What's the deal with the countries without metros? I'm surprised Yugoslavia and Cuba never bothered while most of the commies did; and the USSR never bothered putting metro rail in the Baltics.
Also the Antipodean countries.
>muh metro
The obsession with metro systems is typical for former USSR countries and its satellites. Are you from there by any chance?
To put it right: perfectly working tram or light rail or commuter rail system can do the same work as the typical "heavy" metro.
>>948041
>USSR countries and its satellites
>Most of NATO has metros on many of their cities
>On-surface railed transport system is better than underground rails.
You know, the "obsession" with metro systems is there because they are much more efficient, don't clog roads (as tram lines do), and have much bigger units which can carry far more people.
Commuter rail systems do the same above-ground, and that makes them shittier (intersections with streets clog traffic).
Believe me, I live in a city which has all of those transport systems (tram, light rail, commuter trains, underground metro AND bus rapid transit systems) - Buenos Aires. Even taking into account that all of them are poorly-administered, you can tell by far that underground metro has many advantages over the other systems.
>>948061
>Most of NATO has metros on many of their cities
>citation needed
Tram lines or light rail lines don't clog roads as well, if well designed.
Light rail might have big units as well.
>>948030
It's kind of misleading to only take 'true' subway systems into consideration. Commuter rail networks in Australia, South Africa and some of the ex-Yugoslav countries basically operate the same way as metros for instance.
>>948030
What is this, a metro system for ants?
>>948041
In Spain they also have an unhealthy obsession with metros.
I disagree that a LRT will always be enough, but at least from the spain-based point of view I can agree that more often than not metros are demanded and/or built where an LRT would do just fine.
Doesn't Havana has some sort of commuter rail system?
>>948200
No, they have these weird ass things
The cuban rail system is decrepit and essentially nonfunctional
>>948137
Yeah, sure, you build larger units, make your stations bigger to accommodate bigger trains, more people, faster dwell times. Then you realize, hey, this stuff is taking up a ton of valuable real estate downtown, we should put it above-grade or underground. Congratulations, you just made a metro.
>>948202
Actually they do have a commuter network in Havana. There's also that weird Hershey factory interurban line that is still running.
>>948137
>US
>Great Britain
>France
>Spain
>Germany
I'm surely missing some more.
>>948202
Do they not have buses? Or can they not afford any?
>>948484
There are 28 member countries from which 19 have metro. So the first part of the statement
>Most of NATO has metros
is true
However the second part of the statement says
>on many of their cities
Here is important to define what is "many"...we can say that it is definitely more than 1. So let's take a look how many countries from those 19 have more than 1 metro system.
>Canada
>France
>Italy
>Netherlands
>UK
>USA
>Turkey
>Germany
>Spain
Those are 9 countries, out of 28 which has metro in "many" of their cities. The original statement is therefore false.
>>948030
Non metro cities have Trams.
A map showing cities with metro systems gives a better picture. Typically you will find metro systems in big and densely populated cities. Alternatively or additionally you might also find other modes of mass transport. Like trams, and commuter trains. Sometimes even monorails or rope-ways.
>>948786
>nitpicking
>only to prove "only commies like metro"
>taking everything literal
>on this year of our universe
Specially when you unread everything else.
>>948500
>>948261
>>948202
>>948200
Havana used to have a very sizeable tram network. As is typical for latinos, though, they let it rot until it was no good anymore.
Interestingly, it was one of the few systems to ever use twin trolley poles on trams.
Pic sauced from http://www.tramz.com/cu/hb/hb.html which is an awesome resource on the Havana trams.
>>948968
This.
Any statement like "USSR and satellites", or the contrary, are not to be taken into account here.
Metros are objectively one of the most efficient means of urban passenger transportation.
Sure, in many of those cities you have many more types (as I've said, Light Rails, Commuter trains, Bus Rapid Transit, normal buses, etc), because you can't just have one system for everyone in a city with a population count above 2 million (or less, or more, depending on many factors, before someone starts objecting on the number).
>>949353
Everybody likes metro of course. My point was, that in USSR you can see an obsession with it. Metro is seen like the number one success of any city, building more saint than church. While in the rest of the world it's just another mean of urban transportation.
