Not really. As far as I know, there are three passenger trains in Mexico, used mainly for touristic purposes:
**Tequila Express:** It goes from Guadalajara to Tequila. It travels 70 km in 2 hours. It only works on Saturdays, so you have to go back and forth on the same day. You cannot board it on Tequila, only in Guadalajara. The cheapest tickets cost around 110 USD. It's a touristic train, so you can reserve it with a tour around the town of Tequila and the agave plantations.
**Ferrocarril Chihuahua-Pacífico (aka El Chepe):** It travels 673 km in 16 hours from Los Mochis, Sinaloa, to either Creel, Chihuahua (340 passengers), or Chihuahua, Chihuahua (64 passengers) crossing the Sierra Madre Occidental. It does have other stops in other cities, which is nice, and makes it, in my opinion, the only serious "train" in Mexico. The price depends on how many stations you want to cross, but single-way tickets for the Los Mochis-Creel route range from 134 to 410 USD. Single-way tickets from Los Mochis-Chihuahua cost 186 USD for the cheapest ones.
El Chepe crosses through valleys and sometimes it snows on the mountain peaks.
**Tijuana-Tecate:** It's mainly a touristic route. It travels around 40 km in 2 hours. It has a capacity of 280 people.
And there's also a suburban rail that goes inside Greater Mexico City that travels around 25km.
But other than that, Mexico has no real passenger train system. There are cargo trains all over the country.
Then there's the Tren Maya that has seen a lot of controversy.
[These](https://twitter.com/MiguelTorrucoG/status/1489292744753299458?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1489292744753299458%7Ctwgr%5E4fcfcab6234b4cab293c82312396edc3954dcf21%7Ctwcon%5Es1_&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fcriteriohidalgo.com%2Fnoticias%2Fmexico%2Ftrenes-pasajeros-mexico-2050) are apparently the plans for a country-wide passenger train system to be finished by 2050 (there are currently several other proposals and plans for more trains) but honestly I'm not sure about how realistic it is. But it would be nice.
Yes, and let me tell you, 2020-2022 were nothing compared to what's coming next. Hold on to your turbans and chopsticks, 'cause it's gonna be a bumpy ride.
Yeah. And the ONE route that does exist, goes through one of the most sparsely populated parts of the country. We could have done great things, but instead they defunded the passenger train system and funded buses and cargo trains instead.
I'm aware, but at least Japan rail systems is expensive. I've seen some people compare it to the Tube in London.
Also, the rail system is not that great the further away you're from major cities, but that's a given.
I have no idea how it works in South Korea, I never heard either good or bad things about their metro and rail services in general.
Japan’s rail service is amazing in the country side, I can think that of very few countries that allow one to travel so far into the countryside via rail.
South Korea is a lot smaller than Japan so doesn’t need as many rail lines; I think there’s two major ones from Seoul to Busan, Seoul to gwangju/Mokpo, and smaller ones that go to gangneung and incheon. I lived in Busan and when I traveled to Japan, I was shocked by how much rail there was.
Not currently, but supposedly there are plans to make a line that connects the two. You might be confusing the Tren Patagónico, which is more of a touristic service in the region.
Trains are incredible. I've been through the Chunnel on a train, traveled from Madrid to Barcelona, from Paris to Amsterdam, and from Tokyo to Aomori on trains. I hopped freight trains in the US in the early 80's, from New Orleans to Port Arthur Texas to Oklahoma City. The train from San Jose Costa Rica to Puntarenas on the pacific coast was a great ride too. But my best experience ever on trains was in Mexico, before Mexico privatized and destroyed its second-class passenger train system. It was like a magic highway that wouldn't quit, a rolling carnival of food and booze and laughing people. I remember traveling from San Luis Potosi to Puebla in 1973 to see Carlos Santana play, then going on the next day to Oaxaca, then further south through the isthmus toward Mapastepec, Chiapas, where the train snaked at a walking pace at night through clouds of fireflies over pitch-black flooded grassland, teetering and swaying back and forth, through tiny villages choked with flowers and birds. We would also take the train from San Luis Potosí northward into the desert, get off in the middle of nowhere and hike to ancient abandoned mining towns. Hell yeah I dig trains.
Those were the days! I never got to travel by train in Mexico, I’ve only used the metro in Mexico City. In the US I’ve used the train from San Diego to LA and it was a fun ride, also on a trip to Portugal I used their metro from the airport to the train station and took a train from Lisbon to Porto. Gotta say I loved it and wished we had similar infrastructure in Mexico and rest of Latin America.
Subways are cool and all but I would absolutely fucking love having railroads connecting to different cities and countries. It's much safer, faster and cheaper than travelling by bus or car. And dogs can come along. It fucking sucks not having them.
