Mexican “Metro”… the initial love changes to hatred

I use it every day. While travelling from the south of the city to the centre, Polanco, where my beloved Embassy situated is. At the beginning I enjoyed the ride, despite of the tons of sweat it has cost me during the six months of journeys in this overcrowded means of transport. In Metro you´ll meet new people, you´ll experience what really means to be face to face, bottom to bottom to somebody. You´ll make crazy some Mexican teens, while you have blue eyes, which is pretty unusual in Mexican metro. But first of all, you´ll certainly start thinking about the necessity of buying a car.

The Mexican underground is quite different from the Prague´s one. If I remember well, it has more than 160 stations, the Prague´s Metro will not reach 50, if I´m not mistaken. Mexican underground is extremely cheap. Despite it had cost just 2 pesos (2009) and has risen to current 3, it remains very cheap for the Europeans. Once you´ll pass the turnstile, you can travel how long you want (for 3 pesos). That´s probably the main reason why you´ll meet dozens and dozens of homeless and sellers in every wagon of every line – they can stay there all the day long, shouting and offering sweets, American chewing gums, sewing machines (!), pencils with light, toys, pirate DVDs, music, books, documentaries and everything for excellent prices. You´ll also meet an army of blind people, disabled people, native Indians, all of them begging. The first two carriages are reserved for women, the rest for men and women and the last one for gays (unofficially, but after more than 1 year of unwilling travelling in this last cab – relatively empty – in Czech criterion full, and after some flirt attempts of the gay community, I realized it might be true).

Initially, I liked the “Metro”. For the reasons above mentioned, (except “the last carriage” story) for its quickness, it seemed the best means of transport in Mexico City. Ultimately, I change my mind, I don´t like the underground in Mexico City any more. The quality doesn´t improve, from my point of view it´s even worse than half a year ago. It is also due to the reasons written below.
The underground doesn´t have a timetable, despite it´s true that the frequency is normally much higher than in Prague. Unreliability is the right word! Metro in Mexico City sometimes goes well sometimes it stops for minutes and minutes, without warnings, explanations or an apology. And you sweat, it´s even “funnier” when you´re wearing a suit as I do every day. In some of its lines (especially the orange one, from Barranca to Rosario and also the No.3 from C.U. to Indios Verdes) the temperature reaches 40 grades in summer, people tend to faint. The underground in Mexico is overcrowded every minute of a day (if measured by a Czech criterion), but during the rush hour it is “hasta la madre” (means: really overcrowded). Many times in the morning as well as in the evening you simply can´t enter the carriage…and the full trains passes by and by and by. When you´re finally pushed inwards with the help of other people, you will wait, sweating even more, until the driver finally stops his childish game of opening and closing doors again and again, which obviously does just for screw the people up and detain the train in a station as long as possible. Air-conditioning in the terms of the meaning of this word doesn´t exist. The stations (on the most of lines) are not announced by the driver (microphone) as it´s normal in Prague, so you really need to count them to get off at the station you had planned. If you use Metro in Mexico City be assure to never bet if you get on time to your job, however in most cases I managed it.

Mexican underground is starting to loose in my person one of its most enthusiastic and loyal customers, and that´s a pity. I even started to suspect, that the guys who work there, really don´t mind. There are dozens of things which could (and should) be improved in the Mexican underground, but it seems this company stuck in time. Besides, even if it´s true that the Mexican economy is a capitalist and market economy like anywhere else…there´s one important difference…it´s not a customer targeted economy. This claim deserves another, much longer, article.