A Metro in Paradise? | Barcelona Metro Explained

this video is sponsored by nebula the educational streaming service created by me and my Creator Friends check out the link in the description or stay tuned to learn more Barcelona is a lovely Seaside City in the Catalonia region of Northeastern Spain famous for its uniform blocks Fantastical architecture and laid-back way of life but Barcelona has far more lying just below the surface the city has two Metro systems several rail operators and even more with over 200 stations scattered throughout all of this means the confusion factor is high it can be very hard for an outsider to appreciate how much exists and is going on in this most attractive European Metropolis you could say it's very much in need of an explainer video so let's Dive In [Music] hey there and welcome to RM Transit a Channel about public transport networks around the world first limit is a dense City squeezed between the mountains and the Mediterranean in northeastern Spain and hemden by the Uber got and pesos rivers that flow from The Valleys to the north and roughly to find the central parts of the city the city is obviously famous for its wild buildings and spaces created or otherwise decorated by famous architect Anthony Gowdy including the still under construction after over 100 years Sagrada Familia church casamila and park guel of course Barcelona has far more from its superblocks to the famous LA rambla and Camp Nu home to the famous FC Barcelona there's also the hill of manjuik which has Gardens a fortress exhibition and sporting grounds and important for our purposes agondola and a funicular that opened in the 1920s for you to ride all the hillside transit to your heart's content with the city as big as Barcelona you're bound to have a number of major transport hubs and indeed that's the case here El Pratt airport just to the west of the city is one of Europe's Most trafficked with over 50 million passengers per year pretty coveted but you come here for Railways and if you are arriving in Barcelona on High-Speed Rail either from France or from the rest of Spain which we discussed in our Spanish High-Speed Rail video you'll arrive via Barcelona Sun's station in the west side of the city science also serves trains on the rodalias regional and Suburban train Network run mostly by ronfe traveling through both of Barcelona's two Cross City Regional Rail tunnels which reminded me a lot of Hamburg another city we talked about recently the city is also getting a new High-Speed Rail station on the East End in the coming years Barcelona also has modern trance with two distinct many networks in the West and East of the city which despite the obvious value are still not connected together although the Gap is continuing to shrink and there's actually another set of suburban rail Services these are run by Catalan Railway company fgc terminating at two points in the city center at Plaza Espana and Plaza Catalunya turning these both into major Railway hubs for the city and region as well diving into the Metro like some other cities such as Tokyo Barcelona actually has lines run by multiple different operators with fgc actually running a select few Metro services and the municipal tmb running most of the urban rail Rapid Transit so let's talk about the system like in Madrid and actually the rest of Spain all of the lines on Barcelona's Metro System get their power from overhead rails and wires and the tmb lines are also almost entirely underground even including some major yards however unlike in the capital Barcelona's network has trains with a couple different rail gauges to start let's look at the lines run by the Barcelona Metropolitan Transit Agency or tmb which is in charge of the city's original Metro System the first line we'll look at today is the redline one which first opened in the late 1920s and is 21 kilometers long with 30 stations connecting to South cespania and Catalunya the line stretches East-West across the city forming a broad letter m shape and uniquely among the Barcelona Metro Lines line 1 actually operates on Iberian gauge tracks the same as Spanish mainlands and with larger trains than the rest of the Metro as well even more unique from Catalunya to Arctic Triumph station line one trains share a quad track tunnel with Ron face at bourbon drains which run in the center tracks to the east of the line a large part of which runs parallel to the Ron fake Corridor many stations are designed with the famous Spanish solution layout with an island and side platforms something which only really happens on line 1 the most used in the system line 2 is purple and actually one of the newest lines on the network being constructed in the 1980s for the 1992 Summer Olympics at module week which the line didn't actually open in time for currently line 2 is 13 kilometers long with 18 stops cutting across the city's southern end East-West and Crossing Line 1 twice like all other tmb lines besides line one it features standard gauge tracks line 2 uses five car trains like all other tmb operated Metro lines which are about 2.7 meters wide and 85 meters long the oldest line in Barcelona's Metro is the green lion 3 built in the mid-1920s which like with line 2 was built for a Grand Event but in this case the world fair of 1927 at the time the line was known as El Gran Metro interestingly line 3 originally had a third rail for power but this was