Exploring the A

More than 17,000 people went to a Jan. 19 open day to see how far the A line extension had come, which it turned out was 3 kilometers underground. The walk started at Veleslavín, in Prague 6, about 5 kilometers from Prague Václav Havel Airport, and went up one length of the tracks and back on the other side around what will be Veleslavín station, through the tunnel up to the Petřiny station, and then more subterranean strolling and an eventual exit at Vypich.

It was a slow go at first, more like the world's longest queue, just really tight and without the option of open air. You could start breathing by the time you got to the Petřiny station, which opened up like a cathedral, and will indeed be a blessing when it eventually opens to trains and passengers and not just an underground outing for pedestrians.

The extension was drilled by tunnel boring machines - giant excavators, also called moles, that do the next best thing to moving mountains and can also cut a hole straight across the underbelly of a sleeping city without a person above feeling the tremors. With the completion of the first phase scheduled for next year and the metro soon moving happy commuters from the line's newest end, this was likely the first and last time this stretch of the metro line A will see any significant foot traffic. This is a side of the city that won't soon be seen again, unless perhaps by archaeologists or scavengers in a post-apocalyptic future.

"Prolonging line A for around 6 kilometers will make travel easier for tens of thousands of passengers from Prague and its surroundings," Pavel Bém, then-mayor of Prague, told The Prague Post back in 2010. We're not quite there yet, but, for one frigid Saturday, almost a couple of tens of thousands of future passengers had their day in the dark.

Milan Gagnon can be reached at
mgagnon@praguepost.com