First continental underground electric railway, Budapest 1896

In 1871, a municipal commission in charge of city planning in Budapest introduced an urban development plan based on a concentric annular structure and several large radials. Another element of the plan was the attractive Andrássy Avenue linking the inner city to the city park (Városliget). In 1893, the Siemens & Halske Company developed a project for a shallowly buried railway that was to extend the entire length of the new avenue. The 3690 m long line, inaugurated in 1896, was mainland Europe’s first underground electric railway, preceded only by London’s underground (1890). In the early 1970s, complete restructuring was carried out because of increases in traffic and construction of the underground network. The short surface segment on the inside of the park was taken out of service, the segment between the two stations was buried and the line was extended to the current terminus, beyond the outer boulevard. The subway was then entirely refurbished in 1994–1996. This paper highlights the particular adaptive capacities of the small M1 line, which remains, after more than a century and despite the singular nature of the initial project, perfectly integrated in Budapest’s transport system.