The London Underground, which opened in 1863, was the world’s first underground railway system. More than 30,000 passengers tried out the Tube on the opening day and it was hailed by the Times as “the great engineering triumph of the day”.
The London Underground now carries 1.17 billion passengers a year.
The New York City Subway is 110 years old this year.
The New York subway is one of the very few that offers 24 hours service and has more stations (at 468) than any other in the world. It carried 1.71 billion passengers last year.
The Tokyo subway opened in 1927.
Now Tokyo’s metro system carries 8.7 million passengers a day. It has introduced women-only carriages during the morning rush hours to provide “a sense of security”. Its Subway Manners guidebook advises passengers to set their mobile to silent mode and refrain from talking during the ride.
Although Moscow’s metro opened in 1935, the first plans date back to the Tsarist era. According to Pravda, Joseph Stalin was the first passenger and the driver had to practise driving a train with a Stalin dummy in it for several days before the actual trip.
The Porto Metro (Portuguese: Metro do Porto), part of the public transport (mass transit) system of Porto, Portugal, is a light rail network that runs underground in central Porto and above ground into the city's suburbs. Metro do Porto S.A. was founded in 1993, and the first line of the system opened in 2002. Line A (blue line) between Senhor de Matosinhos and Trindade in central Porto was the first Porto Metro line to open, in 2002. The line was extended in 2004 to Estádio do Dragão, in time for the Euro 2004 Football championship. On April 14, 2005, Line B (red line) opened. The Casa da Música concert hall (which has a station on the combined ABCEF line) opened on the same day. Lines A and B are the last legacy of a line which once went from Trindade to Famalicão, originally narrow gauge, opened in 1875, completed in 1881 and switched to metre gauge in 1930. (The stretch from Varzim to Famalicão is now a bicycle trail.) Line C (green line) opened on July 30, 2005, reaching the centre of Maia. An extension to ISMAI opened in March 2006. Line C uses a stretch formerly part of the Guimarães line which joined the current line at Lousado. Line D (yellow line) proved the most problematic to excavate and opened in 2005. The line runs from João de Deus and Vila Nova de Gaia in the south before crossing the River Douro and passing through central Porto en route to São João Hospital in the north. The São João Hospital and IPO stations were not brought into service until April 2006 due to safety concerns. In October 2011, it was extended to Santo Ovídio. Line E (violet line) opened on May 27, 2006, connecting the Airport Francisco Sá Carneiro and Campanhã. Several weeks later, the line was extended until Estádio do Dragão. An end-to-end journey takes 33 minutes, with trains departing every 20 minutes. Line F (orange line) opened on January 2, 2011, connecting the Porto city centre to the Gondomar region in the east, this line runs between Senhora da Hora and Fânzeres. Lines A, B, C, E & F follow the same course within the City of Porto (between Estádio do Dragão and Senhora da Hora). The transfer point between Line ABCEF and Line D is at Trindade in central Porto; from Trindade to Senhora da Hora, the right of way recycles the original Porto-Varzim-Famalicão/Maia-Trofa-Guimarães trunk line.