u/AstroG4

I spent many hours at that museum, and think it’s one of the best I’ve ever visited. I think they seriously got lighting and sound directors to atmospherize the space. 11/10 would recommend.

ODEG Siemens Desiro HC testing around the Prüf- und Validationcenter Wegberg-Wildenrath, which served as the basis for the training level of TrainSimWorld.

To those who don’t know, the track map for the TSW training center is based on the real-life Siemens Prüf- und Validationcenter Wegberg-Wildenrath, aka the Wegberg Oval, built on the site of the old RAF Wildenrath Air Force Base. Since I’m currently staying with friends in Antwerp, I decided to go on a very small day trip, taking SNCB to Brussels Midi, Eurostar/Thalys to Aachen (where I, of course, paid homage to that DLC), then took a RegioBahn to Erkelenz, bussed to Tüschenbroich, and walked all the way through the oval to Wassenberg, whereby I took another bus to Effeld, walked across the border to Vlodrop, bussed to Roermond, and took NS to Eindhoven, Breda, and Antwerp again. So, overall, just a casual weekend stroll, really.

I didn’t want to trespass to take pictures, so views were limited, but if someone else wanted to visit with a bicycle, you’d probably be able to test many more views. I was really worried I wasn’t going to see a train, but I thankfully managed to catch an ODEG Desiro HC testing. I got to see it pass five or six times, and noticed that it sometimes took 4 minutes, sometimes 6, and sometimes 10-12. I think these are the differences between the outermost high-speed loop, the slightly winder inner high-speed outer loop (not the much smaller transit loop off to one side), and then simulating a station stop.

Personally, I really loved the weirdly 90s track sculpture to the west side pointing towards the facility, and I found it quite interesting how built-out the interior was with light industries (no doubt some seemingly set up as contractors for Siemens). Finally, the mountain scenery was simply stunning. Overall, nerdy but rewarding trip.

It has three(!) open-air levels of train departures, and a ground-floor mezzanine, and connections to the trams and pre-metro, and a bike garage, and a ferris wheel.

It has three(!) open-air levels of train departures, and a ground-floor mezzanine, and connections to the trams and pre-metro, and a bike garage, and a ferris wheel.

45km of bicycling later, and I had visited HSL-Zuid. I waited over an hour for a then-canceled Eurostar, but at least got some good videos of the *Intercity.

Edit: it’s not a Sprinter, those use the bridge behind.

This is part 2 of my experience riding the entire subway and (rail) transit system in Mexico City. Go back and read part 1 for context. Now we can get into some of the things I liked and my overall assessment of the city.

1. For starters, an absolutely incredible and unique thing that I haven’t seen anywhere else as extensively are the pictograms. When the system was inaugurated in the 60s, only half of Mexicans were literate, and less than 5% had an Elementary education. So, rather than go with a horribly inelegant bootstrap (I’m looking at you, Sound Transit, and your station numbers starting in the 50s???), they decided to make large and distinctive symbols relating to the neighborhood each station serves, and these symbols are universally displayed every time a station name is. Don’t speak the language at all? Well just board the train going to pottery station and get off at church bell stop. These pictograms are so distinctive that, several times when I couldn’t tell where I was and couldn’t see very well out the window, I could just squint at whatever the far away pictogram was and easily distinguish whatever it was from every other one on the line. This design was universal, too, with stations on the rail lines, BRTs, and Cablebùses also having their own distinctive pictograms, and, even though regular busses didn’t have pictograms for every stop, they did highlight the pictograms for metro transfer stations, making it easy to understand.

2. While the Correspondencias were very long and stair-y, they were also incredibly well-signed (except for to the Cablebùses). Every 10 meters, there was a clear sign indicating where you needed to go to transfer from any one line to any other, and they even showed the direction of each line, so you didn’t even need to follow the signs for a transfer to Line 7, then stop mid-way and figure out which direction you were going, all you needed to do was follow all signs pointing to “El Rosario”. It was an incredibly smooth system (when it worked, and ignoring the inaccessibility).

3. The frequencies were insane. I guess you don’t need to worry about automation if you’re a country with cheap labor, because, when it was working well, trains were arriving every two minutes or better. While there are signaling and spacing issues, I don’t think I ever, anywhere in the entire region, needed to wait longer than 10 minutes at a station, nearly always less than three, even for BRTs.

4. A small note for me but a nice touch overall, the front three cars of every subway train (and the front section of every bi-articulated bus) was reserved for women and children only, and every station had security officers enforcing this. Additionally, crime was almost nonexistent in everywhere I visited. This did, though, restrict access to foamer windows.

