In any subway system, what two stations, on the same line, are the closest together, by distance?
On the DC Metro system, Metro Center and Gallery Place/Chinatown are just three blocks apart, about 1/3 mile, or 1600 feet. From either station platform you can look down the tunnel and see people standing on the platform at the other station.
Too late to edit: note, 1600 feet is the distance from subway entrance to subway entrance at the street level; the tunnel itself from one station to the next is only about 800 feet.
NYTimes:
By MICHAEL POLLAK
Published: August 30, 2008
According to Glenn Lunden, director of rail systems planning for New York City Transit […]
“There are several pairs of stations that are a very short distance apart — slightly over two-tenths of a mile,” Mr. Lunden continued in an e-mail message. “They are: Bowling Green and Wall Street on the 4 and 5, Wall Street and Fulton Street on the 2 and 3, and Park Place and Chambers Street on the 2 and 3.”
But Antonio Cabrera, assistant chief officer for track engineering, said that the shortest distance is actually between Beverley Road and Cortelyou Road on the Brighton line B and Q — slightly less than 500 feet. (Ron Schweiger, Brooklyn borough historian, said that those two stations preceded the subway lines, and served a grade-level steam railroad, the Brooklyn, Flatbush and Coney Island Railroad.)
On the London Underground, the shortest distance is between Covent Garden and Leicester Square, on the Piccadilly Line.
[QUOTE=Wiki]
The journey between Leicester Square station and Covent Garden takes only about 20 seconds, and measures only 260 metres (0.161 miles), the shortest distance between two adjacent stations on the Underground network. The stations are so close that a pedestrian standing halfway between them on Long Acre can see both tube stations by turning around 180°.
[/QUOTE]
Are you going to exclude people movers in large buildings, and things like the Capitol Subway System?
Yes.
There’s less than 1000 feet between the Monroe station and the Jackson station on the Chicago red line. You can actually walk from one platform to the other underground. Before the Washington station closed it was around 600 feet from the Lake station.
In Chicago, both the Red Line and the Blue Line have stops at Monroe St. and at Jackson St. Monroe and Jackson run parallel to each other, separated by only two blocks (about 900 feet, or 280 meters.) This is a bit of a cheat, though, since the passenger platform is continuous between these two stations. The trains still stop at each location along the platform, so it’s technically two stops; but it can be debated whether they are separate “stations”.
The downtown stations of Nationaltheatret, Stortinget, Jernbanetorget and Grønland in Oslo are .7, .5 and .5 km apart. So beaten by London.
That was going to be my vote. Brighton Line FTW.
A lot of the stops on Boston’s T near downtown are so close, you have to wonder why there are separate stops. Downtown Crossing and Park Street are a block apart on the red line.
In fact, the stations are actually connected underground – you can WALK from one to the other, and damn the trains.
Park Street and Boylston on the Green line aren’t much farther apart:
Three stops on the Philadelphia PATCO line (formerly known as the Locust St Subway) are within 5 blocks:
9th-10th & Locust
12th-13th & Locust
15th & 16th & Locust
Google Maps: https://goo.gl/maps/CJsQ0
PATCO’s “Street Level Access” map showing the stairs - http://www.ridepatco.org/stations/9th_access.html
You can’t see from one to the other because there’s a slight elevation change in the tracks.
It’s not underground, but the Expo Line in L.A. has two stations that are a little over 1000’ apart: **Vermont **and Expo Park/USC.
The Downtown Long Beach and 1st Street stations on the Blue Line are also about that far apart.
There are a couple of stretches on the St. Louis Metrolink system where the stops are about 1,200’ or so apart.
If that’s what we’re going by, on the Tokyo Metro Hibiya line, Exit A1 of the Hibiya station and Exit C1 of the Ginza station are about 120 ft apart.
Don’t have the measurements, but Yonge to Bay stations or St. George to Spadina on the Toronto Bloor line looks to be pretty short, less than 200m.
Yonge to Bay is extremely short. I don’t know the distance, but 200 m sounds about right. When I was a student at U of Toronto, I used to walk from St. George to Yonge, bypassing both St. George and Bay stations (I needed a Yonge train), as it was usually faster than waiting for Bloor trains and connecting at Yonge.
In Toronto, Queen to King is pretty short too. It’s three blocks–I could probably walk the distance on the surface in the time it takes me to walk down to Queen, pay my fare, wait for a train, and ride it to King.
They’re not on the same track.
Both are on the Hibiya line, which is the dashed line running NW-SE.
Touche.