A Tale of Two - OK Three - Subways

Kevin here.

Paris Metro sign

One thing that I was most looking forward to during our time in the big cities of Europe -- in this case, London and Paris -- was not being in the car.  Like most Americans in the US, I'm in a car all of the time. And I was looking forward to living a different kind of life -- at least for awhile.  Or course, we did have a car during some parts of our trip.  We had a car for over a week as we drove around in Scotland.  (I've blogged about learning to drive in the UK previously.)  And we had a car for 4 days or so during our time in Normandy, along the coast of northern France.

Cars are fine.  I like cars.  But, honestly, if I could figure out a way to live and work without one, I would.  I prefer to walk.  And London and Paris are, if nothing else, incredibly walkable cities.  Particularly, Paris.  I have a couple of walking-around-Paris blogs in me that I'll bang out soon.  But walking is an inherently human activity.  I feel more like a person when I walk.

But there are other means of getting around Europe besides walking and driving that I was also looking forward to spending time doing.  Specifically, I couldn't wait to get around using public transportation, in particular the subway.  That would be the Underground in London and the Paris Metro.  Since we've spent a good deal of time on both systems -- we rode them almost every day, often many times a day and with many transfers -- I thought I would share some thoughts.

An art nouveau Paris Metro sign from around 1900.  Only a few like this survive and are considered national monuments.

The world-famous London Underground symbol.

First, both the Tube and the Metro are incredibly efficient.  I'm not sure we ever had to wait more than 5 minutes for the next train.  Sometimes -- particularly during morning or evening rush-hour -- the trains are running 90 seconds apart, tops.  Then, once you're on, they scoot quickly from stop to stop, never lingering at any one station for more than 30 seconds.  And if you need to transfer from one line to another, you can be sure that once you're at the station for the transfer, the next train is probably just 3-4 minutes away from picking you up.  In fact, we've had dozens of experiences where the Underground or Metro train was pulling in exactly as we approached the platform.  The result:  it's pretty easy to get around both London and Paris.

On the Metro

On the Underground

Now... I contrast this with my experience of (trying) to ride MARTA in Atlanta.  I've used MARTA to get to work (downtown off West Peachtree) probably 20 times over the past 6 months. I keep trying, because I want it to work; I don't like driving all of the time for lots of reasons (economic, environmental, lifestyle, etc.). On each occasion, I usually have to wait about 20 minutes at the Avondale station before a train comes (this is in addition to the 15-minute drive to the station).  Once I'm on it, it goes pretty well for the 30-minute ride.  Until I have to transfer at the Five Points station.  I often have to wait there another 10-15 minutes for the northbound train.  All in all, it can take an hour-and-a-half to get downtown.  Maddening.  I can drive there in about 30-40 minutes.  From the standpoint of time taken, there is no incentive to take MARTA.  Ugh.

And let's not even talk about the limited number of places that MARTA actually goes to.  Contrast that with the Metro in Paris:  there is hardly any part of the city of Paris that isn't within a 10-minute walk (at most) of a Metro station.  The result:  the vast majority of people in Paris ride the metro.  Few people have cars.  It's lovely.  London is similar.

Not everything is perfect, of course.  Subways can be noisy, smelly places, no matter what city you're in.  Think about this:  in London, almost 3 million passengers take the Underground every day.  3 million!  And Paris... it's more.  Almost 4 million people on the Metro every single day.  That means a lot of wear-and-tear.

Nevertheless, it's been great to ride and compare these two great urban people-movers.  Some off-the-cuff comparisons between the Underground and the Metro:

Efficiency:  A virtual tie. Both are timely, quick, and get you where you want to go.  We've found the Paris Metro to run just slightly more often, which is nice.  But we've had to use fewer transfers in London to get where we want to go.  Sometimes the Metro seems to require quite a few hops to get to certain places in Paris. Thankfully, the Metro has a great website to help you find the shortest route between two stops.  One thing this demonstrates is that they know they need something like this to effectively navigate the system.

Cleanliness:  I fully expected the Paris Metro to be a beautiful system, far better than London's.  Nope.  Just the opposite.  The Underground seems cleaner and nicer.  I'm painting with a broad brush here -- there are exceptions.  But the Paris Metro stops that we've used (with some exceptions near the Louvre and at a few train stations) are pretty dingy and smelly (yeah, I'm looking at you Place d'Italie).  I attribute this to two things.  1) The economy in France has led to many cutbacks in government services.  I think the Metro has taken it on the chin lately.  2)  London has poured money into the system to get it ready for the 2012 Olympics.

Again, these are generalities.  Paris has some nice Metro trains and stations, especially on the main #1 line that serves many of the highest profile sights.  But it's got a lot of dumps too.

An arriving train on the Paris Metro

People noise:  Like on an elevator, few people talk on a subway.  But, people talk even less on the Paris Metro.  This appears to be cultural.  The French aren't really rude: they just keep to themselves.  So, most people are quiet on the Metro.  This is largely true on the Undergound in London too, but less so.  People do talk, especially tourists.

As an aside:  I had heard that Europeans looked down on loud Americans, especially loud American children.  So, Kelly and I worked hard to help the kids keep the volume down on the Tube and Metro.  It's worked out pretty well.  However... I have since learned that both Londoners and Parisians have a far louder, more obnoxious target for their ire: groups of Italian teenagers.  And I get it now.  Groups of Italian teens: wow.

