Human Transit

munich: do trams cause ridership? vice versa?

My tour of Germany, France, and the Netherlands in July brought me to numerous situations where trams are used to great effect in handling high volumes of passengers moving in exclusive rights-of-way.  (I cannot emphasize too often that these are usually more like light rail than like American streetcars or Australian trams, which are often compromised by having to share a traffic lane.)

I spoke to many transit experts on the trip, and only in Munich did I hear a planner state the view that it may make sense to convert buses into trams solely because trams can attract more riders.  (Note that Prof. Patrick Condon also wants to replace buses with trams, but he's thinking about a development and urbanist outcome.  He's also arguing, as my Munich contact would not, that it may be good for transit to be slower.)  This planner recently wrote to me to share the following data, showing that German cities with trams have higher per capita ridership than cities that run only with buses.  It's too big to copy here, but it's a simple Word file:

Download Cities with or without Tram

He writes:

The result is, that cities with a tram system have in average 50% more passengers in the total system (tram and bus) than cities with a bus only system.

Cities like Wiesbaden with an extensive bus lane system are among them.

OK.  But if you're going to throw these kind of data around as though they're decisive, please remember:

 Correlation is not causation, nor does it tell you which way causation goes.

In this case, the correlation may be more easily explained by a causation that goes the other way, i.e. that ridership is "causing" trams.  The best reason to convert a bus to a tram, or to build trams instead of a bus line, is because you need a higher capacity -- in riders / driver -- than you can handle on buses. It's perfectly logical that high-demand corridors have trams rather than buses, but that doesn't mean the trams caused the ridership.  It may be the opposite, or a complex mix.

Photo: MaxM via Wikipedia

munich: the station as riot

My Munich transit notes will take a while to settle, but meanwhile, Munich's U-bahn station Münchner Freiheit is a must-see for all visitors.

 

U-bahn lines have associated colors that are reflected in both mapping and signage.  (See U-bahn map here).  This station is an interchange between lines 3 (orange) and 6 (blue).  So the architects had a field day exploring all the ways that orange and blue can converse, or clash.   And as if orange weren't garish enough, they invented a peculiar pea green to dance with it.

 

This is, by the way, a weaved station:  U3 and U6 northbound on one platform, and both southbound on the other, to maximize cross-platform transfers.  U6 is toward the center of the station in both directions, so to express that you have the blue pillars down the center, with the curious orange+olive on both outside walls, where the (orange) U3 runs.

A mirrored ceiling festooned with semi-protruding panels of flourescent light amplifies the dissonance.  

This may well the the brightest underground station I've ever seen, bright not just with brute-force flourescents but with a mirror-intensive design that recycles light.  The photons can bounce around pretty much forever.

Munich has several recent U-bahn stations that show some real architectural panache, but this is the only one that's truly fun.  Would it get old looking at this every day?  I don't think so.