5. I simply have to note here, the transit museums were unexpectedly superb, and are well worth a stop. They’re simple and small, but unique and very informative, and absolute must-visits for railfans and transit nuts. The metro has a museum at the penultimate southern station of Line 7, likely built when Line 12 was. It covers some of the history of the metro, the design of its pictograms, has artifacts from the metro’s history ranging from tickets to seats, has a large rotating art exhibit, and, crucially, does not cite any sources why rubber tired metros are supposedly anything but worse than rail metros.

The other museum is the electric transport museum not far from Line 2 on its southern branch, and is I believe a “museum of electric transportation.” Not only does it have historic trolley and PCC cars, not only does it also have trolley busses from throughout the years, NOT ONLY does it have a first-generation light rail vehicle hooked up to power allowing volunteers to illustrate the cab controls, open and close the doors, and fiddle with things like AC, IT EVEN has something I’ve never seen anywhere else ever before: a child-height length of model bus and light rail overhead wire, complete with jumpers, block sections, switches, insulators, and tension. It reminds me of one time finding a childrens’ playground in O’Hare built with actual runway tarmac lights, because, if you already have the parts in stock, why arrange a completely different depiction of how it works when you could just replicate it with real components? In addition, there were a ton more exhibits indoors detailing the recent expansion of the zero-emissions and trolley-bus-BRT-elevated-roadway corridors, as well as a few bits on the Xochimilco light rail. The museum is simple, but completely free and endlessly creative. I wish everywhere had something like this.

6. I am generally anti-bus since bus infrastructure looks suspiciously like car infrastructure, and it should thus be of overwhelming concern to advocates if a transit system’s primary ridership comes from busses because that means you’re fighting an uphill battle and have already been set up to fail by a primarily car-oriented landscape. This is not an extremist opinion, but a carefully-reasoned one which comes from having been originally a bus advocate in undergrad, riding and being disappointed by supposedly-flagship BRTs in New York, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Indiana, Texas, Washington, Oregon, and California, and then visiting Europe and learning that all transportation, especially rural, is better served by and bike and rail than road, in every situation. Literally, according to the publicly-available budgets of several US states, a mile of rail is cheaper to both operate and maintain than a mile of road, so all road spending is climate arson, period.

That all being said, however, the one, and only one, BRT system I have EVER ridden which actually feels to me like it works on the ground is the Metrobùs BRT line 1 in CDMX. It was almost entirely lane-separated (with frequent short rubber curbs preventing stealing of lanes by evil cars); had large, dedicated, high-floor stations with turnstiles and, eh, platform-“hole” doors; absurdly high frequencies (every 1-3 minutes like the subway); fully-pictogramed stations and well-signed transfers; and even bi-articulated busses. While it is in desperate need of TSP and would still nonetheless obviously be bettered by being a rail-based tram system (especially because of the higher capacity per vehicle, something CDMX is in desperate need of), and the high-level stations could stand to be less cramped, I was generally impressed by how useful the Metrobùs BRT was, almost complementing the subway network like a true tram should.

7. But the standout success of EdoMex that has me ranting and raving to everyone in earshot is El Insurgente. On the face of it, it’s nothing overwhelmingly special, just seven stations a little over an hour between CDMX and Toluca, but, on the ground, it felt like a massively important and hyper-modern rail line that I hope nucleates a thousand more trains like it in years to come. It was so modern that the only way I could describe it is like riding a Lucid Stew render, with massive, ultra-moderne, architecturally stunning but understated stations, and long concrete viaducts that elegantly danced among the treetops. The trainsets were 5-car CAF open-gangway EMUs with a surprisingly endearing nose-cover notch to accommodate the Scharfenberg coupler whisker without being overly bulbous (I’m looking at you, ICE4). Inside, they were nothing special but for how exceptionally refined they felt: simple, comfortable seats; huge windows; airy interiors; and crystal-smooth acceleration and deceleration.

And the scenery – Oh! The scenery! It was absolutely extraordinary. You travel from a transfer to the metro at the vaulted Observatorio station, wind your way up desert valleys from the Mexico Basin, then pop through a tunnel and emerge in dramatic evergreen mountains, before descending down some steep hills to run along a high plateau, with plains in the foreground and light green mountains in the distance. For anybody visiting CDMX, I now affirmatively assert El Insurgente as a mandatory tourist attraction for its scenic wonders.

As far as intercity trains go, it’s a little quirky, with almost 10-minute frequencies, no restrooms nor dining amenities, and Mexico’s strong security culture making for weirdness where the back half of the 10-car-long stations are roped off. Furthermore, urbanism on both sides of the mountain pass is the less than attractive cinderblock and corrugated metal shanty variety interwoven by loud and obnoxious stroads, so it’s not exactly a modern train to idyllic, historic communities. However, judging the train on its own, it is an almost flawless execution of rail transit principles and I see it massively enriching the communities it serves in the years to come. In contrast to the hectic mania of the subway, El Insurgente was quiet, sophisticated, and understated, while also somehow being aesthetically unmatched and stolidly assertive.