An arriving train on the Tube in London

Train noise:  subway trains are noisy.  And the noise can feel like an assault on the senses, rendering it less than the peaceful, soothing ride that people like me want it to be.  You can feel pretty tired once you get off the subway, depending on the length of your ride.  But, many (not all) of the Metro trains in Paris have rubber wheels, rather than iron wheels. As a result, many of the Metro trains are noticeably quieter than their counterparts in London.

Suburban Rail:  London as the DLR (Docklands Light Railway) to augment their Underground.  It largely goes out East of the city and covers the Olympic Village.  Paris has the RER, which runs through the city out to the suburbs of Paris (including Disneyland Paris).  Both are nice ways to help move people around, in particular to places that the core underground system does not go to.  Both are slower than the subway and don't run as often.  But I'll give this one to Paris.  The RER uses real trains with plenty of cars and is very efficient.  The DLR in London felt wobbly and insubstantial (it is light rail, after all) like it was going to jump the track.  And didn't run as often as the RER did.  Both are nice, but I prefer taking the RER.

Metro: minutes 'til the next trains.

Crowds:  Both were often crowded.  We had many, many times on both systems where we had to stand.  But, Paris.  Wow.  It can be really slammed.  It's clearly not easy getting 4 million people around every day.

Panhandlers:  There are lots of people looking for handouts on both the Underground and the Metro.  Usually they are offering a service of some kind in exchange:  they sing (a capella or karaoke, in a variety of languages) or they play a musical instrument (drums, keyboard, violin, even french horn).  In London, we saw this about 20% of the time we were riding the Tube.  In Paris, it's more like 90% of the time.  On the Metro, it's getting old.
Cost:  It costs a little more to ride the Underground than the Metro per trip.  But in London you can get an Oyster card which (like MARTA's Breeze card) is a pay-as-you-go card.  That makes it quick and easy to pay and get in.  In Paris, we've stuck to buying a set of 10 small paper tickets (called a carnet) at a time.  It's more of a hassle to keep up with our tickets and dispose of them at the end of each ride (on rare occasions they check to make sure you have them).  And Paris is littered with the little tickets.  The Metro does have an electronic card you can buy called the Navigo.  But it's more of an "all-you-can-eat" card for a certain price than a "pay-as-you-go" card.  Plus you have to buy a photo to put on it.  And you don't get a refund at the end of your usage like you do with London's Oyster card.  All in all, it's far more expensive (for us, since we don't intend to live here for a longer period of time) to get Navigo cards for the five of us than it is to buy carnets.

Of course, for both ways we had to pay by either cash (in Paris) or by a credit card at the service booth (London) since neither of their automated ticket/re-load systems take American credit cards with a magnetic stripe.  It's "chip-and-pin" only on the Tube and Metro.  That's a blog post for another time (maybe) but I think it's past time for America to move to a chip-and-pin credit card.

Buses
We rarely took a bus, if ever, in Paris and in London (except for cheesy sight-seeing buses).  But both cities appear to have robust, clean bus systems.  Noticeably, many of the buses in London were empty. Do they have more bus capacity than they need, perhaps?  One of our London cabbies thought so.  He's hardly a disinterested party, though.

MARTA
All of this time on the Metro and Tube has made me think about MARTA, Atlanta, and public transportation.  I really want MARTA to work for me.  But, as I explained earlier, it does not.  MARTA was the last big subway system built in America.  And I hate that it is such a poor experience.  I dunno.  Maybe others are having a great time with it.  If so, they appear to be in the minority.

Since it is very difficult -- due to political and financial reasons -- to bring MARTA closer to more people... I wonder if it would be possible to bring the people to MARTA.  I don't know if this is a good idea or not... but I had the thought that Atlanta could take zones around each MARTA station in Atlanta -- maybe a zone would be defined as a 5-10 minute walking distance -- and work hard at making them stronger live/work/play communities.  Perhaps these near-MARTA zones would have strong tax incentives to build or revitalize along with better zoning practices.  These places need to be walkable:  pedestrian-biased, if you will.  Move cars to the periphery.  And add grocery stores, doctors, shops, restaurants, churches.  All human-scaled, all close to a MARTA station.  It would have to be done organically, not like planning a new mall.  But... maybe that would start something?  Atlanta will never be Paris.  But it could be a great(er) city with many more true communities of people walking, eating, shopping, worshiping, living.  Imperfect.  But striving.

In Conclusion...

One last thought: our kids have loved traveling by Underground and Metro.  On the Metro, many of the trains have these buttons on the doors to push to get the doors to open to get on or off (otherwise, they don't bother opening).  Our kids often negotiate and jockey for position so that they can be the ones to have the power to open the doors.

Anna's in position for opening the door

And it's been great to see them learn how to read the maps in the trains, to figure out which stops we should get on or off at, etc.  Life skills!?

Daniel & Justin figure out how to get where we need to go.

I don't know if they will ever need to know how to live a more urban life -- one that might include using the subway often -- but I hope that it gives them a taste of living that is different from the largely suburban life we live now.  Who knows what they will one day be called to.