quote:

My ears were about ready to pop from the pressure change and I was afraid of melting because we were so close to the earth's core.

That's nothing. You try line 6 at Cuatro Caminos. It's like the depths of hell.

I've tried to offer my seat to many women and some have simply refused and very rude like. I still do it any way.

Shawn

You've obviously never been on the London Underground (as it is called in the UK).
I've seen people being taken out on stretchers, in the heat of summer, in central London, suffering from heat exhaustion and strokes & heart attacks!!

From my extensive experience of using the Metro systems in both Madrid and Barcelona, I can at least state for the record, that neither of those two systems have ever been anywhere near as bad as the one in London, they've both had a few ups & downs I guess, but the Tube in London is a real nightmare, and if visiting London, is best avoided.

On the whole, I quite like the Metro of Madrid, at least until a few years ago when it really started to get over-used, and the Metro of Barca has been a pleasure to use in previous years, but again, it too like Madrid has had a huge increase in usage by basically everybody, locals and tourists, students & all. I'm sure we are all pretty well familiar with all the various reasons as to why there has been such huge increases, from economic to environmental, to social and political, and probably many other reasons, apart from the one of the most obvious ones, that places in like Spain and it's big capital cities are now high up on the list of places to go & be, visit, study, live, find work, make money, and all the etceteras under the sun, so it seems like this trend is set to continue, until the big cities can't take it anymore, (like London)....and then what? That's why I've enjoyed living in Santander and Zaragoza, no Metro's (yet!!) they've got Electric Trams planned in Zaragoza, and perhaps a couple of "cut & cover" Metro lines, but Santander is quite safe from the prospects of having an over crowded Metro, Electric Tramvias perhaps at some point in the future. The thing that annoys me about the buses in Zaragoza, is the fact that they drive them like they are on PCP or something, mostly because of time constraints, if they don't get it from A to B in a specified time, they lose their bonus for that trip, so if you have to stand during rush hour, it's agony on the legs & back if like me you've got problems. Now you know why people like me are becoming even more determined to use a car, and not to have to suffer the aggravation of using Metro & buses. Now theres the start of another thread, Parking!! Where the hell can you park these days, there certainly isn't anywhere free to park anymore, not since the local councils realized that they could make a mint out of it, and by charging resident on top of that, like in London, people are being charged (and fined) large sums of money, just to park where they live, and now they got those Congestion drive-through-zone fees to pay as well!! Sick, isn't it...\0/

Saludos.

Angelo,

The bus is not better in the summer and I'll explain why. Yes, there is air conditioning, but the majority of the passengers fight over it. Some are hot, some are cold and the arguments that take place are TOO funny.

I agree 100% about the heat in the metro and that's whyI avoid it like the plague, if I canin the summer. I prefer the bus and walking. Can't wait to get back and see all of the changes with the metro.

Shawn

quote:

people are being charged (and fined) large sums of money, just to park where they live, and now they got those Congestion parking fees to pay as well!! Sick, isn't it...\0/

Not really, it's actually rather logical. It's a choice to live in the city and when you do it's with the knowledge that parking is an issue. I don't know of any major city where this isn't an issue. As a result of all the people, the traffic congestion, not to mention the "environmental concerns" it make sense to use public transport. If it's of vital importance for you to have a parking space you either rent one or you buy one (not a bad investment so I've been told). However the reality of said parking is that it's probably not right below your apartment. You could very easily need to walk 10 minutes to get to your parking space in addition to your usual travel time.

I personally prefer public transport. Yes it's hot, crowded, and often smelly (I'm the first to bitch about all of these things) but when you put it into perspective it's not really that bad. I've also been on several major subway/metro systems and I have to say all of them have there faults. Many complain that DC's is confusing though I never had a problem with that, but it's crowded during rush hour. New York's was dirty, crowded during rush hour and an experience unto itself. The subway in Paris was smelly and crowded during rush hour. London's was confusing and crowded during rush hour. And even Amsterdams lovely tram system was quite scary at times as many of the tram drivers seemed to take the corners at dangerious speeds. Oh, and it was also crowded during rush hour. See where I'm going with this? The major difference between these subway systems and Madrid is the cost.