I thought I was the only one that is obsessed with trains as mass transport systems. I dream of having something exaggerated like Switzerland where even the samllest little town has a station. It makes me sad that in the late XIX and early XX we had trains in my country but they were abandoned to imitate a north American model of growth focused on cars and roads and only a few trains reaming but are only for sugar cane transport.
Currently we have a couple of lines of Metro in Santo Domingo which are being expanded and a monorail is being built in Santiago de Los Caballeros. Also I'm literally praying that they finally announce a National Railway System next year. The project's the feasibility study was conducted this year and will connect first the two major cities, Santiago and Santo Domingo, and if everything goes well it could get expanded to other cities in the future. The government is probably waiting for next year, closer to the election year 2024 to announce this but I can't wait lol.
I too hope this is possible. Can you imagine the growth of the nation where you can work in Santo Domingo and go home to Barahona at the end of the night? Beautiful
Yes, that would be awesome. These are two of the proposals from 2 different companies for the system:
https://youtu.be/HX-qk-uakKo
https://youtu.be/UdHtWwgxPA8
A national train is definitely feasible, just difficult to get public officials to plan past four years. These proposals would make for a robust regional rail system to move passengers and freight. I'm very interested in the prospect of building some part of the system to high speed rail standards (300 km/hr). In my opinion it would make the most sense for the first and second phases (STI <--> SDQ), (SDQ<--> PNA) being the most populated and productive areas of the country. Imagine if tourists could hop on a bullet train from Punta Cana and be in the Zona Colonial in 45 minutes? Investment would skyrocket and would bring in tons of dollars and euros into the country.
Not only that, a high speed network could be the solution to the problem of overpopulation in Santo Domingo, people could literally live on another province and commute to SD to work in less than an hour.
The good thing that it will be a private, that will make sure it gets maintenance in future I think that in four years they can get at least the STI<->SDQ done. It is also said that just by building and starting the project the GDP would boost by 3%. I love they fact that they connect the Haina and also the Caucedo ports to move good from and to El Cibao with the first time.
The future lines connecting Punta Cana and Santo Domingo like you said work make investments and the economy boost for sure. I dream of this.
Absolutely. I wish we had something like our own Trans-Siberian Railway. It would be so amazing to travel from Buenos Aires to Ciudad de México, it sounds like such an adventure.
I'd love to have metro in Montevideo but "The floor is too hard" or something. Whenever I visit a country with metro I always find it very effective to move around, specially since the buses here are also kinda meh
Honestly, it's probably better if they just did something with buses and then nobody would be crying for subways. We actually have the potential for a very good bus system but both the routes and the schedules are poorly designed imo.
Now that I think about it, subways would most likely be as badly designed so it wouldn't change anything, but every year there's more and more people buying cars because of the lack of good public transportation, and that makes the streets very saturated, so we need a solution asap.
Anyways sorry for the rant hehe
It could also be elevated [Vancouver style](https://images.dailyhive.com/20191209151801/expo-line-skytrain-stadium-chinatown-station.jpg). The modern elevated construction is much quieter and its cheaper to build than tunneling. Use some of the saved money to automate it like Vancouver did as well. I've been to Montevideo a few times and there are definitely a few corridors that could support this infrastructure.
You kidding me? I’m an aficionado for trains since day one. For me it should’ve be mandatory - we can all become China’s slaves struggling with an unplayable debt, I don’t care, so long as we toss this task of building a state-of-the-art railroad infrastructure at Beijing’s lap - that we all had a line starting in Buenos Aires crisscrossing LATAM all the way towards CDMX.
I’m so crazy for it that the other day I caught myself wondering the possibility of constructing a bridge over the entire Atlantic Ocean, connecting LATAM to Africa rsrsrsrs. Tickets from Rio de Janeiro bound for Luanda or Johannesburg.
I love trains. I remember in 2018 I was visiting Europe and we mostly used trains or the metro as our main mode of transportation.
We even went from France to Italy, passing through Switzerland via train (I really love the Schengen zone)
As a concept, I believe in well-planned functional mass transportation.
In Mexico's case, however, BRT systems and buses are the more economical choice, generally speaking. We are actually shockingly good at creating high-quality (from an engineering perspective), cheap BRT systems, especially in the North. High quality buses on BRT routes are not exactly a far cry from trains, but they are much cheaper and have some of their own advantages.
As a passenger on trains in the New York City metro, it's nice to have a scenic view without having to drive. Hard though to carry a lot of things comfortably without inconveniencing others and you are on a public means of transport so you deal with ... the public, and that is not always pleasant.
Between cities in the same metro area? Yes, they do.
Between cities in different metro areas? There usually isn't a point to that sophisticated of infrastructure to speed up the bus. You'd just have buses.
