Virgin Vacations, of all places, has a list of the 11 (?) best subway systems in the world. It’s a relatively arbitrary list, but that doesn’t make it any less fun to read. They include a selection of good pictures and YouTube vidoes of most of the systems they mention, as well as a handful of fun facts (Moscow is the fastest worldwide system at 120km/h, etc.). Toronto isn’t on the list of course, but Montreal is. This is always the case. The Metro in our sister city is such a crappy ride: crazy long waits between trains, super loud and cramped cars that sound like you’re in a jet turbine, a system that closes too early, and no air conditioning making for sweaty rides in the summer. Yet they make everybody’s favorite subway list (mine included) because the whole thing is so dead sexy. The aesthetics of the system can forgive so much.
Via Rail is currently running ads for cheap train tickets up to Montreal on the television that play over and over, keeping Montreal on the mind. In Dublin on the weekend that city was in an Arcade Fire frenzy (they had recently played two shows that sold out in record time). When I told people I was from Toronto, they often mentioned Arcade Fire, and it felt like it was OK to take a little credit. Outside of Canada, it’s alright to consider Toronto and Montreal sort of the same place — a “Monronto.” All it takes is a few pictures of the Montreal Metro to create an urgent desire to visit that city again, and soon.
9 comments
yay for torontonian not hating on lovely MTL!
andrew> I think Torontonians hating Montreal is a myth. All it takes is a couple of loudmouths. I don’t know any — in fact it’s the other way around. People tend to be down on their own city and love MTL.
There weren’t any long waits while I was there (the waits seemed less than here), although from what I was able to read from some list I think it gets crazy long at the end of the night.
Yep, I can see why Montreal makes the list, but agree it’s arbitrary. If it’s supposed to be in order, the NYC subway is way too far down the list for how important a part of the city it is.
As for the times between trains, Toronto’s subway runs more often than most, especially off-peak. Here, the furthest apart trains are scheduled is 5 minutes (6 on Sheppard). In downtown Montreal at noon on a weekday, trains are 7 minutes apart; after 10 pm they’re 10-12 minutes apart. But I’d say NYC is the one with “crazy long” waits: 20-30 minutes between trains overnight.
The one thing I’ve noticed about all of those systems that I’ve ridden on is that they were much more aesthetically pleasing, and especially much cleaner, than Toronto’s. The one thing the TTC has going for it is that it runs a very utilitarian system that works (well sort of).
The five minute headway on the Toronto subway is extraordinary. Atlanta’s subway only runs every 20 minutes off peak, Baltimore’s only 15, BART in San Fransisco is every 20 minutes off peak, Chicago is 10 minutes off peak, Washington every 12, LA runs every 9 minutes off peak, and New York, between 10 minutes and 30 minutes off peak.
I rather like Toronto’s design scheme. While I liked some of Montreal’s aesthetics, the interior of their cars were pretty bland and dingy-looking.
I’ve also found Toronto’s subways to be pretty clean. Sometimes messy, but rarely so dirty (except for winter days, of course) to warrant comment.
I was disappointed not to see Washington make the best 11 subway systems listing – we have travelled on it often and have always been so impressed by it’s dependability, cleanliness, speed, good manners of its staff and accordingly then good manners by the majority of its riders. We especially found it amazing how easy it is for those in wheelchairs to get onto and out of a train. Toronto should take some lessons from this – also in the way you can buy your tickets by the mileage, so that when you are visiting and using the system, if you don’t use all your mileage you can pass your ticket slip on to someone else.
As Steven pointed out, Toronto is really the exception when it comes to frequencies. Even New York has train intervals that are more comparable to Montreal (5-10 minutes off-peak). There were times in London when I had a wait an awfully long time for a train, too.
(Vancouver has 90 second frequencies for most of the day, but its trains are automated and very short.)
So consider yourselves lucky. I’d rather have a utilitarian subway with very frequent service than a good-looking one with only moderately frequent service.