actually replaced with overhead lines in the 90s mine 3 has 26 stops over 18 kilometers of track and like lines one and two it's a broadly East-West line but in this case forming a u-shape from the northwest of the city to the Northeast connecting to both Line 1 and line 2 twice and the city's three major Railway stations the connection to line two at parallel is cross-platform in One Direction and also provides connections to the mantri fanucular iron 4 is a 22 station 17 kilometer yellow line which forms an almost complete Loop in the East Central part of the city Crossing Line 1 and line two twice and coming close to Catalunya without connecting to it and then heading north to the Eastern Terminus of line 3. originally the central part of line 4 passing by Catalunya was a branch of Barcelona's original metroliant the rest of which grew into line three as in Madrid part of line 4 was previously removed and transferred to another line in this case line two next up is line 5 which is 19 kilometers long with 27 stops the general shape of this line is quite similar to line four but rotated 90 degrees counterclockwise the line starts on line three at its underground yard and then crosses line 4 before grazing lines one and two and heading west across the city north of the other lines connecting to South Station and terminating to the northwest of the city as it turns out the line which was originally in line 2 was actually renamed to become line five probably the most infamous line or lines on the Barcelona Metro are lines 9 and 10. I have an entire video dedicated to this Lion and the unique way its tunnels and stations are designed because it's truly like nothing else in the world so you should check that out if you're confused about why I'm talking about them together lines 9 and 10 are actually mostly on the same alignment through the city center it's only on the outer branches that the two Services diverge when fully complete lines 9 and 10 will have nearly 50 kilometers of track almost entirely underground besides A short segment of elevated running on the Western Line 10 Branch operating fully automated trains and stations with full platform screen doors but for now the line is broken into two legs in the west and the East with the central section left unopened broadly the idea of the line 9 and 10 alignment is to provide an orbital route within the city traveling East-West across it farther north than any other line providing additional connections it will also help fix a bunch of other problems like better integrating the FPC and tmb Metro Lines by adding connections to the very radial fgc Metro services with stations connecting to Line 6 7 8 and 12. and adding an airport connection to El prad there's also a planned station at Camp noon very useful if you're going to an FC Barcelona game the last line in the tmb system is line 11 and it is absolutely the strangest metro line on Barcelona's Network it's just about two and a half kilometers long with five stations and the line has small two-car trains initially operated with drivers better now fully automated with platform screen doors at all stations the line also long had a cross-platform transfer with Lion 4 which 911 is a virtual extension of akin to some of the Metro lines in Madrid just like in Madrid line 11 has been designed such that it could be converted to an extension of line in the future and interestingly it's almost all single track with double track passing Loops only at two of its five stations the second component of Barcelona's Metro are the lines run by fgc and I must say I am really fond of fgc's logo it's definitely one of the best out there for a railway what can make Barcelona system confusing and honestly also just frankly unique is that even though fgc's lines are officially part of the Metro that wasn't always the case and they aren't exclusively Metro Alliance instead fgc has two main inter-urban derived Suburban rail corridors which dead end into Barcelona from the west and the North and the high frequency of local stop services on these corridors that terminate closest to the city center have been treated as Metro lines for the last few decades on science they're denoted with an l and then a number while other fgc services get an s or an r and then a number fgc's routes comprise four of the Metro lines on this system the first of the Interurban lines is the Barcelona Valles line which has its Origins over a century ago and runs to the region of Valles north of the city this route was traditionally Iberia engaged but was converted to standard gauge with overhead line power at 1500 volts DC the line terminates at Plaza Catalunya which has five stubborn tracks for the ballast line although not all of them are used the operation is super impressive because all the different services including the s-lines make up more than 30 trains per hour which turn at the station the stopping pattern for the s-lines has actually been simplified since the end of 2022 cutting the total number of s services from 5 to just two which don't stop at several stations already served by the metro Services albeit with the removal of what was a previous skip stop service hopefully all improving reliability today the vallis line forms three Metro lines on Barcelona's Network the first two of these are lines 6 and 7 which have 8 stations over four and a half kilometers of track and seven stations over four kilometers