To me memorable could be either pleasant or unpleasant, or some unique feature which made it memorable.
Tokyo- memorable due to its sheer size and volume of passengers transported
Moscow- memorable for some incredibly beautiful stations
Mexico City- likewise for efficent and some very attractive stations
Montreal - for its rubber wheels (ie relatively quiet ride)
Buenos Aires- although not extensive, it is one of the first in the world.
London/Paris- for their size and age and efficiency
New York- just because it is New York and the interesting cast of characters that ride the subway.

I don't see Shanghai on the list

^^

You don't see San Francisco on the list either.

I have not been on the Shanghai subway YET. But I do have plenty of opportunity. (Thank you, SAS. )

Since I travel mostly ASIA & USA, I like

Singapore, Clean, fast, low cost

Taipei, Mostly new , clean, big cars and fast, and is getting biggest (by wish it would expand faster!)

Tokyo and most big city systems in Japn, nice systems, although some are really big and complex, but I like the shopping and malls connected in the systmes, like in O-saka.

Hong Kong is nice, and Airport line is very nice. In Shanghai the airport express train is really nice (I think it goes 180kph++), make for short trip to town.

In USA, Washington DC is nice, goes to National Airport, and in SFO has BART, and Atlanta is nice.
NYC system is nice, much better than before, just wish they could clean or mondernize the stations more, need AC for the summer is my wish.

To help you get around on these systems
Check out Subways

Schedules and routes for most every sub system in the world

I'm afraid I've got the advantage on this topic as I've actually written magazine articles on several of them.

To pick up a few points :

Moscow is the most heavily used in passengers per day. London has the highest average fare per mile. New York has to be the most imnproved over the last 20 years.

Soviet systems (Moscow and St Pete are exampled above but there are others) were indeed built very deep as joint transport and nuclear bunkers. If you look closely at station entrances you can sometimes see the blast doors still there. The cars are standardised (the factory is in St Petersburg) across all Russian systems and also old eastern Europe such as Prague. The first Soviet cars, type A, now long gone, were built in the 1930s, they were a direct copy of what New York was building at the time, they got their hands on the St Louis Car (long-time subway car builders) blueprints.

Deepest station in the world is Park Pobedy in Moscow, over 300 feet (100 metres) down.

Many cities have 2 sizes of train. London has already been described, Berlin is the same, so is New York (IRT trains smaller than BMT/IND) and others.

Most subways run at about 600 volts DC by an outside third rail, the current returns to earth through the car body and tracks. London however has a fully insulated system, positive outside, negative between the tracks, still 600 volts but +400 on the outside and -200 on the centre rail. It gives an advantage in avoiding interference with the signals.

Chicago cars are the size of the old streetcars and the ones built in the 1950s were actually rebodied streetcars, then the infrastructure built around them prevented anything larger.

Britain has built subway trains for other cities over the years, like Toronto (the old red trains) and Hong Kong. In contrast the latest Jubilee Line cars in London were built in Spain.

Oldest station is Baker Street in London (Circle Line), opened in 1863, restored on its 125th anniversary to look like the old days.

Favourite systems - Paris, New York and Moscow, in no particular order.

Greatest waste of money- LA Red Line I am afraid.

Smallest "proper" subway - Glasgow.

Thanks for the link. Very handy. ^

I'd have to give my .02. I also have to recommend Taiwan and Thailand. For some reason I can't recommend Singapore's system with the whole security deposit of SGD 1.00.

The Kosmonavtlar station on the Tashkent metro is one of the most bizarre things I've ever seen.

Lille's fully automated 'VAL' metro is quite fun, too. It has a toy train feel to it...

Never mind the express tracks, wouldn't it be nice if there were direct MTR trains from Kowloon Tong to Central, so that you only had to change once between, say, Shatin and Central (ie from KCR to MTR)?

Express tracks are a US phenomenon. Very relevant in New York where the city is long and thin, they are also on the systems in Philadelphia and Chicago (except may I ask if the express tracks in Philadelphia on the Broad Street line are now abandoned ?).

The New York station at 34th and Broadway, with two 4-track routes crossing one on top of the other at an acute angle inside a huge tunnel chamber, is indeed impressive engineering, there are other similar ones. You can just about get to a position to see the whole thing from one point.

Well, it's nice to see someone write something nice about the TTC. However, it could be so much better. Trains aren't as frequent as they could be, and so many lines get talked about (Eglinton West, Queen, Downtown connector) that never, ever get built. Sigh. It'd be such a nice system if it could be expanded.

Anyway, should be interesting to see what happens in Toronto in the next 10 years. They are talking about replacing the subway cars with the open-ended, articulated cars like they have on some of the lines in Paris. And there is talk of expanding the above ground, street car network, which is a very cool feature of Toronto.

Greg

great topic. I havnt travelled many subway systems except for NYC (of course i live there!) and Chicago.

I want to know how are most of the Subway lines named around the world.

I.E. NYC = Letters
Chicago = Colors

What I don't like about DC is the "speed" of the metro: slow slow slow - and for some reason there is constant acceleration/deceleration/acceleration/deceleration etc. etc. etc. Not a smooth ride at all, unlike BART. I often (jokingly) think that DC drivers should take classes from BART drivers, since it seems that the systems are technologically similar....

Another great resource for world subway systems is Urbanrail.net

My favorite is Toronto, but purely for sentimental reasons. It was the first subway I rode as a child and I thought it was the neatest thing. Anyway, I have to stay that although there are not many lines it seems like it pretty much goes everywhere I want/need.