Kharkiv Metro

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Line scheme of the Kharkiv Metro system
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Line scheme of the Kharkiv Metro system

The Kharkiv Metro (Ukrainian: Харківське метро; Russian: Харьковское метро) is the metro system that serves the city of Kharkiv (Kharkov), the second largest city in Ukraine. The metro was the second in Ukraine (after Kiev) and the fifth in the USSR when it opened in 1975.

Contents

[edit] Lines and Stations

# Name Opened Length Stations
1 Kholodnogorsko-Zavodskaya Line 1975 17.3 km 13
2 Saltovskaya Line 1984 10.3 km 8
3 Alekseevskaya Line 1995 7.9 km 7
Total: 35.4km 28
(The colours in the table correspond to the colours of the lines in the Kharkiv metro map.)

[edit] History

The central platform of one of the first stations in the system, Kholodnaya Gora.
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The central platform of one of the first stations in the system, Kholodnaya Gora.

Initial plans for a rapid transit system in Kharkiv were made when the city was a capital of the Ukrainian SSR. However, after the capital moved to Kiev in 1934 and Kharkiv suffered heavy destruction during World War II, a rapid transit system was dropped from the agenda. In the mid-1960s, the existing mass transit system became too strained, and construction of the metro began in 1968.

Seven years later on August 23, 1975, the first eight-station segment of 10.4 kilometres was put into use. According to some, the metro does not have the beautiful and excessive decorations that stations in Moscow and Saint Petersburg Metros show, yet they do make the best of mid-1970s and later styles.

[edit] Facts and Numbers

The central hall of the Yuzhny Vokzal station.
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The central hall of the Yuzhny Vokzal station.

Nowadays, the Kharkiv Metro consists of 3 lines, 28 stations, and 35.4 kilometres of tracks. The stations arranged in a typical Soviet design of a triangle, that is, three radial lines crossing in the city centre. Open from 5:30 in the morning till midnight, it has a daily passenger traffic of over one million passengers.

Because of the city's uneven landscape, the metro stations are located on varying depths. Six of the system's 28 stations are deep level stations and the remaining rest are shallow. Of the former, all but one are pylon type, and the latter are of column type. The shallow stations compromise fourteen pillar-trispans and eight single vaults. Kharkiv was the first metro to exhibit the single vault design of the shallow type (see more on Skhodnenskaya article).

The metro is served by two depots which have a total of 320 carriages forming 59 five-carriage trains (all of the platforms are exactly 100 metres long).

The metro is subordinate to the Ministry of Transport of Ukraine and unlike the Kiev Metro, is not privatised and owned by a municipal company. In August of 2005, the Ministry proposed to transfer the metro to the city administration.

[edit] See also

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[edit] External links