InsideTransit

If you are a railfan, you’ve most certainly heard of BVE. BVE is a train simulator that freaking rocks (I wish it worked on Vista!) which allows you to “drive” train routes from around the world that developers have created.

Now I’ve come across a site which is a different kind of simulator – this time it’s a schedule simulator. You pick a city system from the following: LIRR, SEPTA, Chicago Metra, WMATA and MBTA. Then just sit back and watch the full map for the system and you see dots on the map move as the schedule moves. What’s really amazing is to watch the activity at rush hour.

Maybe, just maybe, riders will have a bit more respect for just the sheer number of trains that pass through the system on a given day. It only takes a minute to watch the whole day so give the simulator a try.

Here we go – try walking from one end of this train to the next – I’ve seen 12 car trains but never a 15 car train. The train in the video below is from Tokyo and consists of 15 cars including 2 double decker cars. The video’s creator estimates the train at 300 meters long. The train has great pickup as well as it leaves the station very quickly.

Now this is something…how many times have you stood at a bus stand in the middle of the summer sweating like crazy in your fancy business suit and then you realize the bus will be late? Check out this photo from Dubai where they have been installing air-conditioned bus stands. I want this everywhere I travel!

I wonder if there are TVs in there or perhaps a snack or beverage machine – that’d be even hotter! Of course here in NYC the transit agency has gone from a huge surplus to a billion-dollar deficit – so I doubt we will see these anytime soon.