I don’t know many other people who have been on the Cairo Metro (I rode it in 2009), so this may be one of the few English websites out there that has photos and information about it.  However, I don’t personally know anyone who has been on the Pyongyang Metro, and no, there will not be a North Korea section on Oren’s Transit Page anytime soon.

I’ve certainly been on my fair share of subway systems around the world, and I’ve even been to some systems in their entirety (you can see the entire list of subways I have been on here).  However, there are some cities that I have not visited and have no intention of visiting anytime soon, and as a result, you will not be seeing photos from those places on this website.  One of those places on my “no desire to go there list” is Pyongyang, the capital of North Korea.  The Pyongyang Metro supposedly has two lines and about 16 stations served by rolling stock imported from East Germany.  However, as with most things related to North Korea, the truth is hard to verify and I won’t be traveling there to visit every station.  Instead, I’ll send you to a blog entry on a website called “Earth Nutshell”, where a tourist claims to have visited all the stations on both lines of the Pyongyang Metro.  This is notable because many North Korean tours only include two subway stations, and some have suggested that the “commuters” are just actors and the subway is no larger than the two stations seen by tourists.  Furthermore, the number of subway cars imported to North Korea is much larger than the number needed to operate the supposed two line 16 station network, feeding speculation that a secret network for the Pyongyang elite might also exist.  The one constant in all the reports from the Pyongyang Metro is that the stations are very ornate and feature many propaganda murals and even statues of eternal president Kim Il-Sung.  Also, as is common in just about every place in North Korea, a photo of Kim Il-Sung and Kim Jong-Il is present on board each subway car.

Intrigued but not yet ready to commit to a highly regulated tour of North Korea?  (I don’t blame you aren’t sold on the idea of traveling to Pyongyang.)  Then click here to see Elliot’s tour of the Pyongyang Metro and enjoy touring this system vicariously.

Oren’s Reading List is an occasional feature on The Travelogue in which I share articles that I’ve read that might also be of interest to the readers of this website.

Yesterday, I saw an article on CityLab about yet another way to map out New York’s subway lines.  Most of the world’s subway maps, including the iconic maps from New York, London, and Washington (among others), are not drawn to scale, as the density of stations in the city center would make the map illegible.  Sometimes, one can find scaled maps, as they are useful in showing how far out a city’s network might extend, however they are not great for trip planning.

Andrew Lynch recently created a self described “totally accurate, totally useless” set of maps showing each New York City subway line to scale.  His own description fits perfectly.  The maps are to scale, and therefore accurately drawn.  However, they are also totally useless because you can’t use the individual posters to navigate the system if you need to use more than one line to get to your destination.  But I’d point out that while they might not be so helpful in figuring out how to get from the Bronx Zoo to Coney Island, they do show how distorted the subway map that we are so familiar with is. For example, take a look at the 8th Avenue IND poster on Lynch’s website.  You can see that although the A train is the longest subway route in New York at 32 miles, it’s stations are far from being evenly distributed in terms of the distance between them.  Furthermore, it is 3.5 miles between the Howard Beach and Broad Channel stations, the longest distance between any two single stops on the entire subway and one not fully appreciated on the not-to-scale maps put out by the MTA.

See more of Andrew Lynch’s work on his website, http://vanshnookenraggen.com.

Oren’s Reading List is an occasional feature on The Travelogue in which I share articles that I’ve read that might also be of interest to the readers of this website.