INTERNATIONAL: The opening of the latest extension takes Chongqing up to seventh place in Railway Gazette’s analysis of the world’s largest metros, displacing London Underground (405 route-km) out of the top 10 for the first time and leaving Moscow (437 route-km) as the sole non-Chinese city represented.
The opening of Chongqing’s Line 4 extension takes the metro network to 435 route-km, including more than 100 km of monorail but excluding service connections and a peoplemover.
Moscow itself was demoted to sixth place with the opening of Hangzhou’s 31 km Line 3 extension on June 10 2022.
Although the Russian capital is extending its network, faster progress is being made by the seventh-to-10th placed metros of Chongqing, Wuhan, Nanjing and Shenzhen. Moscow is likely to be surpassed by these over the next couple of years, but retain its position in the top 10 until challenged by the expanding networks of Seoul (389 route-km) or Delhi (349 route-km).
The next group of Chinese metros are Tianjin, Xi’an, Qingdao and Hong Kong, ranging from 240 to 268 route-km.
