The world's first metro was opened in London in 1863 and consisted of 5 stations. Since then, this mode of transport has spread throughout the world and has undergone significant changes. Having appeared in the USSR back in the 30s, the metro is still an important and integral part of the transport system in several cities of Russia.
Different sources indicate different data on how many metro stations are operating in Russia - this is due to the fact that old stations are closed, new ones open, and long-term plans are often mistaken for existing schemes. According to the last count, in all cities of Russia there are now 316 stations in the subways of seven cities.
Moscow
The first metro in the USSR was built in Moscow and opened in 1935. The first line connected Sokolniki and Park Kultury stations with a branch line to Smolenskaya. At the moment, the metro in Moscow consists of 12 lines with 194 stations. The total length of the lines is 325 km.
St. Petersburg
Despite the fact that the St. Petersburg (at that time Leningrad) metro was officially opened in November 1955, the first projects of its construction were presented much earlier than the Moscow one - back in the 19th century. But for a long time there were reasons that did not allow its construction - first, insufficient technical equipment, then the war.
At the moment, there are 5 metro lines in St. Petersburg, including 67 stations and a total length of 113.6 km.
Nizhny Novgorod
The next in chronology of opening was the Nizhny Novgorod metro, launched in 1985. In terms of the number of stations and the total length of lines, the Nizhny Novgorod metro is much inferior to Moscow and St. Petersburg - only 14 stations and 19 km.
A feature of this metro is its shallow depth. Only two stations - Moskovskaya and Gorkovskaya - are equipped with escalators. The metro has only two lines, but there are prospects for expanding the metro for the 2018 FIFA World Cup.
Novosibirsk
The fourth in Russia was the Novosibirsk metro. It was opened in 1986 and is still the only metro outside the Urals. It has 13 stations in its arsenal - two lines with a length of 16 km.
Samara
On December 26, 1987, the opening of the subway took place in Samara. At the moment, only one line has been built, consisting of 9 stations and a length of 11 km. The entire line can be traveled in just 20 minutes.
However, in the future - the construction of two more branches of 12 and 9 stations, respectively, and the expansion of the first.
The construction of the metro has been going on in Chelyabinsk for many years, but so far not a single station has been built. This gave rise to a lot of jokes about what is, apparently, buried too deeply.
By the way, it was in the Samara metro that some scenes from the film "Metro" were filmed.
Yekaterinburg
The metro in Yekaterinburg (at that time in Sverdlovsk) was the last one opened in the USSR, it happened in April 1991. At that time, the metro consisted of only three stations. Now there are 9 stations in Yekaterinburg, located on one line with a total length of 13.8 km.
It is not known for certain whether this is true or not, but it is believed that the Yekaterinburg metro after its opening was included in the Guinness Book of Records as the shortest operating metro in the world.
The longest and most extensive in terms of the number of metro stations is in New York, it has 468 stations and 337 km.
Kazan
The youngest metro in Russia is Kazan, it was opened in 2005 in honor of the millennium of Kazan. Initially, it consisted of 5 stations on a 7 km line. Now there are 10 stations on 16 km of track, by 2018 it is planned to open a new branch of 18 new stations.
