Metro projects for the imperial capital The question of building an underground road in Saint Petersburg arose in 1820. A resident of the city, a self-taught man by the name of Torgovanov, submitted a bold project to Tsar
Alexander I — involving the digging of a tunnel from the center of the city to
Vasilyevsky Island. The Russian ruler rejected the project and ordered the inventor to sign a pledge "not to engage in hare-brained schemes in the future, but to exercise his efforts in matters appropriate to his estate." Other, more developed projects subsequently emerged, but they, too, received no recognition. Many arguments were advanced against the construction of an underground road. The "city fathers" stated that the excavation works would "violate the amenities and respectability of the city"; the landlords affirmed that underground traffic would undermine the foundations of the buildings; the merchants feared that "the open excavations would interfere with normal trade"; but the most violent adversaries of the novelty, the clergy, insisted that "the underground passages running near church buildings would detract from their dignity." Thus all the projects for the construction of an underground passage in Saint Petersburg, and later in Petrograd, remained on paper. By the end of the 19th century, certain interested parties began discussing the possibility of opening the
Russian Empire's first metropolitan railway system. The press of the time praised the initial plans, while engineers privately worried about the serious lack of experience in the sort of projects required to build a metro; at the time, Saint Petersburg did not even have electrified
tramways. However, due to the wish of the municipal authorities of the time to take ownership of the metro after its eventual entry into service, none of the aforementioned projects ever came to fruition. In 1901 the engineer Vladimir Pechkovsky presented his project to build an elevated station in the middle of
Nevsky Prospect, opposite the
Kazan Cathedral, and to link it, via elevated and underground sections of track (above the Ekaterinsky and Obvodny canals and beneath the Zabalkansky prospect) with the
Baltiysky and
Varshavsky Rail Terminals. In the same year, Reshevsky, also an engineer, working at the behest of the Emperor's minister for transport, came up with two possible projects, which aimed primarily to unite all of Saint Petersburg's main railway stations with one urban interchange. An interesting development, the work upon which had been carried out for many years by railway engineer P.I. Balinsky (one of the first Russian metro engineers) involved plans to build a dedicated network of six urban lines, two of which would be radial lines with a total length of . The construction work (including the filling of low-lying areas of the city in order to avoid flooding, construction of 11 major bridges, embankments and viaducts at a height of , and the actual laying of track etc.) was projected to cost around 190 million rubles. However, in 1903 Emperor
Nicholas II rejected the scheme before any work ever started. Almost all pre-revolutionary designs featured the concept of an elevated metro system, similar to the
Paris or
Vienna metros. However, as it was later discovered through the experience of operating uncovered ground-level metro sections in St. Petersburg (which were later closed due to the same reason), such projects would lead to many difficulties in its maintaining. Unfortunately, Russian engineers had neither sufficient equipment nor technical skills at the time to build deep-lying tunnels through the challenging ground beneath St. Petersburg. In 1918,
Moscow became the country's capital after the
October Revolution of 1917 and the
Russian Civil War (1917–1922) followed; for more than a decade plans to build a metro in Petrograd languished.
First phase construction, abandonment, and opening In 1938, the question of building a metro for St Petersburg (by then renamed to Leningrad), resurfaced at the initiative of
Alexei Kosygin,
Chairman of the Executive Committee of the Leningrad City Soviets of Working People's Deputies. Ivan Zubkov, an engineer who for his work was later to become a
Hero of Socialist Labour was appointed the first director for the metro construction. The initial project was designed by the
Moscow institute 'Metrogiprotrans', but on 21 January 1941 'Construction Directorate № 5 of the People's Commissariat' was founded as a body to specifically oversee the design and construction of the Leningrad Metro. By April 1941, 34 shafts for the initial phase of construction had been finished. During the
Second World War, construction work was frozen due to severe lack of funding, manpower and equipment. At this time, many of the metro construction workers were employed in the construction and repair of railheads and other objects vital to the
besieged city. Zubkov died in 1944, having never seen the opening of the metro.
