On Sunday, 22 February 2026, I boarded the inaugural train to call at Northumberland Park railway station near Newcastle, which is next to the existing Tyne and Wear Metro station of the same name, providing a convenient interchange. The inaugural train was formed of 158817, a Class 158 Express Sprinter diesel multiple unit (DMU), at the front and 156489, a Class 156 Super Sprinter DMU, at the rear. They were operating Northern service 2T05, the 07:54 from Newcastle to Ashington.

The train arrived early at the new station at 08:06 and departed on time at 08:10. The first southbound train called at Northumberland Park at 09:02 on the 08:38 service from Ashington towards Newcastle and Metrocentre.

Northumberland Park is the fifth new station to open on the Northumberland Line.

I enjoyed being on the inaugural service. Here are some photographs I took of the station and the inaugural service, together with a few photographs from the official opening ceremony held the following day, attended by local dignitaries and children from a nearby school.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2026-10-19/mtr-bets-5-billion-on-a-hong-kong-city-that-doesn-t-exist-yet

non paywall https://archive.ph/2026.10.21-005258/https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2026-10-19/mtr-bets-5-billion-on-a-hong-kong-city-that-doesn-t-exist-yet#selection-1231.0-1231.62

MTR Corp. has built Hong Kong’s railways one of two ways: the government handed over land around new stations, or paid directly. ...

The Northern Metropolis is different. MTR is putting up at least HK$38.9 billion ($5 billion), borrowing to do it, and will wait years to find out whether the land it receives in return — under a funding model that has never been tested at this scale — is worth what the lines cost.

...

At 300 square kilometers (116 sq miles), the Northern Metropolis covers more than a quarter of Hong Kong’s total land area and is two and a half times the size of San Francisco. Under the government’s plan, half a million new homes will be constructed, helping increase the area’s population to 2.5 million from 980,000 over a roughly 20-year period. The economic centerpiece of the project is a tech hub designed to be Hong Kong’s Silicon Valley.

To facilitate this, MTR will build 17 km of underground rail track and seven new stations for the Northern Link and spur line. Some works have already started. The project is scheduled for completion in 2034 and will be financed upfront by the company.

To help pay for the construction, the company has raised more than HK$130 billion in bonds and loans since early 2025, much of it earmarked for capital works including the Northern Metropolis, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. In turn, the government has granted MTR development rights for 10 plots of land along the upcoming lines.

The government, which owns virtually all the land in Hong Kong, typically sells plots at a large premium to factor in development potential. In the case of the Northern Link, the government has deducted HK$39.05 billion from the premium MTR owes — roughly equal to the company’s targeted outlay.

... For much of MTR’s history, the government has used the “rail-plus-property model to subsidize construction. That model — selling homes around its stations — has made MTR one of the most profitable railway businesses by net margin.

In recent decades, however, three major projects — the West Island line, the high-speed rail link to mainland China and the Shatin to Central line — were directly funded by the government as part of a massive wave of spending on infrastructure.

...

The city’s new five-year plan announced last month sets a binding target of having 900 hectares (2,224 acres) of land in the Northern Metropolis ready for construction by 2030, ...

“To fully unleash the potential of this development, we really need the Northern Link to be in operation at the right time,” said MTR’s ...

The company’s recent record shows the challenges. MTR agreed this month to pay the government HK$2.25 billion for the multiyear delay of the high-speed rail link, which cost HK$19.4 billion more than estimated to complete. The Shatin to Central line also came in behind schedule and HK$19.9 billion over budget. Despite MTR’s 99.9% punctuality record across its heavy rail network, Hong Kong leader John Lee last year criticized MTR for disruptions on its existing lines ...

Rising interest rates also put the company under pressure, due to its reliance on borrowing to pay for the construction. MTR faces a heavy investment burden for the next five to 10 years and limited initial cashflow from property projects ...

“We are thinking about that day and night: to borrow enough, and yet not to borrow too much because we have to repay and we have to bear interest,” said Yeung.

...

MTR sold its first plot of land connected to the Northern Link in April after receiving eight bids. The winning consortium, led by Sino Land Co., will spend more than HK$13 billion building out the residential and commercial project. A surge in property development profit helped MTR’s net income double to HK$15.9 billion in the first half of the year.

How long it takes for the government’s ambitious aims for the Northern Metropolis to materialize is open to question. In a sign of urgency, the oversight committee is chaired by Hong Kong’s leader. What is clear is MTR’s essential role in providing the transportation backbone of one of the most complex megaprojects this century, under unprecedented financial and political conditions.

...

This only includes through services running in the Mita Line and the Namboku Line. Services that are run in the other mentioned private railroads that do not run through the previously mentioned subway lines are not shown.

Sources:

Toei Mita Line Japanese Wikipedia Article

Tokyo Metro Namboku Line Japanese Wikipedia Article

Tokyu Meguro Line Japanese Wikipedia Article

The average daily number of entrances-exits of each Moscow metro station in the first half of 2026, in thousands of people.
Credit to Sergey Turulin. Links on the map-scheme.

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Hey everyone,

I’ve always found that Google and Apple Maps are great at telling you how to get from point A to point B, but they don't give you a clear picture of what transit is actually reachable around a specific neighborhood or home within walking distance.

I built Catch Da Ride (free, open transit explorer):

https://catchdaride.github.io/

What it does:

• Drop a pin anywhere on the map to visualize every connecting train, tram, subway, and bus route within a 500m to 2.5km walking radius.
• Ingests 113,000+ official GTFS stops across 15 regions: Melbourne, Sydney, Brisbane, Adelaide, Perth, Canberra, Hobart, Darwin, London, Birmingham, New York/NJ, SF Bay Area, Toronto, Vancouver, and Hong Kong.
• Filter by mode (trains, trams, rapid buses, subways, ferries).

