Rail Frequent Asked Question's

Click questions to see answer

1)Why is NYC Metro so complex?

Ans: In the early settlement time of 18th century, three different railway companies built railways as business competition. They made subways according to as they like.

Then around 1940, the city government bought the private companies and merged the into the current known MTA.(Metropolitan Transit Authority)

Then the company had to deal with the complex lines of Orange,Yellow and Blue in the present. Rest of the metro is simple and neat.


2)Even though the name is Underground, most of the underground is actually at surface level, why?

Ans: The soul idea of putting it underground gave it's name. But when builders realized that there is no real need for putting it Underground once out of the dense City.

3)why are some parts of a tram network separate from the road when it is said that Light rail and road share the same space.

Ans: If they always share the same space, the trams will be very slow & traffic will be non-stop as the Trams will keep coming & block the junction. They only share the same space when there is no space.

4)Why does Tokyo have so much rail that there are no other type of Public transportation or cars?

Ans: This is seen in very highly populated cities or cities with less space for roads. 

a)Tokyo's and the National government had always promoted rail over roads, 

c)Many people make decision seeing that a rail is never late but a car is always in traffic

d) The roads are constantly used by trucks so no room is left for cars & other vehicles.

5)Why is intercity travel in china rail while car & flight travel in the US?

China: Cars were very expensive option for Chinese people and are very slow for intercity travel so many people chose flights. 

Then so many people in the air bought too much traffic in the Chinese skies combined with International Traffic, soon the Chinese Government saw the problem in 2008 and the leader invested in High Speed Rail. 

After almost 1 year since investment for HSR. The first line opened and was a huge success. Then in just 11 years, they built 38,000 km of railway track.


United States: Before cars and flights, Rail was the primary mode of transportation. seeing this, the US Federal government was planning for HSR. At that time, roads were in very bad condition. Then small automobile & oil companies held hands to destroy all modes of rail transport. 

They started buying out the trams and metro's and sent them to scrap. Then they showed the automobile and proposed for national highways (Interstates, US English). Today what we see is the aftermath of this.

China

United States

6) Why do US Cities have so less rail while NYC has 27 Metro lines + 7 LIRR Lines+ 5 MNR Lines

Rest of American Cities were destroyed by large companies like Ford, General Motors and a few others. But NYC was being built and could not be destroyed. Removing equipment was not possible as the owner (MTA) was a government and was just too expensive to remove.

7) Why do Arabian countries not have any rail?

There is no proper reason for this but now the GCC Countries have building their own rail networks which they will then connect to each other.

Etihad Rail in the United Arab Emirates is currently building the freight & passenger rail network which is going to be completed by 2025.

Which countries have no Railway?

There are many in the world here are some of them