I have permanently de-featured this quiz because I think, unfortunately, the Wikipedia article is not fully accurate.
As many people have pointed out, it's bizarre that a city with like 5 stations has a "metro" where as a city with over a hundred light rail stations does not.
Furthermore, there is no clear dividing line over what is, or is not, a metro system.
The many user comments demonstrate that the quiz is impossible to create in an accurate way.
This seems to be missing quite a few cities. I know for a fact that many more german cities, such as Cologne, Bonn, Dusseldorf, Suttgart, Frankfurt and the whole Ruhr area have a well-functioning Metro System, above ground and below.
They are all considered to be light metro systems. The list limits itself to cities with rapid transit systems. Sometimes the difference can be a bit arbitrary though.
Than Berlin and Hamburg should not be included on this list, they are bigger (more stations) but do not operate differently than Frankfurt. And who are you to declare metro system rules? When you type Frankfurt Metro you'll get this result. And by the all traffic measures Frankfurt is actualy a true metro. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frankfurt_U-Bahn
Frankfurt U-Bahn is a stadtbahn system - it runs at street level for portions of its route. Metro systems must not have any pedestrian or vehicle crossings along their route.
Hmm... by that logic the London Underground only became a metro system in 1994, when the section of the Central Line through North Weald was closed. Not sure that that makes much sense
Frankfurt definitely has a metro system, and it's not a "light metro" either. It is of course possible that Wikipedia lists only cities whose metro stations are mostly underground. However, that would seem to rule out Oslo and no doubt others as well.
The reason Frankfurt is not included is beacuse the network is not fully grade separated, above or underground does not matter. Again, the difference with rapid transit oftentimes is debatable and sometimes arbitrary.
Absolutely no idea how Frankfurt's isn't considered a metro. Only thing I can guess is they ding it for integrating with the suburban lines that definitely are light rails. That being said there are at least 86 true Ubahn stations.
St Petersburg in general is, in my opinion, the most beautiful city in Europe. Beating out Paris, Amsterdam, Copenhagen, Stockholm, Rome, Odessa, Athens, Salzburg, Venice, San Marino, Kiev, Tallinn, Helsinki, Oslo, Moscow, Prague, Budapest and the others I've been to, anyway. I've never been to Spain or Switzerland. Moscow also has a beautiful metro.
@roleybob There have been a significant number of users on other quizzes who have also testified that Istanbul is entirely an Asian city. It is an intercontinental city, given that it crosses both sides of the Bosphorus Strait, one side of which is European, and the other Asian.
@JackintheBox I think metro stations from both sides are counted. The Wikipedia article doesn't specify, but the Istanbul Metro Wiki article does separate it into lines, some of which cross from the European side to Asia. The numbers are outdated, though, and I'm not sure if reless is planning on updating the quiz anytime soon.
The correct spelling is Kyiv, and it is in Europe. Istanbul is commonly accepted as being on the European continent. Yekaterinburg however, is geographically in Asia. If we use your logic then every city in Russia doesn't count because by your logic Eastern Europe isn't really Europe...this is why they teach geography in school kids!
The correct spelling of "Kiev" or "Kyiv" isn't "Kyiv". Kyiv is how you spell when translating it from Cyrillic into Latin letters. Kiev is the standard English spelling.
Kyiv reflects how the Ukrainians pronounce it, whereas Kiev reflects the Soviet/Russian pronunciation. A fact which has become extremely important since your comment.
Most of those are light suburban trains with some long tunnels crossing parts of the city. The fact that they decide to commercially call themselves "metro" is not relevant.
Why is the date for London showing as 1890? It first opened in 1863 with steam traction and was electrified in 1890 but it was still a metro system from day 1, with the first line being known as the "Metropolitan Railway". The referenced wiki article implies that too. In 2013 it made a big celebration of being 150 years old, see "The London Underground celebrates 150 years".
Bit surprised that Newcastle is the only other city in England besides London with a metro system. Why did they prioritize Newcastle instead of larger cities such as Birmingham, Leeds or Manchester?
While Newcastle itself is not so big, the Newcastle metropolitan area (Tyneside) is also one of the largest in the UK. Furthermore, Manchester and Birmingham already have extensive light rail/tram systems, and the West Yorkshire commuter rail network, which includes Leeds as well as other cities like Bradford and Wakefield, and also Liverpool's Merseyrail, do the same job as a metro. So I suppose it's less a case of Newcastle being prioritised, but rather they chose a different system (metro as opposed to light rail/commuter trains.)
The Newcastle Metro also goes to Gateshead and Sunderland. Weirdly, there is no stop (yet) for the Metro Centre - the biggest shopping centres in the UK :/
Dnipro's metro is probably the funniest one on this list. The Soviets planned a full metro for this pretty big Ukrainian city (over 1m residents) in the 1980s, but the USSR broke apart right after construction had started, and the Ukrainian government just opened it up after they finished what they could with limited resources. Six stops barely covering half the city center. I rode it one time to just say that I did, and there was hardly anyone on it and hardly anything to go to at each stop.
