Line 7 of the subway is the deepest one of the entire underground transportation network of Mexico City: to take a train headed to Barranca del Muerto or El Rosario, three flights of stairs must be used. Each of them is as high as three overlapping basements. The temperature rises as the bodies of all the passengers enter the tunnels, stepping into ever deeper geological strata. The trains stop at the platform and the passengers crowd the edge, trying to shove their way into the train car. The platform may sit just under the clay layers sheltering a shallow aquifer, in the middle of the first rocky layers of this portion of the Earth’s crust. The train drives underground, north to south, under the foundations of buildings in the western side of the city. In Tacubaya, this line intersects with lines 1 and 9, causing a swarm of people. Like foam, they push in and out of the open train cars: closer to the surface, changing from one line to the other, climbing from one stratum to the other. [...]
Subway
in ENCYCLOPEDIA