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.

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 :D

^^

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

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

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.

In the US, I'm partial to my own DC Metro system. It's still a tourist attraction in its own right.

Overseas, I was most impressed with Hong Kong's MTR.

Paris line 14 - driverless, so it's great fun sitting at the front and hurtling through the darkened tunnels :p

Why do you say that? Every time I've been on it, it's been pretty full. During rush hour, it's packed. Obviously, people use it.

Ed

I like taking the Metro but it closes every night and opens rather late on weekend mornings. Which subway systems run 24/7 like NYC?

The DC Metro works on the weekends until around 2.30 to 3.30 a.m. and c. midnight/12.30 a.m. -- depending on route/destination -- during the other nights.

24-hour subways/rail .... cannot recall using one besides NYC after 3.30 a.m. for quite some time.

Then again NYC has some of the nastiest stations I've ever been to. Between the urine and the heat .... it can be really foul. Don't generally have that issue with the DC Metro

Tracks need maintenance, so they can't run 24 hours. NYC is an exception - also why I already said it's great - because most lines have 4 tracks. They can use two and run maintenance on the other.

BTW, here's a thought. The Hong Kong MTR opened in 1979 (I rode it on the first day). Except for the newer cars (which aren't much different from the originals), platform doors and Octopus, most aspects remain the same. So, can we say that subway technology has basically reached a plateau worldwide? That's unlike regular trains, where there are so many more high-speed rails around the world since 1979.

BART "drivers" generally close the doors, and not much else. Only in case of emergency, or right after an earthquake (low speed for visual track inspection by the operator until the next station), are the trains manually operated.

Chicago is the only other system in the world with 24/7 subway operations like NYC.

In Philadelphia, the express tracks on the Broad Street Line are most certainly used. Philly also has express trains (but not tracks) on the Market-Frankford El.

Budapest most certainly has the fastest escalators. Those things can give you whiplash.

DC needs to remove seats from the cars to allow for more standing. At least 3 days a week I have to let a train or two go by before I can get on.

Other cities besides Paris are developing those "never-ending" snaking cars. I think I've seen them in Prague and Vienna, (but maybe it was elsewhere in Europe?).

I would argue that Chicago has the loudest subway I've been on. You can hardly carry on a conversation on the Red Line.

And unlike NYC, Chicago's late night system runs on an actual schedule that seems to be very much on time -- at least on the Blue Line.