 This video is sponsored by NordVPN, the leading VPN service that'll help you browse the web safely with the best cybersecurity tools. Check out the link in the description for an awesome discount, or stay tuned till the end of the video to learn more. When people think about metros in North America, well okay, people don't usually think about metros in North America, but if they did, and they should, the Mexico City Metro is an impressively large network that you should get to know. The system has 12 lines and nearly 200 stations, all interconnected with far more interchanges than you'd expect, making getting across Mexico's capital a breeze, and transit in Mexico City doesn't stop with the Metro. It has a comprehensive network of express and electric buses, more rail lines on top of the Metro, and even gondolas, with much more on the way, all coming together to keep North America's most populous city moving. And despite the Mexico City Metro's underappreciated status, it moves more people every day than the iconic Paris Metro, its distant cousin, and nearly as many as the New York City subway with less than half the stations. So without further ado, let's dive in to the Mexico City Metro. If you enjoy explainers of transit systems around the world, make sure to subscribe and hit the bell icon. We'll be covering a huge number of cities this year, and you won't want to miss a single one. Mexico City, or CDMX as it's been branded in recent years, is an incredible and vibrant city, with a long history, and to learn about the Metro properly, we'll want to start with the city itself first. This is the historic city center and the cultural heart of the city, probably best identified by the Constitution Plaza, or more commonly the Zocalo. But as Mexico City has grown, and it's grown a lot, new business areas have also developed outside of the old center. One great example of this is along the Grand Paseo de la Reforma, a broad avenue framed by modern high-rise office towers. At the southwestern end of this spine is the Chipotlepec Forest, a massive, highly-programmed green space divided into four sections, with museums, a castle, and even a zoo, all reminding me a lot of New York's Central Park. To the south of the park is a major bus terminal, served by buses from across Mexico, and as it turns out, Mexico City actually has four of these, with one in each cardinal direction. The eastern bus terminal is adjacent to Mexico City's international airport, which is not ideal. It is very well served by the Metro, but its layout is super awkward, its buildings are old, and the site is highly constrained by surrounding neighborhoods. The city's original plan to replace this airport was with a gigantic, ultra-modern new airport designed by foster and partners, and a large portion of the project was actually built at a site east of the city. Unfortunately, the grand scale of the project made it quite unpopular, and instead an existing military airport north of the city has been expanded to handle passenger traffic, with the potential to become similarly big in the future. The site of the original new airport will instead be turned into a nature preserve. The final major site worth mentioning is Buena Vista Station, north of the city's historic center. This railway station, well not used for long distance intercity services anymore, is a major transit hub, and is also the site of a massive mall. With a sense for the fabric of the city, I want to give you some of the highlights of the metro before going in depth on the network itself, because the system has a number of rather special elements. For one, the system is known for its low fares, less than half a Canadian dollar per ride, really low both in the international context generally, but also for a system that is this extensive. The system is also famous for its rubber-tired trains, which, as in Montreal and Santiago, is a second generation system designed from the ground up based on technology created for and retrofitted onto the Paris metro. Trains are larger than in Paris with up to nine cars, as seen in Montreal. You may have also heard about the unique symbol system created for the metro. Symbols are a fun thing given to every station, and originally meant for a time when many could not read. However, this is not a real issue in the modern day, and instead it stays around as a unique artistic feature of the system that's still useful in some situations. Something that also sets stations apart are the ruins integrated directly into stations like Pino Suarez. These can make the city's history part of an open and public civic space, and it's also a great concept seen in cities such as Athens. Various art exhibits, and even small concerts, also sometimes take place in the metro. Now, for something a bit more unusual, Mexico City, like Santiago and unlike Montreal, fully embraces running its metro above ground, but it often does so in a rather uncommon way. While it's quite common globally to run a metro or rail transit service in the median of a highway, Mexico City runs metro lines down the center of various avenues, and sometimes not particularly wide ones. This can be seen a lot on lines two and three in particular. Another odd feature you'll see across the network at terminal stations such as El Rosario, Martin Carrera, and Pantitlan are long stretched