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Metro, subway, MRT, U-Bahn, metrorail — whatever you call it, here's the creative global resource for it. Focusing rather on compelling features than boring technical details, there are themed sections (menu on the left) and quality photo galleries. Print a fact sheet of the city you plan to visit (city menu on the right) or build your own customized database table of the world's 176 metros and light rails.
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New comment functionality
6 Feb 2010. There should now appear a comment field on the bottom of every Metro Bits page (except this root page) that allows for easy commenting or discussions. Feel free to leave comments or additional facts you know of.
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Latest news
17 Jan 2010. A few tweaks: Projected metros appear in the menus in green (the colour of hope). Added a couple of missing metro logos. Small logos next to the city names now embellish the World Metro Database. Shanghai Maglev Museum added to the Metro Museums. Data updates for Baku, Caracas, Delhi, Dubai and Guangzhou.
10 Jan 2010. Wallpapers page updated with a lot of new large photos:
9 Jan 2010. Happy New Year! The latest updates by Jordi reflect a hesitant development in the "old world of metros" with only 6 new stations in Europe and America combined, while Asia boasts a whopping 129 new metro stations. Shanghai now joins the club of "monster metros" (London, New York, Tokyo) with a network length of over 300 km. The updates in detail: Athens (1 new station), Beijing (24), Delhi (10), Guangzhou (26), Moscow (3), Rio (1), Santiago (1), Shanghai (47), Shenzhen (4), and an entire new metro in Shenyang (18 stations). The planned opening date for the new metro in Algiers is somewhat difficult to come by, but according to recent rumours it might be 1 April 2010.
11 Oct 2009. Besides a new page about 24-hour metros and a few ridership updates by John, there have been minor tweaks: a playful 'Random city' button in the upper right corner, and on the city pages, all table items are now links, the maps are wider, and the Print function will also print the maps. (Btw, those maps can be dragged and zoomed as desired before printing.)
There's only one metro line on this planet listed as a World Heritage Site by UNESCO. It's not Moscow's palace-style stations or Stockholm's painted caves, which might come to mind. It is Budapest's Line 1, the oldest metro on the European continent, with its restored tile-and-wood stations and narrow trains. It was added to UNESCO's Budapest entry in 2002 already. Definitely a fact to be noted on Metro Bits, but it had escaped attention until now.
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A success story
Metros are the most efficient means of transport in big cities. Every year, a lot of existing metros are being extended and new systems sprout. The number of metro cities has more than doubled in the past 30 years! The following graph (based on the opening dates in the World Metro Database) shows how the number has increased since the world's first metro was opened in London in 1863:
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18 Sep 2009. Entries of the Metros with a View page appear in the city fact sheets. Fact sheets are now complete, showing all relevant data available at Metro Bits about the respective city.
17 Sep 2009. Passenger data updated by John Kennes.
17 Sep 2009. On 9 September, the new metro in Dubai opened its first line with roughly 40 km, but with only ten stations. 19 remaining intermediate stations will follow soon. Database updated by Jordi Serradell with new metro lines in Berlin and Vancouver and short extensions in Kolkata, Lisbon, and Sofia. Hong Kong Disneyland Resort Line now included.
7 Sep 2009. Another new tours section, this time about Guided Metro Tours led by experts. All the tours also appear on the city pages. And a page about technical relationships between different metros: Families of Metros (did you know Caracas and Istanbul are using similar trains?)
4 Sep 2009. New Self-Guided Metro Tours section awaiting your contribution! Photo Tours renamed to Photo Galleries in the process to avoid ambiguities.
3 Sep 2009.  Print button at the top of every page. It renders the pages on a white background and without the menus. And in the normal (non-print) view, there's now the city menu on the right hand side on every page, which makes it especially more fun to click around the city pages. Happy printing and clicking!
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Subways need not be boring or dreary! Many operators of metros, subways or underground railways want to attract more passengers with good station design. This often means extra effort and higher costs for the metro operators but it seems to pay off when a metro is more than just a means of transport but something the residents can be proud of. Read more...
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22 Aug 2009. Ticket price comparison. An interesting piece of statistics was in the news the day before yesterday: in this PDF, UBS Research compares prices and earnings for a whole bunch of cities around the world. And among those data: metro ticket prices! I thought it would be nice to integrate them in the World Metro Database, and here they are for 54 cities. The sorting function reveals that you can spend as little as 16 cents in Delhi or as much as $ 4.88 in Stockholm for a single 10 km ride. Prices are only given in US$ for the moment and do also appear in the city fact sheets.