of track respectively making them very short and stop dense oddly for a metro line line 6 currently only runs off peak leaving capacity for the S1 and S2 services that make these same stops within Barcelona line 7 travels from Catalunya to the north before the rest of the line diverges West along with line 6 which terminates a few stations further along line 7 has very steep sections and uses three-car trains with a slightly smaller loading gauge than the 80 meter four car trains used on the other services the only connections from lines six and seven to the rest of the metro and the were Dallas happen at Catalunya as well as to the Metro at provencia one of the busiest stations in the city making the lines pretty radial it is also worth mentioning that unlike a lot of the trains on the tmb portion of the Metro many of the trains used on these services are actually really attractive and distinctive looking models from calf Alston and Statler there's also line 12 which is the shortest line on the Barcelona metro running underground just one station and 600 meters from Saria on line 6 and in the future line 9 and 10. funnily enough the root of line 12 traces an old Urban rail line service from the mid-1800s which was later buried and was the final segment of line 6 in the 1970s which it was split from in 2016. line 12 now operates as a shuttle this conversion allowed the reconfiguration of Saria with larger platforms and more capacity the second fgc Corridor is the line from Barcelona to joburgat and annoya which also has over Century old Origins and runs to the west of the city unlike the Valles Line This slide features only one Metro service and a lot more suburban and Regional services and even Freight Service in some areas this line is actually meter gauge with 1500 volt DC overhead lines meaning Barcelona's Urban Railways indeed operate on three different gauges with Espana station actually serving all three like the Valas Line This Light ultimately continues into two long branches line 8 is 12 kilometers long with 11 stations traveling west from Espana station and terminating in a suburb shortly after crossing the Gilbert got River rest of the city unlike what the vallus line the S Services almost all stop at the same stations as line 8 significantly increasing the effective frequency of the service line 8 has a number of connections to the Barcelona Metro as well as rodales Services all in all the fgc routes are very interesting albeit highly radio limiting their usefulness for travel within the densest parts of Barcelona at the same time because of their inter-urban Origins and generally Suburban nature much of fgc's lines are above ground as you might imagine given the situation with line 9 and 10 Barcelona has a lot of Metro expansion skill in the pipeline with work slowly moving along on this Central tunnel and plans to complete this long delayed line by the middle of the decade what's fascinating is that at the moment the tracks used by the Eastern parts of lions 9 and 10 to access LA sagrera are not the permanent tracks they're actually part of an extension of land 4 to the site being able to use them for lines 9 and 10 is a big benefit of so many of the Metro lines using intercompatible trains in Barcelona planning is also ongoing for automating line 2 of the metro and connecting it to the line 9 airport Branch this will connect both lines 9 and 10 south of their Western split and provide more service to the airport including a direct connection to the city's Center Line 8 of the fgc network will actually also be extended further into the city to connect to the fpc's Line 6 and 7 and fill the void space between the older tmb lines and lines 9 and 10. all in all Barcelona has a lot planned to help better integrate its Metro networks and better connect all of its neighborhoods an exciting period that reminds me a lot of when the MTR and kcr and Hong Kong merged what's clear to me is that Barcelona is just one of those cities with an especially interesting Railway Network and one that cities around the world have lots to learn from now if you've made it to the end of this video you must be at least a little bit interested in how the world's transit systems work and enjoy learning about topics like public transit and infrastructure in depth if that sounds like you Wendover production's new nebula original series the logistics of X might just be the right thing to watch right after this with the first episode centered on ski resorts and everything that goes into keeping one of these popular destinations afloat and this series like other nebula Originals is only available on nebula nebula is the streaming platform owned by me and my Creator friends featuring over 14 000 titles that you can watch ad free including exclusive and Early Access videos from educational creators like myself not just bikes City nerd and City beautiful lots of urbanist content now you can also get nebula classes absolutely free with your base nebula subscription and learn from all of your 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Channel: RMTransit

Views: 104,672

Keywords: transit, transportation, rail, railway, railfan, public transit, public transport, public transportation, train, subway, metro, underground, rail transport, urban planning, barcelona, barcelona metro, fcg, tmb, spain

Id: x83vdbrsCQw

Length: 15min 2sec (902 seconds)

Published: Sat May 27 2023