Almaty metro 02.05.2019
Will continue a series of posts about metro. The only metro system in Kazakhstan.
The newest metro system in ex-USSR country looks surprisingly empty. The first though was that it's a weekend. But in a working day it wasn't really different.
One of the reason of low passenger flow is that metro is almost completely lying in downtown. It almost doesn't cover other part of the city.
And extremely long breaks between trains. About 10-15 minutes each (!). Sometimes you start to think that it'd be faster just to walk (:
Even though there's almost always a place ti sit. It's fascinating.
Keep in mind that Almaty is seismic active city, thus they have extra safety requirements to the system. Even though some believe the tunnel would collapse in case of major earthquake.
Also the construction works took way too long. It started in Soviet time, was put on hold due to financial issues in 90s. Government already start to think about closing the project completely, fortunately they found some budget and managed to complete the work by 2015.
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PS. They have station "Moscow". That's a diplomatic gesture. There's also Almaty station in Moscow metro.