For a resident of a metropolis, the subway is a familiar way of getting to work, visiting or just for a walk. No one even thinks about the history of the creation of the subway, what this word means and how it happened. It will be very informative and interesting to learn about this.
What is it?
Metro is one of the types of urban public transport, which is carried out by the movement of trains on rails. Railroads run, as a rule, underground. But there are such types of subways in which the movement is combined: part of the way the train follows in the tunnel, and part of the rail track runs on the ground. The movement in the subway is consistently frequent so that the trains have time to cope with the load in the form of a large number of people. During peak hours, train intervals are shortened to avoid crowds. Train speeds may vary by country, city and other factors. There are both high speed trains and regular speed trains.
Subway Signs
Metropolitan - what is it? The main features that distinguish the subway from other types of public transport were introduced by Robert Schwandlem, who created an entire website and wrote several books dedicated to the subway.
Signs of the subway:
- subway trains can only be found in cities;
- trains must be equipped with an electric drive;
- used for large passenger flows;
- the rail route is strictly separated from other modes of transport and does not intersect with them anywhere;
- the level of the platform and the floor in the car is the same (this feature is secondary).
The paradox is that if you follow all these signs, then the underground in London in the early years of its existence did not fit the definition of "underground" due to the fact that the trains in it moved on steam traction.
Semantics of the word
Let's give several meanings of the word subway from different dictionaries.
Explanatory Dictionary of the Russian Language by D. N. Ushakov:
Metro is an underground or overpass railway in major cities.
Explanatory dictionary of the Russian language by S. I. Ozhegov:
Metropolitan is an underground, surface or elevated (on overpasses) urban electric railway.
New explanatory and derivational dictionary of the Russian language by T. F. Efremova:
Metropolitan is a type of urban passenger transport in the form of a rail urban electric railway(usually underground).
As you can see from the description, the meaning of the word corresponds to the signs of the subway described above: everywhere it points to the electric railway.
Origin of the word
The name "metropolitan" (subway, subway) is generally accepted in most countries. The origin of the word is associated with the company that built the first railway in London. The company was called the Metropolitan Railway, which means "metropolitan railway".
In 1900, the first metro line was opened in the main city of France. The company that operated the road was called the Compagnie du chemin de fer Métropolitain de Paris. The entrances and exits of the stations were designated by the word Métropolitain, hence the French origin of the word "metro". In Russian, the word "metro" belongs to the neuter gender, but even before the 1920s it was used in the masculine gender.
History of the Subway
As mentioned earlier, the first railway was built in London: there were too many horse-drawn carts on the streets, and the underground was the solution to this problem. The rail track, 6 kilometers long, was built and opened in 1863. It was partly financed by the railway companies as it needed constant access to central London.
In 1890, the first electric rail track was opened in the English capital. Underground lines were in high demand among the population, so they needed to be expanded as quickly as possible. So, after 10 years, about 200 kilometers of railroad were put on electric traction.
BEurope was also engaged in the construction of the subway, by the beginning of the 20th century, many short underground lines were built. The first mixed rail network appeared in the city of Glasgow in 1880, the lines were cable and steam traction.
In 1896, the first subway was opened on the European mainland in Budapest, its length was only 3.7 kilometers. And in 1902, the U-Ban was launched in Berlin, as the subway was called.
The first subway in the US, the Tremont Street Underground, was opened in Boston in 1897. Its length was only two kilometers, but this significantly freed the city from trams.
The best subways
The longest subway in the world is the American subway in New York. The total length of the rail track is 1,355 kilometers, and the number of subway stations is 468. The New York subway is unusual in that more than a third of the routes do not go underground, but on the surface, although they do not intersect with other public transport in any way. More than five million people use the subway every day.
Tokyo subway is the world's busiest subway. It is rather difficult for an ordinary tourist to understand the Tokyo subway scheme: there are thirteen lines on which 290 stations are organized. In Tokyo, the subway is used even by officials and people who have more than one car at their disposal, because this type of public transport is recognized as the fastest and allows you to avoidtraffic jams.
Fun fact: the Tokyo subway has a women's carriage at the end of the train, and there is almost never a crush.
