A 22 minute drive through video of Pyongyang

[Asser 78]

I just tumbled over this video today and I thought this community might be interested in it.

It's a 22 minute drive through the streets of Pyongyang in North Korea.

http://sploid.gizmodo.com/tour-the-capital-of-north-korea-in-this-exclusive-22-mi-1579377554/+brianashcraft

(I'm on my phone so can't embed the video)

Despite their lack of basic human rights and freedoms I actually kinda like the look of the city, the monuments and some of the buildings. It's a bit barren and looks like an Asian city in the 80s.

[jmsepe 2,038]

Interesting city, it has a lot of presentable buildings, it even has its own iconic supertall with the construction of Ryugong Hotel resumed. However, their roads are barren, the price of gas must be shoot the roof. I wish to see Pyongyang be more lively one day. 

[Meg 368]

Fascinating.    They never gave up electric streetcars.    Not sure why we did.

 

Many of the older buildings were kinda boxy but the newer sections didn't look that different from what you can see here.

 

Those people must walk a long way each day.   Is it known what day of the week was this taken?    There weren't a lot of people compared to the size of the city. 

[Asser 78]

Is it known what day of the week was this taken?

In the beginning it says that the video was recorded at 8:56 AM last wednesday.

[Odainsaker 2,133]

All the trees are nice...I remember reading that Pyongyang is supposed to be famous for its willow trees.  Still, it's all too monumentally showcased and scalelessly Stalinist for my taste.  It looks orderly and clean and has everybody pegged properly in their place, but, uh, where in the masterplan can I pop in to get a quick bite outside of my hotel?
 
Outside the showcase capital of obedient party functionaries, the official tour looks like a time-warp into a frozen era.  To think that mineral-rich North Korea is at the geopolitical and geostrategic center of East Asia, where it should be growing rich and fat off the trade and resources moving between the consumerist South, the hyper consumerist Japan, rising consumerist China, heavy industrial Northeast China, and resource-laden Russian Far East.

For amusing comparison, here is a cool ride cruising through Seoul.  No Juche here, and the "The Party" is somewhere you go to pick up dates.  It's all messy and chaotic, but it's also not eerily frozen in place like a city of manicured cenotaphs.  I must admit, watching these types of videos makes me kinda scared to drive in Korea.  My dad often recounts how the taxi ride outside Seoul near the DMZ was the most aggressively dangerous ride in his life, though I had always figured that was just because he was there during the era of the dictatorships and military coups, when kidnapping and assassination teams and even mutinous secret army squads units where sneaking into the south.  Amusingly, this speeded-up video had me gripping the armrest of my computer chair as it looked like we are going to die at each intersection.
 
Another speeding time lapse comparison, this time of the major streets of morning time Tokyo.

[Duke87 1,070]

Fascinating.    They never gave up electric streetcars.    Not sure why we did.

 

Strictly speaking what they have in Pyongyang are trolleybuses - they run on electric power from overhead wires rather than diesel, but they are on rubber tires, not rails. So they are not "electric streetcars" in the purest sense.

 

As for why most American cities gave up electric streetcars... the simple reason is that buses offer the same capacity to transport people but with greater flexibility, since they can go anywhere and aren't limited to following the rails. Being able to remove the rails from the street also smooths up the surface and makes it better for other vehicles - if you're ever in a city that has streetcars sharing a lane with traffic (such as Philadelphia ), try driving in the lane with the track and notice how your car will slip and respond weirdly to having rails under the wheels instead of pavement. In an era where cars were seen as the future and railroads were seen as yesterday's rapidly becoming obsolete technology, there was a lot of push to make streets more friendly for cars and eliminate obstacles such as trollies from their path.

[A Nonny Moose 8,261]

A shame in a way.  It encourages cars and discourages public transit.  I suppose that's why there are still street cars on the main drags in Downtown Toronto.

 

Many cities have expressed regret at the number of private vehicles in their downtown.  Street cars are one way to slow this down.

[ROFLyoshi 1,760]

Fascinating. They never gave up electric streetcars. Not sure why we did.

if you're ever in a city that has streetcars sharing a lane with traffic (such as Philadelphia ), try driving in the lane with the track and notice how your car will slip and respond weirdly to having rails under the wheels instead of pavement. In an era where cars were seen as the future and railroads were seen as yesterday's rapidly becoming obsolete technology, there was a lot of push to make streets more friendly for cars and eliminate obstacles such as trollies from their path.

I can vouch for this. I drive on road shared with rail somewhat frequently and they can get very dangerous in the wet.

But anyway, still a fascinating video. Keeping their streetcars is probably the only thing that they got right over the US

[Zelgadis 638]

I live on a road with such a rail. It was a tad disconcerting at first, but I found that it's easy to get used to.

 

I love our streetcars. They have far higher capacity than buses do. Soon, we're getting even bigger streetcars with even more capacity. Whatever takes more cars off the road.  

 

BTW, Vancouver has trolleybuses just like Pyongyang. To say they can be problematic is an understatement. It's very common for the bus to break loose from the overhead cables. When that happens, the bus has to stop while the driver goes out with a big stick and reattaches the bus to the cables.

[Odainsaker 2,133]

Interesting...my own city of San Antonio, Texas, is often noted as the first large U.S. city to tear out its entire streetcar system amidst the economic collapse of the Great Depression.  With the population fleeing outward and land values plummeting, the system at the time no longer could be financially sustained by either the transit company bleeding money or the municipality short on tax revenue, and the last streetcars ran here in 1933.

