Hacker News new | past | comments | ask | show | jobs | submit login

Isn't the fascinating thing here that "metro" has become the universal moniker for urban mass transit? Even in places that speak a language unrelated to Latin.

Germany has the U-bahn and S-bahn, Sweden the T-bana. And of course the one that started it all, the London Underground.




Nobody in London refers to the Underground as the "Metro". It is, of course, The Tube.


I mentioned it as an outlier. London, Glasgow, Germany, and Sweden were the ones I found that don't call it metro.


some people do. there is also a Metro newspaper free for all commuters


I guess some tourists do, but in my anecdotal experience they are in the vast minority. I can't recall ever having heard someone refer to the Tube as the 'Metro' in 15 years of living in London.

I think the name of the Metro newspaper may refer more to 'Metropolitan', as it is published in many different cities throughout the UK. Also, they probably would not have been allowed to publish a newspaper called 'The Tube' because of copyright.


Even with Londoners, I commonly hear "Metro" used as the generic term for a underground mass transit system, as opposed to "subway".


Not sure why downvotes, one cannot disagree? I know people calling it metro, they live in London, that's my experience and a reply to someone saying "nobody in London".


In Boston it is also the T (properly stylized as T⃝ if you have a good Unicode renderer). It doesn't stand for anything (it's run by the MBTA, and it's not ever called anything but "the T"), though Wikipedia tells me the logo is modeled after that of Stockholm's.


I always thought it stood for Transit


> And of course the one that started it all, the London Underground.

It's never called the Metro here. The Metro is a free newspaper.


It's a weird sort of universality that excludes the oldest and biggest mass transit systems, the London Underground and the New York Subway.


New York's subway stations are stilled marked on the street by a big "M", and you'll occasionally hear people say "metro," but "subway" is much more common -- it is the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, though.

In Chicago, which has another pretty old mass transit system, people call it the "el," even the parts that aren't elevated (i.e., the subway, though you'll hear "subway," too). Oddly, the commuter rail between Chicago and suburbs is the "Metra".


Does the New York Subway have a logo? I know the MTA does (it's kinda cool) but most New York subway street signs just have little roundels indicating the various lines through the station.

http://www.nyhabitat.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/eti...

Maybe the Subway doesn't have its own logo.


I've heard people call the New York system the metro.


The line that started it all is the Metropolitan Line in London.



Universal? I don't think "metro" sees use in the US for any mass-transit related purpose, and I'd be surprised to see it used for buses anywhere.


Los Angeles: LA Metro

Washington D.C.: Washington Metro

Miami: Metrorail


Fair enough. I guess I was thinking more along the lines of words rather than names. "Detroit Metro Airport" is a use of metro in relation to mass transit, too, but I suspect not what whoopdedo was talking about.


I hear the word "Metro" used as a generic term for transit systems often. I think it reflects the variety of transportation options usually included in a "Metro" system: subway, elevated trains, street cars, buses, etc.


Don't worry the German language has lot's of Ms to throw around, so we had to start stacking them:

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Bundesarchiv_Bild_18...


In Hong Kong, it is commonly referred to as the MTR (the company that operates it).




Join us for AI Startup School this June 16-17 in San Francisco!

Guidelines | FAQ | Lists | API | Security | Legal | Apply to YC | Contact

Search: