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They're not going to the London Underground signs nor the New York Subway signs.

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It really boils down to the fact that Toronto, NYC and London are among the very few cities that do not refer to their rapid transit lines as "the metro". I'm sure there are more exceptions but "metro" is by far the most common. Even Montreal uses it. I'm sure a native Parisian would like at you funny if you ever asked them how to get to the subway.
 
Only a few don't call rapid transit Metro?

Offhand, I can think of very few English-speaking cities that use "Metro" for rapid transit lines. None in Canada. Washington DC jumps to mind. Perhaps Newcastle - but even that's somewhere between LRT and rail. I can think of far more examples of English-speaking cities that use Metro for buses and light rail, than I can of rapid transit.
 
That's what I've always understood. There's hardly any rapid transit systems in Canada to start with so that's a bad example. Based on the amount of "M" logos on the link provided by DSC, it would appear that Metro is the most common term for these systems.
 
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I think in the case of most of them though rather then being the French term it's actually the short form for Metropolitan. Much like we used to have the Metro Toronto Zoo.
 
TheTigerMaster said:
"Metro rapid"... It's a bus. Are they trying to be ironic?
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All their buses are Metro. So an express bus as Metro rapid makes sense. The buses are Metro Bus and the Subway/LRT is Metro Rail. To confuse things, BRT is Metro Liner.

So, no they don't call the subway the Metro in LA. The M symbol is used on the shortest of local bus routes.
 
kotsy said:
It really boils down to the fact that Toronto, NYC and London are among the very few cities that do not refer to their rapid transit lines as "the metro". I'm sure there are more exceptions but "metro" is by far the most common. Even Montreal uses it. I'm sure a native Parisian would like at you funny if you ever asked them how to get to the subway.
Click to expand...
Boston: The "T" for MBTA
San Francisco: BART or MUNI
Chicago: "L" trains
Philadelphia: Who knows what it's called, no one really takes it :) Actually the system is called SEPTA, you'll often hear people say "subway" or "Broad Street Subway"
Atlanta: MARTA
Baltimore: never taken it but wikipedia tells me it's alternately called "Metro Subway", "The Subway", or "Baltimore Metro"

So it seems subway is rather uncommon in colloquial usage.
 
Houston refers to their entire "rapid" (hah!) transit system as METRO, and they only have buses and a pathetically tiny light rail line (no subway). Then again, the city sim game Cities: Skylines refers to their subways as "metros", although the developer of that game is Finnish.
 
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