The Weirdest Metro System in the World | Amsterdam Metro

[Music] the amsterdam metro is a weird and wonderful system and i think it's one that we can learn a surprising amount from not only from its successes but also from its challenges the netherlands is a very popular place to talk about for its great urbanism and a big reason it has such great cities is that moving around them is so convenient which it owes a great deal to things like the amsterdam metro and the incredible national train network so let's dive deep and take a look at what makes the system work [Music] if you enjoyed this video make sure to subscribe for more and consider supporting the channel on patreon as with all explained videos it makes sense to start with learning a bit about the layout of amsterdam the city is situated along the a waterway which is connected to the ocean to the west by the north sea canal and a massive lake to the east along the a is amsterdam central station which is at the north side of the canal covered historic center of the city just north of dam square to the southern end of the city you have the suburban city of amstelvan as well as zaudas which is the city's new business district kind of like la defense in paris or canary wharf in london soundness is divided in half by a highway and a major rail corridor that serves amsterdam's out station which translates to amsterdam south other major station areas include slaughterdike in the city's west and zandam with its very wacky transit-oriented development in the northwest north of the a the final major node to mention is the massive amsterdam scriptable airport a massive transportation node in its own right with a major rail station mega hub airport status and important surrounding areas like kupdorff not just bikes has a great video on that you can check out as you can probably tell amsterdam is already really well served by rapid rail lines run by ns the dutch national railway which criss-cross it as well as tram and bus routes for local transit not to mention bikes in some sense though those rapid rail lines act like a large-scale metro system for the entire ranstat region of the netherlands akin to the rhine-rur region in germany or even the greater toronto and hamilton region with more evenly distributed populations it's a region that contains a number of major cities from amsterdam to rotterdam to the hague and utrecht as well as a number of smaller cities like harlem and delft the reality is that this is a fairly dense and compact group of major cities and the rail network really well interconnects them what's super interesting is that the national railway network between these major cities is incredibly frequent as i mentioned it is metrolike and that means there are express trains which connect the major cities every 15 minutes or better plus additional local service for example between amsterdam and utrecht you have six express trains every hour and two local trains now i hope you're getting the sense that while tramps provide neighborhood to neighborhood transport and national rail trains from ns provide regional and country-wide transport the amsterdam metro is very much for trips across the city now the system isn't as extensive as some other european metros and that's likely from a combination of factors amsterdam already has good trams and mainline trains which all kind of blur together to provide a similar service to a metro in many places and at the same time amsterdam being so low-lying and surrounded by water like much of the netherlands makes traditional tunneled metro construction difficult this all leads to the amsterdam metro being quite unlike most metro systems you'll see because it's so heavily interlined and a lot of it is above ground so let's take a look at the lines the first line we'll look at is route 53 which is colored red it's 11 and a half kilometers long with 14 stations route 53 runs from amsterdam central station in the city's center to the southeast of the city to the center of the modernist design neighborhood of belmer roughly the first third from amsterdam's central runs underground before the line pops up onto the surface to run next to ns railway services until it arrives to the north of belmar where the line splits off into its own dedicated elevated metro right of way the second line to talk about is the yellow colored route 54 which is twelve and a half kilometers long and shares much of its length with the red route 53. the yellow line splits from the red line two thirds of the way down the line at dalvindraft a station in the middle of what can only be described as a texas style railway interchange with flyovers running in various directions from here the line continues south in the middle of the ns railway right of way to serve the western parts of belmore as well as the amsterdam arena before diverging from the railway to serve the area of hospital and hein both of these lines run on what are known as the east line the orange route 51 is roughly 20 kilometer line with 19 stations that forms a near-complete ring around the city running from the northern part of the east line onto a new corridor known as the ring line splitting off the east line just south of spokleroax station the ringline serves an industrial district before entering the a-10 freeway right-of-way which runs next to the rye convention center which route 51 serves alongside ns mainline rail from here the line continues to serve zeldas and the amsterdam's out station from which the line continues west from turning north as it passes near the new lake to turn north alongside the ns rail corridor from amsterdam skateboard airport the portion of both lines runs above ground on an elevated embankment through