Lights, Camera, Transit!

Yes, even something as everyday as transit makes it into the movies. Here's a few times where transit has been part of a plot line: Warning: contains spoilers.

Planes, Trains and Automobiles (1987)

This classic film starring Steve Martin and John Candy shows everything that can go wrong with transportation. Obnoxious people. Canceled planes. Strange taxis. Bad hotels. But what that gets Steve Martin's character back home for Thanksgiving without any problems? Yep, the Chicago L. Even in the winter weather that sets back the characters throughout the movie, the world famous elevated trains that symbolize Chicago run right on schedule. See a clip below of the ending, which takes place at the LaSalle/Van Buren stop. But how he can get back to the same station so quickly? Because he's in The Loop. Overall, a pretty good endorsement of "trains" here.



Speed (1994)

One of the most used cliches in describing a movie is saying "Movie x did for activity y what Psycho did for showers!" But I think it's safe to say that about Speed and mass transit. In one movie, a terrorist targets elevators (which may be the most ridden form of mass transit,) buses, subways, and planes. And all in Los Angeles, a city notorious for bad transportation. This movie probably didn't help, but it is a great nonstop thriller. And hey, imagine how quickly you'd get to work if your bus couldn't drop below 50!

Who Framed Roger Rabbit (1988)

Who needs a car in L.A.? We've got the best public transportation system in the world.

So says Eddie Valiant, private investigator in Los Angeles in 1947. He tries to stop the evil Judge Doom, who wants to destroy Toontown. Why? To make room for a freeway. You heard that right. Who Framed Roger Rabbit isn't about cartoons, murder, or the golden age of Hollywood. It's a dramatization of the Great American Streetcar Scandal, in which General Motors bought up streetcar systems to replace them with buses. Judge Doom buys up the beloved Red Car trolley system only to dismantle it, and Los Angeles residents are forced to drive everywhere. Sound familiar?

Good Will Hunting (1997)

This might just be me. But I think Good Will Hunting brilliantly uses transit to tell the story of Will Hunting, a genius from the wrong end of the Boston Red Line. In the film the Red Line, through a few beautiful scenes with the music of Elliott Smith, symbolically and physically connects the rough South Boston with the prestige of MIT and Harvard. If it wasn't for the Red Line trains, could Will have secretly displayed his amazing mathematical talents to an MIT math professor? Could he have met Skylar, a smart and beautiful Harvard student? I'd like to think no.

But the gift at the end of the film to Will from his buddies? A car. Oh well.

Stranger than Fiction (2006)

This little gem of a film features a rare dramatic turn for comedian Will Ferrell. Transit is everywhere in this movie where Harold, a lonely tax agent, finds out he is the protagonist in a novelist's unfinished book. One day, he starts hearing the narrator and finds out he will soon die. His life then starts changing for the better, including this great scene on a bus where he talks to Ana, a free-spirited baker who he is auditing.



Notice how the discussion is made more awkward by his sitting in the middle of an articulated bus (that seems to be going nowhere... it keeps making left turns. Commentary on Harold perhaps?) A later scene has Harold reading the book about himself on a very long bus ride (that even takes him to the garage and bus wash.) And not to mention the ending... Filmed in Chicago, though the transit system is referred to as the MTA rather than the CTA. Is Chicago the only city where white collar workers take transit? According to Hollywood, yes.

Sliding Doors (1998)

Unlike driving or walking, taking mass transit makes a whole lot of "what if" moments. The bus, train, or plane is leaving whether you're on it or not. And you wonder sometimes what would have happened if you caught that bus that left as you were getting to the stop. Would you have met someone? Would you have gotten home earlier and seen something you shouldn't have? Sliding Doors explores two parallel universes: one where Helen (Gwyneth Paltrow) catches an Underground train, and the other where she just misses it. See the trailer here. While transit is not the main theme of the film, how it is used to explain two different possible lives is very interesting.

"Seinfeld" (1989-1998)

The television show about nothing is often a show about New York City. And of course, transit makes a few appearances on a show set in the city where 6.5 million people take the subway every day. The episode entitled "The Subway" from the third season has an interesting encounter happen to all four characters as they take the subway to where they need to go. Jerry encounters a naked man, Kramer hears a great horse racing tip, George meets a woman who cons him out of $8, and Elaine is stuck on a broken down car on her way to a lesbian wedding. Just four of the 6.5 million stories on the subway every day. Below you can watch a great behind-the-scenes movie about the show, including the subway car set. The whole episode appears to be online, but I imagine that link won't last too long.




There's plenty of other example abound, especially involving the granddaddies of them all: the New York City Subway and the London Underground. Any other great moments in Hollywood transit?

PATH: A Tunnel in a River Turns 100 Today

While the costs escalate for our new subway tunnel, Port Authority Trans-Hudson (PATH) turns 100 today. Originally linking Hoboken, New Jersey and Manhattan, the sunken tunnels first operated for trolleys on February 25th, 1908. You can read the original New York Times story from the day after, 2/26/1908, here in PDF form. The system now includes stops in Newark, Jersey City, and on two lines in Manhattan. The trains serve 227,000 daily passengers and the trains run 24 hours a day. And to celebrate, the train is free until 11pm tonight.

