subway systems
 

I always ride the subway in cities I visit.. you really get to experience the pulse of the city.

Budapest has the fastest closing doors and escalators (though that was 1993)

BART in San Francisco (arguably more a commutter rail than a subway though it does go underground for significant stretches) seems to be the fastest

Paris was the most efficient in terms of frequency of trains

what systems are memorable to you?

Hong Kong's is the nicest I have ever been on. The trains are very clean, and they have this lighted subway maps that tell you where you are, where you are going and what side to exit the train. Very slick. Plus, really easy to get to the airport, always a plus.

Moscow has really, really deep subway stations. I read somewhere that the Russian built subway stations in both Moscow and St. Petersburg very deeply in the ground so they could be used as bomb shelters.

Hong Kong's system is very user-friendly, as is Singapore's. I dislike the systems in Chicago and London because the cars seem so claustrophobic. Is it just me or do the trains in those cities seem to be built to a smaller scale than most others?

I like Hong Kong and Singapore's systems: air-conditioning is something of a luxury on a tube train to me. Tokyo's great as well, but can be a bit overwhelming due to the sheer size of it. Shanghai has a nice system too, except that people don't actually let you off the train first before they push and shove their way on. New York is good too. So's BART.

Duplicate post

Chicago has to be short to make the tight turns built into the system (especially some of the elevated lines). The height/width of the cars seem pretty normal to me (unlike London, which clearly is smaller to fit the tunnels).

Funny, though - after spending time in Chicago, once I get back to DC the metro cars seem to be about a mile long, and actually THAT kind of bothers me more. Also worth noting that here, because of the length of the cars, there's a perpetual problem with people bunching around the doors - a fear by many, I guess, that they'll get jammed into the interior of the car and not be able to get out in time once it gets to their stop .

>what systems are memorable to you?

Mexico City - Absolutely PACKED and full of vendors selling everything under the sun.

Prague (October 1990) - Cost under a dime, stations gleaming white ceramic tiles.

Cheers,
Geoff Glave
Vancouver, Canada

Seoul ,Singapore and Hong Kong stick out in my mind,HkG might have the longest trains I have seen,all 3 have plenty of stations and seem to cover their cities well

Santiago de Chile has a really nice system with frequent, inexpensive, clean and new trains, with flat screen monitors playing music and other videos in the stations. The system is also undergoing a substantial expansion, which it needs.

Buenos Aires reminds me of something that would have fit in perfectly in mid-century Soviet Union.

London: the Circle Line was the first of all. It is the only system that still has much of the Victorian era look.
Paris: On some lines there are no ends to the intermediate cars so it feels like you are riding in one long flexible tube.

Many people have answered about Chicago...

In London, it depends on which line you ride. Some, like the Circle Line is built by digging from the street - they take full-sized cars. Others, like the Metropolitan (oldest) is tunneled deep underground. The cars are definitely much smaller in cross-section.

Anyways, I'm most impressed by NYC's 4-track layout with express trains running in the middle. Cuts a lot of time between stations between Mid-town and Downtown. [Like whenever I ride the Hong Kong subway, I wish they had express tracks between Kowloon Tong and Central, with stops at only Mongkok and Admiralty.]

... a titch surprised
 

...that YYZC2 didn't plump for T'ronna's Metro-eh?
True, the TTA powers that be seem for some years now to have made a political football out of the issue of providing service from downtown Toronto all the way oot ( read: "out") to Pearson International--not there yet! And the cost of a ride rises at a frankly surprising rate; on our annual visits I buy a buncha tokens which offer a great ROI from year to year...
Still, full marks for clean, comfy, convenient and safety conscious; I don't remember seeing a "DWA' in London, Hong Kong, Paris, or Singapore. :) ^

Moscows seemed to be pretty fast. And I've never more people on more subway cars than here, or as frequent service. And you can buy dried mushrooms from the little old lady between stations!

I like Washington DC's. Paris is nice, but I'm sorry, there really are too many smells onboard. Prague's was very nice with beautiful stations.

Off the top of my mind, I've used the following within the last 12 months:

Boston's
Buenos Aires'
Chicago's
Delhi's
London's
Moscow's
NYC's
Paris'
Rome's
Santiago's
Singapore's
Stockholm's
Tokyo's
Washington's

... and probably a few more are memorable.