What places have you been with the most Coruscant/Trantor sorts of vibes (city on top of city on top of city, without a clearly visible ground level)?

Fun find this afternoon: In 1957, the Port Authority did the engineering work to link the downtown PATH to the Lexington Avenue subway local tracks.

Trying out the new GoVolta low-cost rail service from Berlin to Amsterdam. We found out two hours before departure that you're supposed to "check in" by four hours before, but got the website live chat to send us our boarding passes anyway.

Is this an April Fool's joke or just a data error?

What is this, Amtrak?

It's weird how Berlin's Ringbahn is among its most important passenger rail lines while Paris just abandoned theirs. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chemin_...

The Paris cable car is both a lot of fun and seems plausibly quite useful for people living in the area served. Daily ridership is apparently 12.5k, not huge but a good 3x the London cable car for example.

Updated for 2025: timeline maps of every metro system in the world transit-timelines.github.io

@enf.bsky.social Do you still have the pdf that was once at trafficways.org/scans/1956-b...? Or any other information about the 1956 SF rapid transit proposal depicted in www.flickr.com/photos/walki...

Finally trying out electrified Caltrain

Furthest I've been (on land): N: 71.171°N Nordkapp, 1989; as an adult 69.715°N Nordpissen, Tromsø, 2025 E: Likely 176.378°E near Waimangu on a Wellington-Auckland bus, 2013 S: 65.065°S Port Charcot, 2020 W: 159.782°W or so in Kauai, 1988; as an adult 150.022°W Point Woronzof, Anchorage, 2013

My favorite proposals (that I hadn't already seen elsewhere) from the "1 like = 1 passenger rail project" threads:

🦋 Is this public transportation?

1 like = 1 passenger rail project idea

Today we are familiar with the enormous Chinese high-speed-rail network, but decades ago, it took a tremendous amount of work to build out the conventional rail network from its state at the proclamation of the People's Republic - mostly sparse, in ruins, and incredibly regionally concentrated

Travel threads I have posted: Antarctica-Boston without flying Nicosia-Lisbon without flying Boston-DC by local buses Berlin-Chisinau via Kyiv Austin-Quebec City without flying Berlin-Sicily by local/regional trains Berlin-Lagos without flying Berlin-Tromsø without flying

At Eidsvoll you can transfer directly from a 200km/h electric train to the 169-year-old paddle steamboat Skibladner en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skiblad..., the world's oldest operating public transport vehicle.

This time I'm heading north, starting with the slow trains from Berlin to Hamburg (since they're free with Deutschlandticket and it turned out a hostel bed in Hamburg tonight was cheaper than an early fast train to Hamburg tomorrow morning).

Apparently it's hotter than usual in Hell right now?

It's currently difficult to get very far from Europe in most directions without flying (especially with a US passport). But one path remains open, so today I'm heading southwest from Berlin towards Tangier, Dakar, and beyond.

If you see this post, quote with a bridge from your gallery.

What are the furthest points from Berlin/Europe currently reachable via publicly-available not-airplane-or-cruise-ship transport, and how would you go about reaching them?

Me at 21

What's the most underrated city in the EU?

⚠️ Achtung! Have a nice day.

What do STEM PhD dropouts do now that bigtech hiring is so much weaker than in the 2010s?

== Berlin to Pozzallo by local/regional trains == Vehicles: 32 trains, 1 ferry, 1 rail-replacement bus Distance: 2755km by train, 7km foot, 8km ferry, 100km bus In-vehicle time: ~40hr train, 20min ferry, 2hr bus Map: google.com/maps/d/edit?... Thread starts: staging.bsky.app/profile/lexa...

Enabled by Deutschlandticket (€49/month unlimited local/regional transit in Germany) & the Italia In Tour ticket (€29/3days unlimited Trenitalia regional trains), I'm planning to spend the next few days traveling from Berlin to Southern Italy entirely on local & regional trains.

we're so back

Berlin's Gärten der Welt has gardens in the style of places all over the world and... the USA garden has a parking lot with US cars. But nature is healing, wasps have infested the cars.

goblin mode

Labor productivity fell in 2023Q1 https://www.bls.gov/news.release/prod2.nr0.htm; 2022 was also negative for the year, lowest since at least the 80s. I think this is mostly lower-productivity workers rejoining the workforce but I wonder how much is attributable to the Adderall shortage?

Which North American urban areas have multiple unconnected mainline rail termini/central stations? - NYC (Penn, GCT, Atlantic, Hoboken, LIC, St George) - Chicago (Union, Oglivie, Millennium, LaSalle) - Miami (Central, Airport, Amtrak) - Dallas (Union, Trinity Mills) - Philadelphia (30th, WRTC)

Is this the worst light rail line in North America, or merely a mediocre commuter rail line?

Is this a T stop? 🦋

The original route of the Northeast Corridor (NJRR) ran alongside this canal until 1863.

It's surprising to me that (if I understand correctly) voluntarily unemployed people in Germany have to pay €210/month for mandatory health insurance, while healthcare for voluntarily unemployed people in most US states is free.

Considering travel plans for the next two months, do I know anybody who would like to meet up in any of Austin, Toronto, or Philadelphia?

Anybody want to come ride https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tshiuetin_Rail_Transportation with me sometime in the next two months?

Today I learned that since 2021 Dakar has had an electrified suburban rail line with trains every 10 minutes all day. https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Train_express_r%C3%A9gional_Dakar-AIBD

What's going on here? Penn Station didn't exist in 1908 and I'm pretty sure no part of it ever looked like this.

Boston transit history question: when was the last time before today that an in-service train ran through from the Tremont Street (Green Line) Subway to Medford?

So what's everybody's plan for getting to Medford at 4:30am?

Is Park Street the only subway station in the world where you are allowed to walk across (one of) the tracks?

BRB&L and B6

TIL that the Berlin transit system includes a rowboat. Standard public transport tickets are accepted. https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/F%C3%A4hrverkehr_in_Berlin#Ruderf%C3%A4hre_(F24)

"stopped" = left the airport/station at all "visited" = did things that were part of the trip purpose/not purely incidental to onward travel "stayed" = more than 10 days cumulative and 4 continuous "lived" = at least 90 days within a 180 day period https://t.co/fgBWbssifw