This article on how metros divert trips from cars struck a nerve with me. Of course, removing cars is not the point; the point is that removing cars is necessary to larger issues (like the green energy transition that the article is about, or like allowing for better, more walkable cities). But I think it's worth reminding ourselves of what it is that metros do so well.
1. Space Available
A metro frees up surface space in two different ways. The first is the most obvious: the metro itself is not on the surface. That means it produces transit capacity that does not demand surface space (well, besides station space, and even that can be largely off the surface).
This goes even for things like the Chicago El or Vancouver SkyTrain that are not below the surface.
Pictured: a highly efficient way to move people off the surface of the street.
The second way a metro produces space is the way that the article I linked to brings up: it takes cars off the road and thus reduces the need to use surface space for other modes, as well as for itself.
None of the people in this train are in a car, obviously.
Trains like the above are why the Boston metro area can give up street space to bicycle lanes (well, that and the fact that bike lanes are actually very efficient people-movers themselves, but it certainly makes the political argument easier).
2. Non-Linear Transportation Options
Of course I don't mean this literally: a metro does indeed run in a line. Rather, I mean that a metro is not restricted to the existing linear layout of the city in which it is built, and can connect areas that are not easily connected (or connected at all).
Metro maps, like this MBTA map, are often schematic precisely because they don't model onto the existing street network easily.
And it's a lot harder to walk or drive to the airport here than to take transit.
Metros thus allow for a more integrated and effective plan of city transportation than streets alone can.
3. Centralized Development
A metro also provides a very clear opportunity for transit-oriented development and clear spaces for where development is happening and where it will happen in the future.
This development in Somerville, MA is intimately connected to the Green Line expansion there; no expansion, likely no development.
Likewise, Canary Wharf and its surroundings were revitalized along with the deployment of the Docklands Light Railway.
If you're the sort of pedant who is pointing out in your head that both of those are technically light rail masquerading as and integrating in with proper metro, first of all welcome, this is a safe space, and second of all how about the very development of Central London itself, both a driver of and a result of the origination of metro systems in 1863 and following? Not to mention the towns of Metroland built up by service from the original metro, the Metropolitan Line.
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