Finding the unexpected in the everyday.
September 30, 1973 Operations began for a rapid transit station within the Östermalm district in Sweden’s capital city of Stockholm. This station was built as part of an extension of Line 14 of the Stockholm Metro’s Metro 2 line, which would be officially designated as the Red Line during the 1990s. The station is only... Continue Reading →
September 28, 1969 Operations began for an extension of the Chicago “L” rapid transit system serving the Windy City and a few of its surrounding suburbs within Cook County, Illinois. (The “L” stands for “elevated.”) The newly completed extension was named after Dan Ryan (1894-1961), who served as a member of the Cook County Board... Continue Reading →
August 12, 1991 Guelatao station of the Mexico City Metro, the rapid transit system serving the metropolitan area of Mexico’s capital, first went into service. This station was one of 10 constituting Line A of the system to be opened on the same date. Line A, which is also known as the Purple Line, became... Continue Reading →
July 1, 1977 The Blue Line of the Washington Metro first went into service. This line’s inaugural stretch between National Airport station in Arlington County, Virginia, and Stadium-Armory station in southeast Washington, D.C., joined the Red Line (introduced the previous year) in forming what was then the world’s newest major rapid transit system. The Orange... Continue Reading →
June 30, 2023 On Hawaii’s island of Oʻahu, Kualakaʻi station in the community of East Kapolei first went into service. This station was one of nine that were officially opened on the same date. These stations constituted the inaugural segment of Skyline, a light metro rapid transit system that is managed by the Honolulu Department... Continue Reading →
June 24, 2024 Operations formally began for a Paris Metro station built at Orly Airport, which is located approximately 8.1 miles (13 kilometers) south of the central area of France’s capital city. This airport is based in Paris’s southern suburbs of Orly and Villeneuve-le-Roi. It is one of two international airports serving Paris. (The other... Continue Reading →
June 1, 1982 A little over two months before the Helsinki Metro was officially inaugurated, Hakaniemi station became one of a few stations of that rapid transit system to be opened to the public for test drives of trains during the morning and afternoon rush hours. Hakaniemi station is named for an area within the... Continue Reading →
May 13, 1885 Operations officially began for a rapid transit system in what was then the independent city of Brooklyn, New York. This new means of public transportation in Brooklyn was the first elevated railway – a transit system with its tracks above street level and on a viaduct or some other raised structure –... Continue Reading →
May 11, 1991 The first segment of the Green Line of the Washington Metro rapid transit system was formally opened. The next day’s edition of the Washington Post highlighted the fanfare surrounding this public transportation milestone in the nation’s capital. “The politicians were there,” reported Washington Post staff writer. Stephen C. Fehr. “So were clergy... Continue Reading →
April 28, 1978 Operations began for Adenauerplatz station, a part of the line that is designated as U7 and within the rapid transit system known as the Berlin U.Bahn. This station was built in Charlottenburg-Wilmersdorft, a borough of what was then West Berlin. West Berlin was a political enclave in the western area of the... Continue Reading →
