Metro Qartulad

[Ortiz Ullery]

TheMadrid Metro (Spanish: Metro de Madrid) is a rapid transit system serving the city of Madrid, capital of Spain. The system is the 14th longest rapid transit system in the world, with a total length of 293 km (182 mi). Its growth between 1995 and 2007 put it among the fastest-growing networks in the world at the time. However, the European debt crisis greatly slowed expansion plans, with many projects being postponed and canceled. Unlike normal Spanish road and rail traffic, which drive on the right, Madrid Metro trains use left-hand running on all lines because traffic in Madrid drove on the left until 1924, five years after the system started operating.

Trains are in circulation every day from 6:00 am until 1:30 am,[5] though during the weekends, this schedule is to be extended by one more hour in the morning in 2020. Furthermore, the regional government intends to keep stations opened around the clock during these days from 2023 onwards.[6][7] It has only stayed open 24 hours during the 2017 World Pride and during the 2021 Madrid snowstorm.[8]

A light rail system feeding the metro opened in 2007 called Metro Ligero ("light metro").[9] The Cercanas system works in conjunction with the metro, with a majority of its stations providing access to the underground network.

On 19 September 1916, a royal decree approved the 4-line plan for the creation of the metro of Madrid. The engineers who created the plan, Mendoza, Gonzlez Echarte, and Otamendi then began the process of raising the 8 million pesetas to begin the first phase of the project, the construction of Line 1 from Sol to Cuatro Caminos. Carlos Mendoza made contact with Enrique Ocharn, the director of Banco de Vizcaya, who offered 4 million pesetas on the condition that the public pledged an additional 4 million.

Mengemor published a brochure to persuade people to make donations. The men were able to raise 2.5 million pesetas of the 4 million they needed. King Alfonso XIII intervened and invested 1.45 million pesetas of his own money.[11]

The first phase of construction was finished in 1919. It was constructed in a narrow section and the stations had 60 m (200 ft) platforms. The enlargement of this line and the construction of two others followed shortly after 1919.[12] The Madrid metro was inaugurated on 17 October 1919 by King Alfonso XIII.[13][14][15][16] At the time of inauguration, the metro had just one line, which ran for 3.48 kilometres (2.16 mi) between Puerta del Sol and Cuatro Caminos, with eight stops.[13]

The king, the royal family, and others, then took part in the first official metro ride which went from Cuatro Caminos to Ro Rosas, and took 40 seconds. There they stopped for one minute, before traveling to the Chamber station which took 45 seconds. The trip went all the way to the end point, Sol. The king and his family then rode the metro back to Cuatro Caminos from Sol, this time without stopping. The journey took 7 minutes and 46 seconds.[14]

Two days later, on 19 October 1919, the Madrid metro was opened to the public. On its first day, 390 trains ran, 56,220 passengers rode the metro, and the company earned 8,433 pesetas in ticket fares.[17]

During November and December 1919, the metro had an average of 43,537 passengers a day and earned an average of 6,530 pesetas a day in ticket sales. Due to their success, the company decided to expand more, and created 12,000 new shares to sell to the public to raise more funds to fund further expansion.[17]

The Company then began to gather materials necessary to expand the Line 1 from Sol with the new stations Progreso, Antn Martn and finally Atocha. The latter was then and is now an important train station for mainline rail.

On 31 July 1920 the company submitted it proposal to extend Line 1 from Atocha to Puente de Vallecas. In 1921 the company declared its interest in beginning the line from Sol to Ventas, with the first phase of the project being built from Sol to Goya, along Calle Alcal.

On 26 December 1921 the Sol-Atocha section of the Line 1 was inaugurated, adding three new metro stops to the line: Progreso, Antn Martn, and Atocha. The king and queen, Don Alfonso XIII and Doa Victoria, attended the inauguration.[19]

In 1924, traffic in Madrid switched from driving on the left to driving on the right, but the lines of the Madrid Metro kept operating on the left hand side.[20] In 1936, the network had three lines and a branch line between pera and the old Estacin del Norte (now Prncipe Po). All these stations served as air raid shelters during the Spanish Civil War. After the Civil war, the public works to extend the network went on little by little. In 1944, a fourth line was constructed, absorbing the branch of Line 2 between Goya and Diego de Len in 1958, a branch that had been intended to be part of Line 4 since its construction but was operated as a branch of Line 2 until construction works had finished.

