subway systems, best and worst!
 

Rate the ones you've experienced.

My favorite: Mexico City, it's very cheap, the platforms are quite clean, modern subway cars, and some of the stations have all sorts of nifty archaeological treasures found during the excavations.

A close second would be Montreal, it's a 1960's period-piece, but one that's aged very well.

Most character-full: New York and London, all sorts of interesting characters, confusing routing for the express / locals in NYC, and so much a part of the city.

Worst: Frankfurt. Pricey, not air-conditioned, and generally ugly, shabby stations. Announcements in German, you'd think that for an international city that there would also be English language announcements.

Tokyo is my favorite. So clean, I would literally eat off the subway or platform. Brightly lit, signs in English and Japanese. Punctual. Signs tell you not only when the next few trains are expected but also where in the system they are.

I've learned to accept Chicago's El. Usually it works, but it's overcrowded, constantly under construction to patch up holes in the 120-year-old infrastructure. Many of the elevated stations leak in the rain and have water pooling on the wooden floors. The last couple years of concentrated construction have really helped, but the system has a ways to go. They've also joined the 20th century and put up electronic signs (with ads, natch) that every now and then will tell you when the next train is coming.

Moscow has the fanciest metro stations I have seen, nice architecture.
It’s almost museum like.

I was not too happy taking the red line on the Boston ‘T’. I was unaccustomed to most of the folks on the platform standing 7-8 people deep to get on a train.

Madrid and Athens are the best (actually, the one in Athens is probably too good- marble floors and whatnot).

While reliable, the metro system in Moscow has to be one of the least passenger-friendly ones; there are virtually no interchange stations. If you want to transfer between two adjacent lines, you need to walk walk walk, climb up and down stairs and, by the time you do all this, you might as well have gone on foot...

Paris - for the sound the rubber wheels make ... (although I did get attacked down there:()
London for the Englishness of it all... standing to one side on the escalators and keeping to one side in the corridors...
New York for the vibe...

I must admit to a preference for Tram systems in general. Give me open-air any day.

Best -
Hong Kong. Clean and easy and gets you everywhere. Too bad it's not 24 hours.
New York, although the word 'best' is used differently here. I can't imagine NYC without its subway.
London is not bad either. Reliable.

:confused: Reliable???

Strangely, as someone living in a mass transit capital of the world I hate using public transportation when I travel. Chicago, San Fran, DC, and LA are cities that I visited time and time again but have never used the subway/train system.

Sydney has modern and comfortable trains and most buses (actually a pleasure to ride) and very nice stations. While NYC has some scary looking stations, the sheer number of people it transports everyday on a huge scale of subway lines makes it one of the most efficient systems. Also, and much easier for tourists, there is no zone pricing on NYC subways and the price is the same whether one rides one stop or 32 miles, the length of the A line. Plus, NYC is one of the rare systems with both express and local tracks.

The El in Chicago, as well as the BART/Muni rail in SF, are really only good for getting in from the airport, and from a couple of other areas into downtown. They're not laid out to be as useful if you're running around town.

I found that the Moscow subway system was pretty efficient once you started recognizing a bit of Cyrillic. The old parts were pretty and not that bad to move around in once you learn the colour scheme. Cheap as well.

The MRT in Singapore was solid but limited. Very Singaporean :)

I liked the Montreal one when I was there for the Grand Prix weekend last year. I thought it worked out great for getting to and from the race track considering how many people were trying to get to and from the track.

Tokyo and all the Japanese metros - Very clean, simple to use and I love Suica card scan to enter thru the turnstiles and also doubles to buy food, drink from the vending machines and shops in the station. And also the people on the metro are quiet

Madrid, Barcelona, San Francisco, Vancouver, Toronto, Montreal, Sydney - Clean and easy to use. Stations and trains had signs and lighted charts to show you where you, what's the next station and which direction you are going.

Worst
New York City - I found it confusing to use. I always ending up going the wrong direction or on the wrong train. I went through 3 bottles of mini hand sanitizers when using the fare machines. Stations that kinda resembles a sewer...uncollected garbage that now looks like sewage on the train tracks and water dripping from the ceiling of the station.

On my upcoming trips, I'll be using Chicago, Milan, Zurich metros for the first time. Let's see how punctual those Swiss trains really are.

I'm going to rate New York City as the best. It's still only $2.50 to go anywhere in the system with unlimited transfers. It has express trains (a huge rarity in rapid transit systems) and I've never felt safe.

For worst I'm going with Boston. I used to ride the Green Line from Packard's Corner to the Airport and this would take me longer than flying up from New York. The connections at Government Center were never timed, more often then not they'd take the train out of service at Park Street and I'd have to change. Also, the entire trip down Commonwealth Avenue was excruciatingly slow and obnoxious.

the subway system in Taipei, Taiwan is not bad - spoken announcements and electronic signs in multiple languages ... nifty.

I've seldom (except at 3-4 am) felt unsafe on the NYC subway.

To be fair, the B line is more a D-minus line, but the C and D trains are usually
okay, as are the Red and Blue lines. I find that the Washington Metro though
marginally snazzier in appearance is less reliable than most of the Boston system.
Worse, I discover that the Metro line I need to take several times later this week
had a horrid accident yesterday that killed at least 9, after which the spokesidiot
claimed that the trains were safe: