I am limiting thus question to actual underground trains (not buses, trams, etc) -- what is the best subway system in Europe?
I am voting Paris for the artistic nature of the stations. Plus they have all those funny French names! (that is a joke)
Close second to London for the number of escalators.
If your criteria is based on the beauty of the stations, I would put Stockholm, Moscow, and St Pete way above Paris. In terms of functionality, I rank it this way: London, Paris, Berlin. My least favorite is Rotterdam...the signs, maps and layouts of the stations are beyond confusing!
My favorite systems in the entire world are Mexico City (.05 cents a ride!), Hong Kong (fully air conditioned: stations and trains), Tokyo (complete network saturation of the city), and Washington DC. My least favorite: NYC....not user friendly in any way shape or form, haven't got a clue how visitors cope:)
Ease of use - Boston
Cleanliness - Toronto
I know this isn't the call of the question, but Hong Kong and Beijing outshine any European or US subway system in speed, cleanliness, efficiency, quality of signage, etc.
The question would be "best" for who? Tourists or residents? For tourists, I would rank Paris and London on top. They're easy to use and few sites of interest to tourists sit far from a station. But for the task of efficiently moving nearly a million or more commuters from outlying districts into the city center on a daily basis, the Moscow metro is a wonder. Not that the London Underground and Paris Metro don't do this as well, but the numbers who ride the Moscow metro on a daily basis are nearly an order of magnitude larger.
London~~~for it's functionality
I don't know about "best," but we just returned from Athens; and I'll put in a plug for their metro. Clean, attractive stations, 1 euro to ride anywhere (except the airport), 3 euros for a 24 hr ticket. The trains run very frequently, a few minutes apart most of the day; and signage is very good, both Greek and English everywhere. Puts my local (SF Bay area) system to shame.
I think Madrid's is pretty good too ~ and less than a euro a ride if you buy a carnet. For folks from the Bay Area, where short metro rides cost several bucks, it's glorious to see cheap, straightforward subway systems. :)
Michael, nice to hear a native New Yorker confirm that NYC's subway really is confusing! Thought it was just me...
The easiest metro's I have used were in Madrid and Barcelona. London's tube system is about ten times as large (of course, it's a larger city than the first two). My first solo trips were to Spain and it was a nice "starter location" for a first-time solo traveler. I thought both citiies were easy to navigate (on foot and by metro).
So far, I've liked London the best. It's functional, efficient and Bobbies even politely warned us against getting on a car carrying a group of drunk football fans.
St. Petersburg did have some impressive Soviet style stations, but the cars were built in the 1950's - like riding a wooden roller-coaster.
Rome has only two lines. Unscheduled maintenance closures left us hailing a taxi more than once.
Copenhagen has a very nice Metro, but the service area is limited. There is no signage, however, where you board the trains (at least not at Kongen's Nytorv). With only two choices, you would think I would have picked the right train more than one out of four times. We had to get off at the first stop and catch the next one going the other way.