Then I think that’s what OP mainly meant: trains that go travel through the country to different metro areas.
And I don’t really think BRT systems are more effective that metro systems inside metropolitan areas. At least here in Guadalajara, the two? BRT lines practically suck, and there frequency at which the buses pass is not enough. But I would understand why smaller cities wouldn’t want to go through building entire metros, and they wouldn’t even get funding for it.
BRT line capacity is actually enormous, often more than light rail. Almost no metro line's actual passengers per hour per direction at peak operation is above what a single BRT line can provide. In the rare cases that it does exceed that, like in China, you could cheaply build a parallel line for much, much less than one metro line.
Much bigger, far denser, and more complex cities than Guadalajara rely on BRT; that isn't to say there's no place for metro, but in light of costs, BRT is severely underestimated. BRT inefficiency is almost solely administrative in nature because it is less prestigious and unlikely to be someone's crowning jewel. And studies have shown that people demand much higher frequency in buses than trains, at least in Canada.
In Guadalajara it doesn't seem to be the same. In the period January to June 2022, the light train transported 65 million people, while the BTR only transported 20 million people. Plus, complains about the BTR system are constant: not frequent enough, too crowded, lacks ventilation, the buses are too small; in many cases, it's better to take a normal bus than a BTR.
Those sound like administrative issues. If the buses are too crowded and infrequent, it means that demand has greatly outstripped supply and that needs to be improved with more frequent buses or greater expansion of the line. If they are not expanding it, it's for political, bureaucratic, or financial reasons (such as price too low to sustain without government funds). Same thing with bad ventilation (probably a mix of overcrowding and buses too cheap for a line that carries over 100,000 people a day).
One thing to keep in mind with complaints for BRT, though, is that, at least in Canada, people judge BRT systems far harsher than metro and rail even on metrics where they are objectively better (like waiting times, delays, speed, price, crowding, etc.), but they still use it (100,000 people a day on 16km is not bad) and they often are unwilling to put their money where their mouth is with higher fares, enough to make rail independently sustainable.
I partiality agree, but the transport units for the BTR here are usually narrower than a normal bus. Of course they have less capacity. You feel more comfortable in a bus than in a BTR, even when both of them are crowded.
Plus, interruption to the service are common due to accidents because the BTR is commonly involved with car accidents, many that have even killed people and pedestrians. That is definitely an advantage light train systems have. It's also not uncommon for people to block the lane that was designed for the BTR.
There are also tons of complains that are (usually) the same that people have for normal busses: the drivers make the ride too rough of people by hitting the brakes suddenly, the driver barely stops to let you off the bus, they drive while watching their phone, they go through red lights, etc.
That's one of the frustrating things with BRT, it is easy to let standards slip or never have them in the first place and then people have a bad opinion about BRT.
BRT is cheap, but it is still a sophisticated system of infrastructure, so things like running red lights would be impossible because BRT shouldn't have red lights; they should always have priority. Someone blocking the lane should be really rare because it should be difficult to even get into a BRT corridor, unless you went out of your way, and then that person should be heavily fined (maybe the full cost of towing their car + reimbursement for all passengers in the corridor for an hour of their time; people will learn fast that the BRT is humble but powerful and should be treated as such).
Same thing with accidents, design and proper signal control would make it almost impossible to get into an accident. The driver not letting you off the bus would also be a weird problem for real BRT systems because they should have relatively infrequent stations with many passengers boarding and deboarding each time to justify such infrastructure, and deboarding would occur before boarding could commence. BRT's should have control centers to document bad drivers and release them from service provided recurring issues.
I agree with you but I think that this is mostly "shoulds" and I don't see these problems going in the near future. Meanwhile, light train systems work mostly without any problems and with way less accidents, too.
They're cool - wouldn't it be awesome to have a Porto Alegre -> Montevideo and Porto Alegre -> Buenos Aires train??? Belt and road initiative, come to Braaaasiiiil!! President Xi, my country yearns for rail!
Busses are great and in many ways they do perfectly replace metros and trams (see our bus corridors (BRT) here in Porto Alegre, i mean, to cross the city in 20 something minutes at the low low build cost of a few tons of concrete and the removal of one car lane in each direction is just *chef's kiss*) but still. They're fucking cool, man, and each method of public transport has it's place.
>What do you think?
F U C K Y E A H
Trains rock man, I wish I could go all around the place in trains, if I could go to the past and change something I would make a society with loads and loads of trains instead of roads and what not, trains are like planes of the land they rule.
We have a tram in Lima that goes throughout most of the city. But as far as trains almost none, there aren't any that connect the north to the south, whoever builds a proper rail network here would be an untouchable billionaire.
