Who has the busiest railway system?

R

rjhowie

Active member
I have noticed a tv advert here in GB where a motor driver has stopped at a level crossing. It doesn't have full barriers across the road just one of those with the half barriers and the voice over makes the comment about how dangerous it is to try and drive across on one of the busiest railways in the world. He decides to start up looks about and is about to drive off at an angle when a train woooshes by at great speed giving him a fright. That got me thinking. Which countries have the busiest systems? I can imagine that is a hard one. In Gt Britain our rail is virtually all passenger in the USA it the other way round and elsewhere various varieties in between.

Would be interesting to see an answer to this if it is possible?
 
Would it not depend on how you define the busiest?

freight: tonnes per kilometer
passenger: people per kilometer

rather than total tonnes or people moved. After all if one moves the same number of tonnes or people using half the tracks as another, they would be a twice as busy as the other.

Some interesting stats here on Wikipedia
Even there, note the number of qualifiers in the passenger rail section. depending on what is counted, the numbers can vary by a great deal.
 
When it comes to a definition for 'busiest' with regards to level crossings, I would have to say it comes down to train frequency, regardless of passenger numbers or frieght movement.
 
Hi pfx and Everybody
As you state pfx this is a difficult but very interesting question you have asked the forum. I believe you could sub-divide the question between Metropolitan (city underground etc) services and overground mainline. You would also have to look at the size of the population per square mile of country and what proportion of the population use the railways on a regular basis.

If you look at Metropolitan use in the above light, then the London underground system must rate as one of the busiest in the world. Train's on the Central and Circle lines run at the rate of one every one to two minutes throughout the day and are inevitably packed with passengers throughout. indeed I have always felt that London would grind to a halt very quickly without the famous London underground.

With regard to overground mainline services again Britain must rate as one of the busiest due to the fact that it is one of the heaviest populated countries per person per mile and the railways are heavily used by that population. If you take the service that I regularly use to London from Bristol there is a service once every fifteen minutes and again the services are heavily packed with passengers throughout the day.

From Reading into London Paddington the line is joined by services from Oxford and the Midlands along with the services from Devon and Cornwall which run via Castle Cary etc. The foregoing means that services into London Paddington are arriving at approximately one every three minutes throughout the working day. It was stated in the press a few weeks ago that London Paddington had no further available slots between 7 AM and 7 PM to receive additional Trains.

Passenger rail transportation in Britain is rapidly growing due to the pressures on the road network and the cost of using a private car. Therefore I would feel that both Britain and Japan (prior to its recent troubles) would have the most heavily used rail networks in the world.

Bill
(That should start the debate going):D
 
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For my definition of busy, I'm sticking with the advert which I'm taking to refer directly to level crossings and how they affect road traffic.

There are certainly very busy urban networks above and below ground but most of these are designed specifically not to interfere with road traffic (for instance, imagine a service frequency such as that on the London Underground having level crossings, the gates would be down almost all the time!)

I take the opportunity to mention the Dublin DART system as being very busy, again with reference to level crossings. There are numerous crossing on the south side of Dublin between Grand Canal Dock and Booterstown. Between DART and Commuter services, there is generally a train every 10 to 15 minutes throughout the day in both directions. I spent a lot of time sitting waiting for gates there. : )
 
Hi Mikado And Everybody
Mikado said:
In Europe Netherlands have the busiest rail network:

http://www.cbs.nl/en-GB/menu/themas...aties/artikelen/archief/2009/2009-2702-wm.htm

R/Tom :)
Click to expand...

Mikado thanks for your researched data on the Netherlands railways with regard to kilometers run. However, although the data was published in 2009 it does referred to traffic patterns in 2006.

With the above in mind, It could well be that with the increased development of passenger traffic and freight on railways in Britain and other countries in the last five years that the figures could well have changed by 2011. The foregoing could very much effect the top usage in the Netherlands v other countries debate.

With regard to usage of level crossings referred to in the pfx posting, perhaps the opening poster clarify if this is the sole figures he is looking for. If that is the case it could well be that no such figures exist for usage of level crossings and delay times for road traffic using those crossings

Bill
 
At one point the busyiest railroad around me was the Norfolk and Western railroad. Back in 1950s this railroad was were a lot of powerful steam engines like the Y6B 2-8-8-2 was in fact the strongest steam engine build, and yes It was stronger than the bigboy. The busyiest narrow gauge railroad would be of course we all know this. The Denver and Rio Grande was and is still the best of narrow gauge today and has the most fleet of steam engines in america today.
 
Well ... Today it is not the US !

In Altoona there are @ 70 freights in a 24 hour period, and 2 passenger trains per day (all providing unergonomical timetable scheduals).

If you go to the "Curve" take a good book along ... as 3 hour lulls between trains is common in the afternoon.

Sometimes you'll get lucky and catch 8 freights in an hour at the Altoona Station ... then several hours of nothing.
 
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I'd say Russia is pretty much up there. After all it has one of the biggest networks and stands for pretty much all the freight between Asia and Europe on the Trans Siberian Railway. IT even has the second most powerful locomotive after IORE - the VL85. Pfx, considering the busyness of the crossings, out local railway crossing is closed almost 8-10 hours of each 24 hour day due to all kinda trains. I'd call that busy. We can get milelong jams from all those trains passing by. The cars could use upto three hours at one crossing. Whooo, fun. I counted and we have up to 150-200 trains a day passenger and freight passing by, that's an average of 8.3 trains in a hour :)
 
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I was thinking about a railroad that used to be around the NYC, wasn't that a very busy railroad before it was shutdown?
 
I bet none of your guesses are correct. It's like asking "what form of transportation moves the most people each day"? And the answer would be; The Elevator!
I'm thinking there's some obscure railway someway, maybe at an amusement park, that moves more people each day than any freight or passenger carrier! Just a hunch...
 
How about an old favourite Clapham Junction Station. Each day about 2,000 trains, most stopping, pass through the station. At peak times 180 trains per hour pass through of which 117 stop.

It is not the busiest station by number of passengers, most of whom (about 430,000 on a weekday, of which 135,000 are at rush hours) pass through. Interchanges make some forty per cent of the activity and on that basis too it is the busiest station in the UK
 
Euphod said:
I bet none of your guesses are correct. It's like asking "what form of transportation moves the most people each day"? And the answer would be; The Elevator!
I'm thinking there's some obscure railway someway, maybe at an amusement park, that moves more people each day than any freight or passenger carrier! Just a hunch...
Click to expand...

You just might be right Euphod... My bet is on the Disney Monorail system.

JRT
 
What about Light Rail??
It also depends where you're talking about in regard to the area, the outer suburbs, the CBD, the countryside, where

Because Flinders Street Station handles up to 1500 trains a day, not including frieght or country services, but only 110,000 commuters

Jamie
 
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