Posted by Seth on February 22, 2012 under Trip Reports | 
Break out the bunting and the balloons: it is time for a birthday party! In this case the birthday was of Istanbul‘s Tünel transit system, second oldest subway system in the world. The system is now 137 years old and, while it has seen a number of upgrades over the years, it is still more or less providing the same service as it did when it was put into service.
The Tünel connects the waterfront of Galeta to the commercial district of Taksim up on the hill. The elevation difference isn’t huge – about 60 meters – but at the time the Tünel was built there was only one narrow road connecting the two areas handling around 40,000 pedestrians daily. Something better was needed and it was delivered in January 1875, with a tunnel built into the hill and trolley cars carrying passengers up and down the hill.
The current iteration is only slightly different from the original. The original was two parallel tracks; the current version is a single track with a passing section in the middle of the run. Also, the original was (obviously) not powered by electricity. That was changed about 100 years into the life of the Tünel and the current system is electrified and climate controlled.
For the anniversary celebration the Tünel was decked out in ribbons and balloons. It was quite festive, though I was a day late for the actual party. And, while there are now many more roads connecting the two ends of the Tünel line, the funicular is still in business as part of the Istanbul mass transit network and it continues to carry folks up and down the hill every few minutes of the day.
It is a quick ride and not particularly amazing, other than that it saves walking up the big hill and the history of the tunnel is pretty impressive. I make sure to give it a ride every time I’m in town. There is another, newer funicular on the other side of Taksim Square but it doesn’t have the same history as the Tünel.
Posted by Seth on June 25, 2010 under Trip Reports |
“Mind the Gap” is perhaps one of the more iconic phrases in the history of mass transit. Say that line and many folks’ thoughts will immediately jump to the London Underground, as well they should. And yet, this week, it was nearly 36 hours from when we arrived in London to when we first set foot in an Underground station, and then only to make our way back out to Heathrow for our departure.
No, we didn’t take taxis all over town. Nor did we stay in one place. We actually saw a number of things during our visit. We reverted to the original mass transit means in town: the River Thames.
Sure, a day pass on the river boats was a bit more expensive (£12 for an adult) than a day pass on the Underground, but it was also a lot more fun. Rather than being confined to hot, crowded rail cars we were on boats with climate control and outdoor space. And, for us, the boats were also much more convenient to get where we wanted to go. From out hotel in the Southwark/Blackfriars area we rode up the river to the Tate Britain gallery for a bit of culture. After a quick breakfast at a nearby cafe we were back on the water headed east, to Greenwich.
There are two museums in Greenwich, the Royal Observatory and the National Maritime Museum. Both are worth a visit.
First stop for us was the Royal Observatory, also known as the place where the Prime Meridian passes through. There is a line marked in the courtyard and a sundial statue where folks were all taking photos (self included). There was also quite a collection of much less clichéd exhibits on the importance of the Royal Observatory and its history.
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Posted by Seth on March 9, 2009 under Trip Reports |
About 75% of my transportation in Tokyo was on the train, so I got a pretty good feel for the local train options that they had. I didn’t get to ride any of the intercity rail lines such as the “bullet train” so no observations on those, but overall I was rather impressed by the local options that I had.
Getting from the airport to the city is surprisingly slow. Yes, the airport is ridiculously far from town (~80Km) so I wasn’t expecting it to be a 10 minute ride like from National to downtown DC, but the 60-80 minute ride on the train was pretty slow. It didn’t help that I was pretty tired from the flying and had my headphones on and missed my stop on the train, adding an extra 30 minutes to the trip. The extra bit also introduced me to an even more local train than the one I started on, so that was nice.
