Contemporary (1950-Now)

The Berlin U-Bahn, together with the S-Bahn, is the backbone of the public transport system of Berlin, Germany. The U-Bahn runs mostly underground (as U-Bahn stands for Untergrundbahn, or Underground railway), while the S-Bahn is mostly above ground. more...

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The U-Bahn opened in 1902 and now consists of 170 stations on nine subway lines, which have a total length of 144.2 kilometres. Trains run every two to five minutes during peak hours, and every seven to 12 minutes for the rest of the day. The entire system is maintained and operated by the Berliner Verkehrsbetriebe, commonly known as the BVG.

The system was designed to alleviate traffic to and from central Berlin. It rapidly expanded until the end of World War II, when the capital city was divided into East and West Berlin. The system remained open to residents of both sides until the construction of the Berlin Wall and the subsequent travel restrictions imposed by the East German government. East Germans were prevented from riding on the U-Bahn into West Berlin, and West Germans could take certain lines that ran through East German territory, but were not allowed to disembark. The system was reopened completely with the fall of the Berlin Wall and German reunification.

The U-Bahn has been modernised after being neglected for so many years to serve as the main transportation method of the capital of Germany. Many former East Berlin stations were updated as many had not had any construction work done in them since 1961.

The U-Bahn network

U-Bahn stations

History

At the end of the 19th century, city planners in Berlin were looking for solutions to the increasing traffic problems in Berlin and its suburbs. After the rejection of several separate proposals, the first U-Bahn line was inaugurated on 15 February 1902. Known in German as the \"Stammstrecke\", it ran between Warschauer Straße and Zoologischer Garten, and had a short spur to Potsdamer Platz. It ran mostly on elevated rail tracks. The system was immediately popular, and many more stations were subsequently built, especially in the then-independent cities of Wilmersdorf, Schöneberg, and Charlottenburg, which began planning their own lines. These lines would later lead from Dahlem in the south to Spittelmarkt in the north, and west to the area where the Olympiastadion is now located.

Many communities bordering Berlin were incorporated into a larger \"Groß-Berlin\" (Greater Berlin) at the end of World War I. Plans were put forward in 1920 for a city-owned U-Bahn line, known as the \"Nord-Süd-Bahn\" (North-South line) between Wedding and the Tempelhof-Neukölln area. The AEG Corporation also started to build its own U-Bahn line, called the \"GN-Bahn\", between Gesundbrunnen, Alexanderplatz, and Leinestraße. Construction on these lines progressed slowly due to the Great Depression and hyperinflation. In the 1930s, another line was added between Alexanderplatz and Friedrichsfelde. These new lines were built to use wider trains than their predecessors, and are known in German as \"Großprofil\" (wide profile) lines (note that only the loading gauge, at 2.8 m, is wider than the 2.2-m \"Kleinprofil\" (narrow profile) trains; both run on standard-gauge 1435-mm track).

Read more at Wikipedia.org