Six first subways, and the cities that built them

London, 1863

The first underground railway in the world opened on January 10, 1863, between Paddington and Farringdon. It belonged to the Metropolitan Railway. Steam locomotives pulled wooden carriages lit by gas, and about 38,000 people rode it on the first day. The tunnel was built by cut and cover: dig a trench along a street, build a brick tunnel in it, and put the road back on top. That is one reason early lines follow the streets above them so closely.

Budapest, 1896

Budapest came next. On May 2, 1896, during Hungary's millennium celebrations, a short electric line opened under the city. Locals call it the kisfoldalatti, the little underground. It was the first electric metro line on the European continent, and it opened thirty-three years after London's.

Boston, 1897

Boston's Tremont Street subway opened on September 1, 1897, and became the first subway tunnel in the United States. The first train left at 6 in the morning with a little over a hundred people on board. By midnight about 250,000 people had paid the five-cent fare. The Boston Globe counts it as the fourth subway in the world, after London, Budapest and Glasgow.

New York, 1904

New York's first line opened on October 27, 1904. The Interborough Rapid Transit Company ran it from City Hall north to 145th Street at Broadway, 9.1 miles and 28 stations. Mayor George McClellan drove the first train himself at 2:35 that afternoon and liked it so much that he kept the controls as far as 103rd Street. When the line opened to the public at 7 p.m., more than 100,000 people paid a nickel to ride. The stretch along Broadway north of Times Square is still served by the 1 train.

Tokyo, 1927

Tokyo's first subway opened on December 30, 1927, between Ueno and Asakusa. It was only 2.2 kilometers long with four stations, and it was the first subway in East Asia. The man behind it, a businessman named Noritsugu Hayakawa, had seen the London Underground on a visit in 1914 and decided Tokyo needed one too. He co-founded the Tokyo Underground Railway in 1920. Construction began in September 1925, and the line carried as many as 53,000 people a day. It is now part of the Ginza Line.

Seoul, 1974

Seoul's Line 1 opened on August 15, 1974. It was the first electrified rapid transit line in South Korea, and the second on the Korean peninsula after the Pyongyang Metro, which had opened the year before. The underground part ran 7.8 kilometers between Seoul Station and Cheongnyangni. Through service onto Korail's tracks soon pushed the line far beyond the city, from Soyosan in the north to Incheon in the west. Line 1 is still the oldest axis of the capital region.

What the dates show

Sixty-four years separate London from Tokyo, and another forty-seven separate Tokyo from Seoul. New York opened its first line forty-one years after London did, and Boston beat it by seven. The pattern is not a race. Every one of these lines started with a short, expensive tunnel between places that already had a lot of traffic, and then grew outward for decades. Seoul's second line, for example, opened on October 31, 1980, and its loop was only completed on May 22, 1984.

You can still ride the descendants. The Metropolitan line in London carries the name of the company that dug the first tunnel, and the Ginza Line, Line 1 and the 1 train are all in HelloSubway. Pick one and type your way along it.