InsideTransit

My favorite place in the world is Grand Central Terminal. It’s my favorite place for so many reasons – watching the people go to work, leave work to head home to their families, the smell of the trains, the shops, the great black and white cookies at Zaros, the transit museum shop and being able to watch the place go from such a pile of crap to one of the most beautiful pieces of architecture out there.

With the hurricane named Irene heading into NYC, there has been a suspension of all rail and subway service so GCT is empty. The MTA took some photos and below is one of them. Just amazing to see the place empty – just think of what it would normally be like on a Saturday afternoon.

Here’s something I never thought I would see in my lifetime – a complete shutdown of the NYC MTA bus and subway system. This is due to approaching Hurricane Irene. MTA’s Aaron Donovan notes that the system will resume, “when conditions make it possible”.

This suspension includes ALL subway lines (both the letters and numbers) and ALL buses in every borough. Also included are the commuter rail lines – Metro North and Long Island Rail Road.

For historical purposes, below is a screenshot of the current MTA.info website showing all subway and bus routes are currently suspended.

If you are a NYC resident, make sure to check mta.info for the latest transit information. I suggest not heading to a subway station or bus stop without verifying that the system is up and running.

By now most of us have seen the “flash mobs” that gather in the subways and train stations around the world. In NYC, we have seen the pants off mobs and in Sydney we saw a Riverdance flash mob gather and dance to the Riverdance tunes.

But this is the first time I’ve ever seen a NYC subway train turned into a fine dining restaurant. The conversion took place on the L subway line which runs from Brooklyn to Manhattan. Melena Ryzik has the story of the train headed for Brooklyn that offered fine foods including: caviar, foie gras and filet mignon, and for dessert and chocolate panna cotta wrapped in gold leaf.

A number of supper clubs participated in the event and boarded the train and different stations along the route that crosses Manhattan on 14th Street.

The “event” brought in just over $1,600 and tickets were priced at $100 per “seat”. Sure beats the bag of McDonalds you usually see someone eating on the subway.

Last night, U.S. President Obama announced that Osama Bin Laden was dead. From the reports I saw on CNN, people took to the streets all across the country singing the songs of this country including the national anthem.

Here’s how a packed NYC subway car full of people reacted to the news of Bin Laden’s death. From the narration at the end of the video, it appears that not only are locals on the train but also people from Poland and Denmark.

Ok, here’s another one from the “uhm wtf?” file. A bus operator for Greyhound buses crashed into a wooded area –but get this, the bus operator forgot to set the parking brake after she parked the bus at a travel center in North Carolina.

The bus traveled backwards across Highway 61 and somehow wasn’t hit by cars traveling on the highway. The bus came to rest in the wooded area on the other side of the highway.

Fox8 news in Greensboro, NC has the details on the incident. Can you imagine the shock the bus driver must have received? She parks the bus, heads into the travel center, grabs some food, maybe a scratchoff, uses the restroom, comes outside and finds her bus traveling backwards across the highway.

Maybe Greyhound should play the same (very annoying) announcement you hear in the San Francisco airport when you take the airtrain. As it pulls into the station, we hear “we are entering the station, set luggage cart brake to on”.

Last year I wrote about a snakes on a bus “wrap” where the German bus looked like it had huge snakes wrapped around it. The bus wrap was created to promote the Berlin zoo.

Today I’ve learned about a man who carried a ton of snakes onto a bus in Argentina. The man, called a trafficker, was caught on the bus with 40 live snakes plus boxes of additional snakes and reptiles in the luggage hold below the seating area.

Joe Raedle from AFP notes, “The trafficker had loaded them with 444 boas, vipers and other snakes; 186 endangered tortoises; 40 lizards, and an armadillo.” Now that’s a lot of reptiles!

I wonder which is worse…a snake jumping on you while riding on a bus, or a rat jumping on you while sleeping on the subway?

There are 2 major international airports around Paris: Charles de Gaulle (a.k.a. Roissy) located north-east of the city, and Orly, located south of the city. You can get to either airport either by taxi or Air France coach for € 15 to € 70, depending on where you start from and where you’re going.

