downtown rail mostly elevated, some at-grade
 

in portland theres a short part of the light rail downtown thats elevated, people say it has amazing light rail. for light rail that is at-grade only it is.

what are some cities with mostly elevated rail downtown but no subways?

In the actual CBD with only the strictest definition:

Chicago has the famous "L"
Miami has the MetroRail system and the Metro Mover.
Jacksonville, Florida has a mostly pointless monorail that doesn't go anywhere but I guess it counts.
Honolulu's new metro will have an elevated downtown segment

Cities with trains downtown and if they are elevated downtown -

Seattle- No
Portland - Not really except going up onto bridges
SF - Nope
Oakland - Nope
San Jose - No
Sacramento - No
LA - No
Long Beach - No
San Diego - No
Phoenix - No
Salt Lake City - Nah
Denver - Nein
Minneapolis - Not really except for the very end of the Blue Line
St Louis - Uh no
Chicago - Yeah def.
Cleveland - Nope
Pittsburgh - No
Dallas - Nah
Houston - No
Atlanta - No
New Orleans - No
Charlotte - No
Norfolk - No
Buffalo - Nah bro
Miami - Yes
Jacksonville - Yes
NYC - Not under strict definition, there are els in Brooklyn and elsewhere
Philly - Not under strict definition but there are el's
Honolulu(Under Construction) - Yes
San Juan - Doesn't even go downtown
Boston - No
Baltimore - No
Washington DC - No

Can anyone think of a rail system in the US I left out?

Detroit - Yes

I forgot about the People Mover!

Shame they never extended it and ended up with the streetcar instead.

Las Vegas has that useless monorail system on the strip (that's not downtown though).


Maybe Manila?

It's also barely on the strip, rather it is a couple blocks east of it IIRC. Given what a block is in Paradise, NV, that's pretty far away.

doesnt chicago have some subways downtown and there probably isnt at-grade rail?

i was thinking in the whole world, maybe there isnt something like a portland but ahead of its time.

chicago red and blue lines are subways downtown, yes


and actually starting and ending well outside of downtown, to be particular. The red line goes underground south of fullerton all the way to chinatown.

blue is under ground off and on on the northwest side and reemerges on the eisenhower expwy west of downtown

Denver has at-grade light rail and commuter rail lines downtown (no underground sections) with one above grade segment that carries the B and G lines over the S Platte River and a series of freight tracks just outside downtown.

chicago is in a different level then light rail type cities. portland got some things right like not building a lot of freeways or wide streets. the worst part is downtown with the real slow trains. if they fixed that then they could have longer lines and fix the lines so they dont go through so many tight turns, longer trains too.

NYC has more elevated track than people realize - approximately 40% of the system or 168 miles of track are above ground, mostly in the outer boroughs.

I just thought of one very interesting exception from the above list, and that is Morgantown, West Virginia. It deserves an asterisk, because technically I don't think it runs on rails, and the cars are essentially just big enough for a moderately sized family... but it's still, for all intents and purposes, in the same category as the Jacksonville people mover.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Morgan..._Rapid_Transit

https://transit.land/images/morganto...own_tracks.jpg

unlike freeways twisting all over. trains going over echother looks cool, more if its downtown. i dont have any pics though. except the one i made on the computer. http://forum.skyscraperpage.com/show...=232032&page=6

But nothing is elevated even remotely close to the major business districts. The closest elevated trains to core areas of Manhattan are in Queens. And, maybe, if you want to count the train lines that cross the East River over the bridges instead of through a tunnel.

True, the elevated portions are beyond the core commercial areas, except for Long Island City / Queensboro Plaza.

Seattle has the tourist-oriented Monorail from the CBD to the Space Needle.

it would be easy to build with cities with only one light rail line, just add two monorail lines going through downtown. except you cand add a line onto monorail, mabe you can? that could equals eight spoke train lines or ten if you branch off of the at grade line and turning it into a bunch of lines. it would be better to have all the lines be equal and im pretty sure monorail can only be on a mono track, because its literally on one rail. the train would have to stop and wait for the track to change.

True, but much of that isn't elevated.

Something like 40% of the system is non-subway, but that includes trenches (such as the N in Brooklyn and 5 in Bronx), embankments (the Q in Brooklyn, the A in furthest Queens) and elevateds. I would guess no more than 15-20% of the system sits on elevated structures. There are a lot of London-style trenches further out.

The Shanghai Metro has quite a bit of elevated track (including an interesting stretch of the north end of Line 1 that runs underneath an elevated highway) but the only elevated line that could be said to be in the city centre is Line 3, and even then it just runs around the periphery of Shanghai's densest districts.

There's elevated rail that looks super futuristic with reinforced concrete construction, long clear spans between support columns and nice modern rolling stock. And then there's the decrepit old hulking rustbuckets in older cities, with its million support columns and massive low slung structure creating dark and dingy city streets below.

Be glad that you don't have elevated rail in the city center. Subways are better in every way. Elevated rail is cheaper but that's about the only reason to build them.