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Of course, being something of a transport nerd, the creation of a public transport system for the city is something that has occupied much of my attention. You can see the system as a whole in the image below, or a much more “zoomed in” version by clicking here:Over the next few months I hope to work my way through understanding and describing large chunks of the city’s transport network in quite a bit of detail. Transport, obviously, is critical to the way a city functions. Especially in quite a dense city, and a city with relatively few motorways, the quality of the public transport system is going to be critical.

Line 1 is the black line in the image above, running in an approximate northwest to southeast direction, passing through the city centre towards its southern end (although continuing out past the city centre for a bit too). The line’s location is shown in the map below (bigger image here): You can see at its northern end the line splits in two, to cover a broader area but also most likely an area with less demand that means running at half the frequency on each branch (assuming that they get an equal number of trains, which I think is what would happen) is sufficient.

At a guess, this line is probably of of the city’s busiest Metro lines. In its northern half (say above where it intersects with the blue line) it runs through what seems like a pretty dense residential area. Although the river immediately to the west of the line somewhat affects its catchment, I have always anticipated that there are a great number of east-west bus routes feeding people into both the red and black lines – and for city-bound trips the black line is probably the quicker of the two. Close into the city, the line then runs through a number of high patronage generators. The map below highlights their location, and a description of each is provided below:A: Major sports complex including a cricket ground and a football stadium. Neither are the city’s largest stadiums, but still something that’s likely to draw some fairly large crowds (mainly for domestic games rather than internationals) on a fairly regular basis.
B: The city’s largest university, so a huge generator of patronage.
C: The city’s civic centre, including a monument, City Hall, a large public square and various other tourist attractions. Also a hub of business activity, particularly relating to the city’s governance.
D: Transfer to one of the three main commuter rail hubs, providing commuter rail access to the very northern suburbs and also the main inter-city station. Line 1 is the only line providing a direct link between this station and our next main generator…
E: Transfer to another of the three main commuter rail hubs, which provides access to the northern and eastern suburbs.
F: A major theme park at the end of the line. A major tourist attraction of international standard, and therefore a large trip generator on weekends in particular but also generally at all times.

My feeling is that trains along this line would need to be running at pretty high frequencies most of the time to cope with demand. I had envisaged this line running 24/7, although it seems that this often causes more problems (through making maintenance really difficult) than it solves – so I’m up in the air on that matter.

The line is almost entirely underground, except for where it runs through a large train storage yard (around its transfer point with the blue line). This reflects that it runs through very dense areas for pretty much its entire length, and also probably that each end of the line (which were probably built later than the central part of it) were extended into parts of the city already constructed at fairly high densities.

All up, the line is crucial to the functioning of the city. It serves significant tracts that are built up at quite high densities, doesn’t really duplicate any other line to a great extent, and connects many major trip attractors.