The trains in Tokyo are operated by three different companies, which also adds to the confusion of the system. Ultimately I chose to pay a bit extra for my rides and have the flexibility of riding any line at any time, but I’m not entirely sure that was necessary. I used a lot of the information from this site for helping plan my trip, and he’s got a bunch of useful information on there. I highly recommend it if you are planning a trip. I ended up with the Pasmo card, basically a stored-value card that works on all the systems in town. A typical ride is somewhere between ¥150-¥250 ($1.50-$2.50), on top of a ¥500 deposit for the card. Supposedly you can get the deposit refunded if you return the card but I kept mine as a souvenir. The daily unlimited cards cost around ¥700 so my two days for ¥1500 (plus the deposit) were about the same price and I didn’t have to worry about which line I was riding. If you’re riding more then a daily might be a better deal, but I was happier not worrying about which train station I had to find, as I was pretty lost throughout the trip.
A few things that struck me as particularly impressive about the train network. First is that the stations are all numbered using the Arabic Latin alphabet and numerals. That was VERY useful for me. Second, the map that they have is very busy because of the number of different routes. And it doesn’t have any landmarks on it. That’s generally not a problem, but there are also some quirks with the spacing of the stations such that some appear to be very close when they are, in reality, not. I ended up about a half mile out of the way – in the pouring rain – thanks to my inability to figure out the map so well. Oopsie. The good news is that there are street maps just about everywhere at street level – officially for evacuation purposes but they are a boon for tourists – so figuring out where you are and how to get to the next place isn’t so hard.
There are displays on every platform that list the details of the next train, including destination and when it will depart the station. I never waited more than 4 minutes for a subway in town and only about 10 minutes at either end for my airport transfers. I’m pretty happy with those timings.
My biggest gripe about the system is that it shuts down overnight. I know that most metro systems do and that New York is actually an exception more than a rule, but I’m still so used to always having it available that when it isn’t I’m surprised. It cost me a pretty penny (¥3000) for the taxi to Tsukiji as the subway wasn’t running in the early morning, and I could see it being a problem if I were out drinking late one night, but in the end that is a small complaint about an otherwise ridiculously efficient and well run system.
Posted by Seth on March 8, 2009 under Trip Reports |
I really cannot get over just how much fun I had wandering the stalls of the Tsukiji market, taking in the tuna auction and otherwise being immersed in a bit of the local culture where, even as an obvious foreigner, I was paid no mind. The folks there had work to do and my presence certainly wasn’t going to affect them getting their job done.
And what a job it is. Once the tuna are bought they rapidly travel through a series of wholesalers, making it to the retail market only an hour or two after the auction, and into my stomach shortly after that. For the frozen tuna the tool of choice is the band saw. For the fresh stuff it is a series of knives, starting with what appears to be a samurai sword that takes three men to wield and proceeding to a series of smaller knives after that.
Not wanting to waste even the slightest bit of fish (and at the prices they are paying, who can blame them??) they even go so far as to scrape the bones clean and save that last little bit to put to use somehow.
Weighing in a chunk of tuna for a customer
Yup, it is a yellow fin tuna
A bit of a shrine in the driver’s door of a delivery truck parked at the market
The market has way more than just tuna available. Just about any type of fish could be found, as well as many non-fish items in the farmers’ market offshoot around the side. I recognized some of the fish that were out on display, but many, many, many were completely foreign to me, at least in their natural state.
I think that perhaps the most interesting part of the entire auction process is that the language used is not really Japanese. Yes, the numbers from the bidding are, but the rest of the words that the auctioneer shouts are no more intelligible to a native Japanese speaker than they were to me. Second-most interesting is that it only takes about six seconds to sell a fish. With a couple hundred to sell each morning that speed is rather important. They apparently actually tried to computerize the process a couple years back, sinking USD $20MM into the effort, and realized that it was slowing them down so they scrapped the whole thing.
Also, I mentioned in my initial post about my Tsukiji visit that I took some video of the auction process. Generally I’m not a fan of video; I prefer to tell the story through still images. But I don’t think that I could do the auction justice without some videos, so here they are.
Prepping the fish for the auction:
Getting a feel for the quality of the tuna:
The auctions underway:
Just an awesome time overall. They are working on plans to overhaul the existing space, in use for ~80 years at this point, in favor of a new facility by 2014. So get there now and see the show before it is gone.
