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The Kharkiv Metro (Template:Lang-uk, Template:Lang-ru) is the metro system that serves the city of Kharkiv (Kharkov in Russian), 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.

History

The first designs for a rapid transit system in Kharkiv were made before 1934 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 the 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 the August 23, 1975, the first eight-station segment of 10.4 kilometres was put into use. The metro does not have the very beautiful decorations that stations in Moscow and Saint Petersburg Metros show, yet they do make the best of mid-1970s and later styles.

Facts and Numbers

Today the Kharkiv Metro has swelled since 1975 to an impressive 3 line, 28 station system with 35.4 kilometres of track arranged in a typical Soviet design of a triangle, three radial lines meeting in the city centre. Open from 5:30 till midnight (later on public holidays) it has a daily passenger traffic of a million Kharkovites.

Because of the city's uneven landscape, the Metro stations are located on varieng depths and as a result, of the 28 stations six are deep level and the rest are shallow. Of the former all but one are pylon type (the other being a column one). 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 Lines of the Metro

The colours in the table correspond to the colours of the lines in the map above.

External links

• Metrosoyuza
• Popular site (Russian)
• Subways Kharkov
• Kharkov Metro Fansite (Russian)
• UrbanRail Kharkov
• Kharkov Metro Plan (bottom of page)

• Metros in Europe
• Rail transport in Ukraine
• Electric railways