>>949358
I'm suspecting its just you posting all the
XXDDD>>>//POL/// this here
Triggered much?
>>948030
Commie here from ex-USSR.
USSR authorities authorized metro only in cities of over 1M population. None of Baltic cities still has ever reached 1M pop, but at the end of The Union, due to economic and strategic importance of Riga, the metro was designed and granted funds for construction. The construction would've been among the most expensive, because soil here is shit - sand, gravel, small rocks, bogs and swamps, a river in the middle of the city. But local nationalist movements used protests against metro to organize independence rallies, spread western propaganda, making friends. The union eventually collapsed and the plans of metro were abandoned, sadly, and nobody could track where all the granted funds went.
>>948202
There were plans in the late 80s for a metro in Havana with the help of the USSR. A small bit of construction began before the collapse of the USSR and the project was abandoned.
Today Cuba has new buses from China and Russia. They don't really use those anymore.
>>948968
>australia and sub-saharan africa
>>948968
Cleveland is a bit of a stretch. Shouldn't Seattle and St Louis have dots?
>>949400
Why wouldn't they use elevated rail, or cut and cover?
>>949400
It's sad that Volgograd tram tunnel was left as one in a kind experiment.
>>949382
>Metro is seen like the number one success of any city, building more saint than church.
Indeed.
>>948030
There were plans to develop metro systems in the Baltic capitals.
>>950418
More like Meme-tro.
>>950389
> cut and cover
Im not an engineer, but you can't cut and cover under homes and through the river. The challenge was high ground water and a very challenging terrain. It is easier to do in caucasus or Nordics or even Iberia, than in this sinking scheißloch
> elevated rail
I have seen this only in berlin's Ubahn. The city is old with many narrow streets, unlike rebuilt Berlin. And UBahn experience sucks. The idea of metro is to defy street layouts and buildings,
>>952594
>Im not an engineer, but you can't cut and cover under homes and through the river.
As an engineer here, I say that "with sufficient thrust, a pig will fly just fine".
You cut and cover under rivers with "cofferdam".
Houses can be supported from below with pilings while they are tunneled under. It's just, that's terribly expensive so as a rule, the metro lines built as cut and cover follow the street grid.
>>949400
>USSR authorities authorized metro only in cities of over 1M population
You're forgetting about the system in Yerevan.
>>952681
There is an anecdotal version of how the Soviet rules (more than 1 million, a full Metro system; less than million, a Tram system) were bypassed. Reportedly the Chairman of the Armenian Communist Party, Karen Demirchyan, convinced the Soviet premier Leonid Brezhnev in the following manner:
>Technical problems with the construction of the Rapid Tram were allowed during planning when calculations were done about perspective passenger traffic. The root of which lies in the hearts of the Armenian people. Each Armenian who lives away from his or her parents must visit them daily. As a result the passenger flow will be at least 1.5 times greater than projected. Moreover the republic is growing and becoming more developed at an increasingly large amount, sooner or later many of the Armenian diaspora (which outnumber those living in the former Armenian SSR) will want to return home. In this case, by 2000 our capital will not have 1.5 million, but 2 million inhabitants. We need Metro!
>>952855
>reported directly from Radio Yerevan
I'm more concerned about what the deal is with the countries without the metric system.
>>954368
>n.a.
Some countries just don't measure things?
I want more hanging monorails
>>954368
USA has been slowly transitioning but since it's such a big country changing roadsigns/everything takes a tremendous amount of resources.
So it has the be slow and steady
slow and steady
>>954396
Road signs isn't a problem. What would be the real problem is car speedometers being in miles and downtubes not being able to convert from km/h to miles/h.
>>954397
To be fair, don't they use miles for speedometers / road signs pretty much everywhere where metric system wasn't adopted before the automobilization?
>>954407
No. The only place I can think of that does is the UK.
All cars in the US have dual kph/mph speedometers these days. Changing to metric has nothing to do with cars and road signs, it's just inertia and stubbornness that keeps us from doing it.
We were supposed to switch at the same time as Canada and Mexico. Halfway through the process we just said "fuck it" and gave up.
