Why Tokyo Metro is Better Than any Other Metro in the World
Why Tokyo's metro system is a 100x more impressive than Singapore, Hong Kong and London metro COMBINED!
This is my most extensive article yet, but I felt I really needed to get it out there just how impressive the Tokyo metro is!
If you have seen any list of the greatest metro systems in the world, it definitely has Singapore, Hong Kong and London on it, almost always ranked higher than Tokyo.
All those metro systems are indeed amazing and deserve all the credit they get, but I am here to tell you that they are nothing compared to Tokyo’s metro.
The biggest reason, literary, is the sheer size of Tokyo
Tokyo is absolutely massive! In fact, it’s 850% larger than London which in turn is 43% larger than Hong Kong, which in turn is 54% larger than Singapore.
Still, every single area of Tokyo is easily commutable by train!
Look at this:
This is a distance of 72km in greater Tokyo, between Yokohama and Saitama, that is commutable in around 1h!
Take the same 72km distance in greater London, between Banstead and Brentwood, and the commute looks far bleaker:
I wanted to do the same comparison for Singapore and Hong Kong, but the cities are so small there are no trains travelling anything close this distance.
Tokyo Metro’s complexity is seen as a downside, but its really a testament to its amazing planning
This insane span of train tracks makes the Tokyo railway system very complex, especially in the urban hubs where all these tracks meet.
Most people visiting Tokyo see these complex urban hubs, like the notoriously hard-to-navigate Shinjuku station, and assume that the Tokyo metro system is poorly planned.
That could not be further from the truth. For example, Singapore has 6 metro lines, Tokyo has 13 metro lines and 39 train lines, with Shinjuku station connecting almost all of them!
Now, I am no train station planner, but I think most of us would agree that Shinjuku station is far more impressive than any station on the Singaporean railway system.
So to sum it up:
Tokyo has the world’s best railway system because it has the same or greater connectivity, speed and comfort as other megacities on a far far greater scale!
I could go on about other features that makes the Tokyo metro even more impressive. Like how Tokyo has connected their railway and metro tracks to allow passengers to commute vast distances faster and without transfers, or how the train car seats are made with the most comfortable fabric known to man.
However, at the end of the day those features are just the icing on the Tokyo railway cake that is so much sweeter, larger and tastier than London’s, Hong Kong’s, and Singapore’s combined.