Washington D.C. (there is no monthly abono):
Metrorail fares
Regular fare (In effect on weekdays from opening to 9:30 a.m., 3-7 p.m. and 2 a.m. to closing)
$1.35 minimum
$3.90 maximum
Reduced fare (All other times)
$1.35 minimum
$1.85 mid-range
$2.35 maximum

NYC 30 day abono:
30-Day Unlimited Ride MetroCard
Cost: $76, reduced fare $38
Good for unlimited subway and local bus rides until midnight, 30 days from day of first use.

Paris Metro:
Monthly orange pass starts at 52,50€ for zones 1-2

London Tube:
Monthly rates start at £89.10 for zones 1-2

Amsterdam Tram:
€35,80 for a monthly zone one pass
Zone one only covers the dead center of Amsterdam and the girls school was just outside zone one. A zone two pass costs €60,75 a month.
Much of downtown Amsterdam has serious limits on where you can take a car so your better off with a tram card. I didn´t take it daily so I bought a multiple trip card instead, which go a lot faster than one would think. However in Holland your best bet is to take a page from the locals and get yourself a bike, parking is almost always free, but finding a parking space can also be a challenge.

Considering the current state of our planet I´m grateful that so many are using public transport and that Madrid makes it relatively affordable to do so. Having said that, they seriously need better accessability for the disabled and elderly.

Yes quite true, I agree with you, we do have to accept the inevitability of having extra charges levied upon us in the big metropolitan cities, but for people like me who have become increasingly Dependant upon use of a vehicle, due to mobility problems, Incapacity, Disability, etc, it makes us feel like we are being penalized every time they hit us in the pocket for something else, or stick a new Tax on us car owners, because some of us cannot carry stuff anymore, not on buses or trains of any kind, and it's then that we have to use a car, but more often than not now, we cannot, and this is clearly wrong, and has been affecting a lot of people, who would normally be free to use their vehicles to do what they need to do, go where they need to go, and with out having to pay all those new extra, extras, (stealth Taxes) that public transport users are not subject to, where's the fairness or Logic in that? It doesn't matter to me how much a bus or Metro ride is, as I can't use it for what I need to do anyway, I (like many millions of people) cannot carry things anymore, and every time I need some things I have no choice other than to drive out of town and find a retail park or Hypermarket, that means using Petrol (UK) Gas (US) which also means that I'm paying so much more to have, keep and use a car in the city, but in reality cannot use the car in the city, the city just become like a giant overly expensive car park, just to keep your car/vehicle sitting (hopefully) not too many streets away from where one lives. But anyway we could go round in circles with this until the cows come home, so let me just round off with this, I guess it can be said that most people have got a choice, but for many, like myself more recently, many of us have lost our choice, we have no choice, due to the nature of our various disabilities, but we are the ones who are paying the most for it all at the end of the day, my excuse for using my car most of the time is called "Neurogenic Claudication" as a result of my spinal stenosis, http://www.google.co.uk/search?hl=en&q=Neurogenic+Claud...=Google+Search&meta=
which has been getting increasingly worse over the last few years, and I would love to help to save the planet & the economy by using buses & trains more, and to get out of having to pay all of those extra charges, but I can't, so I guess all of us with disability/mobility problems will ultimately have to move out of the cities, back to the country, (los pueblecitos) and you know what, even on the coast of Cantabria, specifically Santander, I still can't get away from it, everything has to be done way outside of town, wherever one can find free/or paid parking, (with available spaces that is) it's all happening here in Spain now, it's catching up with the UK, it wont be much longer before they start putting up all the same cameras that are all over the place in the UK, London in particular, they're now using vehicle registration number plate recognition technology cameras, to identify the vehicle & owner, along the sides of the main streets, they have got radar/speed detectors, backed up by high-mounted video cameras, if they don;t get you for one thing, they get you for another, and it's a certainty that the congestion charge zones are coming to Spain, and the cameras with them.

Saludos.

Got this in the mail today and decided I would try not to complain about the Madrid subway again. Yikes,I guess it's not that bad for us :
http://www.glumbert.com/media/rushhour

Wow, Lena, I looked at that clip and it's amazing to see how people are truly packed in like sardines. Talk about maximum use of space, hehehe.

Sometomes Line 10 can seem that way, especially first thing in the morning, before 09:00.

Shawn

Ouch

Irene

Yup, line 10 in the morning can be pretty packed. I don't miss those days at all. My student once called it "making a new friend", and I corrected him, saying I was discovering new scents of deodorant.

