Random internet finds: public transport

I spend too much time on the internet and not enough time on buses, but I try to make up for it by spending time on buses while I’m on the Internet. And now I’m sharing some of that useless information with you.

When I visit places abroad, I’m just as interested in their public transport systems as in their “normal” sights and attractions. But some places have forms of transport that even normal people who aren’t especially into public transport might appreciate.

• Amsterdam’s municipal public transport company operates ferries across the IJ (side note: It’s pronounced “Eye”.) river and Amsterdam–Rhine canal. The ferries and their destinations are nothing special, but they’re free for pedestrians and cyclists.

• The oldest electric elevated railway in the world can be found in the German city of Wuppertal. The Wuppertaler Schwebebahn, as it’s called, is a suspension monorail that originally opened in 1901. Despite its age, it is still in use as a form of public transport. But don’t expect authentic wooden carriages: the network runs modern air-conditioned trains that only entered service in 2015.

• YouTuber Tom Scott’s channel has featured many examples of weird and slightly impractical forms of transport, including a bus that transforms into a train (and of course it’s in Japan).

• Dulles International Airport and Montréal–Trudeau International Airport feature mobile lounges that are basically jetways on wheels. PALT (“Passengers And Luggage Together”) was a similar concept from the 1980s that would have taken the idea even further by transporting passengers (and their luggage) directly from the plane to the airport. The idea didn’t take off.

If none of these options are appealing enough to you, you can also simply buy your own used train from Deutsche Bahn.

If you browse around on this website, you’ll find that I have published designs for papercraft buses, drawn Dutch trains using HTML and CSS, programmed a spiritual successor to sl, and developed a journey planner using SQL. But I’m far from the only person on the internet who has worked on useless public transport-themed side projects.

• Have you ever wondered why you sometimes wait for a late bus, and then all of a sudden two or three buses arrive at the same time? This is called bus bunching, and some people built a simulator that explains this concept in a very visual way.

• Git graphs can be visualised as networks. Does this mean you can describe a metro network using Git and have GitHub visualise it as a network? Apparently the answer to that question is yes.

• LEGO can be used to build almost anything you want – including of course miniature versions of real-life trains. /r/LEGOtrains is a subreddit dedicated entirely to LEGO trains, but there are some examples to be found in other subreddits as well, such as this one from Hong Kong.

• Sit In Shade is actually helpful, as it helps you find the best seat on a bus or train if you don’t like being blinded or cooked alive by the sun during your journey.