- Fare and where to buy tickets
- Metro lines
- Working hours
- History
- Peculiarities
"We have a subway in the city!" - the residents of Krivoy Rog inform tourists, often without specifying that this transport system is significantly different from the subways of many other cities on the planet. For a long time, the metro has been called metrotram, that is, a transport system that combines the features of a metro and a tram. The Krivoy Rog metro system is just such a system.
Above the entrance to each station there is a large letter "M" - as in the subways of many cities around the world. True, some townspeople complain that the new metro line, built in 2012, made it look more like a tram than a metro, but still, most city residents continue to call this transport system the metro. This system is a kind of city landmark: for many visitors to the city who have never seen the metro trail before, it makes a rather strong impression. The Kryvyi Rih Metro Tram is unusual, interesting, but this does not exhaust its advantages: it is very convenient, and the fare in it is low (at least by Russian standards).
Fare and where to buy tickets
At the old metro tram stations, the fare is paid using plastic tokens, but on the new line, the fare is collected by the conductor.
The cost of the trip is two and a half hryvnia. You can buy a token at one of the ticket offices located at the stations. Unfortunately, at rush hours there are quite long lines near these ticket offices, so it is better to purchase tokens at other times (if there is such an opportunity). Turnstiles are installed at the entrances to the platforms of the metro tram.
Metro lines
There are four routes in the Kryvyi Rih Metro Tram system. Three colors are used to mark them on the map (the fourth route is not marked with any special color):
- Red;
- blue;
- green.
The total length of the tracks is approximately twenty-eight kilometers and thirty stations are located on them. Passengers are served by trains consisting of two or three cars; single-car trains are also used. By the way, some tourists find that tram cars are more comfortable than regular, classic metro cars. The daily passenger traffic is small: about sixty six and a half thousand people.
Working hours
The movement of trains starts at five in the morning and stops one hour before midnight. The time interval between trams is from five to fifteen minutes. In the evening, it increases to half an hour.
History
The plan to create a new transport system in Krivoy Rog emerged in the early 70s of the XX century. It was developed in detail and quickly began to be implemented. Several dozen organizations from different parts of the Soviet Union took part in the construction of the metro tram.
In the mid-1980s, a new transport system was opened. The length of its tracks was about seven and a half kilometers, at this distance there were four stations, seven trains ply between them. This section of the transport system connected the industrial zone and the railway station: this principle of construction was characteristic of the Soviet era, the first sections of the subways of many Soviet cities were built in this way - "from the plant to the station".
During the construction of the second stage of the metro tram, a problem of groundwater arose: several times the tunnels were flooded. In this regard, the site was opened somewhat later than planned. After its opening, the total length of the tracks was more than twelve kilometers. Almost half of these paths were (and are currently) in tunnels, laid at a depth of six to twenty-two meters.
In the 90s, the third stage of construction began. By the end of the 20th century, a new site was opened. It housed four stations, but in fact only two of them functioned. The other two were not yet completed; one of them opened in the early 2000s, the other remains closed to this day.
The length of the third section was approximately five and a half kilometers. One and a half kilometers of them were laid in shallow tunnels. Now the total length of the tracks was almost eighteen kilometers, of which more than a third were laid underground.
Relatively recently, a new line was opened: the metro tram was launched along the tracks of an ordinary city tram. This step caused an ambiguous reaction from the local population: the opinions of the townspeople were divided. Those who reacted positively to the appearance of a new line in the city make the following argument: now it has become easier to get to the remote corners of the city without transfers. Opponents, however, raise the following objections: the movement of the metro track along paths unsuitable for this will lead to a decrease in the speed of the trains and their rapid deterioration. In addition, with the advent of a new metro line, the metro began to look more like a regular tram than a subway, and the townspeople have long dreamed of a real metro (or at least a form of transport that would be as similar to it as possible). Opponents of the new line also argue that after its appearance, the Kryvyi Rih Metro Tram lost its uniqueness, since now it has more in common with similar transport systems in many other Russian and foreign cities.
It should be noted that the construction of the last line was accompanied by a number of miscalculations of the construction management. This caused inconvenience to the townspeople. So, on the day of the start of construction, some urban transport routes were changed (as they were an obstacle to construction work), but the townspeople were not warned in time. Tram traffic was blocked in some places, but no alternative transport was organized. The day of the grand opening of the line, like the day of the start of construction work, was not without unpleasant surprises for the townspeople: several trains on the new metro tram line were out of order (although traffic was quickly restored).
Peculiarities
It is rather difficult to talk about the peculiarities of the Kryvyi Rih Metro Tram, since this transport system in itself, in its essence, is unusual. Of course, there are similar systems in some other cities, Russian and foreign. Nevertheless, the number of such cities where public transport is the "underground tram" is small. Many guests of the city, especially those who have never heard of the metro tram before, describe their impressions of it in approximately the following words: “You are standing on the platform, waiting for an ordinary metro train, and then suddenly … a tram! Awesome … ".
But, of course, this transport system has other features as well. One of them is the architectural appearance of the stations, their design. All stations of the Kryvyi Rih Metro Tram are designed in such a way that, without exaggeration, each of them can be called a real architectural decoration of the area in which it is located.
Another feature of the Kryvyi Rih Metro Tram is the movement of trains not along lines, but along routes (that is, they run in the same way as ordinary trams).
Metro Kryvyi Rih
