THE world's first metro, now the world's oldest system, is the London Underground in England, which is more commonly known as the Tube, which was opened in 1863.
At 402 kilometers in length the London Underground is also the world's second longest metro system.
Visit our page - Lines And Stations Of The London Underground - to read more about this system.
THE world's longest metro system is the Shanghai Metro in China at 434 kilometers long. The system also incorporates the world's only tourist tunnel, the Bund Sightseeing Tunnel, which travels under the city's Huangpu River between East Nanjing Road station and Pudong station.
The 647 meter long tunnel is encased in a glass capsule which houses a system of strobe lighting which throws vivid, psychedelic patterns upon the tunnel walls.
Visit our page - Lines and Stations of the Shanghai Metro - to read more about this system.
THE metro system with the most number of stations in the world is the New York City Subway in U.S.A, with four hundred and twenty two stations.
Visit our page - Lines and Stations of the New York City Subway - to read more about this system.
THE country with the highest number of metro systems in the world is the USA with subway systems situated in at thirty two cities.
THE smallest city in the world to have a rapid transit metro is Lausanne in Switzerland. Lausanne is just 41.37 square kilometers in size and it's fifteen kilometer long Metro Lausanne consists of two lines and twenty eight stations.
THE world's smallest metro system is the 3.8 km long Metropolitana di Catania situated on the Italian island of Sicily which consists of just one line and six stations.
THE world's first metro system to be built solely for the use of religious pilgrims is the 18.1 kilometer long Al Mashaaer Al Muqaddassah Metro, which opened in November 2010 in Saudi Arabia's holy city of Mecca.
THE world's busiest metro system, in terms of passenger number, is Tokyo's Toei Subway with eight million passengers a day, or 3.16 billion a year.
THE metro system with the highest number of lines or routes, is the New York City Subway in the U.S.A, with twenty four lines.
ONLY four rapid transit metro systems in the world run a complete twenty four hour, round the clock service, and they are all located in the same country.
They are the New York City Subway, the Blue and Red Lines of the Chicago L system, Philidelphia's PATCO System and the New York City to New Jersey PATH - Port Authority Trans Hudson - system.
Some cities offer bus services during the hours that their metros are closed, particularly ones that cover airports or major rail stations on their routes.
Certain cities offer 24 / 7 services during special occasions but as a general rule it is unusual to find a twenty four hour metro system due to the fact that the lines need to be cleared for maintenance and the best time to do this is overnight when passenger numbers are low.