out yards, often placed in the center of roadways as well. These are typically combined with the standard Mexico City Metro terminus, which itself is rather unique, in that it generally features two island platforms with three tracks, the center featuring boarding on both sides. Now, to dive into the lines of the system, which I will discuss all at once for simplicity, and you'll actually see some patterns as construction was done over several distinct eras. The first major portion of the system to be built were lines one, two, and three. Line one is an east-west line, running roughly from west of Chipotlepec Park at Observatorio, which is also the site of the western bus terminal, under Avenue Chipotlepec, just south of the Paseo de la Reforma to the historic city center, the eastern bus terminal at San Lazaro and beyond to Pantitlan, serving Mexico City's old international airport. This line has a total of 20 stations over 17 kilometers of track. Line two is a west-to-south line, serving the historic center and notably the Socalo, before running to its southern terminus of Tascuena and the site of the southern bus terminal. Line two is the system's most heavily used line and features 24 stations over 20 kilometers. Line three is a 21 station, 21 kilometer north-south line that runs from the university city in the south to the north, passing the historic city center on the west and forming a three-point triangle transfer with lines one and two, helping to spread transfer loads. The first three lines of the Mexico City Metro were all opened around the early 1970s and provided a fairly radial service focused around the historic city center. The lines also nicely frame the Paseo de la Reforma, with line one to the south, line two to the north, and line three to the east. Following the first three lines, things got sort of weird as a number of new circumferential lines were added to the metro system in the 1980s, framing the original triangle transfer and giving the network its distinctive decentralized topology. To be clear, these lines are not really suburban, but they definitely do not go directly through the old city center. It's sort of weird. Line four is a pretty straightforward north-south line, running through the city's east. Like line four in Toronto, it's the shortest and least used line on the system, but with a respectable 10 stations over 9 kilometers of track. Interestingly, the line was the system's first foray into heavily elevated construction and thus has a fairly distinctive look and feel. While the Mexico City Metro generally has fairly reasonable transfers, some stations like Consolado on line four remind me of the Delhi Metro, with a fairly long transfer walkway with line five. And speaking of line five, line five itself is a diagonal line traveling from the north of the city to the east, in the northeast of the city, with 13 stations over 14 kilometers of track. At its north end, the line connects to the northern bus terminal, and it connects to line one at its eastern terminus. Line six is an east-west line in the north of the city, which starts at the northern terminus of line four and runs west 11 kilometers with 11 stations. Since demand is fairly low on line six, as well as with line four, shorter six-car trains rather than full-length nine-car trains are used, although a few nine-car trains have been reintroduced onto line six. As with its eastern end, line six also shares a terminal at its western end with a north-south line, but in this case line seven, which runs in the west of the city. Line seven has 14 stations over 11 kilometers of track, and runs along the western edge of Chipotlepec Park, as well as through the neighborhood of Palanco, one of the wealthiest in Mexico. The last of the lines to open in the 1980s was line nine, an east-west line running in the south of the city that terminates on line one at both ends, with Pantitlan and Tacubaya. As it has 12 stations on 13 kilometers of track and a more direct alignment across the city than line one, line nine can act as a bit of an express relief line for many east-west trips in the city. And it also provides direct access to the Mishuka Sports Complex, which was built for the 1968 Summer Olympics, as well as the Formula One race track. Now, after the opening of the lines in the 80s, little new central capacity had been added to the system, with line two especially running into heavy crowding issues, and so in the 1990s line eight came to the rescue. Line eight has 19 stations over 18 kilometers of track, and runs from the populous southeast of the city to the north of the historic city center, turning the triangle transfer in the city center into more of a square transfer. Now, if you're wondering why line eight opened after line nine, it's much the same as in Santiago. Mexico City quite responsibly built their metro system on a master plan, and it simply happened that the line designated nine in the plan was fully planned and built before the line designated eight. You can see similar things in many Chinese metro systems these days, where systems with far less than 20 lines are already seeing lines in the 20s opening. Now, as it turns out, it wouldn't be until nearly 20 years later when the latest numbered metro line in the system opened with line 12. The line is quite big, with 20 stations spread over 25 