The 1421ft Shuttle Bus? And Other T Musings

Just announced on Post-Gazette: Gateway Center subway station is going to close for two years in May of next year to build a new station for the North Shore Connector. The current subway station will be replaced by a new one in 2011, probably due to Gateway Center's lack of an outbound platform. The crazy part of the story is this:

Service will end at the Wood Street T Station in the interm. Shuttle buses will be provided for riders who want to continue their trips by transit instead of walking to and from the Gateway Center area.

I one time took a T from Wood Street to Gateway Center and then laughed at myself for waiting to take a minute long ride. The distance between the two stations? 1421ft. And they're going to run a shuttle bus for a quarter mile? A bus that goes 3 blocks? Really? Might as well install a moving walkway like they have at Pittsburgh International Airport. Heck, remove one of the unused ones since they have to close a quarter of the gates. I just hope that if they do make a shuttle bus they expand it a bit, like the old 96A Golden Triangle free bus that circled downtown when people still shopped there.

And again, why does Port Authority still put Penn Station (Or maybe it's called Penn Park...) on some T maps? No trains ever run there, and even if they did they usually only ran twice a day. They did use the Penn Park station during the All-Star Game due to its proximity to the convention center. Wait a second, didn't the Port Authority try to connect the T to the Convention Center as part of the NSC only to cut it due to costs? Meet Glen Walsh, local transit advocate who proposed a plan to link the Penn Park station to both the Mellon Arena and Convention Center using elevated walkways. The City Paper even did a story on it, but the idea was rejected by the Port Authority. The station now just sits there, as does the starwell leading to "Track 3 Penn Park" in Steel Plaza. The far left side of that photo is the Penn Park platform that is now mothballed.

And putting a "future extension" arrow toward the airport when there's no funding or environmental impact plan or acquiring of right of way? Genius.

CORRECTION: The 96A was a reduced fare route, not a free route.

UPDATE 2/23: Full P-G story here. I'm still confused, how will cars transfer from inbound to outbound if the loop at Gateway Center is closed? Will they just reverse? Wait, that's not possible, like two cars in the same elevator shaft... right?

UPDATE again: Turns out I deleted the oh-so-clever map that I created to accompany this story. I'll try to get it back later.

Exit Fares and "Charlie on the MTA"

My previous post about the confusing Port Authority fare system may have you wondering whether other cities have this confusing system. Well, enough do that it is called exit fare and it's apparently notable enough to warrant a Wikipedia entry. Apparently Seattle's Metro Transit has the same exact rules as Pittsburgh due to a similar free zone.

The interesting fact it that in some cities you sometimes have to pay twice, once when you get on and again when you get off. In Boston, this was originally put in to allow for easier adjusting of fare increases to further stations. This new policy was so controversial in 1948 that a Progressive party candidate for mayor enlisted local folk songwriters to make a song protesting the fare increase. The song "Charlie on the MTA" is about a man who can't afford the exit fare, so he spends his days trapped on a subway train. Not sure why his wife could bring him lunch everyday but not the extra nickel, but come on it's a song. You can hear some performances on YouTube here.

The song became such a part of Boston lore that when the MBTA (which changed names in 1964) instituted a smart card fare system, they called it the CharlieCard. If Charlie had one with extra money on it, maybe he wouldn't have been stuck on that train. Apparently the system still exists on some stations in Boston still.

And what about Pittsburgh? They're eying a smart card system too. Any ideas for names? Something Pittsburghese? Bus N'at? Dahntahn Card?

Pyongyang Metro - The secret subway

North Korea (known officially as Democratic People's Republic of Korea or DPRK) is well known as a secret state of human rights violations, famine, and nuclear aggression. But this isn't an international policy blog. This is one about transit. So let's talk about a fascinating rapid transit system that might not even exist: The Pyongyang Metro in North Korea's capital city.

Simon Bone's excellent Pyongyang Metro website has lots of information, pictures, maps, and news stories about this peculiar system. The city also has a tram/trolleybus system that pretty much runs on right-of-way since there are few cars in Pyongyang. Visitors to the city are often shown the Metro, but they all seem to make a 1 stop journey between the the same two stations and few pictures online show others. The stations shown are beautiful and are filled with patriotic music, large murals, all-female attendants, and (possibly staged) well-dressed people going in and out of the station. This raises suspicion that either the metro puts on a show for foreigners, is in disrepair, is not operating outside of showing foreigners due to cost or power shortages, or doesn't exist at all outside of the "show stations." Ok, so maybe the last one is a bit of a stretch, but this is a city that would have had the world's tallest hotel if only it wasn't a concrete shell. Take a look at some interesting links and see for yourself:

- A online travel site offers a partial tour of the subway
- Beautiful photos from a Russian site, but again, of the same two stations
- BBC reporter describes the metro "with old East German trains complete with their original German graffiti." No pictures show this, so perhaps the reporter saw the side of the metro citizens see.
- System map
- Strange video showing the metro, but of only one station
- This site reports to show some other stations, showing that it may not only be a prank on foreigners
- Photos that show another station
- Trip report from Last Known Location, mentioning people getting off a train only to get back on it again and a perfectly filled train and station that seemed to vanish immediately when the foreigners left...
- Some facts from subways.net

Sesame Street - Subway

Classic Sesame Street song about the New York City Subway and the perils of taking the express train.

Tandy Subway

Tandy Subway

The only privately-owned subway line in the United States, shut down in 2002 when the connecting mall lost most of its tenants. Wikipedia article about this fascinating part of Ft. Worth, Texas transit. Nowadays a company would just charter a bus from a store to parking lots. But you know, there's something about riding a subway that just might make people not mind parking far from their destination.