Dec9,2023
Praise for Hong Kong’s MTR gushes from every traveler who’s ever set a toe inside the immaculately clean, well-signposted, cheap, regular, convenient system that connects most corners of the city, from the crowded bowels of Wan Chai to the villages of Tai Po.
In addition to being one of the only metro systems in the world with cell phone service and Wi-Fi, many of the subway trains in Seoul are outfitted with TVs and are climate controlled. We love the toasty, heated seats in the winter.
After an amalgamation of several transit-service-providers in 2000, SMRT has grown to 600 million passengers per year.
The London Tube was the world’s first underground metro, opening in 1863 and they’ve not done terribly much since. Still, air-conditioned carriages been introduced, alongside intermittant Wi-Fi signal.
The City of Light’s metro is unusually dense, with 245 stations on 14 lines, in just 87 square kilometers of the city. Parisians, apparently, don’t like to walk.
At 294 kilometers, Madrid has the sixth-longest metro system in the world. But on top of that is another 386 kilometers of suburban rail services.
New York City’s MTA subway lines are doubled up so all local and express trains can run simultaneously along the same routes, 24 hours a day.
Tokyo’s rail system is legendary. Super-fast, super-punctual, super-everything. Some 102 train lines, an estimated 14 billion passengers per year.