My only strong critique for this line is that it feels a bit slow for the physical infrastructure, and things could probably be sped up at least 20kph more without exceeding design considerations. If the line is ever extended beyond a few stations, I’d actually recommend branding it differently and having lower frequencies and more long-distance-suitable trainsets, with tables, restrooms, and a cafe. Actually, perhaps the cafe car could be replaced with a ‘Mercado car’, where, say, 2-4 independent vendors are allowed to set up tiny shops for the duration of the day. I personally would prefer a cafe with proper food, but I think this is a potentially good idea for better reflecting the local culture (can I say ‘decolonizing the concept of trains’ without being laughed at? No? It was worth a shot).

–––

Okay, so some ups and some downs, what is my overall assessment of Mexico City, its transit, and Mexico at large? I think I can make three solid observations:

First, it’s not for everybody. The huge amounts of poverty, shortage of potable water, omnipresence of ultra-processed foods, and whole ‘used toilet paper in a trash can’ thing make Mexico a little less than the complete utopia that even the most car-dependent country in Europe is in comparison to the Fascist States of ‘Murica. Especially in some of the smaller Mexican cities, I’d describe walking as “normalized, but marginalized”, much more accessible than almost anywhere in the US, but still aggressively underinvested and deprioritized. However, if you have even the remotest knowledge of Spanish or interest in Latin American cultures, it is absolutely worth a trip, and, depending on your circumstances, may be a viable alternative to US suburban car-dependency. In essence, I enjoyed my time there; I just quite wouldn’t want to live there, but I can very easily see how someone would.

Secondly, the majority of Mexico City’s transit felt like it was useful not because of itself, but in spite of itself. In many ways, from now direct experience with both, CDMX’s metro is a latin facsimile of NYC’s metro; bogged down by historical decisions, operational quirks, and numerous inefficiencies. That it was, in spite of all this, still the easiest (I’ll exclude saying “stress-free” due to the inescapable max crush loading) way to get all over the city is more a testament to network design than anything else. Especially given the variety of modes, I’d award the system ‘jack of all trades but master of none’.

Except for the recent work. Tren Suburbano is the high-speed, longer-distance express service the region needs (and will get any minute now) more of. Line 12 is an actual rail-based subway that, knowing full well its recent history (the fatal viaduct collapse to those who don’t know), nonetheless still felt ultra-modern and incredibly well-designed. And El Insurgente is a short intercity train which could genuinely go toe-to-toe with the very best Europe or China has to offer.

In general, it feels like Mexico is a place that really only got going 15 or so years ago, and is starting from very far behind, but is at the very beginning of an unstoppable, meteoric rise. It has a lot of headwinds, but its recent work is international-level. Every loss of the US is Mexico’s gain, and, given recent trajectories, I could easily see Mexico catching up to be of completely equal importance and livability to the US livability in 20-40 years. If you’re needing to escape the US as a refugee such as myself and Mexico even remotely fits your interests, take this as a sign that Mexico is well worth your time and investments. Just be sure to arrive with an open mind, make an effort to learn the language and respect the local culture if you end up living there.

Since graduating my PhD, I’ve been fleeing the US, and managed to cross the border by water and get rescued by the Mexican Navy (not for the reasons you think, but, still, the parallels are uncomfortable. My parents said I could be anything I wanted when I grew up; I didn’t think refugee was on the table).

After a long time in a very unwalkable coastal town, things finally got going for me to escape to the EU, by way of Ciudad de México. Naturally, given the chance to spend 10 days in the vicinity of the second-largest metro system in North America, and having ridden every line of the New York City Subway end-to-end, I was obviously legally obligated do the same in CDMX (it says so right on the back of my autism card that train completionism is a condition of maintained diagnosis; if I don’t keep up with dues, I could lose my membership status).

Given that it’s the second-largest metro system in the western hemisphere, and now encompasses not only both rubber and rail-tyred metros as well as suburban and intercity rail, but even BRT, trolly-bus-RT, and cableways (can somebody there build a tram and a water taxi; I’m going for blackout bingo), there’s obviously more to say than can be fit in one post, so I’ll split this into two parts starting here with the bad and ending next time on the good.

A bit of a disclaimer, I fully recognize myself to be an irreconcilable gringo of privilege, though I have ridden 2/3rds of all US rail transit systems and a further 10% at least partially (yes, I have a spreadsheet, why do you ask) as well as trains in 12 countries (US, Canada, Mexico, Australia, France, UK, Switzerland, Germany, Austria, Slovakia, Italy, Netherlands). As such, take my comments not as binding quality assessments, but, rather, observations of what I, a well-traveled individual noticed as most different or notable.

