The development of the urbanisation process highlights the decentralisation phenomenon experienced markedly by metropolitan areas. Within its metropolitan area, Rio de Janeiro’s central area, has been, historically, the most established region, and it has also had the highest share of jobs. Nevertheless, it shares its lead with another development centres. Despite that, regional urban planning has devoted little attention to the emerging subcentres, creating a mismatch that results in unnecessary trips, high average travel times, and high occupancy rates within vehicles. Also, an incorrect match between functional centres represents restraints to their economic development. Therefore, this paper aims to contribute to better understand the subcentre structure by means of analysing the trip patterns of the Rio de Janeiro’s metro network. This study is based on an exploratory analysis of O-D matrices which were built with metro passengers in and out data. Results point to the emergence of new centres outside the CBD, and they also suggest that transit performance has not been able to keep up with these tendencies, creating severe operational issues.