In a list of the 11 Top Underground Transit Systems in the World, the Tokyo subway comes in fifth. I was surprised to see that it isn’t the most heavily used: this page says that 2.8 billion riders take the chikatetsu each year, compared with 3.2 billion in Moscow. (I imagine this isn’t so surprising since the JR and private surface lines handle so much of the daily traffic in this city. Moscow’s subways, by the way, are amazing; during the Cold War they were meant to double as nuclear attack shelters for the city’s population, and they are astoundingly deep as a result. I rode them in 1987 and remember being amazed by the escalators—easily the longest I have seen anywhere.)
One problem with the page linked above: two of the three photos for Tokyo show JR trains, not subways. There’s a shot of a Shinkansen rolling between Tokyo and Shinagawa and a shot of what looks like the Chuo Line, which I take every day.
(Via Kottke’s site.)
by David M.
03 Mar 2007 at 01:03
If you were to look at the totality of rail stations in Tokyo (somewhere around 550), there would be no doubt that Tokyo’s would be the most ridden. I think I read somewhere a couple years ago that the Yamanote line alone handled nearly as many riders per days as the entire Montreal system (which, to be fair, has only three lines and around 55 stations).