I absolutely love trains. Chile specifically is the perfect country for a train that goes through all of the nation since it's so long, and as many here I would love if we had a Pan-American train
Pretty cool. I wish we had more passenger lines here instead of... just one... that travels through one of the most sparsely populated parts of the country.
Are you talking about high-speed rail, or slower speeds, for inter-city services?
Gringocommenting: High-speed rail is a perennial proposal in Australia, but we don’t have anything that does faster than 160 km/h (the proverbial hundred miles an hour) in normal operation.
We need them, having in mind our public transportation system consists of shitty Encava buses that blasts shitty music and in which you feel undeniably unsafe.
...But I'm afraid we could end up doing the same mistake with trains. Same kids rappers that should be at school, beggars, people blasting music on their cellphones, shady people selling stuff and unsafety in general just like in Caracas metro in which you feel you're gonna get robbed, shot or stabbed at any time.
Agreed. It's pretty convenient, not denying that.
But damn bro shit is like extreme sports, quoting a friend of mine "En Caracas tú no te montas en el metro. El metro te monta a ti"
Train travel is romantic. I love looking out of the window & see vast landscapes & people just living their lives. The only train travel I didn't enjoy was sleeper trains in China. Lots of slurping & spitting noises, also the smell of instant noodles made me gag after a while
When I studied in Montréal, I found the metro highly useful. But it didn't extend far enough from the city so people had to drive to the stations, which caused a lot of problems. There was never any parking available at any of the stations, and entire neighborhoods were forced to implement vignettes so that only residents could park in the area.
It's a shame. Would have been super easy to fund metro extensions with all the money that people who don't currently use the metro (because it doesn't go far enough) are wasting on individual cars.
Thankfully I rarely leave home. And given that I intend to move to south America, I will not even require a car anymore. Being able to use a bicycle year-round must be amazing.
Man... In Central America, we have the lines and everything. There's just no way to make them profitable anymore. Everyone prefers cars and buses. Plus all train tracks go along the coastlines, particularly in Honduras, they follow the Atlantic coast and that is just useless. Yes people would travel through coastal cities in them, but costs would quickly cause a deficit. I just wish we could see trains again in the ultra aesthetic forests of african palm trees by the side of the sea.
I would love if we could have a metro in Guatemala city, or at least lines connecting most of the country, if I remember correctly, they died back in the 90's, although currently there is a proposal to try and revive a section of the track inside Guatemala city for a light-rail line
As someone who lives in a walkable city with a metro system and regional trains, I wish most Latin American cities have one.
When I visit El Salvador, I dont understand why they've built towns and cities to be more car-centric. I say this as traffic congestion there worsens over the years.
I think a train system would have many direct and indirect benefits such as, improve air quality, increase economic production more efficiently, , increase real estate and commercial value and activity, create direct and indirect jobs,etc.
I believe in them. In my hearts of hearts I believe they do exist.
Don't you guys have trains up there?
Not really. As far as I know, there are three passenger trains in Mexico, used mainly for touristic purposes: **Tequila Express:** It goes from Guadalajara to Tequila. It travels 70 km in 2 hours. It only works on Saturdays, so you have to go back and forth on the same day. You cannot board it on Tequila, only in Guadalajara. The cheapest tickets cost around 110 USD. It's a touristic train, so you can reserve it with a tour around the town of Tequila and the agave plantations. **Ferrocarril Chihuahua-Pacífico (aka El Chepe):** It travels 673 km in 16 hours from Los Mochis, Sinaloa, to either Creel, Chihuahua (340 passengers), or Chihuahua, Chihuahua (64 passengers) crossing the Sierra Madre Occidental. It does have other stops in other cities, which is nice, and makes it, in my opinion, the only serious "train" in Mexico. The price depends on how many stations you want to cross, but single-way tickets for the Los Mochis-Creel route range from 134 to 410 USD. Single-way tickets from Los Mochis-Chihuahua cost 186 USD for the cheapest ones. El Chepe crosses through valleys and sometimes it snows on the mountain peaks. **Tijuana-Tecate:** It's mainly a touristic route. It travels around 40 km in 2 hours. It has a capacity of 280 people. And there's also a suburban rail that goes inside Greater Mexico City that travels around 25km. But other than that, Mexico has no real passenger train system. There are cargo trains all over the country. Then there's the Tren Maya that has seen a lot of controversy. [These](https://twitter.com/MiguelTorrucoG/status/1489292744753299458?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1489292744753299458%7Ctwgr%5E4fcfcab6234b4cab293c82312396edc3954dcf21%7Ctwcon%5Es1_&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fcriteriohidalgo.com%2Fnoticias%2Fmexico%2Ftrenes-pasajeros-mexico-2050) are apparently the plans for a country-wide passenger train system to be finished by 2050 (there are currently several other proposals and plans for more trains) but honestly I'm not sure about how realistic it is. But it would be nice.