kilometers of track, and the alignment runs from the deep southeast of the city to an interchange with line eight, where the line turns due west and connects with several north-south lines before terminating at line seven. Due to a tragic accident in 2021, causing a number of fatalities and injuries where a portion of elevated guideway extensively used on the southern portion of the line collapsed, line 12 has been closed since. The line's underground portion is set to reopen in early 2023, and its above ground section will be reopened when it is rebuilt and strengthened. The trains used on line 12 are unlike most of the others on the system, and were a last minute change. These cars are more conventional with steel wheels and 1500 volt DC overhead power lines, while also being wider than the trains used on the rubber-tired lines at 2.8 meters wide with seven car trains. They're also arguably the nicest looking trains on the system, with most of the rolling stock on the older lines looking very boxy by comparison, although this is being fixed with the newest model trains, slowly being rolled out onto line one. Now, as you might imagine, lines 10 and 11 have not been forgotten, and simply have not been built, yet. Well, sort of. As it turns out, Mexico City has two suburban metro lines, known as line A and line B, which opened at the beginning and end of the 1990s respectively. Line A is a suburban metro line that runs from Pantitland southeast to La Paz, with 10 stations over 15 kilometers of track, and with steel wheeled trains, the newest of which are very similar to those seen on line 12, albeit with 750 volt DC overhead power. Line B is slightly weirder. It runs northeast from an epic elevated station at San Lazaro, deep into the suburbs in the median of a highway, similar in style to line A, but it also takes over portions of the alignment for the planned line 10, running underground west from San Lazaro through the north of the historic city center to a terminus at Buena Vista Station. Because of its hybrid design, it's given a combined green and silver color, and, like older metro lines, it utilized rubber-tired trains running to the 21 stations along the 20 kilometer line. Now, in addition to the suburban metro lines, there are also two other suburban rail services currently operating in the Mexico City region. One of these is the Trend Suburbano, a modern suburban rail service with high-floor, fully walk-through EMUs from CAF, with lots of doors, that operate on mainline tracks electrified with 25 kilovolts AC overhead lines along a 27 kilometer route with seven stations, running from Buena Vista Station north, and connecting with line 6 of the metro on the way. The Trend Suburbano is particularly interesting as its trains share tracks and right-of-way with typical North American freight, showing this mixing is indeed possible. Listen up, American and Canadian freight companies. The other suburban railroad is the Xochimilco Light Rail, which was conceived as part of a larger, never-completed inter-urban scheme. The line operates using single, high-floor articulated tram vehicles, like those used in Guadalajara, and extends 18 stops over 13 kilometers south from Tascuena in a fairly well-isolated right-of-way that used to belong to the last remaining route of the city's extinct tram system. Beyond just the current network, a lot of projects are actually underway in CDMX, all of which really ought to get more coverage. The first of these, and probably the biggest, is the new inter-urban line to Toluca. This line is a fully new heavy rail line that will run from Observatorio, southwest into the hills, to the New Age business district of Santa Fe, sort of similar in concept to La de Fons Circanerie Worth, and then across the mountains into the satellite city of Toluca. In the spirit of the trend suburbano, the Toluca rail line will be very modern, with a design speed of 160 kilometers per hour, a new heavily tunneled and elevated rail alignment, 25 kilovolts AC overhead power, and modern 10-car trains from CAF. The total line will be nearly 60 kilometers long and will feature 7 stations. Unfortunately, though, to reach the historic city center of Mexico, or most other destinations, riders will need to change onto the metro at Observatorio. Fortunately, Observatorio is set to become much better connected, as an extension of Line 12 to the station is underway, and an extension of Line 9 is also planned. This would ultimately create a similar edge hub to Pantitland, where passengers transfer between urban and suburban services. Interestingly, as part of the new rail link being built to the Mexico City Airport as a branch of the trend suburbano, some of the trains from the Toluca line have been borrowed for the service. The new branch will be 23 kilometers long with 5 stations, and given the intercompatibility of it with the Toluca and trend suburbano trains, it does give me hope in the long term for a Mexico City Ariarski, that could connect the northern routes to the Toluca line by way of a 10 kilometer rail tunnel that could also connect to lines 2, 3, 7, and B, and bring rail to the Paseo de la Reforma. A second phase of such a project could convert Line A to mainline rail standards, extend it, and add a second cross city tunnel, adding links to lines 4, 5, and 8. Now, while Mexico City does