Mexico City – The Metro System

For a lot of people, hanging out in the subway, tube or metro is a bit of a nightmare. For me, it gives you a chance to get up close and personal with the locals and see the world through their eyes. Sure, there are times when a nice cab or personal drive is good to insulate yourself from the seething masses, but if you never take public transport, you don’t really feel the soul of a city.


Today, I finally worked out the Metro system, properly. Tickets are 2 pesos each – which is about US$0.20 or GBP0.10. The trick is to buy a bunch of tickets so you don’t have to queue each time. It’s no cheaper, but it is more convenient. Unlike the Guadalajara Metro which goes from nowhere to nowhere, the Mexico City Metro is very convenient. No attraction is more than about ten minutes walk from a Metro station, so it’s incredibly cheap and convenient.

The trains themselves are generally well maintained and clean, but you don’t really notice that when fifty people are jammed into every crevice of your body. Unlike most cities where the Metro is only really busy in the morning and evening, the Mexico City Metro seems to be jam packed any time of day. With taxi crime being such an issue, I can see why. It’s cheap, fast and efficient. What more can you ask for!

Just to add a bit more character into the mix, throughout the trips, there are a huge range of wandering merchants coming through the trains selling various junk. The most popular seems to be sellers of music. Even with my dodgy Spanish, I was able to work out than one dude was selling the “rock and roll classics of the 70s, 80s and 90s”. Just to make his point, he had the music blaring out through a little stereo that he had in a bag strapped to his back. This seemed a pretty well organised racquet. It wasn’t often that you didn’t have someone selling music.

There were also some very sophisticated sellers. Some were selling movies and music video DVDs. These guys had portable DVD players so you cans see what you’re going to buy, as well as hear it – at maximum volume, of course! I can’t tell you how weird it was to see local Brisbane boy Darren Hayes from Savage Garden playing at maximum volume an inch from my face in Mexico City. But that’s not all. The super classy salesmen were selling CDs full of MP3 files. Such is the increasingly sophisticated life of the pirate!

In such crowded places, personal security always has to be a high priority. There are numerous stories about people being pick pocketed on the Metro. Mind you, they say the same thing about the London Underground and I never feel threatened there. Ultimately, pay attention and stand in a corner or against a wall and you’re fine. I was never threatened at all in any of my numerous trips.

Apparently, they have stopped digging new lines in the city. Every time they tried, they unearthed some massive new archaeological treasure, so it became too hard to proceed. Much the same thing happened in Athens when their Metro was built for the Olympics.

By the end of my time in the city, the Metro was no longer a novelty, it was an essential part of life in Mexico City. It’s just so convenient, so quick and so cheap. Anyone who chooses to risk their life in a taxi instead is missing out on a lot.