Artist and urban planner Neil Freeman of Fake is the New Real has been updating his geographically accurate maps of city subway systems, all drawn to the same scale. We’ve used a selection of his maps below: can you identify the cities?





A note from Neil Freeman: When I say the maps are in the same scale, each is drawn in a custom Transverse Mercator map projection centred on each system. I’ve defined “metro” as high-capacity urban heavy rail systems that run on grade-separated right-of-ways. They run with short headways, at least at rush hour, and are generally built to serve commuters. Further, the metros I’ve included have platform boarding (you might have to mind a gap, but you don’t ascend steps).

Since I’ve included “urban” systems, I’m excluding inter-city lines. I also exclude short systems that primarily serve as transit within a business district. There are, of course, grey areas. London’s DLR is an edge case, and I think that one could reasonably include it in this list. However, it has “light railway” right there in the name, so I think that distinguishes it from “heavy rail”. Seoul’s subway and commuter rail systems are intertwined in ways that are difficult to categorised, and I hesitate to say I’ve made the right choices there. The underlying data is from OpenStreetMap and is available under the Open Database Licence.