1. First off, maybe I’m too much a New Yorker at heart, but people do not know how to walk there. Casual strolling down connecting hallways like nobody else has anywhere to go, no awareness of halting in the middle of a walkway mid-flow, and, most notably, not once in a week and a half did anybody stand out of the way of the doors of incoming trains to allow people off the train cars. Every station stop was effectively a(n American) football scrimmage line, shoving as if humans were liquid and could merely diffuse through each other on their way about their days. It’s not as if the transit agency wants this to happen, as there were plenty of stickers on the ground futilely begging people to stand aside, it just wasn’t heeded by anyone. And moving to the center of the subway car away from the doors upon boarding was unheard of.

2. A second cultural observation before I get into actual transit review, so, so, so many (for lack of better phrases) street vendors and buskers. On almost every single train ride, somebody would walk through either putting a candy bar on your knees or trying to sell you (I’m not joking) nail clippers, all hailed by the universal battlecry of “dies pesos!” More notably are all the kiosks swarming the hallways of almost every station. While I would like to think of myself as supportive of entrepreneurs and understanding of the high capital costs of storefronts, what flummoxed me was the random nature of all of these stalls, how most acted like convenience stores, hosting a random assemblage of beverages, phone chargers, stuffed animals, phone cases, and endless quantities of junk foods. I can imagine that a lot of this derives from the need for shelf-stable products along with old-fashioned bartering (“hey, my uncle got this package of 40 Ratatouille stuffed keychains, I’ll sell it to you for 50 pesos”), but, for me, it was not convenience like the Swiss model of grocery stores in S-Bahn basements making it easy to buy a few ingredients for dinner on the way home, and much more like a subway- (and street-, and city-)wide version of checkout aisle shelves, not actually offering you a service or convenience, but instead with thousands of individuals preying on your impulses to buy things you neither needed nor were good for you.

At the very least, pick a lane; have one stall be a food stall, another be an electronics stall, a third be a toy stall, and so on, so that, if I actually needed something, I would know which (type of) stall to go to. As it is, with every stall having a mash-mash of everything, it would take me carefully scanning every one to make a purchase (maybe that’s why people walk so slowly), but, as I am in a subway and have places to go and things to do, it instead makes me skip over every such stall as an obstacle to my commute, not an asset.

On the flip side was Mercado Merced, a gigantic (I’ve been in countries that are smaller, both physically and in population) indoor farmer’s market which has a subway station in the middle and produce stalls beyond the horizon in every direction. It was enjoyable to spend as much time in the city as I did, but it got a bit old when I celebrated my sixth consecutive birthday not having seen the outside world. I’ve literally read SCP stories (3008) that were less scary and more realistic than my time in Mercado Merced.

3. Transit-wise, I have never experienced max-crush load like I have in CDMX. Especially on outbound trains during the afternoon, on hot days, in un-air-conditioned metros, it felt like I got to know the locals exceptionally intimately. The amount of rush hour skin-to-skin contact could conservatively be described as orgiastic. In some ways, this is a marker of success of a transit system, but, realistically (especially given the heinous amounts of traffic on the surface), it rather shows the sheer degree of unmet demand.

4. Rubber-tyred metros. I tried to be open-minded, and I read tons of articles trying to find an opening, but I for the life of me cannot find any evidence of benefits they provide. Their invention was lobbied by Michelin, they come at absurdly higher cost (each individual subway car is now a literal 16-wheeler, in addition to 8 more steel wheels), your commute can now be delayed by tire blowouts, tire dust is a leading carcinogen and pollutant that you’re now getting gassed with at least twice a day, tires take much more energy due to higher friction and energy of deformation, and, because of that friction, your subway cars now can’t have air conditioning because it would heat the tunnel interiors beyond melting. It’s often cited that rubber-tyred metros are useful for grades and geologically-unstable terrain, but seeing as A) I have personally been on multiple adhesion steel-rail lines with steeper grades than anything on the CDMX metro and B) the CDMX metro’s trains are nonetheless anyway still guided by steel wheels on steel rails inside the tires, I find myself quite skeptical of both of these claims. Furthermore, that there’s what seems to be a 10mph slow-order in place on all above-ground tracks during rain due to loss of tire on steel traction is more indicative of a technological liability rather than an advantage of rubber-tyred metros.

Oh, and the ride quality is garbage, with standing upright and even sitting on the subway making me noticeably more fatigued than on days spent merely walking around. The only verifiable difference which I identified was faster acc- and deceleration, however this in itself is a problem, because the speed changes were shoulder-dislocatingly harsh. Given the max crush load of every train, if anyone were to throw the emergency brake, I figure there could easily be a hundred thousand casualties, maybe even a million. Especially Mexico being a less than bottomlessly wealthy country, I can only imagine how much money is squandered and how much station repair is deferred due to paying more than necessary for ongoing maintenance costs which could be equivalently resolved by a few extra ballast tampers to deal with the few locations of geologic instability.