If you really wanted to, a visit could be done in just about 48 hours from most cities in the USA with non-stop service to Tokyo. Fly over on day one, see the market and head back out to the airport for the return flight. There’s even some extra time in there to see other things around town. I don’t think it is quite as compelling an experience as the Taj at sunrise, and probably wouldn’t make a special trip just for it again, but it is definitely one of the highlights of a visit to Tokyo.
A few other logistical notes about the visit. The market is up and running very early in the morning. There was activity at 4:20am when I got there. And the tuna room is only open from 5-6:15am. The first ~45 minutes of that is them getting ready and then the auctions come fast and furious. The 6:15am stop time is pretty strictly enforced, so don’t expect to arrive late and still get to see things. That being said, you do not really need to be there at 5am to catch the action. The Tokyo metro doesn’t start running until ~5am and, depending on which neighborhood you are staying in, you can be at the market by 5:30am by taking the metro without too much trouble. That is a good thing since taxis in Tokyo are pretty ridiculously expensive. I ended up spending ¥3000 (~$30) for a taxi to the market because I was awake at 4am and ready to go and didn’t realize that the metro wasn’t open yet until I found all the gates closed. So, if you are looking to save a bit of cash, time things for the first metro train and skip the taxi. There were several people at the auctions with “guides” escorting them around but I wouldn’t spend my money on them, particularly based on the info I heard them providing while there. They didn’t seem very helpful at all and it really isn’t too hard to navigate that part of the market on your own. And it is cold in there. It was also relatively cold outside while I was there so I’m not sure what it would be like in the middle of the summer, but all that frozen fish in a room keeps the temperatures pretty low in there.
If you plan on eating sushi in the market area after the show, expect to spend ¥1500-2000 per person, cash only, at the lower end places and as much as you want if you just keep ordering more at some of the other places. A breakfast can easily end up in the ¥4,000 range in a hurry, particularly if you keep ordering the o-toro. Also if you plan on going to a place where you aren’t ordering a set menu, try to learn a few words of the types of sushi you want. Salmon is the easiest since it is the same. Otherwise, copy down the Japanese words from your local sushi place (the regular stuff, not the crazy rolls) and use that as a guide. Ordering hamachi, for example, was easy to do and much better received by the chef than had I said “yellow tail.”
A couple parting photos from the tuna market. The “steam” you see rising off the fish is actually the ice melting. And it really is hard to get a grasp for just how big the room is. There were easily 200 fish sold the morning I was there, ranging in size from 20-300Kg. That’s a LOT of tuna!
Posted by Seth on September 12, 2008 under Uncategorized |
The traffic in Istanbul sucks. There is no two ways about it. The city is on the water, with the Golden Horn and the Bosphorus major impediments to travel there, funneling all traffic through a couple of bridges that are woefully undersized to handle the loads. They are apparently planning on adding an additional bridge on the Bosphorus, but that is still a ways out, as it has only just been approved by the government and the final site hasn’t yet been selected yet. A taksi from the airport to downtown is easily a 45 minute endeavor, at a rate of something around YTL30, which isn’t horrible, but also certainly isn’t cheap by any stretch. The roads are just ridiculously crowded. Not quite as bad as Delhi or Saigon, but close.
Fortunately, they have a pretty solid mass transit system in place. And we rode a lot of it. We didn’t take a bus in Istanbul, but there are plenty of them and it seems there is pretty reliable route coverage and frequencies. Similarly, the ferries cover the water crossings way better than a car possibly could; as busy as the waterways are they are still way better than the bridges. There is even an aerial cable car that operates just below the Hilton Hotel near Taksim Square, crossing over a park for those who don’t want to walk or drive around to the other side. Those are the pieces we didn’t get to try, but there are plenty that we did.
