Kharkiv tram

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tram
Kharkiv tram
image
Tatra T3-WPNP in Kharkiv
Basic information
Country UkraineUkraine Ukraine
city Kharkiv
opening July 3, 1906
Infrastructure
Route length 217.6 km
Gauge 1524 mm
Power system 600 V DC overhead line
business
Lines 13
Line length 469.1 km
Network plan
Network plan

The Kharkiv tram is a tram company in the Ukrainian city of Kharkiv (Russian: Kharkov) with a gauge of 1524 mm. It is therefore one of the broad-gauge railways .

history

The forerunner of the tram was the horse tram, which opened on September 24, 1892 . It was operated by a private Belgian company and was called Société anonyme belge des tramways de Kharkoff . Until 1918 it ran between the train station and the center of the city, parallel to the tram. In 1906 the first line, at that time still with a gauge of 1000 millimeters, was opened. After the October Revolution , the horse-drawn tram was expropriated and re-gauged and electrified in the following years. The meter-gauge tram network grew to over 65 kilometers until the 1920s. In the years 1927 to 1930 this net was re-gauged to 1524 millimeters. The routes were expanded in the following decades and had reached their maximum length of 230 kilometers in the 1980s. 31 lines with around 600 vehicles operated on these routes.

After the collapse of the Soviet Union , the business situation deteriorated rapidly. Due to the catastrophic financial situation, the income from ticket sales practically failed, the network could not be maintained. Buying new vehicles was also out of the question. In order to save the railway, it became the property of the city and became part of the municipal utilities .

Despite the good utilization of the vehicles, around one million passengers are transported every day, the future of the railways is uncertain. This is mainly due to the difficult financial situation of Deutsche Bahn. With the income, the railway is in a position to generate the ongoing operating costs. There is hardly any money available to maintain the network or to buy new cars. At the end of 2016, a large number of used Tatra T3s and some Tatra T6A5s were taken over from Prague .

As of April 2017, the superstructure is predominantly in a poor, partially desolate condition.

literature

  • Сергій Тархов (Sergij Tarchow), Кость Козлов (Kost Koslow), Ааре Оландер (Aare Olander): Електротранспорт України (Elektrotransport Ukraini) . Київ (Kiev), ISBN 978-966-2321-11-1 .

Web links

Commons : Trams in Kharkiv  - Collection of pictures, videos and audio files