz would benefit from many things ;)
Comparably sized Brno is planing to build something like that. It will not be true metro but underground railway with plenty of regional train going throw taking lot of people who now use regular tram system with way more people (on that one line) than there should be.