Professional Planner vs. London’s Tube in Subway Builder

Comments · 556

• CI

  @CityPlannerPlays · 8 months ago (edited) · pinned

  Subway builder isn&apos;t on steam yet - only on the dev&apos;s website <a href="https://www.subwaybuilder.com/">https://www.subwaybuilder.com/</a>; though I believe he intends to add it to steam in the future.<br><br>Huge thank you to Factor for sponsoring! &nbsp;Use code CITYPLANNERPLAYSFB50 to get 50% OFF your first Factor box plus free breakfast for 1 year at <a href="https://bit.ly/3UiIc4Q">https://bit.ly/3UiIc4Q</a>!

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• JM

  @jmcdonald.1998 · 8 months ago

  Hearing you justify a train frequency of 12 minutes when every Londoner I know is furious if there isn’t a train arriving in the next two minutes at any time is hilarious

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• AI

  @aitcheymoo · 8 months ago

  Riding the piccadilly line from Heathrow while watching you build a raised version and miss the majority of the stations was... an experience

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• FN

  @fndjfgsdk · 8 months ago

  The main problem I have with games like Subway Builder and Nimby Rails is that the transit network dictated what the map looks like today, so it makes the most sense to put the transit lines back where they already were because... Well... The growth was caused by the transit lines...<br><br>I&apos;d be very interested in a game that grows dynamically with your transit network as you build it, otherwise I just end up recreating the same network that already exists

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• RA

  @RandomHuman4022 · 8 months ago (edited)

  Transport modeller from Transport for London (TfL) here. This is like my perfect video, mainly for the data the game uses. The City of London is historically an employment centre, but it&apos;s nice to see East London get some representation here too. In real life London has lots of places towards outer areas which act as Urban centres in their own right - Stratford in east London hosted the Olympics and saw massive development off the back of that. Canary Wharf is another example with the development on top of former Docklands during the financial deregulation of the 80s, although it&apos;s losing prominence slightly. <br><br>One of the funnier elements for me though was seeing you regard 9 minute headways in peak demand as being such that &quot;you could turn up without thinking about it&quot;. Our busiest lines run much higher frequencies than that. The Victoria line, for example runs 36 trains per hour. The District has something like 24 tph in the core.<br><br>All of these thoughts and I&apos;m only 10 minutes in 😂<br><br>Edit: you were pretty much spot on with the principles of your lines compared to the existing network. Bearing in mind that our network is 150 years old in places with the bulk of it built pre-WW2. The purple one you identified is the Elizabeth Line, our newest line and a fantastic advert for building big transformational transport projects. A £20 billion investment providing East-West connection through London extending to areas outside London, with a ridership of about 250 million a year. The overall network has an annual ridership of about 2 billion. <br><br>Our major challenge in London is dealing with crowding issues which is why we have such high service frequencies. That&apos;s because people don&apos;t like crowded trains, which is an obvious thing to say, but we internalise that into our Generalised Journey Time calculations which are used to set performance targets.<br><br>Anyway, really great video, and fascinating to see that, as you observed, transport planning principles are really widely applicable in different contexts, but local knowledge can make a huge difference to the final result.

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• FE

  @Fetch- · 8 months ago

  <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jje-1UT8O2I&amp;t=610">10:10</a> if i ever had to wait 47 minutes for a train id lose my mind

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• MD

  @mdhazeldine · 8 months ago (edited)

  London resident / train-nerd here: Interesting game &amp; exercise. You did pretty well considering you have no knowledge of the city. Liverpool Street is actually London&apos;s busiest station since the Elizabeth Line (purple line) was opened! That said, there are 2 fundamental flaws with this game. 1) It doesn&apos;t have a concept of mainline heavy rail. That is such a big element of a large city&apos;s transport system that it&apos;s criminal to ignore it. Much of the network south of the river Thames is actually mainline rail, not the Tube (due to soft soil and historical reasons). 2) Building in an already completed city totally ignores the fact that much of London grew AROUND the Tube. Lines were built out into the countryside and new suburbs were planned around stations. In this game you just have to work with what&apos;s already there.

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• LA

  @larilille · 8 months ago

  Amusingly you made the same mistake at Liverpool Street that one of the early tube lines (the City and South London Railway) did slightly further south - they built a small station with a very small capacity per train to save money; and then ended up replacing the station a few years later.<br><br>The western end of the Piccadilly Line started life using tunnels built for the District (green) line’s abortive express service and runs along side the District line for a long way before taking over parts of the District line in the suburbs; including the line that now goes to Heathrow. &nbsp;So your line actually mirrors parts of the original District line very well.

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• NO

  @Noct31 · 8 months ago

  Editor Phil vs Player Phil: UK Edition.

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• KI

  @kiwiting1238 · 8 months ago

  Hi, Londoner here, long time fan of your channel, really love this episode.👍<br><br>Its funny how you said you are not trying to recreate the system IRL then recreating the eastern leg of the Elizabeth line right off the bat.😂

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• TU

  @TurpoChargedGaming · 8 months ago (edited)

  Not sure if this comes up later in the video, but peak time tube trains servicing the city center can be every 2-3 minutes. Even with this my rush early commutes are packed in like sardines! Your editor Phil note of self sabotage is correct, 9 minutes is not remotely enough!😅<br><br>Edit: also I think the 23M structure you almost demolished was the Marble Arch, which commemorates the Napoleonic Wars. Thank you for not killing it 🤣

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• WO

  @wolfkam · 8 months ago

  I love the unhinged editorial inserts of the real life ramifications of your actions. Keep it up.

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