IELTS Writing Practice Test 39 (Task 1) and Sample Answers

Established in 1863, London Underground is the oldest and has the longest line length of route amongst the six with 394km, twice as much as the second-longest system in Paris, and serves 775 million passengers per year. The underground networks in Paris and Tokyo were opened in the first few decades of the 20th century and have 199 and 155 km of route respectively, which are far less than the network in London. However, these two systems have far more customers than that in London, with Tokyo underground being the busiest with 1927 million yearly.

The three less busy underground systems are those in Washington DC, Kyoto and Los Angeles, with the passengers per year figures of 144, 45 and 50 million respectively, which are just fractions of the figures for London, Paris and Tokyo. The newest system is in Los Angeles, which only began to operate at the turn of the new millennium, and has 28km of the route.  Both of those in Washington DC and Kyoto started to serve customers in the late 20th century, but while Washington has a relatively long underground route of 126km, the length of Kyoto underground is just 11km, the shortest amongst the six networks.