In the 1960s, a suburban railway was constructed between Plaza de Espaa and Carabanchel, linked to lines 2 (at Noviciado station with a long transfer) and 3. A fifth metro line was constructed as well with narrow sections, but 90 m platforms. Shortly after opening the first section of Line 5, the platforms of Line 1 were enlarged from 60 to 90 m, permanently closing Chamber station since it was too close to Iglesia (less than 500 m). Chamber has been closed ever since and was recently[when?] reopened as a museum.[21]

In the early 1970s, the network was greatly expanded to cope with the influx of population and urban sprawl from Madrid's economic boom. New lines were planned with larger 115 m long platforms. Lines 4 and 5 were enlarged as well. In 1979, bad management led to a crisis. Works already started were finished during the 1980s and all remaining projects were abandoned. After all those projects, 100 km (62 mi) of rail track were completed by 1983[22] and the suburban railway had also disappeared since it had been extended to Alonso Martnez and subsequently converted to the new Line 10.

Work on a major expansion of the metro began in 1995, with 172 km (107 mi) of new line and 132 new stations opened by 2011, built in 4 phases.[23] The average construction pace throughout that era (more than 10 km (6 mi) of new line per year) was among the fastest in the world at that time and was equalled or surpassed by only very few metros in the global north (one notable example being Seoul Metro) either then or since.

This included the extension of lines 1, 4 and 7 and the construction of a new Line 11 towards the outlying areas of Madrid. Lines 8 and 10 were joined into a longer Line 10 and a new Line 8 was constructed to expand the underground network towards the airport. The enlarged Line 9 was the first to leave the outskirts of Madrid to arrive in Rivas-Vaciamadrid and Arganda del Rey, two satellite towns located in the southeast of Madrid. Control of the network was transferred to a public enterprise, Metro de Madrid S.A.

In the early 2000s, a huge project installed approximately 50 km (31 mi) of new metro tunnels. This construction included a direct connection between downtown Madrid (Nuevos Ministerios) and the airport, a further extension of Line 8, and adding service to the outskirts with a 40 km loop called MetroSur serving Madrid's southern suburbs.

MetroSur, one of the largest ever civil engineering projects in Europe, opened on 11 April 2003. It includes 41 km (25 mi) of tunnel and 28 new stations, with a new interchange station on Line 10, connecting it to the city centre and stations linking to the local train network. Its construction began in June 2000 and the whole loop was completed in less than three years. It connects Getafe, Mstoles, Alcorcn, Fuenlabrada, and Legans, five towns located in the area south of Madrid. As the metro line is part of a project to develop the area, some stations lay in sparsely populated places or were even surrounded by fields at the time of opening.

The age of many Madrid Metro stations is evident by their design: Older stations on the narrow lines are often quite compact, similar to stations of the Paris Metro. They were decorated with tilings in different colour schemes depending on the station similar to the scheme architect Alfred Grenander implemented at Berlin U-Bahn around the same time. In recent years, most of these stations have been refurbished with single-coloured plates matching those in the newest ones, alongside other improvements such as modernized signalling technology and elevators. The stations built between the late 70s and the early 90s are slightly more spacious, with most of them having cream-coloured walls.

On the other hand, the most recent stations are built with space in mind, and have natural-like lighting and ample entryways.[24] The colour scheme varies between stations, using single-colored plates and covering the whole station in light colors. Recently built transfer stations have white walls, but this is not the norm.

Most stations are built with two side platforms, but a handful of them (the busiest transfers) have a central island platform in addition to the side platforms theoretically dedicated to exits. This system was originally used on the Barcelona Metro and is called the Spanish solution. The 12 stations with this setup are:

Two stations have cross-platform interchange arrangement with two island platforms, which allows extremely fast transfers between lines. Both of these stations are on Line , with cross-platform interchanges at Prncipe Po (with ) and Casa de Campo (with ). On both occasions, Line 10 uses the outside tracks, so passengers unboarding there leave through the "right" side of the train instead of the usual left side.

Another system is where there is one island platform with one side platform. This system is used in two stations on lines 2 and 4 as termini, and three stations on Lines 7, 9, and 10 where it is required for passengers to change to smaller trains to continue their journeys, normally to towns outside Madrid like Alcobendas or Coslada. This is done so the island platform can be used for passengers to change easily between trains. In the latter three stations, the island platform is equipped with fare gates for tickets to be validated for travel between fare zones. These stations are:

3a8082e126