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While Delhi and Mexico city might be good comparisons with WMATA (I have no personal experience with these systems and do not know how old or extensive they are), I would caution against comparing WMATA to Shanghai and Beijing. Yes, their transit services are FAR superior to Metro, but consider the circumstances...labor is cheap and expendable, the government can just spend whatever they feel like spending, and the systems are quite new. There's also some question about just how well-built they are. I'd be interested to see how well they operate in 10-20 years, since, in my experience, China is fantastic at building stuff (I rode the new G-level HSR a few years ago, and boy was that a thing of beauty/efficiency), but terrible at building it right and maintaining it.

A somewhat better comparison, IMO are the transit services offered in Hong Kong. The MTR is only 3 years younger than Metro, and covers more mileage and has more stations. The trains are higher-tech, and the stations are much better-built. To buy a ticket (they also do distance-based pricing), rather than navigate a complicated fare table, you touch your destination station on a touch-screen, and then select a one-way or round-trip ticket. All "paper" farecards are recyclable plastic, cutting the costs of single-use ticket overhead. Moreover, taking a bus or trolley in Hong Kong is a pleasure...service is frequent and timely, coverage is extensive, and the buses are modern, comfortable (okay, if you're tall, maybe not so much, but consider the typical resident/rider), and clean as a whistle. The Star Ferry is also a thing of beauty. In operation forever, it still runs fantastically, frequently, and is so cheap it might as well be free (the buses/trolleys are pretty cheap, too - around $2 to go from Kowloon to the south end of the island - but at approximately $.30, the ferry is a STEAL). Hong Kong's transit puts WMATA to shame, and that really shouldn't be the case.

by Ms. D on Jul 12, 2012 7:04 pm • link • report