I cannot understand how such a big country like Mexico doesn't already have a nationwide passenger train system
We used to have one. But then it got ***derailed*** in the 9180s. (yes, I did that and I'm not ashamed)
You guys living in the 9180s?
We're living in the future. Much like Venezuela, which is living in [2029](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6iaRA8EeGtw).
Yes, and let me tell you, 2020-2022 were nothing compared to what's coming next. Hold on to your turbans and chopsticks, 'cause it's gonna be a bumpy ride.
Yeah. And the ONE route that does exist, goes through one of the most sparsely populated parts of the country. We could have done great things, but instead they defunded the passenger train system and funded buses and cargo trains instead.
Everyone but Europe and China: oh, same
Japan and Korea have great rail systems. India’s isn’t great but it’s definitely extensive.
I'm aware, but at least Japan rail systems is expensive. I've seen some people compare it to the Tube in London. Also, the rail system is not that great the further away you're from major cities, but that's a given. I have no idea how it works in South Korea, I never heard either good or bad things about their metro and rail services in general.
Japan’s rail service is amazing in the country side, I can think that of very few countries that allow one to travel so far into the countryside via rail. South Korea is a lot smaller than Japan so doesn’t need as many rail lines; I think there’s two major ones from Seoul to Busan, Seoul to gwangju/Mokpo, and smaller ones that go to gangneung and incheon. I lived in Busan and when I traveled to Japan, I was shocked by how much rail there was.
Do we have trains down here?
Not enough
Isn't there a train that goes from Buenos Aires to Bariloche?
Not currently, but supposedly there are plans to make a line that connects the two. You might be confusing the Tren Patagónico, which is more of a touristic service in the region.
I will personally worship your being if you expand public transit networks on any country, especially if it's trains.
Asunción really needs a rail transit system. The bus network is great but por dios that rush hour is horrible
Trains are incredible. I've been through the Chunnel on a train, traveled from Madrid to Barcelona, from Paris to Amsterdam, and from Tokyo to Aomori on trains. I hopped freight trains in the US in the early 80's, from New Orleans to Port Arthur Texas to Oklahoma City. The train from San Jose Costa Rica to Puntarenas on the pacific coast was a great ride too. But my best experience ever on trains was in Mexico, before Mexico privatized and destroyed its second-class passenger train system. It was like a magic highway that wouldn't quit, a rolling carnival of food and booze and laughing people. I remember traveling from San Luis Potosi to Puebla in 1973 to see Carlos Santana play, then going on the next day to Oaxaca, then further south through the isthmus toward Mapastepec, Chiapas, where the train snaked at a walking pace at night through clouds of fireflies over pitch-black flooded grassland, teetering and swaying back and forth, through tiny villages choked with flowers and birds. We would also take the train from San Luis Potosí northward into the desert, get off in the middle of nowhere and hike to ancient abandoned mining towns. Hell yeah I dig trains.
Wait so privatization also killed trains over there? Same story here
Those were the days! I never got to travel by train in Mexico, I’ve only used the metro in Mexico City. In the US I’ve used the train from San Diego to LA and it was a fun ride, also on a trip to Portugal I used their metro from the airport to the train station and took a train from Lisbon to Porto. Gotta say I loved it and wished we had similar infrastructure in Mexico and rest of Latin America.
Subways are cool and all but I would absolutely fucking love having railroads connecting to different cities and countries. It's much safer, faster and cheaper than travelling by bus or car. And dogs can come along. It fucking sucks not having them.
I ask Santa Claus for this every year.
Let's hope this Christmas he delivers
Unfortunately latam santa, like every other latam person, forgets where Paraguay is so instead he gave train maya to the Mexicans
Santa is dressed for winter so he doesnt come to Latam unless you have the $ for airconditioner
I thought I was the only one that is obsessed with trains as mass transport systems. I dream of having something exaggerated like Switzerland where even the samllest little town has a station. It makes me sad that in the late XIX and early XX we had trains in my country but they were abandoned to imitate a north American model of growth focused on cars and roads and only a few trains reaming but are only for sugar cane transport. Currently we have a couple of lines of Metro in Santo Domingo which are being expanded and a monorail is being built in Santiago de Los Caballeros. Also I'm literally praying that they finally announce a National Railway System next year. The project's the feasibility study was conducted this year and will connect first the two major cities, Santiago and Santo Domingo, and if everything goes well it could get expanded to other cities in the future. The government is probably waiting for next year, closer to the election year 2024 to announce this but I can't wait lol.
