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What technical and/or operational criteria need to be fulfilled by a system to be included into this article? In German Wikipedia there have been extensive and rather emotional discussions whether to include Frankfurt's system in the U-Bahn category which ended with the decission to not include it, giving Germany four U-Bahn systems (Berlin, Hamburg, Munich and Nuremberg). The problem in said case was that the operator in Frankfurt officially calls it "U-Bahn", but there is generally a broad consensus in professinal literature that it is a "Stadtbahn", or light rail system, because a U-Bahn is generally considered to be completely separated from all other means of transport, whilst all lines of Frankfurt's system have street-bound sections at some point. So, which systems should be included here and should Frankfurt be deleted following the result of the discussion in German Wikipedia? MissyWegner (talk) 09:27, 18 June 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Frankfurt should be removed. It was irritating to see it on the list. Always every city in North Rhine-Westphalia has a Stadtbahn system, and they are not included. They all use the U symbol, but that doesn't make them metro systems.--62.96.99.98 (talk) 01:23, 3 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I have a tendency to to also remove "Frankfurt" from this list. However, if "Frankfurt" will be removed, then at least also "Charleroi", "Porto" and "Malaga" as well. These and some others systems are even less like a full metro. We need to find consensus over MissyWegner's question first: What technical and/or operational criteria need to be fulfilled by a system to be included into this article?KatVanHuis (talk) 12:21, 12 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I've found that one well known report (page 10) that classifies the Frankfurt U-Bahn as a light rail system: "U-Bahn is applied to all underground rail transit in Germany, whether rapid or light rail. The common belief that this term is synonymous with rail rapid has led to the false classification of some light rail subway operations. Light rail U-Bahn exists in Frankfurt, Cologne, Bonn, Hannover, Stuttgart. In Munich, Berlin, Nuremberg and Hamburg the U-Bahn is rail rapid." KatVanHuis (talk) 15:54, 11 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]