The table provides a comparative overview of underground rail networks in London, Paris, Tokyo, Washington DC, Kyoto, and Los Angeles, focusing on their opening dates, total route lengths, and annual passenger volumes.
Overall, older railway systems generally feature much longer routes and significantly higher passenger volumes than newer networks. Additionally, Tokyo stands out as the most heavily used system despite not being the largest in size.
The three oldest networks, all established before 1930, dominate the dataset in scale and traffic. London, opened in 1863, possesses the longest system at 394 kilometers, yet it ranks third in ridership with 775 million passengers annually. In contrast, Paris (opened 1900) has roughly half of London’s track length at 199 kilometers but handles a larger crowd of 1,191 million people. Tokyo (opened 1927) records the highest usage by far, transporting 1,927 million passengers per year along a 155-kilometer route.
Conversely, systems constructed after 1975 operate on a much smaller scale. Washington DC is the largest among the modern networks, containing 126 kilometers of track and serving 144 million commuters yearly. The two remaining cities, Kyoto and Los Angeles, feature the shortest networks at 11 and 28 kilometers respectively. Consequently, they attract the lowest annual ridership figures, with Kyoto serving 45 million passengers and Los Angeles following closely at 50 million.