Patrick Crozier

“It’s not much of a quid pro quo for having lived through the Cultural Revolution and the Great Leap Forward...”

The other night Michael Jennings, Brian Micklethwait and myself sat down with the intention of recording a podcast about South East Asian Metros, Michael being pretty clued up on the subject.

We started well.  We managed to keep to the subject for a good five minutes before veering off onto topics as far apart as colonial architecture and the evils of communism1 the Metropolitan Railway’s Club carriages, the importance of passenger information, maps and timetables (or lack of them), international fare system convergence and commuter escalators.

And our tendency for all talking at once continues unabated.  Oh well.

Notes
1. As evidenced by Michael’s quote at the top.

Update 11/01/08 Michael tells me that that “South” bit in the title is inaccurate.

Rob Fisher

The Sunday Times travel section has an article about the splendour of the stations on the Moscow subway.

Komsomolskaya station, to the northeast of the city centre, was opened as part of the first wave in 1935. Its atrium is one of the most beautiful: luxuriously decorated with heavy chandeliers, arches made from three types of marble, and granite floors.

On the ceiling and walls are depictions of Russian leaders and civilians, the former heroically leading forces into battle on horseback, the latter with sleeves rolled and backs breaking in honest toil.

All this reminded me of some photos I’d seen of the Pyongyang Metro.  That website is run by someone who thinks Pyongyang’s metro has military uses, but it seems that communist transport infrastructure has propaganda uses, too.  Sometimes that’s the only use, as in the case of a ten lane highway with hardly any traffic.

Patrick Crozier

Seems Barcelona’s commuter trains are not as good as they could be:

The other thing everyone’s talking about is the awful Barcelona commuter train system; there was another massive delay yesterday on two of the suburban train lines. That makes about twelve major screwups on the Renfe commuter trains this year so far. This time a bunch of passengers got pissed off and blocked the train tracks at Martorell, thereby holding things up even more, of course. That’s what happens when the government runs the trains or any other industry that should be in private hands.

The FGC at Plaça de Catalunya

I know I am libertarian ideologue but I am actually quite shocked.  In my experience the rail system in Barcelona is fantastic - although my experience is mainly with the Metro (owned by the Barcelona city government) and the FGC (owned by the government of Catalunya).  This, of course, is RENFE, run by those hicks in Madrid.

Commuter action is not unknown.  In the 1970s, unhappy commuters smashed up a station in Tokyo.  A few years later the company was privatised.