wrote:
Buenos Aires also does that multiple names for the same station thing.

As does New York, since most stations are named after cross streets. I
can ride the F or V train along 6th Avenue to the 14th Street station or
I can ride the L train along 14th Street to the 6th Avenue station and
reach the same point. (To make matters even more confusing, a
passageway to 7th Avenue permits free transfers to the 1, 2, and 3
trains. So if you're on the L and you want to transfer to the 7th
Avenue line, you have to get off at 6th Avenue.)

New York also has multiple stations with the same name, for the same
reason. There are additional stations named 14th Street at Union Square
and at 8th Avenue. There are even two routes that stop at pairs of
identically named stations: the B stops at 7th Avenue (and 53rd Street)
in Manhattan and at 7th Avenue (and Flatbush Avenue) in Brooklyn, and
the R stops at 36th Street (and Northern Boulevard) in Queens and at
36th Street (and 4th Avenue) in Brooklyn. And if that's not bad enough,
the D train has stops named 47th-50th Streets, 50th Street, and Bay 50th
Street.

The New York Metrocard is paper, not plastic - I have one here as a
bookmark somewhere.

No, the standard MetroCard is plastic. SingleRide tickets and bus
transfers are paper.

What annoys me is that you need a US zipcode to buy
one with a credit card (and I'm pretty sure you can buy top-ups too) -
US banknotes hardly ever work in machines, so it's hard for foreigners
to get hold of one.

Do the machines ask for zip codes for foreign cards? That's pretty silly.
--
David of Broadway
New York, NY, USA

In message , David of Broadway
writes

As does New York, since most stations are named after cross streets. I
can ride the F or V train along 6th Avenue to the 14th Street station
or I can ride the L train along 14th Street to the 6th Avenue station
and reach the same point.

A similar system on the Paris metro brings together some deliciously
unlikely pairings: Barbès — Rochechouart (a 19th-century
revolutionary writer and a 17th-century aristocratic abbess, Richelieu -
Drouot (Louis XIII's secretary of state and Napoleon's aide-de-camp) and
so on.

--
Paul Terry

Paul Terry wrote:
In message , David of Broadway
writes

As does New York, since most stations are named after cross streets.
I can ride the F or V train along 6th Avenue to the 14th Street
station or I can ride the L train along 14th Street to the 6th Avenue
station and reach the same point.

A similar system on the Paris metro brings together some deliciously
unlikely pairings: Barbès — Rochechouart (a 19th-century revolutionary
writer and a 17th-century aristocratic abbess, Richelieu - Drouot (Louis
XIII's secretary of state and Napoleon's aide-de-camp) and so on.

But unlike in New York, IINM the Paris system refers to the entire
station complex by the combined name. In New York, you won't find any
reference to 14th Street on the station name signage on the L platform
or to 6th Avenue on the station name signage on the F/V platform.

One odd exception is one stop away, at Union Square, which even the
automated announcements on the L announce as 14th Street - Union Square,
despite the fact that Union Square is the third of five consecutive
stops that the L makes along 14th Street.

There have been attempts to unify some complexes. For instance,
references to Bryant Park popped up a few years ago at the station
complex that includes the 42nd Street station on the B/D/F/V and the
5th Avenue station on the 7, and the massive station in Brooklyn
currently known as Broadway Junction was until a few years ago (2001?)
signed as Broadway Junction only on the L platforms, with the J/Z
platforms signed Eastern Parkway and the A/C platforms signed
Broadway-East New York. (The A/C platforms were fully retiled in the
renaming. The J/Z platforms did once have an exit to Eastern Parkway,
but that exit was closed permanently in the 80's or early 90's.)

And some station complexes have had unified names since they've opened.

But for many of them, there is no conceivable name that would make sense
on all of the platforms.
--
David of Broadway
New York, NY, USA