the western portions of the city offering convenient transfers to east-west tram routes at several of the stations eventually the line comes to amsterdam slaughterdike which is a major junction station and office district in the port area at the northwest of the city after passing through the station the orange line terminates at isolaterveg a station serving an industrial area the green colored route 50 at just over 20 kilometers is the longest line in the system with a total of 20 stations the line runs from the ring line onto the east line as with the orange line but instead turned south to run along with the yellow line to hein the blue route 52 is the newest in the system opening in just 2018 the blue line runs from southass east to a new station underground in front of the rye center from which it runs due north throughout the central areas of the city in a tunnel up to a new deep station under amsterdam central from here the blue line crosses under the eye waterway before popping out onto the surface in the middle of a major roadway to serve amsterdam north finally connecting the area with rail access as well as park and ride lots bet you didn't expect to see that the line has a total of eight stations on nine and a half kilometers of track there are substantial expansion plans for the metro system though it's not clear how many of them will actually be built some plans call for a new east-west service across the city which could connect to areas like iberg a part of the city built on a brand new island in the i lake the area around the reichsch museum and wando park there's also been a number of extensions discussed including to zandam potentially as a western wing from the north south line and skipper as well as hyphdorf as a potential southern extension in addition to one of the aforementioned new east west line to almer roughly 20 kilometers northeast of the city and perma-end 15 kilometers to the north these longer distance connections seem probably better made with mainline trains than metro showing odd mode choices aren't just the thing in the anglosphere given the unusual layout of amsterdam and its metro the city's difficult geography and the fact that the amsterdam metro was only opened in the 1970s the system has quite a few unique features and planning elements as well as quite the storied past a good place to start is to look at the east line which was built along land formerly used for mainline rail infrastructure and a station called amsterdam whisperport as well as using very controversial cut and cover construction this controversy and subsequent protest is probably most notable surrounding the demolition of a portion of the new market neighborhood which is now memorialized in its namesake station also relevant to the east line is the area of belmer which was considered an innovative transit-oriented development area at the time of construction of the metro but has been seen as a failure in retrospect because of having a modern design that separated pedestrians from the street network and housed people in massive apartment buildings which when combined with social issues made the neighborhood feel unsafe and isolated from the rest of the city as was mentioned earlier the difficult soil conditions in amsterdam make tunneling challenging these difficulties came to a head with the north-south line which was severely delayed in part because of the complex excavations under amsterdam central along with other historic areas near the line which faced land settlement issues one of the most interesting parts of the amsterdam metro is its history with regards to the former line to the town of amstelvan south of amsterdam originally given the tenuous history of the metro after the construction of the east line when the line to amstelvan was planned instead of constructing a metro a snell tram or express tram line running down the middle of a wide street was built running from amsterdam zhao down to amstelvane this meant no massive city altering construction was really needed but it also meant that this would be one weird metro line because the trams used on the amstelvane line were more like high-capacity stop bond trains you might see in a german or german derived rail system like the calgary c train would need to work on both a surface tram line and on the existing amsterdam metro network because of the heavily interlined routings the trams used on the sneltram were especially unusual for one since these vehicles would have to use the high platforms of the amsterdam metro they needed to be high floor now this is of course a problem you see for urban trams you usually don't want a high floor train that's because boarding from a curb or slightly raised platform to floor height of a high floor train usually isn't possible this means you'll probably need internal stairs which are really bad for accessibility now to be fair systems like this do exist but they tend to solve access problems in very janky ways many lrt systems in the us solve the problem of low floor stations by having mobility device users ascend an awkward ramp to a small mini platform where they can board a floor hide door on the train which isn't great another option is what san francisco does on the muni system which is to have trains with internal stairs that can literally raise up and down which is complicated and again very awkward naturally since this is the netherlands a more elegant solution was found right well yes and no for the absolvane line in order to have surface tram stops which could be used both for the trains running on the metro and for normal trams there were two platforms at each stop which were long and unwieldy but at least provided full level boarding for either type