Comment by tigershark
9 years ago
Do you mean a shitty managed train system, right? In London at peak time there is one train every two minutes, in Moscow one per minute. One train every 5 minutes is the off peak frequency in London when you are actually complaining that you are waiting too long.
At the peak times for the most used stations there is a car that frequently sure, but if use look at the overall system they don't send anywhere close to 60 * 24 = 1440 trains past every station in each direction per day. Further trains going to different stations often share the same track because you need more throughput in the city center than at the furthest stations. But, just because the edge stations get less use does not mean the track is cheaper to construct.
The max throughout is the number that we should care about - they provide fewer cars per minute not because they're physically incapable of doing it, just because there isn't demand. And it would be the same in a car-centric situation as well - lower throughput in off hours.
Having the ability to send 1 billion people from A to B is useless unless there is actual demand to send 1 billion people from A to B. Similarly, not all stations get anywhere close to the same demand, but you need to build a large network or the peak demand is less. Thus, measuring the network is what's important not the 'best case' subset of a few most heavily used stations.
Further, roads and bridges do get used from 2-4 AM when subway systems are generally not operating, so it's the use over the full day that's important not just peak usage.