One of the deepest in the world is the Kiev metro station

What now seems to take for granted was formerly a fantasy. Sweets have become widely available, but a hundred years ago they were terribly expensive and scarce. Phones are endowed with features that not every computer can boast of, and twenty-five years ago to imagine a phone not only a huge imagination could allow a phone to be stationary. Metro, which is a component of everyday life and the means of transportation of most of Kiev, appeared less than sixty years ago.

The third in the Union

The Kiev metro was the third in the Soviet Union after the capital and Leningrad. The opening of the first metro line took place on the eve of the anniversary of the October Revolution in 1960. The first metro stations of Kiev were a line connecting the railway station with the Dnieper and passing along the central axis of the city. For the sake of historical justice, it should be noted that the first draft of the underground railway in the city, following the example of London, was considered at the end of the nineteenth century, but the city authorities did not support it. How did not support a similar project in the early twentieth century, just one year before the revolutionary events. Already in the thirties they made a new attempt and even began to carry out preparatory work, but they were interrupted by the war, and the project was quiet for a decade. During the post-war reconstruction of the city to resume underground work did not return, it was not until that. But already in 1949 the construction of the Kiev subway began to boil.

Steady start and rapid growth

Underground manipulations were new to builders, the terrain was not particularly studied, which caused complications and the construction and joining of the first five stations stretched for a decade. At that time, one of the deepest metro stations in the world was built - "Arsenalnaya", and the line, called "Svyatoshinsko-Brovarskoe", is still the title of the deepest in the world. The first metro stations of Kiev did not remain alone for long. Their number gradually increased, and the opening dates of new stations were constantly timed to the main holiday of the Soviet Union. Eleven stations of the first subway line were already opened, when in 1970 the construction of a new branch began. The new line was called "Kurenivsko-Krasnoarmeiskaya" and crossed the existing one almost at right angles. The first Kiev metro stations of this line began operating in 1976. The third, the last for today, is the Syretsko-Pecherskaya line, whose stations were opened in 1989, although it began to be built eight years before. The newest line connected the historical central and newly built southern Kiev. The metro station "Kharkivska" was built literally in the center of the new urban district and was put into operation in 1994.

Metro scheme

The first stations were few, and the passengers knew them all by heart. But the number of them increased, there were transfer stations, and there was an urgent need to visually show all the metro stations in Kiev. The scheme of today's metro of the capital of Ukraine looks like this:

The Red "Svyatoshin-Brovary" line now has eighteen stations and has a length of more than twenty-two kilometers. The blue "Kurenivsko-Krasnoarmeiskaya" also includes eighteen stations with a length of almost twenty-one kilometers. The youngest, green Syretsko-Pecherskaya includes only sixteen stations, but it is the longest - about twenty-four kilometers.

Stations today

Initially, the stations wore names, the use of which was required in the country of the victorious revolution. But after the declaration of independence, most were renamed. The stations were named historic or new, by the name of the places near which they were located. By the time the European Football Championship was held in the country, the metro had sounded English station names and places of transplants for a city train. But despite the large volume of new construction and the significance of the human traffic (more than five hundred million passengers per year), the residents of the capital of Ukraine want to get new metro stations in Kiev, which will allow them to move on the most convenient public transport without transplantations.