of vehicle although the fact that you had to pay before boarding in contrast to the onboard payment for regular trams definitely wasn't straightforward and confused and overcharged many a rider that said complexity wasn't entirely in the infrastructure the trains used on the sneltram line had to be special to enable changing modes from tram to metro operation that meant being able to accept dual voltages having third rail pickups and pantographs and since the amsterdam metro uses roughly three meter wide trains and light rail trains are typically more like two and a half meters wide having flip up platform extenders to enable level boarding on every train since otherwise there would be a fairly wide and unsafe gap between the snell tram trains and the platforms at stations where larger regular metro trains were used unfortunately though since at the time of the amstelvan line's opening it was less clear how many problems the line would have the subsequently constructed ring line and the next order of metro trains were actually built to the default narrower width of the apstalvane line trains this meant trains on the ring line initially did not have to use their pop-up platform extenders on the new parts of the ring line but they still needed to be used on the rest of the system and the new line was completely unusable by the traditional wider and higher capacity metro trains used on the system in addition to this the complexity of the vehicles ended up being the downfall of the amstelvan metro service having to switch operating modes mid-route was not always a smooth process and the vehicles had a lot of additional moving parts over a typical metro train at the same time their narrower size limited the capacity into the core of the amsterdam metro system especially on the infrastructure built for larger trains moreover the frequent operations in the middle of the street including crossing busy intersections at grade led to collisions and unreliable service which impacted the whole metro network because it was so heavily interlined eventually it became clear that essentially having two separate fleets of trains serving a metro system that had lines which were built for two different standards was not a good idea and so the platforms for the ringline were converted to be usable by all metro trains forcing the newer trains to permanently use their platform extenders once again at the same time the on-street amstelvane surface problematic as it was was shut down and completely rebuilt and removed from the metro system high platforms were removed and they were replaced with longer low platforms that would serve new longer low floor trains that would run along the line up to amsterdam's out alongside pre-existing tram services which continue into amsterdam the line also received some key grade separations to reduce the risk of collisions and improve the speed and reliability of the new service which is much improved and is now known as the amstel tram i think all of this goes to show that even places we think of as very good at transit can make regrettable decisions and this should really be alerting for cities like seattle and toronto who are building half subway half tram lines but what it also goes to show is that you can always fix things if you don't get them right as long as you're willing to admit that you may have screwed up it's also worth noting that part of the reason that these vehicles and alignment issues came to a head is that by and large the amsterdam metro has been quite successful and popular for one that's thanks to it connecting areas not directly on the ns national railway network and on the other hand also running parallel and essentially providing a local rapid transit service even in corridors where those high frequency mainline trains already run but where it might not be practical to add additional stops for infrastructure or scheduling reasons i should say rolling stock wise the amsterdam metro also isn't all that bad i like many have a fondness for the original metro cars which during their last renovation were given art interiors to help make them more unique and pleasant as they rode off into the sunset at the same time while i really don't like the look of the original snell tram trains the new amstel tram trams that's a mouthful look really nice especially in the silver livery which represents arnet the network of transit systems interconnecting the ramstead the new m5 trains from alstom and the future m7 trains from cafe who seem to be very popular in the netherlands these days are also really nice the clean silver arnet livery is there but the design is also high capacity and modern trains are formed of six cars which are fully walk through and 120 meters long showing once again that 150 plus meter trains are not necessarily the norm around the world and as you've probably picked up these trains run on third rail so that's the amsterdam metro a metro system as quirky and unique as the city it serves unfortunately the good quirkiness of amsterdam has been historically met with some bad quirkiness on the metro but fortunately things have been sorted out since that said as amsterdam always seems to do as it did with highways before the city has somehow managed to fix things and maybe even make them better we in the rest of the world still have so much to learn [Music] you

Channel: RMTransit

Views: 307,063

Keywords: transit, transportation, rail, railway, railfan, public transit, public transport, public transportation, train, subway, metro, underground, rail transport, urban planning, amsterdam, amsterdam metro, amstelveen, amsteltram, amsterdam tram, tram, trams

Id: gMFf5io5WZo

Length: 15min 2sec (902 seconds)

Published: Sat Jun 25 2022