Vienna Underground – A brief History

The public transport in Vienna isn’t alone around the subway. There are driving busses, trams and also the overground train. You don’t have an exact date for your first day, when drives began about the subway from Vienna. It had been a very complicated system. The initial date inside the books is 1898 with all the opening of Otto Wagners citytram – a system that is nearly the same 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 main difference is simply a a few changing times.

U-Bahnnetz Wien, 2017

Timetable
1925 was the year, the location where the City Train was reopened being an urban transport system after being electrified through the town of Vienna. The operation happened, however, with streetcar sets.
In 1969, three lines were built: U1, U2 and U4 and connected plenty of places in the city. Within the time between 1883 and 2000 came two new lines within the center: U3 and U6 plus the following several years to 2028 will build the extension from the lines U1, U2 and U5.

New dates for opening
The 3rd first date from the subway of Vienna was 1976 when the first new subway train ran on the route between Heiligenstadt and Friedensbrucke. This is termed as a “test operation”. Additionally, the traveled route have been operational since 1901.
Last but not the very least, around 1978, was built the first new tunnel between Karlsplatz and Reumannplatz. It absolutely was opened with big celebrations. Nevertheless, subway trains had already been on the U4 line for just two years.

1898
I am inclined to observe the year 1898 as correct, analogous for the opening date from the London Underground in 1863: this coming year too a steam locomotive-powered metropolitan railway was opened in open cuts or shallow tunnels as well as their electrification took place time later. The first electric subway in mining tunnels was opened there in 1890, but there’s nowhere a reference – the London Underground do not need been opened until 1890. Within this sense, 1898 generally seems to me being acceptable to Vienna underground.

The midst of the Century
After World War II, the decission was taken in 1946 to come back two-thirds with the area “Greater Vienna” to Lower Austria. The emergence with the “Iron Curtain” as well as the occupation of Vienna through the four Allies, which lasted until 1955, also acted like a brake on growth. Although a reconstruction-enquiry declared the war project with the Siemens Building Union as an official subway network; it had been targeted at an urban area of 3 to 4 million inhabitants, and also today isn’t on the horizon. In 1954, Karl Heinrich Brunner therefore presented a streamlined concept – but without any potential for realization. Another utopian project was Rudolf Maculan’s trackless subway (1953).

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