The initial post-war era In 1946,
Lenmetroproyekt was created, under the leadership of M A Samodurov, to finish the construction of the metro first phase. A new version of the metro project, devised by specialists, identified two new solutions to the problems to be encountered during the metro construction. Firstly, stations were to be built at a level slightly raised above that of normal track so as to prevent drainage directly into them, whilst the average tunnel width was to be reduced from the standard of the
Moscow Metro to . On 3 September 1947, construction began again in the Leningrad subway, and in December 1954, the Council of Ministers of the USSR ordered the establishment of the state transport organization
Leningradsky Metropoliten, to be headed by Ivan Novikov. The organisation set up its offices in the building directly above
Tekhnologichesky Institut station. On 7 October 1955 the electricity was turned on in the metro, and on 5 November 1955, the act by which the first stage of the metro was put into operation, was signed. Ten years after the end of the war, at the beginning of the post-Stalin
Khrushchev Thaw, the city finally got an underground transport network. The subway grand opening was held on 15 November 1955, with the first seven stations (the eighth one,
Pushkinskaya opened a few months later) being put into public use. These stations later became part of the
Kirovsko-Vyborgskaya Line, connecting the
Moscow Rail Terminal in the city centre with the Kirovsky industrial zone in the southwest. Subsequent development included lines under the
Neva River in 1958, and the construction of the Vyborgsky Radius in the mid-1970s to reach the new housing developments in the north. In 1978, the line was extended past the city limits into the
Leningrad Oblast. 1,023 governmental awards were made to participants of the construction of the metro first stage.
Further development The first expansion of the metro took place in 1958, when the first line (later to become the Kirovsko-Vyborgskaya Line) was extended beneath the
Neva river to the
Finlyandsky Rail Terminal. Later this same line was extended when the Vyborgsky radius, constructed in the 1970s, brought the metro to new residential areas constructed in the north-east of the city, and by 1978, those further out, in the nearby
Leningrad Oblast. The metro was expanded to the south-west, with the construction of the Kirovsky radius, in 1977. Construction of the second,
Moskovsko-Petrogradskaya line began almost immediately after the initial opening of the metro. Just six years later, in 1961, the section from
Tekhnologichesky Institut to
Park Pobedy, along Moskovsky Prospect to the southern areas of the city, was opened. In 1963 the line was extended north to the station
Petrogradskaya station; in the process making
Tekhnologichesky Institut the USSR's first
cross-platform interchange station. Further extension of the line was undertaken to the south in the early 1970s, and in the 1980s to the north, with the final station
Parnas being opened, following numerous delays, in 2006. station is widely considered to be one of the most exquisitely decorated metro stations in the world. The third
Nevsko-Vasileostrovskaya Line was first opened in 1967 and eventually linked
Vasilievsky Island, the city centre, and the industrial zones on the southeastern bank of the Neva in a series of extensions (1970, 1979, 1981 and 1984). The fourth line,
Pravoberezhnaya, was opened in 1985 to serve the new residential districts on the right bank of the Neva before reaching the city centre in 1991 and continuing to the northwest in the late 1990s. It was in this period that the opening of the metro's fifth (
Frunzensko-Primorskaya) line was planned, however, it was only in 2008, with the opening of
Volkovskaya and
Zvenigorodskaya stations, that this took place. On 7 March 2009, when the fourth line was expanded with the addition of
Spasskaya station, the fifth line finally (as dictated in earlier projects) began to directly serve both the
Primorsky and
Frunzensky districts of Saint Petersburg. By the time of the
dissolution of the Soviet Union, the Metro comprised 54 stations and of track. Up until this period, it was officially known as the 'V.I. Lenin Leningrad Metro of the
Order of Lenin' (Леининградский Метрополитен Ордена Ленина имени В.И.Ленина).
1992-present station is of the
horizontal lift design, a type of
platform screen doors unique to the Saint Petersburg Metro. In early 1992, construction work was carried out at 14 stations. These were six stations of the Primorsky radius (
Admiralteyskaya,
Sportivnaya,
Chkalovskaya,
Krestovsky Ostrov,
Staraya Derevnya, and
Komendantsky Prospekt), two stations on the fourth line (
Spasskaya and transfer tunnels to
Sadovaya station),
Parnas and the 'Vyborg' depot on line 2, and five stations of the Frunzensky radius (
Zvenigorodskaya,
Obvodny Kanal,
Volkovskaya,
Bukharestskaya, and
Mezhdunarodnaya). Thus, it was believed, considering the average time of construction of a metro station in Saint Petersburg being 5.6 years, that, with sufficient funding, all the works mentioned above would be completed by 1997; a record in the history of the construction of the St. Petersburg metro. This however, was not achieved, and the plans were only completed in late 2012. In 1994, plans were to almost "double" the size of the Metro system within 10 years, building three new lines and 61 new stations. However, in reality, by 2004, only 6 new stations were opened. At this point, the metro considered funding construction through a system of individual stage and station sponsorship. Saint Petersburg's geology has frequently hampered attempts by Metro builders. While constructing the
Kirovsko-Vyborgskaya Line in the 1970s, the tunnelers entered an underground cavity of the
Neva River. They managed to complete the tunnel, but in 1995 the tunnel had to be closed and a section of it between
Lesnaya and
Ploschad Muzhestva flooded. For more than nine years, the northern segment of the line was physically cut off from the rest of the system. A new set of tunnels was built and, in June 2004, normal service was restored. == Lines ==