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Apr. 7, 2007 Metrophilia (mĕ·tro·fĭl´·ī·ǎ) is a new name for the fine art of subway appreciation. As a non-driver, I’ve always been a fan of rapid transit systems, and by that I mean not only subways, but elevated, surface-level and light rail or trolley lines. But I exclude from that bracket suburban commuter trains, which are usually short-line variations of regular railroads. I have had the pleasure of riding the Metro, whatever name it goes by, in New York , Chicago , San Francisco , Los Angeles , San Diego and Atlanta in the US . I’ve ridden it also in London , Paris , Madrid , Barcelona , Berlin , Frankfurt,
Vienna , Genoa , Rio de Janeiro , Buenos Aires , Santiago , Tashkent , Beijing and Hong Kong . I’ve been in many other cities that have Metros, but where I did not ride, like Rome , Cairo , Oslo , Stockholm , Copenhagen , Hamburg , Amsterdam , Brussels , Budapest , Glasgow , Singapore , Sao Paulo ,
Mexico City, Philadelphia , Boston , Washington , etc.. The question that has always been in the back of my mind is how they compare length-wise. It seemed to me that track mileage would be one of the most important indicators of the utility of a rapid transit system. Unfortunately, in the past, I could never find figures. I could never even find a list of
the world’s rapid transit systems. I found mentions here and there, usually with mere verbal expressions, such as “very comprehensive”, “one of the world’s largest”, etc. Little by little, I reasoned that New York City has the largest Metro (subway), but after that I simply could not get the figures. Now Wikipedia has a List of Rapid Transit Systems, which lists all the systems in the world.
Unfortunately, the system lengths are not given in the table. You have to visit each article independently. Many of the individual articles have the length tabulated right in an inset. For others, you have to read the text, sometimes adding up lengths of individual lines. Sometimes suburban commuter lines and Metro lines are added together, with no breakdown. Thus I was unable to get figures for Sydney , Philadelphia and Boston . Someimes there is no indication at all. Foreign lines are sized in
kilometers, domestic in miles. I converted them all to miles. So the following list, ranked in order of system length, is very tentative, but this is the first such list I’ve seen. 1.) New York City...656 miles 2.) London...255 miles 3.) Tokyo...191 miles 4.) Seoul...180 miles 5.) Moscow...174 miles 6.) Madrid...142 miles 7.) Paris...132 miles 8.) Stuttgart...120 miles 9.) Cologne...119 miles 10.) Mexico City ...111 miles 11.) Washington , DC ...106 miles 12.) Chicago ...106 miles 13.) San Francisco ...104 miles 14.) Berlin ...95 miles 15.)
Nagoya ...93 miles 16.) Philadelphia ...90 miles? 17.) Shanghai...89 miles 18.) Stockholm ...89 miles 19.) Singapore ...86 miles 20.) Dallas ...84 miles If anyone has any corrections or objections, please let me know. These 20 are also the only ones with over 75 miles of track apiece, exclusive of decommissioned and private track. The
total number of world cities with Metros is nearly 200, but all the qualifications and explanations make an exact count meaningless. As for the world’s tiniest Metros, here are the bottom 8, in reverse order: 1.) Laon, France...0.9 mile 2.)
Seattle, Washington...1.0 mile 3.) Haifa, Israel...1.1 miles 4.) Tokorozawa, Japan...1.8 miles 5.) Catania, Italy...2.5 miles 6.) Sakura, Japan...2.5 miles 7.) Detroit, Michigan...2.9 miles 8.) Genoa, Italy...3.1 miles Genoa has expanded tremendously. When I was there, in 1991, they had only 1 mile, with 2 stations.
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