My hometown—Melbourne, Australia—got its underground train line in 1981. Five stations. It was very exciting—finally, a world city, big enough to have to send people underground to move them around. Ha! Yet, although Melbourne’s underground had five stations, it only had one loop. Not exactly huge and complex. And it changed direction from morning to evening, which always scared me: what if they mess it up and trains meet face-to-face? Is there any other city in the world where you have to factor this into the usual delays, dirty seats, dirty old men, and high prices?
But, strangely, I have come to love the world’s metros, so much so that recently in Prague I insisted we use the Metro to traverse a walkable distance, just for the sheer joy and experience of it. In that spirit, here’s my list of world-favorite metros.
Moscow Metro
Surely the Moscow Metro is the pinnacle of them all. You really can’t avoid using it in a city this huge (12.3 million people) and with such bad traffic congestion. When I was trying to get to the airport on a Friday night, the taxi driver ended up dropping us off at a metro station because he said there was no way we’d make the plane while traversing the city above-ground! Even with metro (followed by taxi from the outskirts of Moscow) we were lucky to make it. Especially given the rain and the crazy driving …
First opened in 1935, Moscow’s metro system now has twelve lines, 177 stations, and about 7 million riders a day. Now that’s what I call a metro. It’s the second busiest in the world, after Tokyo’s metro. And the interval between trains is only about ninety seconds—a clock counts it down. The other essential factor of the Moscow Metro is its design, which makes it a must-see. In fact, ride it just to get off and look at the many stations. Chandeliers, vaulted ceilings, socialist realist art: fabulous.
One night, in the rain, getting a taxi seemed impossible so we decided to be brave and risk the last Metro at about 1:00 a.m. We had to go in though the exit doors as the entrance was locked, but lots of locals were doing it and they didn’t look like homeless people seeking a bed for the night. Just inside the doors, each phone booth was occupied by a stray dog—quite a feature of Moscow—but the dogs were not hungry so we made it un-mauled to the escalator, still running in a downwards direction for the cleaner. The whole thing was much less challenging than we’d feared: there were lots of women alone on the train and it all seemed quite safe. I’m not sure I would have done it if I hadn’t been with a six-foot tall man though. A drunk on a crowded daytime train punched another male friend of mine for no reason, so you can just never tell.
During the day, I quite happily travelled the Metro alone. I found the ticket system easy to negotiate and loved the long, long escalators with their clean designs and great lamps. Even the signage began to make sense after a while, though it was in Cyrillic. I hopped on and off to look at various stations. Photography is not allowed, but I snuck a few …
Prague Metro
The Prague metro only has three lines, each of which is clearly color-coded: red, yellow and green. Prague’s Metro is the eighteenth-busiest in the world, with about 1.5 million riders a day. It can’t be that hard to use, right? Wrong. You see, some of the stations are really big, especially the ones in the center of Prague that we (the tourists) are going to use: Muztek and Muzeum. Make sure to get the right exit or you can end up a long way from your destination and end up walking for longer than the Metro ride took.
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