Many of them are too small to need a metro - if Kharkiv were in the UK, it would be one of the biggest cities. Several wouldn't suffer well the huge disruptive works that the installation of a metro would require, given their historic significance or small, winding city centre streets. And some you might expect to be on the list have alternatives to a metro system, like integrated bus/train networks or trams serving the same purpose.
Quizzes like this are frustrating already because they rely on an idiosyncratic hair-splitting definition anyway (Oh, Bordeaux's tramway isn't a metro, it's a light metro-like streetcar blah-blah-blah in the first place. San Francisco doesn't have a metro, it has cable cars, streetcars, light rail, rapid transit and commuter rail but it's not a metro, nyeaarh.
It's icing on the cake to throw in cities from another continent; for that matter, where's Chelyabinsk, if Yekaterinburg is included? More whiny transit wonk exceptionalism, one assumes.
There is no real source for subway systems in the world. I have tried hard to find one and it always comes back with arbitrary exclusions because a train is slightly smaller than another. Any and every normal person taking the "light rail" underground for miles in Boston would say they are on the subway.
Also terminology kills any research. Many languages use "metro" as a shorthand for subway, but it also generically includes any mass transit like buses. A place like Ottumwa, Iowa can call their local bus system the metro and it would make sense. "True metro" is a non-existent concept. It depends on an agreement by a small bunch insisting their definition is the only one versus the rest of the planet.
Lastly, arguing with Wikipedia means arguing with any human who may have had access to the internet at one point in his life. There is a solid reason no one accepts it as a source in universities or even elementary schools.
I'd say it's "subway" which is shorthand (especially in North America) for metro. People can obviously call whatever they want whatever they want, and as you say this whole quiz depends on pretending a very grey area is actually clear-cut - but the idea of including buses in a definition of metro seems just wrong to me. You might as well include buses in a possible definition of "helicopters" or something.
Every time I take this quiz I end up thinking how much I dislike it. Almost every comment is about how some city has a Metro but it's not on this list. The quiz is based on some list from Wikipedia that is updated from some international association that loves dinging "Metro" systems that are integrated into suburban and regional commuter systems. So just about everything from Frankfurt north and from Liverpool to the east is excluded even though the vast majority of the world sees it no different than what's in Paris and Tokyo. In many respects they are superior to the included metros in terms of usability and foresight. Crazy that some city like Dnipro with 6 stations, 7.8 kms of track and 20,000 riders a day is on this list and Frankfurt with 84 stations, 65 kms of track and half a million riders isn't because it's directly connected to another system that has 112 stations and 303 kms of track.
The metro of Porto, Portugal should count because it runs as a fully separated metro network in the actual city proper. Just because it eventually branches off outside of city limits as a tram/light rail shouldn't disqualifity it from being on this list because on the actual city borders it runs exactly as the Metro of Paris or London do.
A brand new metro system opened here in Thessaloniki (Nov 2024), although its construction started 30+ years ago. If you happen to update the quiz please put us in as well. Thank you!
As many people have pointed out, it's bizarre that a city with like 5 stations has a "metro" where as a city with over a hundred light rail stations does not.
Furthermore, there is no clear dividing line over what is, or is not, a metro system.
The many user comments demonstrate that the quiz is impossible to create in an accurate way.
I don't think I've noticed it anywhere on the site before...
@JackintheBox I think metro stations from both sides are counted. The Wikipedia article doesn't specify, but the Istanbul Metro Wiki article does separate it into lines, some of which cross from the European side to Asia. The numbers are outdated, though, and I'm not sure if reless is planning on updating the quiz anytime soon.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_metro_systems_in_Europe#United_Kingdom
Let's stop using the terms "Europe" and "Asia" since they really don't have any meaning.
It's icing on the cake to throw in cities from another continent; for that matter, where's Chelyabinsk, if Yekaterinburg is included? More whiny transit wonk exceptionalism, one assumes.
Rennes added a new metro line.
So i think it needs to be updated.
Thank you
Also terminology kills any research. Many languages use "metro" as a shorthand for subway, but it also generically includes any mass transit like buses. A place like Ottumwa, Iowa can call their local bus system the metro and it would make sense. "True metro" is a non-existent concept. It depends on an agreement by a small bunch insisting their definition is the only one versus the rest of the planet.
Lastly, arguing with Wikipedia means arguing with any human who may have had access to the internet at one point in his life. There is a solid reason no one accepts it as a source in universities or even elementary schools.
I'd say it's "subway" which is shorthand (especially in North America) for metro. People can obviously call whatever they want whatever they want, and as you say this whole quiz depends on pretending a very grey area is actually clear-cut - but the idea of including buses in a definition of metro seems just wrong to me. You might as well include buses in a possible definition of "helicopters" or something.