Vienna Underground – A Short History

People transport in Vienna just isn’t alone about the subway. You will find driving busses, trams and also the overground train. There isn’t a perfect date for your first day, when drives began around the subway from Vienna. It absolutely was a really complicated system. The initial date within the books is 1898 with all the opening of Otto Wagners citytram – something which is nearly the identical today. We speak from Line 4 along with a section of Line 6, known today as modern trains as well as in 1898 as rail steam locomotive. The difference is simply a few changing times.

Timetable
1925 was the entire year, in which the City Train was reopened as a possible urban transport system after being electrified from the town of Vienna. The operation took place, however, with streetcar sets.
In 1969, three lines were built: U1, U2 and U4 and connected a lot of places within the city. Inside the time between 1883 and 2000 came two new lines within the center: U3 and U6 and in the next many years to 2028 will build the extension in the lines U1, U2 and U5.

New dates for opening
The third first date from your subway of Vienna was 1976 if the first new subway train ran along the way between Heiligenstadt and Friedensbrucke. It was known as a “test operation”. Additionally, the traveled route have been operational since 1901.
Last although not the least, in the year 1978, was built the very first new tunnel between Karlsplatz and Reumannplatz. It absolutely was opened with big celebrations. Nevertheless, subway trains had already been around the U4 line for just two years.

1898
I tend to view the year 1898 as correct, analogous to the opening date of the London Underground in 1863: this coming year too a steam locomotive-powered metropolitan railway was opened in open cuts or shallow tunnels in addition to their electrification took place time later. The very first electric subway in mining tunnels was opened there in 1890, but there is nowhere a reference – the London Underground will not have been opened until 1890. Within this sense, 1898 appears to me to be acceptable to Metro Wien.

The Middle of the Century
After Wwii, it was decided in 1946 to come back two-thirds of the area “Greater Vienna” to Lower Austria. The emergence with the “Iron Curtain” as well as the occupation of Vienna by the four Allies, which lasted until 1955, also acted being a brake on growth. Although a reconstruction-enquiry declared world war 2 project with the Siemens Building Union as an official subway network; it had been targeted at a town of three or four million inhabitants, as well as today just isn’t in sight. In 1954, Karl Heinrich Brunner therefore presented a streamlined concept – but without any possibility of realization. Another utopian project was Rudolf Maculan’s trackless subway (1953).

City Tram
Inside the city, motorized private transport increased strongly from your fifties. The resulting conflict of use in public areas roads was then often solved in support of private transport: As with a multitude of locations in Europe, the tram network was reduced from 1958, but not as radical as with other cities. The duties of the abandoned tram lines were transferred mostly towards the new bus lines. During these years, there was also an unlucky politicization from the subway question, since the conservative OVP in the municipal election campaigns in 1954 and 1959 massively advocated for your subway, the dominant SPO and also the housing inside the foreground. Roland Rainer’s traffic concept 1961 was accordingly pronounced as U-Bahn enemy. It had been assumed a Viennese subway would lead to excessive promotion with the centrality from the inner city.
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