A mix of the old and new(ish) in Manchester city centre - a SELNEC Central liveried bus heading to Middleton and a Metrolink Tram to Bury via Victoria spotted next to the Arndale Centre in Manchester yesterday.

SELNEC was the Passenger Transport Executive in the area from 1969 until it was renamed Greater Manchester Passenger Transport Executive (GMPTE) in 1974.

A freight train is pushed over a small hill. A worker uncouples individual wagons, and gravity sends them rolling onto different tracks.

The tricky part is getting the timing right: uncouple at the right moment, coordinate with the locomotive driver, and make sure each wagon reaches its destination.

I used to work at a real hump yard in Uzbekistan for four years. Now, as a frontend developer, I’ve been building a small 3D simulation of that job.

You can play as the yard worker or the locomotive driver, either solo or with a friend.

Hi. I hope this fits in this reddit group.

I would love to get some more information about Yutong electric city buses. Their online persona is very rendered and not many actual pictures. But they’ve been number one of sold electric buses in Europe (or EU?) in the last three of four years. And their delivery time is only 6 months compared to european brands at two years. Up until recently they were not available in my country.

Does anyone know what (European) cities use them? Is reliability good? What are known issues? How is service time and getting parts in Europe? How to they compare to other brands’ e-buses? Warranty on battery and other parts? How is the range? Thanks!

Even though the SEC doesn't have any teeth right now, I think about how much more communal wealth the US would have if train tracks were a utility. One where the tracks were owned and maintained by the country and access was leased to it's users. In theory, this would be of great benefit to the population as it would create shipping competition as well as passenger service competition. The military has need for high speed movement, passengers have desire and need for high speed movement, shipping has need for high speed movement, etc, but the current freight companies for various reasons do not care about these things and so we don't get them. I'm curious what a pathway towards train tracks becoming a utility in the USA would look like, along with what freedom that would provide for Amtrak and local passenger operators.

Really nice, how close to history parts the athens metro is

It’s called Headway, and it’s live on the Apple App Store and at headwaytransit.com

Most of us have stood at a stop looking at a printed timetable and wondering whether the tram is two minutes away or stuck somewhere across town. Many agencies now publish real-time data, but it isn't always easy to see it as a simple picture of where vehicles actually are.

Leidaro is an Android app that tries to do that. It shows buses, trams, trolleys and metro moving live on a map in 30 European cities. Vehicle positions refresh about every 3 seconds.

How it works:

• Tap a stop to see real-time arrival times. They're colour-coded: red under 2 minutes, orange for 3-5, green for anything longer.
• Tap a vehicle to follow its route.
• Arrival times come from the public GTFS / GTFS-RT feeds that transit agencies publish, so accuracy depends on each agency's feed. The app isn't official or affiliated with any agency.
• Offline maps per city: download routes, stops and timetables once and use them with no signal, which helps underground or when you're travelling without data.
• Transit alerts: pick a line, stop and direction and it tells you when to head out. It runs in the background with the screen off.

Cities include Vienna, Brussels, Prague, Copenhagen, Helsinki, Paris, Berlin, Athens, Budapest, Dublin, Rome, Amsterdam, Oslo, Warsaw, Madrid, Stockholm, Zurich and London. More can be added if a city publishes open transit data.

It's free to install, with no account and no ads. A small paid upgrade unlocks extras. It needs Android 7.0 or newer and isn't available on iOS or the web.

https://leidaro.com

A question for people here who know their local systems: in your city, how reliable is the agency's real-time feed compared with what you actually see at the stop? And if your city publishes open data but isn't on the list, which one should be added next?

Disclosure: I'm posting this on behalf of the leidaro.com team.

Hey everyone,

We've started a brand new Android public transit app called Leidaro that will cover major European cities (currently we've onboarded about 20). It's a 100% european, created, funded, and builf for Europe and is a good alternative for other transit apps that are mostly US based.

We have all the usual stuff like real-time positions and arrivals, routes, schedules, etc... but what also makes us different is:

* no need for account - download and use the free tier as you wish

* no ads

* we don't collect your data, we just serve the transit information to from European transit agencies to you

* lots of cool features alredy

* download the static data to your pfone for each city and use without internet

We're just starting, help us shape the app by providing feedback.

It's available on Play Store: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.minrax.leidaro

Region: Europe

The 3rd episode of Amtrak Extras, Specials and Private cars is now live on YouTube! In this episode we see many unusual moves including a Cascades Airo trainset being pulled by a ACS64, and a dress rehearsal, Colonial Crafts, ALC42 training trains, and of course track geometry cars on Amtrak NEC PW line! Please consider giving this a watch. Which one did you catch from the 3rd quarter?

2006 diesel Gilligs still earning their keep in daily revenue service for Colorado Springs. 603 and 612 aka “big red” and “big blue” as they are nicknamed have over a 1,000,000 Miles and yet the city refuses to retire them due to the reliability.

Now that flying car like vehicles are seemingly feasible, wouldn't that technology fare far better for public transit than private vehicles?

Im only thinking off the top of my head but if implemented on a train car/bus type of carriage I can see it being a far cheaper alternative to commuter rail

I'm from somewhere where subway stations mostly get build with two tracks without bypass，so the design of NYC subway just becomes confusing.