16 Aug 2009. New photo gallery pages of Dortmund, Kuala Lumpur, and Palma de Mallorca.
28 Jul 2009. Metro Database update by Jordi: The world has got another two new metros — Maracaibo and Seattle. And there are new extensions added for Bilbao, Brasilia, Incheon, once again Singapore, and Taipei.
23 May 2009. The World Metro Database is available again! Sorry for the delay.
22 May 2009. Major metro update by Jordi: three new metros (Adana, Santo Domingo, Seville) and new stations in Bangkok (+2), Delhi (+1), Recife (+5), Shanghai (+1), Singapore (+2), Sofia (+5) and Tehran (+4). The data for Los Angeles now includes the Green Line.
1 May 2009. A Metro Bits photo has made it on a rock album! The band 4 Letter Holiday from Leeds, UK had some time ago asked for the rights to use the photo, and now it can be seen on their debut album Contentment Is Happy Boredom. Style of music is a rock guitar sound and driving drums with a jazz-style and jamming feel. Download the album from iTunes, Amazon or other major music download sites. The band members have been working hard to raise funds for a CD version to be released very soon.
23 Feb 2009. Several updates submitted by users via email or in the forum, some of them pending for weeks already, have been made available now. Sorry for the delay. Metro Bits should become interactive so that users can leave comments on every page in realtime!
16 Feb 2009. Nuremberg photo gallery update
5 Feb 2009. Delhi, Istanbul, and Recife updates by Jordi S.
28 Jan 2009. Unfortunately, the World Metro Database page has been temporarily disabled by the web host due to high usage. However appreciative it is for a website to have many visitors, this problem has to be fixed, and hopefully will be fixed soon. Meanwhile, the recent accurate metro data is still available for each city on the Fact Sheets, and older data lists (about a year old) are available here: World Metro List, Features List, and Annual Passengers. Sorry for the inconvenience!
25 Jan 2009. Buenos Aires and Taipei updates by Jordi S.
15 Jan 2009. Kazan update (one new station).
21 Nov 2008. Mark Ovenden, author of the bestseller Metro Maps of the World has launched his new book Paris Metro Style in Map and Station Design at the London Transport Museum. Co-authored by Julian Pepinster and Peter B. Lloyd, the tome is incredibly detailed and contains 500 maps and 500 photos — the result of three people's enthusiastic work over three years.
20 Nov 2008. Bucharest metro extended. Lausanne's metro line 2, which had seen public test runs in the preceding weeks, is now officially opened.
26 Oct 2008. Warsaw update.
19 Oct 2008. London has "lost" a metro line. The East London Line is closed for upgrading. By June 2010, the line will belong to London Overground and run from Dalston Junction in the north to New Cross, Crystal Palace and West Croydon in the south.
12 Oct 2008. Baku update.
5 Oct 2008. Metro database updated with new figures for Barcelona and Monterrey. And the resources page has got a small technical tweak.
19 Sep 2008. Another update from Jordi to the metro database with new figures for Kaohsiung, Moscow, Oslo, and Rotterdam.
Updated list and two new metros2 Sep 2008. Yesterday, Jordi has sent his updated list of network lengths, stations, openings etc, which is now integrated in the World Metro Database. Since the last update, two new metro systems have entered the scene: the cute stylish minimetro in Perugia, Italy and the metro in Kaohsiung, Taiwan, which started with a decent 28 km. And a lot of other metros have increased in length.
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24 Aug 2008. New Stuttgart photo page. Stuttgart has a classy light rail network and a commuter rail (S-Bahn) tunnel section. |
New World Metro Database
21 Aug 2008. Start with a predefined table (Basics, Numerics, Features, Complete), then add, rearrange, or remove columns. Select metric or imperial units. Click on headers to sort, click again to change sorting direction. Bookmark your current table.
The new flexible database makes things cleaner and simpler and replaces the old pages World Metro List, Features List, and Annual Passengers (they are still here, just in case).
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Most metros have logos or symbols to mark their station entrances, rolling stock, and printed matter such as maps or tickets. Since most metros around the world are indeed called 'metros' (only few are called subway, underground, U-Bahn, T-bana or something else), many metro logos are more or less fancy variations of the letter M. More about metro logos...
Some subway systems are stylish enough to communicate with their customers through exclusively designed typefaces for wayfinding signage and paperwork. More about metro fonts...
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