AKICIF: Subways

[bohemiancoast]

Which US cities have underground railways?

Background -- so, yesterday I was hacked off at one of the many ways that the iPhone is rubbish if you're outside mobile phone reception, and concluded that nobody with any influence at Apple had any experience of commuting by underground.

Edit: mr_tom has pointed out that some of the US urban railways are so

Comments

[bovil]

So from the Apple POV:

The San Francisco Muni Metro (local service in San Francisco) is a mix of underground and above-ground lines.

VTA Light Rail (local service for Santa Clara County) is above-ground.

BART (regional service not including Santa Clara County) is a mix of underground and above-ground lines.

Caltrain (regional service SF-Gilroy, which is south Santa Clara County) is above ground, but does have to pass through a few tunnels cut through hills at the SF end of things.

Apple isn't in SF, though. It's in Cupertino. There's no rail service (BART, Caltrain or VTA Light Rail) in Cupertino in the first place. Apple execs and designers are going to drive or can afford to live in the Cupertino hills and surrounding area and bicycle if they want to feel green.

[swisstone]

Atlanta, Baltimore, Washington, New York, Boston, Los Angeles, Philadelphia, San Francisco. Cupertino, where Apple are based, doesn't have any commuter railways at all, let alone underground ones.

[peteyoung]

Alphabetically: Atlanta's MARTA is partly underground; Baltimore's Metro is underground in the city only; Boston's MBTA; Chicago's 'L' has about 10km underground; Los Angeles Metro's red and purple lines are underground; New York's Subway; Philadelphia's SEPTA; San Francisco's BART and Washington's Metro.

I could be wrong, but I think Cleveland's RTA and Miami's Metrorail are entirely above ground.

[mr_tom]

Also, the NYC Subway is only just underground, so mobiles work fine for the most psrt. I'm not sure about the others, but I'd guess they'd be similar. London's underground is unusually deep.

[bohemiancoast]

Ahah! This is key. Of course, mobiles work quite well on much of the Circle line; it's the deep tubes that are the problem, such as the Victoria line.

[redbird]

I wouldn't say "for the most part": they work near one or both ends of some lines (which get the least traffic), most of a few lines (7, J), and not at all on some. And even our shallow, cut-and-cover lines don't have reliable service: on the 6 train (Lexington Avenue local) there are areas in some stations, usually near entrances, that have service, but a few meters away will be dead, and the reception is spotty at best on the trains.

[purplecthulhu]

I think there are some underground bits on the Portland metro (can't remember what it's called), and Seatle has an underground busway - they still haven't found the money to upgrade it to a metro.

[ckd]

Seattle's bus tunnel now carries light rail as well. Depending on your criteria for "metro" that might count. (It's not built as a "pre-metro" that can be upgraded to heavier rail as Brussels has done.)