Wikijunior:Public Transit/Subway
Subways are trains with tracks and station that are underground – taking the pressure away from busy downtown streets. Now, many cities around the world have subway systems, but some of the oldest are in London, Budapest, and New York.
The London Underground first opened in 1863, as the Metropolitan Railway – and it was the world's first underground passenger train system! Today, only about of the network is actually underground, although the system is still called the "Underground" or the "Tube". Up to five million people ride some of its eleven different lines each day.
In the early days, steam engines were still used to pull the trains, and this caused the air in the station to become very polluted.
The Underground continued to expand during the 20th century, and the work continues today. An extension of the Northern Line was finished in 2021.
Many of the subway stations built in the Soviet Union have impressive designs, but Tashkent (now the capital of independent Uzbekistan) has some of the best. Tashkent was the seventh Soviet system built, in 1977, but the first in Central Asia. After the Soviet Union fell apart in the 1990s, Tashkent continued expanding and improving its metro system, launching a new line in 2001. Embarrassingly, one of the new stations got drenched in water due to a bad ceiling just a few days before the grand opening!
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New York City
editAnother of the world's oldest and largest subway networks, New York City has more than 400 stations, most of which are underground.
Cairo
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Bibliography
- Khalid, Adeeb (2022). Central Asia: A New History from the Imperial Conquests to the Present. Princeton University Press. p. 331.
- Stronski, Paul (2010). Tashkent: Forging a Soviet City, 1930–1966. University of Pittsburgh Press. p. 259.