5. While I can appreciate that good signaling and cheap labor make for almost automated-light-metro frequencies of trains every 2-3 minutes, on almost every trip, trains became bunched and required prolonged delays waiting in stations either for signals ahead to clear or to re-space based on dispatcher’s orders. Similarly often, I would observe at least three trains picking up passengers in the opposite direction while I waited longer and longer for a train heading in mine, to finally have a train arrive max-crush-loaded, and a second less than a minute later empty as could be. I can’t help but observe that this may be due to the absurdly tight scheduling at terminal stations, with layovers lasting little longer than at normal stations, one operator hurriedly ducking into the former reverse end as the other exits the former lead. While these light-speed turnarounds represent good equipment utilization and almost nonexistent non-revenue time, they do lose the possibility for buffer time to absorb delays and maintain reliable train spacing. Since at least a portion of the overcrowding seems due to asymmetric headways and platform loading, I think a theoretical minor decrease in capacity would much improve rider experience with less spontaneous overcrowding.

6. The Cablebùs lines in theory have their usefulness as quick injections of ultra-cheap moderate-capacity routes over challenging terrain especially in economically-disadvantaged areas, but, riding them end-to-end can make them feel quite slow and inefficient, the longest taking over a half-hour at little more than a walking pace (especially when accounting for the slow crawls through every station). I can appreciate gondolaways for difficult terrain or low-cost shuttles, but, much like BRT, they are not substitutes for high-quality transit lines. I can see a world where short cableways connect to many subway stations as a way to artificially expand the transit system’s reach, but I cannot see a world in which they successfully act as an extension of a subway line. As it stands, most of the Cablebùs stations were in unchallenging terrain.

7. The Corespondencias, or in-system transfers, often involved absurd amounts of walking (the one at Atlalico was genuinely over a kilometer long). In many ways, the CDMX metro is a case study in transfer penalties, and I usually chose to take longer and more out-of-the-way routings to minimize the number of line changes. Whether this was faster, I don’t know, but it was noticeably less effortful. As such, not all transfers are created equally.

8. The pedestrian tunnels were tightly controlled in terms of directionality. This wasn’t like WMATA where the correct direction escalator was placed more conveniently in front; instead, half of all routes were labeled “no pase”, most tunnels had temporary or permanent barriers down the middle, and, if you made a mistake and went the wrong way, there was often no directional signage nor a way to swap over to the correct side except by doubling back. While I understand this is to control an absurd amount of humans (Tacubaya was always a madhouse), in practice, this strategy was also often deployed where it wasn’t needed and instead resulted in excess walking, duplicated routes, and underutilized spaces. It probably would’ve been wiser to just not sign undesired routes, let regular commuters figure out the shortcuts, and allow them to decide the routes of least resistance based on passenger loads rather than prohibiting all shortcuts forever with gates and padlocks.

9. Tren Suburbano was good (albeit completely wall-to-wall packed with passengers as usual), and it is currently under active expansion, but its terminus, Estacion Buenavista, feels alarmingly similar to some Italian fascist architecture stations, and then was lidded a few decades ago by a gigantic shopping mall and parkade. That it was originally an intercity rail station shows, with exceedingly long walks between its platforms and the only one metro line it connected to. While a non-street-level transfer would be ideal, I instead think Buenavista should be used as the terminus for true intercity trains once they get up and running, and Tren Suburbano should seek a more centrally-located terminus better connected to major destinations. More on this below.

10. Finally, and absolutely worst of all, ADA accessibility is practically nonexistent. I’ve lampooned the NYC subway for being extremely user-unfriendly not just for wheelchairs and crutches, but also suitcases, carts, and bicycles, but this is on a whole other level of ableism. Most escalators weren’t working, almost every transfer involved at least six flights of stairs, elevators were effectively nonexistent, and, even though there were some stations that were actually accessible, to my memory, most transfer stations were not, therefore meaning that each line was effectively standalone and not part of an accessible network. If I had so much as twisted my ankle, almost the entire city would’ve ceased to exist for me.

11. Tiny gripe relevant to next installment, the security culture shock was insane. It was rare I was allowed to linger on mainline train platforms to take pictures. And poking around random hillsides to get good views of passing trains, like I did for my DMU adventure? Forget it. While I get that Mexico has a historically quite large problem with crime (though I will say in over three months of living there, I didn’t see any crime at all, not once), I also think that a bit of PR niceties (i.e., being more railfan friendly) would go a long way to aid international branding.