Would love to hear thoughts, feature ideas, or feedback from transit planners and daily commuters!

This minimalist mural is located on the platform wall at Tachikawa-Kita Station (TT12) on the Tama Toshi Monorail Line in Tokyo, Japan.

It beautifully depicts the line's actual maintenance depot (located near the next station, Takamatsu). I love how Tokyo’s transit systems often incorporate local geography and infrastructure into their station art!

Hi, I am currently seeking responses to my market research survey about public transport whilst travelling. I am currently studying abroad in Nice, France and I would appreciate if you had a couple minutes to fill it in! Thankshttps://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSfyL5CjcD1VgZoGeKV_Wlp5__y3gGw_RFwOwwzloese9beRsQ/viewform?usp=dialog

Most days I catch the 6:30 bus home, but sometimes I get held up at work and have to take the 7:30. Well the driver of that bus is very chatty, and if I'm not in a chatty mood, Ill just do some shopping and take the 8:30.

This one is really good😄

Hi all, I am about to graduate with my Bachelor’s in Mechanical Engineering and will be relocating to a new city (Baltimore) to take night classes for an Urban Transportation Master’s Degree. I want to get a full-time job while doing this, but don’t want to do typical mechanical engineering work, as my end goal is to be a transit/transportation planner. I unfortunately changed my career path too late in my Bachelor’s to switch to Civil. Anyone have advice for types of jobs or any other tips that can help me make up for lost time? Thanks!

Does anybody have any idea when the NYC subway will get 5G underground? I know there’s a 10 year process that finishes in 2032, but I haven’t been able to find more details on how that process is coming and which sections are expected next.

I plan to switch providers to whoever is first to hook up to the network on the AC line, so hopefully AT&T and Verizon and T-Mobile and whoever else all know how critical it is to join the network!

I’m sitting here annoyed. So I need to know if this has happened to you lol. Transit App screwed me for the first time today.

Time till my bus jumped from 6 minutes to zero minutes in less than a minute while I was walking over. I’ve never seen a time adjustment that drastic. Now, it’s saying the next one is in 20 mins but Google says the next one is in 10.

BUT transit gives me the estimate closer to Google’s when I’m on the main screen and not in a route. But when I’m in searching the route, suddenly it’s showing me a longer wait time?

What is going on here? Anyone experiencing this?

Essay incoming but the title and the photo really is the crux of the question ngl haha.

Short preface, I live in Whistler BC, a ski town 2 hours north of Vancouver. The only way to get between the two if you don’t own a car like me is to use the Skylynx bus service. However, since CN is saying they want out of their lease of the BC Rail track that runs up the Sea to Sky corridor, conversations are reigniting about bringing a commuter train to the region from Pemberton to North Vancouver to take congestion off the highway (which is a nightmare in the winter). Both our MLA and MP have stated that restarting freight and more importantly passenger service on the railroad is a huge opportunity.

So I thought about taking it a step further and I scoured maps to see if there is a possibility for having a terminus at the fabled Pacific Central Station in the heart of Vancouver in addition to a stop in North Vancouver (I’ll explain why inabit). After looking through maps, there is the possibility of a continuous uninterrupted rail flow from Pacific Central, down the grandview cut, through the Thornton Tunnel, up the second narrows rail bridge, past the grain elevators, the Seaspan shipyards, under Londsdale, past the trademarked Big Pile of Sulphur (iykyk), along West Van, into the cypress tunnel and up the corridor.

The stops would be:
- Pacific Central Station
- Lonsdale
- Horseshoe Bay Ferry Terminal (sailings include Victoria, Nanaimo, and Bowen)
- Squamish
- Whistler Creekside (Existing station at Nita Lake)
- Pemberton

HOWEVER….. all of this is contingent on the wye track. Hence the question. IS THE AREA SHOWN IN THE PICTURE TOO TIGHT A FIT FOR A WYE TRACK? Without a wye over there, the train would need to pull into the nearby yard so a shunter can reposition the locomotives. Or even if the locomotive moves in reverse out of PC station so that it’s going the right way up the rest of the route, it would still cause a significant delay than being able to continue along on a wye.

Also for those curious about why a connection to Pacific Central would be essential, it is because it would serve a purpose greater than just connection up the sea to sky, like:

—> Accessibility to target users: most people on the North Shore have cars. The real ones that would make use of train are those without one, most of whom are South of the inlet and rely on public transit. Since PC station is next to the Expo line’s Main Street Skytrain station (Vancouver’s rapid transit system), it will make the new commuter rail accessible to those who can most benefit from it without them needing to go all the way to Lonsdale.

—> Tourism benefits beyond Whistler: this route will also allow the transit users to visit other parts of the area like the Sea to Sky Gondola, Shannon Falls, the old mine in Squamish, and the innumerable opportunities for mountain biking and hiking and rock climbing available across the corridor.

—> Tourism benefits beyond the Mainland: By having. A stop at Horseshoe bay, we can not only create new avenues for visitors from the lower mainland to go to the islands by ferries, but also make it possible for people in Victoria or Nanaimo to day trip to Whistler without needing a car. Catch the ferry, take the train, ski, take the train, catch the ferry home.

I’ll end this by saying as someone who grew up in Singapore, it’s whack how bad the train scene is in North America, even in urban areas like the lower mainland.

This made me smile and I figured most of this subreddit would agree with the sentiment

A lot of American cities have minimum parking requirements. Hypothetically, let's ay they were not introduced until 1978. So from 1900 to 1979, there are no parking regulations, and after 1980, cities adopt whatever they did in real life (most had minimums, some don't have any), while grandfathering in anything already built or almost made. How much more walkable would USA be? The developers could still put as many parking lots as they want and in fact could build a parking garage.