 

Eighty years later, groundbreaking...or is it "streetbreaking"...is expected to begin next year to embed rails for the first phase of San Antonio's new downtown streetcar system, complete with overhead wires.  The main transit stations and their neighborhoods are already under redevelopment and reconstruction, and many see this system as the first piece in the greater puzzle that will include light rail and later regional commuter rail.

 

While it was publically discussed, the issues of the physical effects of cars tires running upon the rails never really came to the forefront despite some dire scare tactics, as most public discussions devolved instead on concerns over mixed-traffic interaction patterns.  Though I don't dismiss the effect on tires, I figured people in other cities with such systems against which ours was modeled somehow made do, and that we would similarly make do as well.  Admittedly, I confess inexperience here as I have never driven across such a rail, nor have most any other San Antonians, who are, err, not especially noted for their driving acumen.  Given how small the system's phased layout really are, I suspect when completed that most San Antonians actually will never drive over them.  Still...while the potential driving threat to cars is raised by opponents to new streetcar systems, is there anywhere where the actual danger to current cars have led to the regretful failure or abandonment of modern streetcar systems?

 

We'll see how this ultimately goes, for the usual anti-rail, anti-transit, anti-growth, anti-tax, anti-business, anti-government, and anti-Obama activists are all collectively up in arms, and their petition making the rounds is to place on the upcoming November local election ballots a question to change the city charter to specifically bar the city from ever embedding rails into city streets.  While I think radically changing grand charters and constitutions to cover such mundane issues are silly and that these groups typically oppose and protest anything anyway to no effect, conservative and libertarian activists gleefully expect their turnout this upcoming mid-term election cycle will bring a nationwide political bloodbath, and so there is no predicting how things may turn out even in a typically Democrat-leaning city.  Perhaps fortunately, this petition attempt is indeed seen as an oddly desperate end-run effort among those who had already noisily failed on other fronts, and with construction already underway by developer interests, the, uh, train hopefully may have already left the station!

 

How much easier it must be for the trolleybus planners of Pyongyang...no cars, no rails, no budget, and no protesters!

[AkemiAzula 280]

A clean and pleasant looking metropolis. Good to see cycling at a good level and plenty of buses. Monuments and architecture quite balanced. I noted jaywalking and running through crosswalks but it seems the people are alert and fluid.

[Zelgadis 638]

We'll see how this ultimately goes, for the usual anti-rail, anti-transit, anti-growth, anti-tax, anti-business, anti-government, and anti-Obama activists are all collectively up in arms, and their petition making the rounds is to place on the upcoming November local election ballots a question to change the city charter to specifically bar the city from ever embedding rails into city streets.  

 

Adorable, isn't it? Anti-government activists are typically the first to abuse government procedures in order to get what they want.

 

BTW, did anyone else notice in that video how few lane markings there were on Pyongyang streets? I noticed that before anything else. Sometimes, there wasn't even a center divider marking.

[A Nonny Moose 8,261]

Who would dare drive on the wrong side of Dear Leader's streets?

[Kuewr665 40]

Ooh cool! Recently I've had an interest in watching cab view rides through various cities, so this is perfect for me.

 

Pyongyang is a pretty cool city, and I wonder how the city would look when it becomes more modern too.

 

Many cities in former socialist/communist countries still have streetcars. It's evident in Berlin, where West Berlin replaced their trams with buses and subways, but East Berlin kept them.

[AkemiAzula 280]

I actuallu prefer boxy architecture. Modern architecture seems odd and senseless. However my favorite buildings were the neoclassical ones. Yeah i too first noticed the lack of markings but after roadworks we have that in england. Road markings are usually common sense anyway. I liked the city. It seems clean and orderly. But pedestrian crossings need improvement. Also im more of a Melbournian than a trolleybusser. Prefer good ol tracks.

[NMUSpidey 3,956]

Everyone mentioned how neat and clean the buildings looked.  Yeah, they did.  Ever wonder what's behind those buildings?  Hidden from view, in the center of every neat, clean block, are the shacks and sheds of the Pyongyang shanty towns:

 

 

So real Pyongyangers (Pyongyangians?  Pyongyangites?) live like that, hidden from foreign view, in favelas or shanty towns or slums or however you want to term it, and the only way anyone gets to know this is by researching Google Earth or by taking illegal photos of the city from the upper floors of their hotels.  I mean, some of those 'buildings' are little more than mere walls, no more real than a Hollywood set, which is all anyone really gets to see when they take the official tour.  Unfortunately, going off the tour's 'rails,' so to speak, is a major no-no, and I suspect that they have fairly stiff penalties for it.  These photos (taken under pretty high risks, I imagine) are by Russian designer Artymy Lebedev and there are more fascinating photos in this gallery: https://imgur.com/gallery/zsJXU and this gallery: https://imgur.com/gallery/CKBlK and this gallery: https://imgur.com/gallery/CKBlK

[A Nonny Moose 8,261]

Dear Leader's houses of cards?

[Kuewr665 40]

I've seen those houses from satellite images, but for some reason I associated them with old neighborhoods of Seoul which aren't exactly slum-like.

[Linoa06 1,374]

Makes me think of Cities in Motion 2. 

[AkemiAzula 280]

The slums should be demolished and turned into parks.

[LexusInfernus 908]

BTW, did anyone else notice in that video how few lane markings there were on Pyongyang streets? I noticed that before anything else. Sometimes, there wasn't even a center divider marking.

 

With such wide streets and such little traffic, street markings are hardly necessary

 

 

And meh, North Korea is basically just one big museum. Its interesting how a country can be so devoted to keeping up appearances while at the same time trying ensure that no one really ever gets to see it.