———

Okay, enough complaining. What would I do if I were a transit planner in charge of Ciudad de México? Well, the only option I can think of to solve the insane overcrowding is to copy the entire metro system, pan down and to the left, and paste. In terms of more realistic projects: for one, no more rubber tires, and slowly rebuild the existing lines to rail as opportunities arise. Similarly, make it a long-range goal to streamline and shorten transfers between lines and rebuild station access tunnels to be less directionalized, as well as ADA-accessible. Maybe pick three stations a year and do this on a rolling basis from oldest station to newest. The Cablebùses are potentially useful, but I’d prioritize new projects be shorter and more than fewer or longer, emphasizing places that are hilly enough to actually need cable cars rather than using them as cheap stopgaps. Additionally, I always think that rail is better than bus, so I’d look to converting every major BRT and bus routes into trams of European length (as even the bi-articulated busses are not enough to prevent max crush loading). Trams or not, transit signal priority and standard-issue rocket propelled grenades are needed immediately to prevent the surface routes from being interfered with by automobile traffic.

Finally, possibly the biggest thing I could recommend is to now focus on regional rail. Unlike many other subways, where ridership peters out into the suburbs, most of Mexico City’s subway lines are (probably smartly) anchored by massive transit centers(/street markets) for transfers to busses both regular and jitney, so ridership remains strong along its entire length. As such, I can only imagine how much transit access would be improved not by more lines, but by more super-express lines to help with cross-megalopolis trips (what’s a step down from a “super commuter”? A “large commuter”?). I saw a bit ago on r/MexicoCity that someone suggested S-Bahn-ing a connection between El Insurgente and Tren Suburbano, and I think this is an exquisite suggestion and wise first step, but I’d then personally build an RER-style system from there to address the multipolarity of the region, making effectively a super-subway network to shadow the regular subway map, as well as then continuing further into the sub- and exurbs than the subway does (in addition to, of course, being the basis for a proper intercity rail system).

Since graduating my PhD, I’ve been fleeing the US, and managed to cross the border by water and get rescued by the Mexican Navy (not for the reasons you think, but, still, the parallels are uncomfortable. My parents said I could be anything I wanted when I grew up; I didn’t think refugee was on the table).

After a long time in a very unwalkable coastal town, things finally got going for me to escape to the EU, by way of Ciudad de México. Naturally, given the chance to spend 10 days in the vicinity of the second-largest metro system in North America, and having ridden every line of the New York City Subway end-to-end, I was obviously legally obligated do the same in CDMX (it says so right on the back of my autism card that train completionism is a condition of maintained diagnosis; if I don’t keep up with dues, I could lose my membership status).

Given that it’s the second-largest metro system in the western hemisphere, and now encompasses not only both rubber and rail-tyred metros as well as suburban and intercity rail, but even BRT, trolly-bus-RT, and cableways (can somebody there build a tram and a water taxi; I’m going for blackout bingo), there’s obviously more to say than can be fit in one post, so I’ll split this into two parts starting here with the bad and ending next time on the good.

A bit of a disclaimer, I fully recognize myself to be an irreconcilable gringo of privilege, though I have ridden 2/3rds of all US rail transit systems and a further 10% at least partially (yes, I have a spreadsheet, why do you ask) as well as trains in 12 countries (US, Canada, Mexico, Australia, France, UK, Switzerland, Germany, Austria, Slovakia, Italy, Netherlands). As such, take my comments not as binding quality assessments, but, rather, observations of what I, a well-traveled individual noticed as most different or notable.

1. First off, maybe I’m too much a New Yorker at heart, but people do not know how to walk there. Casual strolling down connecting hallways like nobody else has anywhere to go, no awareness of halting in the middle of a walkway mid-flow, and, most notably, not once in a week and a half did anybody stand out of the way of the doors of incoming trains to allow people off the train cars. Every station stop was effectively a(n American) football scrimmage line, shoving as if humans were liquid and could merely diffuse through each other on their way about their days. It’s not as if the transit agency wants this to happen, as there were plenty of stickers on the ground futilely begging people to stand aside, it just wasn’t heeded by anyone. And moving to the center of the subway car away from the doors upon boarding was unheard of.

2. A second cultural observation before I get into actual transit review, so, so, so many (for lack of better phrases) street vendors and buskers. On almost every single train ride, somebody would walk through either putting a candy bar on your knees or trying to sell you (I’m not joking) nail clippers, all hailed by the universal battlecry of “dies pesos!” More notably are all the kiosks swarming the hallways of almost every station. While I would like to think of myself as supportive of entrepreneurs and understanding of the high capital costs of storefronts, what flummoxed me was the random nature of all of these stalls, how most acted like convenience stores, hosting a random assemblage of beverages, phone chargers, stuffed animals, phone cases, and endless quantities of junk foods. I can imagine that a lot of this derives from the need for shelf-stable products along with old-fashioned bartering (“hey, my uncle got this package of 40 Ratatouille stuffed keychains, I’ll sell it to you for 50 pesos”), but, for me, it was not convenience like the Swiss model of grocery stores in S-Bahn basements making it easy to buy a few ingredients for dinner on the way home, and much more like a subway- (and street-, and city-)wide version of checkout aisle shelves, not actually offering you a service or convenience, but instead with thousands of individuals preying on your impulses to buy things you neither needed nor were good for you.

