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The Kharkiv Metro is the metro system that serves the city of Kharkiv, 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

Kharkiv is commonly dubbed as the second capital of Ukraine. Despite its proximity to Russia, it was the republic's capital from 1918 up until 1934. During that time the first designs for a rapid transit system were formed. However after the capital moved to Kiev and the destruction of the city brought by three battles of the Second World War, a rapid transit system was out of the question until the mid-1960s, when the fifth largest city in USSR was showing the signs of need for a rapid transit. Finally in 1968 the first construction works triumphantly began.

Seven years later on the August 23, 1975, the first eight station segment of 10.4 kilometres was put into use. They were built at a time when the dictated Soviet functionality design of architecture ceased, missing Stalinist times. The metro does not have the very beautiful decorations that stations in Moscow and Saint Petresburg 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. Kharkov 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
• Electric railways