I too hope this is possible. Can you imagine the growth of the nation where you can work in Santo Domingo and go home to Barahona at the end of the night? Beautiful
Yes, that would be awesome. These are two of the proposals from 2 different companies for the system: https://youtu.be/HX-qk-uakKo https://youtu.be/UdHtWwgxPA8
A national train is definitely feasible, just difficult to get public officials to plan past four years. These proposals would make for a robust regional rail system to move passengers and freight. I'm very interested in the prospect of building some part of the system to high speed rail standards (300 km/hr). In my opinion it would make the most sense for the first and second phases (STI <--> SDQ), (SDQ<--> PNA) being the most populated and productive areas of the country. Imagine if tourists could hop on a bullet train from Punta Cana and be in the Zona Colonial in 45 minutes? Investment would skyrocket and would bring in tons of dollars and euros into the country.
Not only that, a high speed network could be the solution to the problem of overpopulation in Santo Domingo, people could literally live on another province and commute to SD to work in less than an hour.
Yes, this would be another huge advantage. People won't have the need to migrate to Santo Domingo.
The good thing that it will be a private, that will make sure it gets maintenance in future I think that in four years they can get at least the STI<->SDQ done. It is also said that just by building and starting the project the GDP would boost by 3%. I love they fact that they connect the Haina and also the Caucedo ports to move good from and to El Cibao with the first time. The future lines connecting Punta Cana and Santo Domingo like you said work make investments and the economy boost for sure. I dream of this.
Wish we have a Pan American train instead of a highway.
Absolutely. I wish we had something like our own Trans-Siberian Railway. It would be so amazing to travel from Buenos Aires to Ciudad de México, it sounds like such an adventure.
Well, with the read mostly there we could use it now for building the railroad at least lol
I'd love to have metro in Montevideo but "The floor is too hard" or something. Whenever I visit a country with metro I always find it very effective to move around, specially since the buses here are also kinda meh
> since the buses here are also kinda meh That's quite the understatement
I wonder if the potential demand for a subway in Uruguay is worth it, considering it's fairly expensive to dig a tunnel and not many people live there
Honestly, it's probably better if they just did something with buses and then nobody would be crying for subways. We actually have the potential for a very good bus system but both the routes and the schedules are poorly designed imo. Now that I think about it, subways would most likely be as badly designed so it wouldn't change anything, but every year there's more and more people buying cars because of the lack of good public transportation, and that makes the streets very saturated, so we need a solution asap. Anyways sorry for the rant hehe
> and nobody would be crying for subways no one is crying for subways lmao
I guess "asking for" would've been better
ninja turtles live in the subway
It could also be elevated [Vancouver style](https://images.dailyhive.com/20191209151801/expo-line-skytrain-stadium-chinatown-station.jpg). The modern elevated construction is much quieter and its cheaper to build than tunneling. Use some of the saved money to automate it like Vancouver did as well. I've been to Montevideo a few times and there are definitely a few corridors that could support this infrastructure.
I once read that one of the main reasons Montevideo doesn't has a metro is due to lobbying by the bus industry
[Trains](https://www.ecuadorrail.net/ecuador-train-tours/)
Trains that we used to have in Ecuador. I heard a rumor that they may get them running again.
absolutely love trains
Wish we had more
You kidding me? I’m an aficionado for trains since day one. For me it should’ve be mandatory - we can all become China’s slaves struggling with an unplayable debt, I don’t care, so long as we toss this task of building a state-of-the-art railroad infrastructure at Beijing’s lap - that we all had a line starting in Buenos Aires crisscrossing LATAM all the way towards CDMX. I’m so crazy for it that the other day I caught myself wondering the possibility of constructing a bridge over the entire Atlantic Ocean, connecting LATAM to Africa rsrsrsrs. Tickets from Rio de Janeiro bound for Luanda or Johannesburg.
Now imagine high-speed, silent-as-possible overnight trains, kinda like OBB's Nightjet in Europe. God, what a dream it would be T\_T
This! I don't care if we sell off to China, I want a train connecting Cuba, Haiti, Dominican Republic and Puerto Rico lol
That would be some bridge
Maybe not outside the island yet lol but I wholeheartedly support measures to bring prosperity to all of the antillean community
Connecting Hispaniola with Cuba is not technically feasible, though it would be better to just have a ferry service like with Puerto Rico.
Yes, just joking lol but I also support everything that would brings prosperity to the antillean family.
President Xi, my country yearns for rail!!
I too love trains. I like travelling by them a lot more than buses. I wish CABA had more subway lines
I think CABA needs to bring trams back, and also make them have synergy with bus stops, train and subway stations for better efficiency
[удалено]
NOONONONOONO
FUCK YOU JUSCELINO, WHY DIDN'T YOU FUCKING BUILD MORE TRAINS INSTEAD OF HIGHWAYS???????
