A sign for the Paris Métro.

“I swung on to my old guitar,
Grabbed hold of a subway car,
And after a rocking, reeling, rolling ride,
I landed up on the downtown side”
Bob Dylan

As the orange train slows and stops at one of three final resting places in the Helsinki metro system, it tends to stop on the wrong side of the tracks. It loops over to the left side of the platform so that the operator simply has to exit what is now the rear of the vehicle, walk along the cars to the front, then drive in the opposite direction. The metro leaves the Vuosaari and Mellunmäki stops every 8 or 10 minutes, giving the driver plenty of time to wander down the platform smoking a cigarette or eating a sandwich.

It is difficult not to think of sandwiches when one discusses subways. Finland is ranked 24th in the world in terms of Subway restaurants. There are 21 in the country. That’s one Subway for every 240,000 people. Compare that to the 19,467 that are in the United States of America (15,000 people per store), or the 876 in Australia (25,000 people per store). Subway is the third-largest franchise in the world and the fastest growing. There are Subway outlets in Tanzania, Saint Kitts and Nevis, and Afghanistan. No one knows why the filled baguette or roll is called a submarine sandwich. In Viet Nam it is Bánh mì. In Philadelphia they call it Hoagie.

The Merriam-Webster dictionary defines Subway as “an underground way, or a passage under the street.” Americans call this an underpass. An underground railway is called an Underground in Britain, and a Subway in the USA. Metro is more loosely defined as a rapid transit system. This gets rid of the pesky need to go underground, which the London system does only 45% of the time. Generally, the name is thought to have been taken from the Paris Métro, a system well regarded for its architecture. Its 214 km and 300 stations serve 4.5 million daily, more than the London Underground and the Helsinki Metro combined. London’s underground system is the oldest in the world, stretching 400 km with 270 stations. It began operation in 1863.

The only metro in Finland was completed in 1982. Although work has recently begun to extend it, the track is currently draped in a loping Y across 21 km and 17 stations. Robert Smith and The Cure sang about ”midnight on the subway” in 1979, but in Helsinki the last metro runs at half past 11.

A sign from the Tokyo Metro.

The Helsinki metro’s daily ridership is nearly 200,000. This is a fair amount considering the population of Helsinki is only around 500,000. New York City lists over 5 million daily passengers on a system that stretches for 368 km and 468 stations. That’s the entire population of Finland, every day. Amazingly, the greater Tokyo Metro system carries about 8 million passengers a day. One of the most commonly reported crimes in the Tokyo Subway system is frotteurism – very heavy petting indeed – leading to the establishment of women-only cars.

Metro is also a city in Indonesia, the name of the regional government in Portland, a Canadian supermarket chain, and a newspaper. That newspaper has 81 editions in 22 countries and, according to their published results, every day over 22 million people read it. Subway is the name of a Luc Besson film and a British rock band, as well as referenced in the titles of countless songs and musicals. (A classic example can be found here.) Writers, too, have their relationship with rapid transit systems. The recently deceased John Updike tossed a critic under the subway in “Bech at Bay,” published in 1998. Even now, they are building a metro station named for Fyodor Dostoevsky in Moscow.

In Helsinki, as the metro pulls into its final stations, passengers begin to crowd the doors. They wait for the doors to open, then, rushing to the escalators, they stand politely on the right till reaching the top, brusquely taking off again, arms swinging. But when the driver pulls this aforementioned devilish trick of switching tracks, the passengers hear the doors opening behind them and are no longer first off the vehicle. (The passengers waiting to get onto the metro busily push their way in, even though there is 8 to 10 minutes to wait.)

A few weeks ago, I held onto my daughter’s pram as the metro pulled into Vuosaari, moved over to the opposite track, and stopped. But instead of the doors on the right side of the vehicle opening, the doors on the left opened instead. I laughed, stifling it as an elderly woman nearly careened over the edge, caught by the arm by a watchful teenager. The doors closed and opened, this time on the correct side.

It was Updike who wrote that “no act is so private it does not seek applause.” The woman trundled off with barely a backward glance while the boy’s hands fluttered. I pushed my daughter to the elevators.

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