Tashkent Metro


The Tashkent Metro is the rapid transit system serving the city of Tashkent, the capital of Uzbekistan. It was the seventh metro to be built in the former USSR, opening in 1977, and is one of only two subway systems currently operating in Central Asia. Its stations are among the most ornate in the world, and unlike most ex-Soviet metros, the system is shallow.
The Tashkent Metro consists of three lines, operating on of route and serving 29 stations. In 2013, the metro carried 59.2 million passengers, which corresponds to a daily average of approximately 162,200 riders.

History

Planning for the Tashkent Metro started in 1968, two years after a major earthquake struck the city in 1966. Construction on the first line began in 1972 and it opened on 6 November 1977 with nine stations. This line was extended in 1980, and the second line was added in 1984. The most recent line is the Yunusobod Line, the first section of which opened in 2001.
A northern extension of this line is currently under construction, and a fourth line was to start construction in 2010, but has been delayed.

Operations

System

The Tashkent Metro comprises three lines which operate on of route and serve 29 stations.
The depth of the metro's tunnels varies between. The strong construction of these three lines can resist earthquakes of a magnitude of 9.0 on the Richter scale. It sports a gauge and a third rail power supply. The average station distance is.

Lines

;Current lines
The details of each line is as follows:
Chilonzor Line : Construction on this line started in 1968, opened in 1977 between Sabir Rakhimov and Oktyabrinkilobi including Novza depot and one metro bridge over Oqtepa channel between Novza and Komsomolskaya stations. It was extended to Maksim Gor'kiy in 1980. It is long with 12 stations – the planned eastward extension to Traktornyi Zavod was under way but now has disappeared from maps.
Oʻzbekiston Line : The route of this line crosses the city diagonally from northwest to southeast via the Toshkent Railway station. It opened in 1984 and expanded between 1984 and 1991. It is long with 11 stations.
Yunusobod Line : Work is under way on this line to connect the northern districts to the airport in the south. The first section with six underground stations opened for regular service on 24 October 2001 between Ming Urik and Habib Abdullayev.
;Planned lines
In February 2020 it was reported that construction of the first section of the Circle Line from Do'stlik to Qo'yliq stations was finished and that new rolling stock for the Circle Line was undergoing trials. The new section is in length and has six stations.

Stations

Today, the Tashkent Metro has 29 stations that differ from each other. The architecture and décor of each station depicts its name. The peculiarity of the Tashkent metro is its rather shallow station positioning. Some stations have escalators, 7 stations belong to the tower type, 4 stations to the arch type and one station to the tower-individual type. Prominent architects and artists of Uzbekistan took part in designing the stations. Interior décor features solid and stable materials: metal, glass, plastic, granite, marble, smalt, art ceramics, and carved alabaster. Each station is original work of art and centers on a particular theme. After the break up of the Soviet Union in 1991 many stations were renamed to remove references to Communism.

Rolling stock

Like in all Soviet metro systems, the basic type of rolling stock is known as the 81-717/81-714., there are 168 81-717/714 train cars operational on the metro, and they are operated in the form 4-car trainsets serving the system's station platforms. Trains have an average commercial speed of. Services started with carriages of type Ezh3 and Em-508T. By the mid 1980s, all these subway cars were given to Baku and Tbilisi metro. In exchange, the metro has received trains of series 81-717/81-714, which are still in service today. In 2001, Tashkent metro has received newer trains of 81-718/719. There were plans to purchase trains of series 81-717.6/714.6 for the metro but that didn't happen. There was a decision to modernize the existing 81-717 trains in the Tashkent Carriage Repair Factory. The first modernized train appeared in 2015. In 2019 new trains of type 81-765/766/767 were ordered for the opening of the Seligeri line, they are temporarily serving Uzbekiston line.

Rules and restrictions

It was illegal to take pictures inside the metro system or any of the stations until 31 May 2018 because they were considered military installations due to the system's secondary role as a nuclear bomb shelter. The government under the newly elected Shavkat Mirziyoyev ruled that from 1 June 2018, taking photos is allowed inside the metro.