"You can transfer to Magic Line 4..."

Many of you who know me know about my obsession with airplanes.  A close second obsession would be with trains, particularly metro/subway/tube lines (from here on out, I'll be using the word "metro" for the universality of the term).  In Chicago, where I'm originally from, our famed mode of public transport is the 'L', which stands for Elevated.  Those of you not from Chicago may nonetheless be familiar with the L, as it appears as an ever-present backdrop in movies filmed and set in the city.  Those of you fortunate enough to live or visit Chicago know that it is one of the best ways to see the city, given that most of it is, appropriately enough, elevated.  However, as lucky as Chicagoans are to have the L (compared to most of America, anyway), the L pales in comparison to other metro systems around the world.

Up until I moved to Shanghai, my benchmark for metro trains was the Madrid Metro.  Unlike Chicago's L, which only covers barely 2/3 of the city (and thus making a car still a necessity), with the Madrid Metro you could go anywhere you wanted without a car.  The trains were clean, stations were well-lit, and signage straightforward.  When I left Madrid in 2010 many lines had since been either renovated or expanded, and continues to be in expansion.  Adding to it my schtick for languages I always found myself lip-synching to the lady who so politely reminds you: "Atención! Estación en curva.  Al salir tengan cuidado para no introducir el pie entre coche y andén!" ("Attention! Curved station.  When exiting the train be careful not to insert your foot between the car and the platform!").  I measured the quality of a city's public transportation to that of Madrid's, and thought no other metro network could surpass it.  That is, until I moved to Shanghai...

As you may have read in my very first blog entry, I first came to Shanghai in 2009 to visit a friend (coincidentally, from Madrid).  Back then Shanghai Metro only had five lines in operation, and wasn't as far-reaching as the Madrid Metro at the time.  Despite that, I was more than impressed with the Shanghai Metro.  Compared with the much smaller stations in Madrid and Chicago, Shanghai's Metro stations are big and wide, being able to accommodate everyone in the busiest of rush hours.  ("Busy" doesn't seem to be an accurate description of a typical rush hour commute, as the photo below illustrates.)  And as busy as Shanghai's metro can get, I have yet to experience a situation where I could not get on a train because it was full.  Whomever designed the Metro must have had this in mind.  It still amazes me that when I have to change trains at People's Square, the busiest station of the network and follow a sprawling anthill-colony of people to the next line, there is never a bottleneck that prevents people from going where they need to be.

In the fall of 2010, when I decided to move to Shanghai, things had definitely changed a lot in that amount of time.  Shanghai played host to the Expo 2010, and to prepare the city for the event, the powers that be invested hundreds of millions of dollars (if not more) transforming Shanghai into a world-class city.  Along with beautifying the Bund and constructing a whole smattering of glitsy, gleaming new buildings, underneath Shanghai's streets nonstop tunneling took place to expand the Metro network from five lines in 2009 to 13 as of this blog entry's publication, with more expansions and lines planned before this decade is up.  Like the Madrid Metro, with Shanghai's network you can go pretty much anywhere in the city without a car.  And considering that a single ride can cost you a mere $1-1.50, there's no better way of getting around.  My only gripe about the Metro is that it closes rather early compared to Madrid or Chicago's metro systems; last trains depart from end stations at 10:30pm, so before midnight you're at the mercy of taxis to get you around.  That notwithstanding, Shanghai's metro has become my benchmark for quality public transport.  America, take note.

And just as I've combined my thing for languages with the Madrid's Metro, I've done the same with Shanghai's.  As I will demonstrate in a future blog entry, listening to the announcements by the omnipresent Chinese lady has helped me pick up a lot of Mandarin.  But perhaps one of my favorite quirks of the Metro is when announcer switches into English for us laowais; whenever a train stops at a station with more than one line, the following announcement is broadcast in English: "You can transfer to Metro Line 4" but due to her thick accent it sounds more akin to "You can transfer to Magic Line 4".  Intentional or not, given the pace that the Metro has expanded in the last few years,  the Shanghai Metro truly is magic.

*My thing for automated metro announcements have had me combining Madrid and Shanghai announcements in my head.  For example:  "Próxima estación: Xujiahui.  Correspondencia con: Línea 9.  Atención! Estación en curva...you can transfer to Magic Line 9".

Yeah...I'm a weirdo.