>>1179450>YOU ARE MAKING SHIT UPNo I'm not? Generally train services are divided into more frequent local lines, with more stops, and longer distance commuter trains. It all just gets very muddy with Austin, since it's so ridiculously spread out. Coupled with the low density, I can understand why it's difficult to find a good balance for those commuter lines. This relates to what you said here;
>30 miles/50km is typical of a commuter through suburbsThis is true for the US. In Europe a distance like this is enough to cover several separate towns, so it's more intuitive to plan out rail lines because the areas have more people close-by. When you're wheeling in people from 30 miles away, you have to find a balance between how many stops there are and how long the journey takes
Though yeah to be fair, that MetroRail line could probably stand to have some more stations. Four miles is a pretty long distance between two stops. I don't know how they've decided where to put them. For instance, one of the RER lines in Paris running from the center to Cergy Le Haut is 20 miles, and there are 15 stops
Maybe the density just isn't there in Austin, generally that's one of the biggest challenges with constructing rail lines. I'm kinda repeating myself here but Austin is just tons of detached houses spread over a vast area