At the very least, pick a lane; have one stall be a food stall, another be an electronics stall, a third be a toy stall, and so on, so that, if I actually needed something, I would know which (type of) stall to go to. As it is, with every stall having a mash-mash of everything, it would take me carefully scanning every one to make a purchase (maybe that’s why people walk so slowly), but, as I am in a subway and have places to go and things to do, it instead makes me skip over every such stall as an obstacle to my commute, not an asset.

On the flip side was Mercado Merced, a gigantic (I’ve been in countries that are smaller, both physically and in population) indoor farmer’s market which has a subway station in the middle and produce stalls beyond the horizon in every direction. It was enjoyable to spend as much time in the city as I did, but it got a bit old when I celebrated my sixth consecutive birthday not having seen the outside world. I’ve literally read SCP stories (3008) that were less scary and more realistic than my time in Mercado Merced.

3. Transit-wise, I have never experienced max-crush load like I have in CDMX. Especially on outbound trains during the afternoon, on hot days, in un-air-conditioned metros, it felt like I got to know the locals exceptionally intimately. The amount of rush hour skin-to-skin contact could conservatively be described as orgiastic. In some ways, this is a marker of success of a transit system, but, realistically (especially given the heinous amounts of traffic on the surface), it rather shows the sheer degree of unmet demand.

4. Rubber-tyred metros. I tried to be open-minded, and I read tons of articles trying to find an opening, but I for the life of me cannot find any evidence of benefits they provide. Their invention was lobbied by Michelin, they come at absurdly higher cost (each individual subway car is now a literal 16-wheeler, in addition to 8 more steel wheels), your commute can now be delayed by tire blowouts, tire dust is a leading carcinogen and pollutant that you’re now getting gassed with at least twice a day, tires take much more energy due to higher friction and energy of deformation, and, because of that friction, your subway cars now can’t have air conditioning because it would heat the tunnel interiors beyond melting. It’s often cited that rubber-tyred metros are useful for grades and geologically-unstable terrain, but seeing as A) I have personally been on multiple adhesion steel-rail lines with steeper grades than anything on the CDMX metro and B) the CDMX metro’s trains are nonetheless anyway still guided by steel wheels on steel rails inside the tires, I find myself quite skeptical of both of these claims. Furthermore, that there’s what seems to be a 10mph slow-order in place on all above-ground tracks during rain due to loss of tire on steel traction is more indicative of a technological liability rather than an advantage of rubber-tyred metros.

Oh, and the ride quality is garbage, with standing upright and even sitting on the subway making me noticeably more fatigued than on days spent merely walking around. The only verifiable difference which I identified was faster acc- and deceleration, however this in itself is a problem, because the speed changes were shoulder-dislocatingly harsh. Given the max crush load of every train, if anyone were to throw the emergency brake, I figure there could easily be a hundred thousand casualties, maybe even a million. Especially Mexico being a less than bottomlessly wealthy country, I can only imagine how much money is squandered and how much station repair is deferred due to paying more than necessary for ongoing maintenance costs which could be equivalently resolved by a few extra ballast tampers to deal with the few locations of geologic instability.

5. While I can appreciate that good signaling and cheap labor make for almost automated-light-metro frequencies of trains every 2-3 minutes, on almost every trip, trains became bunched and required prolonged delays waiting in stations either for signals ahead to clear or to re-space based on dispatcher’s orders. Similarly often, I would observe at least three trains picking up passengers in the opposite direction while I waited longer and longer for a train heading in mine, to finally have a train arrive max-crush-loaded, and a second less than a minute later empty as could be. I can’t help but observe that this may be due to the absurdly tight scheduling at terminal stations, with layovers lasting little longer than at normal stations, one operator hurriedly ducking into the former reverse end as the other exits the former lead. While these light-speed turnarounds represent good equipment utilization and almost nonexistent non-revenue time, they do lose the possibility for buffer time to absorb delays and maintain reliable train spacing. Since at least a portion of the overcrowding seems due to asymmetric headways and platform loading, I think a theoretical minor decrease in capacity would much improve rider experience with less spontaneous overcrowding.

6. The Cablebùs lines in theory have their usefulness as quick injections of ultra-cheap moderate-capacity routes over challenging terrain especially in economically-disadvantaged areas, but, riding them end-to-end can make them feel quite slow and inefficient, the longest taking over a half-hour at little more than a walking pace (especially when accounting for the slow crawls through every station). I can appreciate gondolaways for difficult terrain or low-cost shuttles, but, much like BRT, they are not substitutes for high-quality transit lines. I can see a world where short cableways connect to many subway stations as a way to artificially expand the transit system’s reach, but I cannot see a world in which they successfully act as an extension of a subway line. As it stands, most of the Cablebùs stations were in unchallenging terrain.

