Vienna Underground – A brief History

The general public transport in Vienna just isn’t alone on the subway. You will find driving busses, trams and also the overground train. You don’t have a perfect date for your first day, when drives began around the subway from Vienna. It was an extremely complicated system. The initial date within the books is 1898 with the opening of Otto Wagners citytram – a method which can be nearly the same today. We speak from Line 4 along with a a part of Line 6, known today as modern trains as well as in 1898 as rail steam locomotive. The difference is only a matter of changing times.

Timetable
1925 was the year, where the City Train was reopened as an urban transport system after being electrified by the city 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. In the time between 1883 and 2000 came two new lines inside the center: U3 and U6 plus the next several years to 2028 will build the extension from the lines U1, U2 and U5.

New dates for opening
The next first date in the subway of Vienna was 1976 when the first new subway train ran on the way between Heiligenstadt and Friedensbrucke. This is known as a “test operation”. Additionally, the traveled route ended up operational since 1901.
Last although not the least, in the year 1978, was built the initial new tunnel between Karlsplatz and Reumannplatz. It was opened with big celebrations. Nevertheless, subway trains had recently been around the U4 line for 2 years.

1898
I tend to see the year 1898 as correct, analogous to the opening date with the London Underground in 1863: this year too a steam locomotive-powered metropolitan railway was opened in open cuts or shallow tunnels in addition to their electrification occurred some time later. The initial electric subway in mining tunnels was opened there in 1890, but there’s nowhere a reference – the London Underground would not have been opened until 1890. Within this sense, 1898 appears to me to be acceptable to Tunnelbohrmaschine.

The midst of a lifetime
After Wwii, the decission was taken in 1946 to go back two-thirds with the area “Greater Vienna” to reduce Austria. The emergence from 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 the war project of the Siemens Building Union as a possible official subway network; it was directed at a city of three to four million inhabitants, and even today isn’t in sight. 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
In the city, motorized private transport increased strongly from your fifties. The resulting conflict of use in public areas roads was then often solved in favor of private transport: Such as many places in Europe, the tram network was reduced from 1958, however, not as radical such as other cities. The tasks of the abandoned tram lines were transferred mostly for the new bus lines. During these years, there was also a regrettable politicization of the subway question, as the conservative OVP inside the municipal election campaigns in 1954 and 1959 massively advocated for your 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 that the Viennese subway would lead to excessive promotion with the centrality of the inner city.
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