Tuesday, December 1, 2015

Name that metro!

Fun piece in the Guardian (here) with a quiz on identifying world metro systems by their shape alone.  Although fun, it’s also a useful exercise.  If you’ve never looked at a transit system map as a system only – without background geography – it can be very revealing of the functions that that system serves.  Some are very compact and dense, providing maximum mobility in the city center.   Others are “leggy,” with long lines serving suburban commuters but few central connections.  Still others are combos of these two approaches.  (The comparisons on the maps in the Guardian piece are a little misleading in that they don’t show suburban rail, light rail, etc. that help to complete a system.)
My view: for full mobility you need to do the full combo in some form or other.

Can you identify the metro system below?