not have an RER yet, it does already feature various other transport modes, used to link up its various neighborhoods and provide additional travel options. For me, the most notable of these is the Metro Bus, a 7 line BRT system that moves nearly 2 million riders per day. That's more than the entire Berlin U-Bahn. Lines 1, 2, 3, 5, and 6 all feature substantial stations with turnstiles and raised platforms to work with the high-capacity, high-floor buses used on those lines. Lines 4 and 7 use more traditional low-floor buses with more modest stops, the buses on Line 7 being awesome double-deckers that run along the Paseo de la Reforma. All buses have station announcements and information screens, while all stations have digital screens with the ETAs for upcoming buses. There's also the Mexibus system that operates within the state of Mexico, serving more suburban areas to the north and east of the city. This system has four routes and over a hundred stations, all of which are meant for use with high-floor buses. It lacks the information screens and station announcements, but it makes up for it with various express services that skip stations unlike on the Metro Bus. On top of the BRT systems, there's also the Mexico City trolley bus system, which is part of the same transport division as the Sochi-Milko light rail. The trolley bus system has nine different lines that now use modern, battery range-extended trolley buses, but most interesting of all is Line 10, a new east-west elevated trolley bus line which operates articulated trolley buses on a fast route between Line A and Line 8. Plans for the future call for a new Line 11 that will head east from Line A, as well as a western extension of Line 10. The full trolley bus fleet was renewed last year with the oldest buses now being from 2019 instead of 1985. Mexico City has also embraced cable-based transport with the Cable Bus, a series of gondola routes that serve areas with challenging geography. There are currently two routes with one terminating at the same stations as trolley bus Line 10, but providing a different route. Line 3 is already in construction and will connect to the four sections of the Chipotlepec forest, with additional routes also being planned. Funnily enough, as with the BRT, the state of Mexico has a similar, but differently named gondola system, which will eventually interconnect with the Cable Bus, known as Mexi Cable. It's all rather confusing, but more transit, more better. With all of these routes considered, you can see that there is a lot of rapid and high capacity transit in Mexico City beyond the metro, and that with all of the systems combined, there is an incredibly dense network. What's nice as well is that for many of the services, including the very substantial EcoBishi bike share system with over 6,000 bikes and growing, a single contactless transport card can be used, something that some cities still do not have in 2022. There are a lot of lessons to be had from all of Mexico City's transit, from not putting your whole metro deep underground, to developing various transport modes for different types of journeys, to creating beautiful designs and stations that actually make people interested and excited to be in them, and perhaps most of all that North America does have a giant modern metro system. Picture this, you've just enjoyed an informative RM transit video, and you head down to the comments section to see what insights other locals and viewers have to say about the Mexico City metro, and to leave a nice comment of your own. A nice one, definitely a nice one. A second later, a notification comes through your YouTube app, and apparently RM Transit has replied to you with a link to totally not suspicious.com. You might not think much of it and discard it right away, but what about your transit-loving grandma? Would she be able to tell that it's probably a link to a virus-ridden website? This is where today's sponsor NordVPN comes in. Besides being a great virtual private network service that allows you to connect to 5,000-plus servers in 59 countries around the world, and get access to apps, content, and websites that might otherwise not be available wherever you might find yourself, NordVPN also comes with Threat Protection, an advanced anti-malware feature that blocks intrusive ads and web trackers, as well as automatically scanning and blocking suspicious links to help you stay safe on the diverse landscape of the internet. With a single NordVPN subscription, you can also get access on up to 6 devices at once, on every major platform, so you don't have to worry about being able to access internet safely on your work laptop, personal phone, or any of your other personal devices. And of course, NordVPN also offers best-in-class speeds, saving me a ton of time whenever I need to upload new YouTube videos or do live streams when I'm on the go, as well as giving you a great experience watching them. Go to NordVPN.com slash transit to get a 2-year plan plus 4 additional months with a huge discount. It's risk-free with Nord's 30-day money-back guarantee, and it'll help me keep bringing you great videos like this one. Again, that's NordVPN.com slash transit. Thanks again to NordVPN for sponsoring this video. A special thanks to Guido Enriquez for his on-the-ground footage from Mexico City used in this video.