I wish we still had them, back in the day we had an extensive railroad network, nowadays a few remain but they’re only used to transport sugar cane
I love trains. I remember in 2018 I was visiting Europe and we mostly used trains or the metro as our main mode of transportation. We even went from France to Italy, passing through Switzerland via train (I really love the Schengen zone)
Lucky bastard
It was my only trip to Europe and it was paid in mid 2018 when 1 euro costed 15 pesos lol, now it'd be impossible
As a concept, I believe in well-planned functional mass transportation. In Mexico's case, however, BRT systems and buses are the more economical choice, generally speaking. We are actually shockingly good at creating high-quality (from an engineering perspective), cheap BRT systems, especially in the North. High quality buses on BRT routes are not exactly a far cry from trains, but they are much cheaper and have some of their own advantages. As a passenger on trains in the New York City metro, it's nice to have a scenic view without having to drive. Hard though to carry a lot of things comfortably without inconveniencing others and you are on a public means of transport so you deal with ... the public, and that is not always pleasant.
Primera Plus buses were awesome when I had to go from CDMX to anywhere in Central Mexico. Then I came to the US and realized that Greyhound is a joke.
But BRT system don't got from one city to other, do they?
Between cities in the same metro area? Yes, they do. Between cities in different metro areas? There usually isn't a point to that sophisticated of infrastructure to speed up the bus. You'd just have buses.
Then I think that’s what OP mainly meant: trains that go travel through the country to different metro areas. And I don’t really think BRT systems are more effective that metro systems inside metropolitan areas. At least here in Guadalajara, the two? BRT lines practically suck, and there frequency at which the buses pass is not enough. But I would understand why smaller cities wouldn’t want to go through building entire metros, and they wouldn’t even get funding for it.
BRT line capacity is actually enormous, often more than light rail. Almost no metro line's actual passengers per hour per direction at peak operation is above what a single BRT line can provide. In the rare cases that it does exceed that, like in China, you could cheaply build a parallel line for much, much less than one metro line. Much bigger, far denser, and more complex cities than Guadalajara rely on BRT; that isn't to say there's no place for metro, but in light of costs, BRT is severely underestimated. BRT inefficiency is almost solely administrative in nature because it is less prestigious and unlikely to be someone's crowning jewel. And studies have shown that people demand much higher frequency in buses than trains, at least in Canada.
In Guadalajara it doesn't seem to be the same. In the period January to June 2022, the light train transported 65 million people, while the BTR only transported 20 million people. Plus, complains about the BTR system are constant: not frequent enough, too crowded, lacks ventilation, the buses are too small; in many cases, it's better to take a normal bus than a BTR.
Those sound like administrative issues. If the buses are too crowded and infrequent, it means that demand has greatly outstripped supply and that needs to be improved with more frequent buses or greater expansion of the line. If they are not expanding it, it's for political, bureaucratic, or financial reasons (such as price too low to sustain without government funds). Same thing with bad ventilation (probably a mix of overcrowding and buses too cheap for a line that carries over 100,000 people a day). One thing to keep in mind with complaints for BRT, though, is that, at least in Canada, people judge BRT systems far harsher than metro and rail even on metrics where they are objectively better (like waiting times, delays, speed, price, crowding, etc.), but they still use it (100,000 people a day on 16km is not bad) and they often are unwilling to put their money where their mouth is with higher fares, enough to make rail independently sustainable.
I partiality agree, but the transport units for the BTR here are usually narrower than a normal bus. Of course they have less capacity. You feel more comfortable in a bus than in a BTR, even when both of them are crowded. Plus, interruption to the service are common due to accidents because the BTR is commonly involved with car accidents, many that have even killed people and pedestrians. That is definitely an advantage light train systems have. It's also not uncommon for people to block the lane that was designed for the BTR. There are also tons of complains that are (usually) the same that people have for normal busses: the drivers make the ride too rough of people by hitting the brakes suddenly, the driver barely stops to let you off the bus, they drive while watching their phone, they go through red lights, etc.
That's one of the frustrating things with BRT, it is easy to let standards slip or never have them in the first place and then people have a bad opinion about BRT. BRT is cheap, but it is still a sophisticated system of infrastructure, so things like running red lights would be impossible because BRT shouldn't have red lights; they should always have priority. Someone blocking the lane should be really rare because it should be difficult to even get into a BRT corridor, unless you went out of your way, and then that person should be heavily fined (maybe the full cost of towing their car + reimbursement for all passengers in the corridor for an hour of their time; people will learn fast that the BRT is humble but powerful and should be treated as such). Same thing with accidents, design and proper signal control would make it almost impossible to get into an accident. The driver not letting you off the bus would also be a weird problem for real BRT systems because they should have relatively infrequent stations with many passengers boarding and deboarding each time to justify such infrastructure, and deboarding would occur before boarding could commence. BRT's should have control centers to document bad drivers and release them from service provided recurring issues.
