Electrification 550 V DC Line length 4,400 m | Operating speed Stations 11 | |
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Line number Line 1 ("Yellow metro") Track gauge 1,435 mm (4 ft 8 ⁄2 in) | ||
The Metro 1 (Officially: Millennium Underground Railway or M1) is the oldest line of the Budapest Metro system. Known in Budapest simply as "the underground" ("a földalatti"), while the M2, M3 and M4 are called "metró". It is the third oldest underground railway in the world after "Tünel" in İstanbul,Turkey (the first being the London Underground), and the first on the European mainland. It was built from 1894 to 1896. In 2002, it was listed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site.
Metro 1 runs northeast from the city center on the Pest side under Andrássy út to the Városliget, or City Park. Like Metro 3, it does not serve Buda.
History
M1, the oldest of the metro lines operating in Budapest, has been in constant operation since 1896.
The original purpose of the first metro line was to facilitate transport to the Budapest City Park along the elegant Andrássy Avenue without building surface transport affecting the streetscape. The National Assembly accepted the metro plan in 1870 and German firm Siemens & Halske AG was commissioned for the construction, starting in 1894. It took 2,000 workers using up-to-date machinery less than two years to complete. This section was built entirely from the surface (with the cut-and-cover method). Completed by the deadline, it was inaugurated on May 2, 1896, the year of the millennium (the thousandth anniversary of the arrival of the Magyars), by emperor Franz Joseph. One original car is preserved at the Seashore Trolley Museum in Kennebunkport, Maine, United States.
The line ran underneath Andrássy Avenue, from Vörösmarty Square (the centre) to City Park, in a northeast-southwest direction. The original terminus was the Zoo (with extension to Mexikói út in 1973). It had eleven stations, nine underground and two (Állatkert and Artézi fürdő) overground. The length of the line was 3.7 km at that time; trains ran every two minutes. It was able to carry as many as 35,000 people a day (today 103,000 people travel on it on a workday).
