1990: The Opening of a Prague Metro Station that Owes Its Name to a Transportation Pioneer

November 22, 1990

The Křižíkova station of the rapid transit system known as the Prague Metro was officially opened. As the time, Prague was the capital of Czechoslovakia. The longtime communist rule in Czechoslovakia had ended about a year earlier, and in 1993, that country would be split into the independent states of Slovakia and the Czech Republic. Prague now serves as capital of the Czech Republic.

Located in the Prague district of Karlin, the Křižíkova station was built as part of an extension of Line B of the Prague Metro. Line B, which had first gone into service in 1985, was the last of the Prague Metro’s three existing lines to be opened. This line, however, has since become the longest of those three lines. Line B consists of 15.9 miles (25.6 kilometers) of track and a total of 24 stations. The Prague Metro in its entirety encompasses 39.2 miles (63.1 kilometers) and 61 stations. (This transit system, which was established in 1974, is one of the busiest networks of its kind in all of Europe.)

The name selected for the Křižíkova station comes from a street in Prague that is adjacent to where that facility is located. That street, in turn, was named after renowned engineer and native son Frantiŝek Křižík (1847-1941). During much of Křižík’s long life, the present-day Czech Republic was part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire.

Křižík made several notable contributions to transportation in the course of his prolific engineering career. In 1878, for example, he created a remotely operated signaling device to help prevent collisions between trains. By 1884, Křižík had founded an electric utility company to provide such public services as electrically-powered trams. He achieved yet another transportation milestone in 1895 when he built one of the first electric automobiles in the Austro-Hungarian Empire.

During the summer of 2002, the Prague Metro station referencing Křižík’s name was severely damaged by a horrific flood ravaging much of continental Europe at the time. After being extensively repaired, the Křižíkova station was reopened for regular service the following year.

Photo Credit: Aktron (licensed under the Creative Commons Attributiion-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license at https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/deed.en)

For more information on the Křižíkova station, please check out https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/K%C5%99i%C5%BE%C3%ADkova_(Prague_Metro)

Additional information on the Prague Metro is available at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prague_Metro