Dense City
Hong Kong island has about 45,000 people per square mile. Compare that to Los Angeles city with 8,000/sq mi. Can you imagine if there were 6 times more people in LA? You'd have a lot more tall buildings.
And it might get pretty crowded on the mall escalators:
There's more people walking on the streets at midnight than there are in downtown LA at lunchtime. Retail stores don't close til midnight. You can shop whenever you want.
There's a great system of buses, trams, and metros for moving people around. The same prepaid "Octopus" card works on all of them. Just tap and go. The card can stay in your wallet or purse; it's RFID. The trams are exactly opposite to US buses. You enter from the back, exit at the front, and pay as you leave. The best innovation of all is that metro lines connect from the same platform. You don't walk up and around in a maze of hallways and escalators. You walk straight across to the next train. When the doors open it's a sea of people. It wouldn't work any other way.
But how can that be? Instead of intersecting at only 1 station, connecting lines run parallel for 2 stops. Each stop transfers to a different direction. In a normal metro system you'll see both directions of one line on the same platform. In Hong Kong, they're on different levels. It takes longer to get down 2 levels of tracks, but the transfers are so quick.
And it might get pretty crowded on the mall escalators:
There's more people walking on the streets at midnight than there are in downtown LA at lunchtime. Retail stores don't close til midnight. You can shop whenever you want.
There's a great system of buses, trams, and metros for moving people around. The same prepaid "Octopus" card works on all of them. Just tap and go. The card can stay in your wallet or purse; it's RFID. The trams are exactly opposite to US buses. You enter from the back, exit at the front, and pay as you leave. The best innovation of all is that metro lines connect from the same platform. You don't walk up and around in a maze of hallways and escalators. You walk straight across to the next train. When the doors open it's a sea of people. It wouldn't work any other way.
But how can that be? Instead of intersecting at only 1 station, connecting lines run parallel for 2 stops. Each stop transfers to a different direction. In a normal metro system you'll see both directions of one line on the same platform. In Hong Kong, they're on different levels. It takes longer to get down 2 levels of tracks, but the transfers are so quick.
Labels: escalators, hong kong, transport
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