First projects
The idea of the creation in St. Petersburg of the northern capital of the Russian Empire by the city's extra-urban railroad - the metro - has a long history and goes back to the nineteenth century. As far back as 1820 the engineer Torgovanov turned through Count M.A. Miloradovich to Alexander I with the project of construction of a tunnel under the Neva. The proposal received a resolution: "Issue 200 rubles to Torgovanov from the office and oblige him to sign off his projects from now on, but to practice in the fields peculiar to him." With close ideas and just as inconclusive acted well-known inventor, self-taught I.P. Kulibin. Unrealized projects by virtue of circumstances left then and Petersburg developments of the famous "father of tunnel construction" of the Englishman Mark Izambar Brunel. The Nikolayevsky (Blagoveshchensky) bridge, built in 1855, for some time pushed the solution of the task of connecting the Neva coasts and cargo-and-passenger transportation from the center to the Vasilievsky Island. However, soon she got up with a new sharpness. At the turn of the century, St. Petersburg turned into a fast-growing industrial city, the historical center of which turned out to be the focus of business activity. The revival of urban life, the growth of traffic in the old streets and avenues made us pay attention to new, not yet traditional ways of solving the transport problem.
In 1889 the Board of the Baltic Railway put forward the first project of the intercity railway between the Baltic and Finland stations. This was the beginning of numerous proposals and developments - a kind of forerunners of the Petersburg metro, from the end of the 1890s. almost annually received from various organizations and individuals. In most of the first projects, the city railroad was primarily intended for connecting all stations with a single line, as well as for unloading traffic along Nevsky Prospekt, the main thoroughfare of the Russian capital. It should be noted that the projects of that time are characterized by the desire not so much to connect the city center with remote outskirts in the south or behind New Village, how much to unload it from street transport. Almost all pre-revolutionary developments envisaged the construction of overhead lines on overpasses, which were used in those years in many cities of the world, with the extensive use of the routes of the Petersburg canals - Obvodny, Ekaterininsky (now Griboedov), Vvedensky and others. In 1900 I.V. Romanov experienced a section of an overhead suspended monorail road in the Gatchina area. The tests were successful. Later, Romanov created a project of the Ring Road around St. Petersburg.
In 1901, engineer Pechkovsky proposed to build a dacha station in the middle of Nevsky Prospekt, near the Kazan Cathedral, and connect it by an overpass-underground road (above the Catherine and Obvodny Canals and respectively under Zabalkansky Prospekt) with the Baltic and Warsaw railway stations. In the same year, engineer Reshevsky, working on instructions from the Ministry of Railways, developed two versions of the project, the purpose of which was to connect the lines of all St. Petersburg railway stations into a single city junction. The most interesting developments were put forward by one of the first theoreticians of the Russian metro construction, the engineer of communications P.I. Balinsky. His scheme provided for the construction of six city lines, including two large ring roads. Construction works (including the backfilling of low-lying areas of the city in order to avoid floods, the construction of 11 large bridges, the construction of embankments and flyovers with a height of 5-10 m, the laying of the railway lines, etc.) cost 190 million rubles according to his design.
Relying on statistical calculations and carefully analyzed examples from world practice, Balinsky was absolutely convinced of the advisability of introducing this undertaking in Russia. Speaking in 1902 in the Moscow City Duma in defense of his projects, he, in the development of this thought, regretfully stated that by that time all the major cities in the world "with a million population and above have already hosted or are hosting (like in Tokyo) urban high-speed railways or subways, and the exception ... are only three European cities: St. Petersburg, Moscow and Constantinople and six Asian cities: Canton, Calcutta, Beijing, Xiangtan, Hong Kong and Changzhou. " Such judgments as a whole found sympathy among businessmen and some prominent statesmen. The idea of the subway, in particular, was supported by S.Yu. Witte, familiar with the projects of Balinsky and fully approved of his estimates.
Almost simultaneously with the proposal of Balinsky (in 1902), a draft of the engineer G.A. Hirschson, over which the author continued to work for seven consecutive years. He assumed the connection of the Baltic and Warsaw railways and planned further extension of the line along the Fontanka embankment, the Ekaterininsky Canal of the Lebyazhy Gulf, across the Neva to Kamennoostrovsky Prospekt and further through Bolshaya Nevka to the Finnish Railway. This project foresaw the laying of an underground route under Nevsky Prospekt - from the Moscow railway station to Dvortsovaya square.
At the same time, engineers N.O. Kulzhinsky (1902), A.N. Gorchakov (1909), F.E. Enakiev (1912), G.O. Graftio (June 1917), as well as the Office of Urban Railways (1917). However, the struggle of various, often conflicting interests in the discussion of all these projects in numerous instances and the need for large financial costs for their implementation turned out to be insuperable obstacles to the realization of the idea of the Petersburg Metro. Return to it occurred only in the 1930s, in a completely different historical era.