There is a Metro system – actually a few light rail systems that connect at transfer points – that cover the city, from the airport in the West to the Sultanhamet to the Beygolu area across the Golden Horn. There’s another tram system that runs on the Asian side as well, with easy ferry connections. With trains running about every 10 minutes and air conditioned, modern cars the light rail was truly phenomenal. From the airport to the Sultanhamet area was about a 45 minute trip, the same as a taksi, and the cost was two tokens – YTL 2.80 – per person. The one thing that is a bit annoying is that transfer between the various lines requires a new token and fare to be paid, but that’s a minor inconvenience considering how convenient the trams are to the vast majority of the areas that most folks want to visit.
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| The engine that drives the funicular. |
There are also a couple funiculars (inclined trains) that run in the Beygolu area. One of them is almost brand new (~10 years old) and the other is actually the third oldest mass transit system in the world (behind London and a now defunct Brooklyn route), over 130 years old. We tried to ride on both one day and managed to find the new one pretty easily, but the older one was elusive. As we departed Istanbul for Cappadocia we actually still hadn’t found it. As we had a 7 hour connection on our return through Istanbul, however, we had a second chance to find the old one and ride a piece of history.
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| The tunnel for the older funicular route. |
The older funicular was more fun, with the tunnel looking its age and the tram car somewhat newer, but not a ton. And we managed to take the Metro in from the airport, ride the funicular up to the Tunel Square area, have a very long and relaxing brunch and repeat the trip in reverse in about 5 hours. Plus the old funicular has a different fare, YTL 0.90, so we had to buy a different token and that meant another fun souvenir for me. I’ve now ridden on at least the three oldest, so I need to find out what the rest of the old ones are and start planning some new trips.
They also seem to have a “tap-and-go” system where you can put money on a card/pass of some sort rather than buying individual tokens. I certainly don’t speak enough Turkish to try to figure out how that works, but it seems like an easier option if you don’t want to mess with tokens during a visit, though I have no idea if there is a charge for the card and/or a discount for using it.
I’m a big fan of mass transit in general, and even more so when it goes to/from the airport. This wasn’t as easy as the Metro in Washington, DC or BART in San Francisco, but it was pretty darn close, and it was way cheaper and mostly easier than a taksi in from the airport. It will definitely be my transit choice next time I’m in Istanbul.
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| The view inside the car of the newer funicular. |
The platform for the newer run. |
Posted by Seth on August 10, 2008 under Uncategorized |
If you’re willing to hack your CharlieCard then it would seem that it actually isn’t all that hard to give yourself some additional fare value on the Boston mass transit system. A group of MIT students were prevented from presenting their report on the flaws in the system thanks to a last minute injunction handed down by a judge in Massachusetts. The trio was poised to present the findings at Defcon, an annual security/hacker conference. The MBTA effectively petitioned the courts that they’d lose too much money if the report was presented before they could fix the problems and managed to get a judgement in their favor.
Of course, the slides for the presentation were published before the injunction came down, so plenty of folks have some of the details. Something about the horses already being out of the barn comes to mind. They apparently offered to tell the MBTA about the problem a while ago and were rebuffed. Better to sue later than solve the problem now. When will people learn that you cannot actually silence people who discover security holes. Just fix them and move on.
Oh, and they got an A on their research from their professor.
Posted by Seth on August 2, 2008 under Uncategorized |
The number of folks riding on the subway continues to rise and the MTA can’t actually put any more trains on the tracks because the signaling systems can’t handle it. And getting left behind on the platform at rush hour is hardly an uncommon experience. One possible solution: cars without seats.
The MTA is putting a pilot program together that will involve new cars that have flip-up seats. The seats will normally be down and available for use, but at rush hour the seats will be locked in the up position, making four of the ten cars on the train standing room only. The MTA expects that the new cars will increase capacity on those cars by 18%, which is a pretty significant jump.
This has a very high potential up-side for folks whose commute are mostly within Manhattan or just across the East River, as the time spent on the trains is relatively low. For folks trying to get to or from stops at the end of the lines, however, the prospect of standing for 60+ minutes on the ride can’t be particularly appealing. Still, with the new plan only going after four of the cars most folks will still be able to sit for the long rides. Overall, I think it is a good plan and I’m looking forward to giving the new cars a ride when they show up.