Both airports are run by the Paris airport authority. An excellent image outlining all your options is available here (french only). What follows gives you a general overview of how to get from/to the airports by public transit.

Charles de Gaulle
… by bus
There is a special shuttle (city bus) called RoissyBus which will take you from the CDG airport to the Opéra métro stop for € 9.40. There are also two regular bus routes during the day (#350 from Gare de l’est, and #351 from the Nation métro station), and two night routes (#N140, and N143). Both buses will cost you three (3) zone-1 tickets.

… by train
The quickest and most relaxing way (in my opinion) to get from/to the airport: the RER B line (€ 8,70). Keep in mind this is a commuter-train, so if you are travelling during the work-week the train will be quite full with commuters and there is not much room for luggage.

A quick note on taking the train from CDG:

* There are many automatic ticket dispensers at the CDG train terminal, however North-American credit cards are notoriously difficult to use with these dispensers if they do not have the chip technology (if you have American Express, forget about it)
* If you have to buy your ticket from an employee, the lines are impossibly long. If you’re lucky enough to know someone who lives in Paris, the best thing to do is have them send you a Paris-CDG ticket in the mail before your trip. It will save you a lot of time.

Orly
… by bus
Similar to CDG, there is a bus service (OrlyBus) to take you from the Denfert Rochereau station to the Orly airport (€ 6.60). You can also opt for regular city-bus service from/to the airport with bus routes 183, 285, and 292. Night bus: N31, and N131

… by train
Both the RER ‘B’ and ‘C’ lines pass close to the Orly airport, but you will need to take a shuttle to complete your journey. Use the OrlyVal driverless light rail trainsit line to get you from the airport to the Antony train stop (RER ‘B’) for €10.25, or the “Paris by train shuttle” to get you from the airport to the Pont de Rungix Aéroport d’Orly train station (RER ‘C’).

Summary:
In my opinion, getting to Paris from an airport by train is the best way to go, but there is one disadvantage: all the stairs in the Paris métro! Once you get to Paris by train, you might want to complete your journey by taxi if you have a lot of luggage with you.

If you are interested in riding the Paris Metro subway system, here’s a listing of all of the current fares as of April 12, 2011. We’ve also created a how-to Paris Metro guide with more information about riding the system.
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Before we get started with our how-to ride the Paris Metro and commuter rail, a little geography: the city of Paris is delimited by a ring road called the Boulevard Périphérique. The city is located in a region called “Ile-de-France”. When you see a reference to the “Ile-de-France”, it is referring to the city of Paris and its surrounding suburbs.

The Paris transit system is made up of four (4) types of transportation: métro (subway), bus, train and tram, and is run primarily by the Régie Autonome des Transports Parisiens (ratp.fr), which has a rich amount of information in English on their website for tourists.

The Ile-de-France is divided into 6 transit zones with the city of Paris being zone 1. These zones apply only to the commuter train network discussed further on.

The Metro
The Paris metro system is made up of 14 underground and above-ground subway lines numbered 1 through 14 with two lines assigned the suffix “bis” indicating that they were at one time part of the main subway line, but now only serve as an extension to a specific line. As these “bis” lines are outside of tourist areas you won’t need to worry about them.

As is common with most subway systems, the direction of the train is indicated by the name of the last stop in that direction. Two of the metro lines (7, and 13) branches so they will have two terminuses, but, again, this is outside the tourist region, and so you will not need to worry about it.

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Earlier this week I posted a video of a man in a Big Wheel challenging a NYC city bus to a race. At the end of the race, the text on the screen indicated that the bus moved at a speed of 3.8 miles per hour.

Can you imagine a bus traveling at over 150 miles per hour (250km/h)? Developed by Wubbo Ockels in the Netherlands, the Superbus can travel at these speeds. The “bus” (looks more like a huge racecar) can carry 23 passengers in what appears to be first-class comfort.

The Superbus will cost 1 million euros per bus and cost 14 million euros to develop. The narrator in the video below notes that most of the cost of development was paid for by Dutch taxpayers. I still prefer rail any day over this Superbus.

Here’s a video of the prototype of the Superbus at a race track in the Netherlands.
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