7. The Corespondencias, or in-system transfers, often involved absurd amounts of walking (the one at Atlalico was genuinely over a kilometer long). In many ways, the CDMX metro is a case study in transfer penalties, and I usually chose to take longer and more out-of-the-way routings to minimize the number of line changes. Whether this was faster, I don’t know, but it was noticeably less effortful. As such, not all transfers are created equally.

8. The pedestrian tunnels were tightly controlled in terms of directionality. This wasn’t like WMATA where the correct direction escalator was placed more conveniently in front; instead, half of all routes were labeled “no pase”, most tunnels had temporary or permanent barriers down the middle, and, if you made a mistake and went the wrong way, there was often no directional signage nor a way to swap over to the correct side except by doubling back. While I understand this is to control an absurd amount of humans (Tacubaya was always a madhouse), in practice, this strategy was also often deployed where it wasn’t needed and instead resulted in excess walking, duplicated routes, and underutilized spaces. It probably would’ve been wiser to just not sign undesired routes, let regular commuters figure out the shortcuts, and allow them to decide the routes of least resistance based on passenger loads rather than prohibiting all shortcuts forever with gates and padlocks.

9. Tren Suburbano was good (albeit completely wall-to-wall packed with passengers as usual), and it is currently under active expansion, but its terminus, Estacion Buenavista, feels alarmingly similar to some Italian fascist architecture stations, and then was lidded a few decades ago by a gigantic shopping mall and parkade. That it was originally an intercity rail station shows, with exceedingly long walks between its platforms and the only one metro line it connected to. While a non-street-level transfer would be ideal, I instead think Buenavista should be used as the terminus for true intercity trains once they get up and running, and Tren Suburbano should seek a more centrally-located terminus better connected to major destinations. More on this below.

10. Finally, and absolutely worst of all, ADA accessibility is practically nonexistent. I’ve lampooned the NYC subway for being extremely user-unfriendly not just for wheelchairs and crutches, but also suitcases, carts, and bicycles, but this is on a whole other level of ableism. Most escalators weren’t working, almost every transfer involved at least six flights of stairs, elevators were effectively nonexistent, and, even though there were some stations that were actually accessible, to my memory, most transfer stations were not, therefore meaning that each line was effectively standalone and not part of an accessible network. If I had so much as twisted my ankle, almost the entire city would’ve ceased to exist for me.

11. Tiny gripe relevant to next installment, the security culture shock was insane. It was rare I was allowed to linger on mainline train platforms to take pictures. And poking around random hillsides to get good views of passing trains, like I did for my DMU adventure? Forget it. While I get that Mexico has a historically quite large problem with crime (though I will say in over three months of living there, I didn’t see any crime at all, not once), I also think that a bit of PR niceties (i.e., being more railfan friendly) would go a long way to aid international branding.

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Okay, enough complaining. What would I do if I were a transit planner in charge of Ciudad de México? Well, the only option I can think of to solve the insane overcrowding is to copy the entire metro system, pan down and to the left, and paste. In terms of more realistic projects: for one, no more rubber tires, and slowly rebuild the existing lines to rail as opportunities arise. Similarly, make it a long-range goal to streamline and shorten transfers between lines and rebuild station access tunnels to be less directionalized, as well as ADA-accessible. Maybe pick three stations a year and do this on a rolling basis from oldest station to newest. The Cablebùses are potentially useful, but I’d prioritize new projects be shorter and more than fewer or longer, emphasizing places that are hilly enough to actually need cable cars rather than using them as cheap stopgaps. Additionally, I always think that rail is better than bus, so I’d look to converting every major BRT and bus routes into trams of European length (as even the bi-articulated busses are not enough to prevent max crush loading). Trams or not, transit signal priority and standard-issue rocket propelled grenades are needed immediately to prevent the surface routes from being interfered with by automobile traffic.

Finally, possibly the biggest thing I could recommend is to now focus on regional rail. Unlike many other subways, where ridership peters out into the suburbs, most of Mexico City’s subway lines are (probably smartly) anchored by massive transit centers(/street markets) for transfers to busses both regular and jitney, so ridership remains strong along its entire length. As such, I can only imagine how much transit access would be improved not by more lines, but by more super-express lines to help with cross-megalopolis trips (what’s a step down from a “super commuter”? A “large commuter”?). I saw a bit ago on r/MexicoCity that someone suggested S-Bahn-ing a connection between El Insurgente and Tren Suburbano, and I think this is an exquisite suggestion and wise first step, but I’d then personally build an RER-style system from there to address the multipolarity of the region, making effectively a super-subway network to shadow the regular subway map, as well as then continuing further into the sub- and exurbs than the subway does (in addition to, of course, being the basis for a proper intercity rail system).