Why and How did stations get planned with extra central or side tracks？How did they decide where to bypass or add track other reasons？

For example，146 st on Eighth，has two levels of tunnels with eight tracks and express service serving. Why did they plan it like this in early 20th century？Was it supposed to be a transit hub？

Or 82st-Jackson Height. Three tracks with express skipping the stop. Did they plan it to have an express skipping since the beginning or a third rail was added later？

In short，why did NYC subway get so many multi-track stations？ Did the transportation board planned these out since the beginning or were some extra tracks added later？

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Egypt’s National Authority for Tunnels has signed an MOU with Hyundai Rotem to study a 28 km hydrogen-powered tram system for the New Administrative Capital.

The project is reported to include 44 tramsets and would serve residential districts, the Government District, and the Al-Fattah Al-Aleem Mosque area, complementing the city’s monorail and LRT connections.

It’s still at the MOU/planning stage, so construction has not started yet.

I think most cities and most freeways should have tolls to maintain our infrastructure, reduce the attractiveness of car usage and fund public transit

The latest LINXS monthly report has dropped.

The new PSA date (Passenger Service Availability date) is February 5th, 2027

But don’t plan on LINXS keeping to that date very long. They’ve been delaying the PSA date about 1 month every month since 2025.

Damage Delays: It’s been reported that there’s been some “blast incidents” at 3 locations. Someone was kind enough to share a photo of one here.

Damage to the power rail and guide beam for the train system during a late September ramp-up ahead of testing also is stalling the train’s progress. “Blast incidents” occurred at three locations on the guideway, the report states. The cause is unknown and investigations are ongoing.

“The power rail and guide beam were damaged. The guide beam has been repaired, but power rail reassembly is ongoing with no confirmed timeline,” the report states.

The engineering report can be found here.

But it’s important to remember that these issues would’ve been encountered and corrected long ago if LINXS hadn’t been delaying their work for extortion leverage.

Extortion Delays: As always, LINXS (the contractor) in their biased report blames the PSA pushback on LAWA (the airport agency). Nandert goes into this latest ongoing delay in his video here at 18:10. But the short version is something like this:

• LINXS: Tries their latest attempt at extorting LAWA over a bs claim
• LAWA: "No more. This latest claim is OBVIOUSLY bs. We’re done paying your extortion fees."
• LINXS: "Well we're going to keep saying that the delays are your fault in our reports. And as leverage to get you to pay, we're going to continuously delay the opening."

LINXS’ extortion explanation: There’s a few parts that enable it.

First, LAWA hired "legal experts" at the law firm Nossaman to write the contract with LINXS, and those "experts" fucked up bad. The contract lacked provisions defining how fast the contractor needs to work during a dispute, what progress needs to be made during a dispute, or what milestones need to be hit. So LINXS just gets to stall the project for leverage in their favor during every claim and dispute. As the grand jury report put it:

If one worker goes out with a shovel and works, the Contractor would be in technical compliance with his contractual obligation. There is no definition of how fast or what progress needs to be made during this owner directed continuation – thus allowing the Contractor to effectively stop progress.

Second, LINXS abuses the design build contract by willfully submitting bad designs so they can manifest their own costly change orders.

Third, the so-called “project neutral”. The “project neutral” is normally a neutral group of 3 people that act as mediators in a dispute. But due to the terrible contract (thanks again Nossaman), there is only 1 person, and no way to replace that person if a party is not satisfied with the project neutral. This “project neutral” has sided with LINXS every time in over 200 disputes. Every time. A fraud investigation is sorely needed for this man.

Fourth, the olympics deadline. LINXS' extortion only works because of the tremendous pressure on LAWA and the city from the Olympics deadline. Normally if LAWA isn’t happy with the project neutral’s decisions, they’d sue LINXS. But LAWA can't sue LINXS because that lawsuit would stall the project until after the Olympics. And LINXS can't continue their shenanigans after the Olympics because then LAWA would be free to sue the shit out of them.

Our first chance of change, the election: Our current leadership has done very little about this. No investigation by the city attorney, and no call for an investigation by mayor Bass. All we got was a weak move by the city council back in June asking for LAWA to tell them what’s been going on. But there’s been no word that LAWA reported back to them, and there’s no deadline for it.

However, Raman has said that if she's elected mayor she'll ask the city attorney and state attorney general to investigate LINXS for fraud. So if we elect Raman as our mayor and Marissa Roy for city attorney, they could actually get an investigation started. Fingers crossed for them these next 3 weeks. Make sure you all drop off your mail in ballots at official ballot box locations. If the right people get elected, those investigations might be the thing to push LINXS to finish the project in 2027.

Our second chance of change, the deadline: There’s a deadline for breach of contract on December 8th. If it’s not open by then, LAWA will be free to get a new contractor. While some say that LINXS would finish the project faster than a new contractor, they’re not taking into account that LINXS has not been working with the intent of finishing. They’ve been intentionally delaying the project for extortion, with no end in sight. So a new contractor (with a better contract) could finish the project faster than LINXS.

The "30 Day Test": To no one's surprise, the scheduled completion of the System Demonstration Test, aka the "30 day test" that started in April, has also been pushed back to November 18th. But before that it was September 30th, and before that it was August 5th, and before that it was June 30th.

yes I know passenger trains accelerate much faster, but isn't this also impressive?

Transit in the midwest is mostly non existent or not useful. Banging my head against the wall trying to solve this problem. Are there any decent systems?