November 6, 1955 from the station "Avtovo" went the first train, and on November 15 began regular passenger transportation. The first 11.2 km long section connected the city center with Avtovo.
On May 1, 1961, the first section of the second stage with a length of 6 kilometers with five stations under the Moscow Avenue from the Technological Institute to Victory Park was commissioned. On the new line for the first time in the country completely abandoned the cast-iron tubing finishing of the tunnel, thanks to which it was possible to achieve a record speed in the domestic practice.
The second section of the second stage of the St. Petersburg metro (from the station "Technological Institute" to the station "Petrogradskaya") was put into operation in 1964. When they dug a mine under the House of Books, they came across two huge boulders. Because of their size, it was impossible to pull them out of the mine. They decided to blast directly under the ground. The explosion was masterful: Nevsky did not suffer, the mine was not damaged. The Neva presented surprises as well - working under the river on the stretch between Nevsky Prospekt and Gorkovskaya, the sinkers found an unknown depression in the bottom of the Neva - they had to dive under it.
For the first time in the history of domestic metro construction, the station "Victory Park" was deprived of landing platforms. On the sides of the central hall are two rows of metal doors. Stations of this type are called "horizontal lift". The construction of the station made buildings less expensive, stations of this type are safer in operation, since in the intervals between trains the doors of the station are closed, which excludes the fall of people and objects on the way. With the doors open, you can only get inside the car. However, in the future it turned out that this type of station is more difficult to operate. The driver is forced to manually stop the train with jewelry accuracy - an error of a few centimeters will lead to the fact that the doors of the cars inaccurately coincide with the doors of the station, which will complicate the exit and landing of passengers.
In 1967 the movement on the third line of the metro was opened - the Hevsk-Vasileostrovskaya. Initially, there were four stations on the line - "Alexander Nevsky Square", "Mayakovskaya", "Gostiny Dvor" and "Vasileostrovskaya". All the stations of this section were built as a "horizontal elevator".
In 1969, work began on the construction of the continuation of the first, Kirov-Vyborg line from the station "Lenin Square" to the north in the area of Grazhdanki. This site will present a "surprise" twice. In 1974, during the construction on this site metrostroevtsy again encountered quicksand. The situation prevailing on the stretch between the stations "Lesnaya" and "Ploshad Muzhestva" could turn into a terrible tragedy.
The first metro stations were built using massive cast-iron tubing and monolithic reinforced concrete structures. Later they moved on to using lighter and more technologically advanced prefabricated reinforced concrete frames. Lighter reinforced concrete bearing elements made it possible to begin the construction of unique single-vaulted deep-setting stations for their time. The first such stations "Ploshad Muzhestva" and "Polytechnic" were opened in 1975.
In 1978, the section "Academic" - "Komsomolskaya" (Devyatkino) was opened. The last station is located one and a half kilometers behind the city limits, in the village of Murino. The metro station looked amusing amidst the rural landscape. Now, this area is quite intensively built up.
In 1979, the Kirov-Vyborg line was extended from the station "Avtovo" to the south. The new site was conducted in comparatively favorable geological conditions of the Ligov heights and was built in an open way.
In the 80s there were works on the Frunze radius, a new branch from the city center towards Kupchino, but it was not possible to complete the work, another turning point has come in the country.
After the decision of the Council of Ministers of the USSR on the liquidation of the Main Metro Administration of the Ministry of Railways in 1990, the subway was transferred to the ownership of the city and today it is a unitary municipal enterprise. In the spring of 1992, the subway officially changed its name. From "Leningrad, the Order of Lenin, the metro VI. Lenin ", he turned into the" Petersburg Metro. " The metro logo was changed, the old logo is still present on the tokens.
As for the construction of new stations, the economic crisis in the country could not but affect the pace of their construction. New stations were opened only on the section of the Right-Bank Line further from the station "Alexander Nevsky Square". The last station on this section "Komendantsky Prospekt" was opened in 2005.
The construction of new stations was also hampered by the second erosion in December 1995 on the same ill-fated plot - a transfer between the stations Lesnaya and Ploschad Muzhestva. As a result of the second erosion, it was necessary to flood the tunnels and to abandon funds for the construction of a bypass tunnel.
Until now, it was necessary in fact to stop the design and survey work on the construction of new lines and stations and freeze the already ongoing construction where the degree of availability of facilities does not allow us to hope for more or less their prompt commissioning. The delay from the program of development of the underground network in Leningrad, approved by the USSR Council of Ministers in 1985 until 2025, has been more than 20 years.
In 2004, after almost nine-year break, the movement of trains on the "Ploshad Muzhestva" - "Lesnaya" section was resumed.