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    This Transit System is EXTREMELY Complicated! | Stuttgart Transit



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    Stuttgart might seem like a car lover’s paradise at first glance – both Porsche & Mercedes-Benz have headquarters there after all – but it’s still a German city, and that means a city with a very good rapid transit system. Let’s take a closer look!

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    Ever wondered why your city’s transit just doesn’t seem quite up to snuff? RMTransit is here to answer that, and help you open your eyes to all of the different public transportation systems around the world!

    Reece (the RM in RMTransit) is an urbanist and public transport critic residing in Toronto, Canada, with the goal of helping the world become more connected through metros, trams, buses, high-speed trains, and all other transport modes.

    21 Comments

    3. Tobias Weißert on

      I expected you to also talk about the Stadtbahn trains being all-axle-trains becauste of the steepness outside the "Kessel" (basin). Still a great vid! Greetings from Stuttgart 🙂

    5. shinook666 on

      Having recently moved back to Stuttgart, this episode is extra fun for me. (I lived here a couple decades ago for 6 years, and wow have things changed since!)
      I used to mostly drive when I lived here before, though still took a ton of S-Bahn trips. Now, we’re car-free and use the public transportation system exclusively when we aren’t walking or biking. Being able to go anywhere I want on public transportation is life changing after driving 1,000,000 miles in the states over the last 18 years(actually documented miles… ugh).

      That said, I’d love for you to deep dive into Stuttgart 21. A whole pro vs con video on it would be amazing. They started the project while we lived here before, and I remember it being a little controversial, but seeing how it is still going two decades later… I’d love to learn everything I can on it. I am curious why it isn’t compatible with the “clock” system… as it is going to be Germany’s first digitally controlled rail system. I just don’t know much about how the systems work…

      Thanks for making this video, was very cool seeing places that I regularly go to and know well. 🙂

    6. Polenn on

      Living near and commuting into stuttgart daily, I‘ve had mostly positive experiences with the U-Bahn system, the S-Bahn though is a different story. It regularily fails to be on time which leads to missing your connection (for me that meant waiting half an hour outside in the cold at Leonberg Trainstation (S6) like once a week or every other week.) Also pretty frequently some technical problems or construction work will lead to no service or severly worse frequency of service on some or all lines towards main station. The tickets are not cheap enough to make up for that unreliability, which is part of why most people that have parking spaces at their office, will still use the car, unfortunately.

    8. AuswahlApfel on

      As a former Stuttgart resident i have to say i absolutely love the U-Bahn. Where the S-Bahn keeps doing DB things like having long delays and poor reliability, the U-Bahn just works. You can get anywhere in the city, quick, easy and comfortable. Especially when paired up with the SSBs also pretty dense and reliable bus network.

    10. Sinform on

      14:52 In Killesberg was the former Stuttgart Fair before the fair moved to the airport. So the Killesberg Station was build for a huge number of passengers during events and the Station had a regular 10 minutes Service and extra Service during events in the fair. Now the station has only a regular 20 minutes Service and is oversized for the less numbers of passengers, except until the annual Stuttgarter Lichterfest in the Killesberg Park.

    12. klein648 on

      Hi, amazing video.
      Ngl I would love to hear you opinion on the "Stadtbahn Rhein-Ruhr" because:
      A: It is a massively interconnected system that connects many larger cities close to each other (splitting this up into separate video would not really make sense because of the strong interconnections)
      B: I grew up there and I still do not really get it

    13. DJKLProductions on

      Are only transit networks considered as such if they consist of trams/subways and commuter trains, or are also pure bus networks legitimate? If the latter, I think Solingen (Germany) and Arnhem (Netherlands) each deserve their own video, as they are among the largest trolleybus networks in Western Europe. They might even be the largest.

      The Solingen network is possibly a model for the future, as the municipal utilities, the operators of the (trolley) bus network, are working on electrifying all lines, but not with more overhead lines or battery-only buses, but with trolley buses with extended power storage. This allows the batteries to be charged while driving on line sections under overhead lines, so that the non-electrified sections can be operated with stored electricity. Stationary charging devices are and will be erected at the respective final stops, to which the trolleybuses can connect classically via their current collectors to really make sure that the charge is sufficient. The idea behind the whole system is not to need long charging times, if any, and not to need batteries that are too big. I think that's a really clever approach.

    14. Tanith Rosenbaum on

      That kind of mixed types of right of way isn't uncommon in Germany at all, and honestly, I don't think anyone here considers it messy or chaotic, since we're all used to it being that way. You'll find similar mixes of alignments in Cologne, Nürnberg, Munich and many Ruhrgebiet-Cities. At least in Stuttgart, there actually is an overarching Leitmotif in all those mixed alignments: optimizing the cost/benefit ratio, with benefits in this case being average travel speed and capacity. Stuttgart has been one of the champions of the approach to its Stadtbahn to apply many small cost effective improvements that add up across the entire network, as well as an astonishing level of pragmatism in varying theses solutions in different locations in the city to match the local needs there, which is pretty uncommon for our standardization-obsessed country.

    16. C. on

      Thank you very much for making this video. It's very interesting seeing a documentary about your home area from a rail professional from abroad, even from another continent. I'm living in the town, where the S-Bahn S1 has its eastern terminus, which is 30 kilometres or 20 miles away from Stuttgart city centre. You said in the beginning of this video that you have familiar boundaries to Stuttgart. So I suppose you visited your relatives there when you made this video. I wish you much success with keeping on making these amazing videos.

    19. Thomas on

      Actually, next month, I'm starting to work as a transit model engineer and strategic planner for the SSB (planning and operating company of the U-lines and buses in Stuttgart). I'm originally from the metro area, but this video was a very neat summary and update of all the lines. So I enjoyed this video even more than the others. Thanks! 🙂

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