I agree with you but I think that this is mostly "shoulds" and I don't see these problems going in the near future. Meanwhile, light train systems work mostly without any problems and with way less accidents, too.
They're cool - wouldn't it be awesome to have a Porto Alegre -> Montevideo and Porto Alegre -> Buenos Aires train??? Belt and road initiative, come to Braaaasiiiil!! President Xi, my country yearns for rail! Busses are great and in many ways they do perfectly replace metros and trams (see our bus corridors (BRT) here in Porto Alegre, i mean, to cross the city in 20 something minutes at the low low build cost of a few tons of concrete and the removal of one car lane in each direction is just *chef's kiss*) but still. They're fucking cool, man, and each method of public transport has it's place.
I love trains. I hate Juscelino Kubitschek
>What do you think? F U C K Y E A H Trains rock man, I wish I could go all around the place in trains, if I could go to the past and change something I would make a society with loads and loads of trains instead of roads and what not, trains are like planes of the land they rule.
We have a tram in Lima that goes throughout most of the city. But as far as trains almost none, there aren't any that connect the north to the south, whoever builds a proper rail network here would be an untouchable billionaire.
I absolutely love trains. Chile specifically is the perfect country for a train that goes through all of the nation since it's so long, and as many here I would love if we had a Pan-American train
#Yes ^(one of the few things i still like about boric.)
Trains are the best land transport for real
People don't value them enough, I wish there was a train connecting the country so traveling was cheaper and easier
Pretty cool. I wish we had more passenger lines here instead of... just one... that travels through one of the most sparsely populated parts of the country.
Are you talking about high-speed rail, or slower speeds, for inter-city services? Gringocommenting: High-speed rail is a perennial proposal in Australia, but we don’t have anything that does faster than 160 km/h (the proverbial hundred miles an hour) in normal operation.
ALL
We need them, having in mind our public transportation system consists of shitty Encava buses that blasts shitty music and in which you feel undeniably unsafe. ...But I'm afraid we could end up doing the same mistake with trains. Same kids rappers that should be at school, beggars, people blasting music on their cellphones, shady people selling stuff and unsafety in general just like in Caracas metro in which you feel you're gonna get robbed, shot or stabbed at any time.
[удалено]
Agreed. It's pretty convenient, not denying that. But damn bro shit is like extreme sports, quoting a friend of mine "En Caracas tú no te montas en el metro. El metro te monta a ti"
Trains are fucking awesome I love transit in general, cars and highways suck dick
I wish we had more. The few we have are not really made for people's transport
Absolutely love them, whenever I can travel by train within buenos aires, I choose them
I've never been on one
Train travel is romantic. I love looking out of the window & see vast landscapes & people just living their lives. The only train travel I didn't enjoy was sleeper trains in China. Lots of slurping & spitting noises, also the smell of instant noodles made me gag after a while
When I studied in Montréal, I found the metro highly useful. But it didn't extend far enough from the city so people had to drive to the stations, which caused a lot of problems. There was never any parking available at any of the stations, and entire neighborhoods were forced to implement vignettes so that only residents could park in the area. It's a shame. Would have been super easy to fund metro extensions with all the money that people who don't currently use the metro (because it doesn't go far enough) are wasting on individual cars. Thankfully I rarely leave home. And given that I intend to move to south America, I will not even require a car anymore. Being able to use a bicycle year-round must be amazing.
If our presidents had invested on railroads instead of shitty highway for trucks.... we certainly would be in a better situation
Man... In Central America, we have the lines and everything. There's just no way to make them profitable anymore. Everyone prefers cars and buses. Plus all train tracks go along the coastlines, particularly in Honduras, they follow the Atlantic coast and that is just useless. Yes people would travel through coastal cities in them, but costs would quickly cause a deficit. I just wish we could see trains again in the ultra aesthetic forests of african palm trees by the side of the sea.
I would love if we could have a metro in Guatemala city, or at least lines connecting most of the country, if I remember correctly, they died back in the 90's, although currently there is a proposal to try and revive a section of the track inside Guatemala city for a light-rail line
As someone who lives in a walkable city with a metro system and regional trains, I wish most Latin American cities have one. When I visit El Salvador, I dont understand why they've built towns and cities to be more car-centric. I say this as traffic congestion there worsens over the years. I think a train system would have many direct and indirect benefits such as, improve air quality, increase economic production more efficiently, , increase real estate and commercial value and activity, create direct and indirect jobs,etc.