16. St. Petersburg Metro system
St. Petersburg has one of the best subway systems I've used. Known here as the Metro, it's clean, quick, convenient, and inexpensive. The stations are not as ostentatious as what I remember from Moscow, but are often well appointed nonetheless. The trains run deep underground, so the escalators are among the longest I've ever seen anywhere. I've never had to wait more than five minutes for a train (even at 10:30 pm on a weeknight), and during rush hour the wait is usually less than 60 seconds.
This is the second time I've lived in a place with a subway system. The first was in Manhattan during the summer of 2001. I liked the subway there, but it was less reliable and much dirtier than it is here in St. Petersburg. Perhaps the comparison is invalid, though - New York's subway has far more stations and is significantly longer than the Metro here, and sees double the number of passengers every year.
In St. Petersburg, I live in the city center and work in the northern suburbs, so I spend approximately 75 minutes a day in stations or on trains. I typically enter, transfer to, or exit from six stations a day, and switch between two different lines during the morning commute. I've used another several stations during weekend sightseeing trips, so that's a representative 10-15% of all the stations across town. Here are a few pictures from most of my daily stations: Dostoyevskaya & Spasskaya (orange line), and Sennaya Ploshchad, Nevsky Prospekt, Pionerskaya, and Prospekt Prosvescheniya (blue line).
This is the second time I've lived in a place with a subway system. The first was in Manhattan during the summer of 2001. I liked the subway there, but it was less reliable and much dirtier than it is here in St. Petersburg. Perhaps the comparison is invalid, though - New York's subway has far more stations and is significantly longer than the Metro here, and sees double the number of passengers every year.
In St. Petersburg, I live in the city center and work in the northern suburbs, so I spend approximately 75 minutes a day in stations or on trains. I typically enter, transfer to, or exit from six stations a day, and switch between two different lines during the morning commute. I've used another several stations during weekend sightseeing trips, so that's a representative 10-15% of all the stations across town. Here are a few pictures from most of my daily stations: Dostoyevskaya & Spasskaya (orange line), and Sennaya Ploshchad, Nevsky Prospekt, Pionerskaya, and Prospekt Prosvescheniya (blue line).
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