I recently got a case of sciatica (inflamed nerve in my lower back), and wow, was I glad of the escalators in Sainz de Baranda metro - they've even got one going up to street level! But I used to live in Opera, and out of curiosity, I used to count how many actual steps there were from the platform to the street, and both of the exits from the green line were around a 100 steps in a series of stairs. Of course, this would be after getting off a stuffy, sticky, smelly, baking train, so hot you lean close to the woman next to you to catch the air from her hand-held fan or would purposely stand up so the air from the windows blasted you full on, even though it too was hot.

As for not being very accessible, many of the stations in cities in Europe are not. Is that fair? No. However, most cities are trying to reform this. In Madrid, Chamartin station is all cool and full of people-movers that do a very good job at getting tourists lost, like in Nuevos Ministerios where they all stand around blinking in the middle and generally getting in your way. Goya has just installed one or two street-level elevators, which somebody else has mentioned. All of line 3 is lovely, cool, and easy to use, and I first used it when is was nothing but a chain of construction sites.

But for all the hoopla and pride about the metro and new stations, I still see people struggling with stairs. And the Cercanias? Well, inside Madrid, it's nice enough. But I go out to Ciempozuelos. And there's no escalators or elevators to get from the station to the other platform. In fact, there's no way at all except the concrete stairs, which are small and slippery. Now, I think about this when the Cercanias is puffing itself up for extending services from Aranjuez and Parla up past Atocha to Chamartin and beyond. That's nice, but not if you can't get on the train in the first place (or indeed, if it even arrives in a timely manner!).

But Madrid is a great place for moving about on the metro. I never feel unsafe. How's that for a little country girl from nowheresville, USA? It's clean, quiet, fast. And relatively cheap. We all know how expensive London is. Even in Oxford where I used to live, a monthly bus pass was 40+ pounds. This is Oxford, folks. Talk about expensive. And the price of gas to fill up your car, when you drive 70 miles roundtrip to work? That's a helluva lot more than 40 euros a month. Even with airport supplement. (Speaking of that, yeah, it was sneaky. But everybody has to make money, and tourists...well, tourists always get stuck in the ... wallet more than others. In a way I commend Spain for using its best moneymaker rather than upping general taxes or cutting the budget elsewhere.

As much as possible I use the bus. Not because I don't like descending halfway to hell in line 9, though I don't, or because line 2 is the slower than Christmas and you always see two or three trains pass on the other side before yours gets there, or because it's "good exercise" to walk up 100 steps, then uphill to your house and then find out the electricity's out, so you gotta walk up 5 more flights - no, I use the bus so I can see the sunshine and this beautiful city and wonderful people all around us. Coming from a place where public transport means more than one person in a car, I'll take Madrid's best any day.

Just my two cents. Well, judging by the length of the post, a few sets of pennies, but oh well.

Tanya

Tanya,

Let me just say that I love your post. It speaks the truth.

quote:

Yup, line 10 in the morning can be pretty packed. I don't miss those days at all. My student once called it "making a new friend", and I corrected him, saying I was discovering new scents of deodorant.

I call it being in all kinds of sexual positions.

Now I live on line 6, in Puerta del Ángel, and Andén 2 going in the direction of Cuatro Caminos can let you down some days.

I think there will be mornings where either I catch buses 39, 138 or 500 to Príncipe Pío or just walk it.

quote:

As much as possible I use the bus. Not because I don't like descending halfway to hell in line 9, though I don't, or because line 2 is the slower than Christmas and you always see two or three trains pass on the other side before yours gets there, or because it's "good exercise" to walk up 100 steps, then uphill to your house and then find out the electricity's out, so you gotta walk up 5 more flights - no, I use the bus so I can see the sunshine and this beautiful city and wonderful people all around us. Coming from a place where public transport means more than one person in a car, I'll take Madrid's best any day.

So, I can feel you on this one too. I used to live in La Latina and there would be days that I walked to Opera to catch Line 2 to San Bernardo to go to my gym. Once, I saw 4 trains pass on the other side, while the platform on my side was getting more and more crowded. I walked up to Callao and took bus 147 to the Glorieta de Ruiz Jiménez. Got there fast.
Shawn

overheard on the metro a while back

Oh God Not More Stairs

said in an American accent. As mentioned before was in Munich and it cost 9.20 to go from downtown to the airport, with a 10% discount for using a debit card.