Guri Metro
 | |
| Overview | |
|---|---|
| Area served | Guri |
| Transit type | Rapid transit |
| Number of lines | 18 metro (+25 other) |
| Number of stations | 522 |
| Daily ridership | 9.66 million |
| Operation | |
| Operator(s) | United Trenchways |
| Technical | |
| System length | 802 km (498 mi) |
The term Guri Metro is the name given to the Urban Transit network of the city of Guri, composed of multiple modes of transportation which include Subway, Heavy Rail, Trenchway, and Tramway services. The network is the oldest transit network in the world, and posseses the largest subway system in the planet and the fifth longest cablecar network in the nation.
History
The transit system of Guri can be traced back to the first railroad in Anteria, then a small 1.8km portion of track between Farthon and Alleyware, which came to be owned by Trenchware Incorporated by 1888, and served as the first connection between the two towns. After a collective effort from the company and the town hall, the Metropolitan Railway Company entered service by 1890, with the small overground line of Farthon-Lugwagon.
Its success prompted the creation of the Western City Railroad and Grand Eastern companies, which both entered service as direct competition of the Metro' via separate initial radial routes to Hollingsworth and Guttingham by 1898 and 1899, respectively.
Further extensions to the lines eventually reached northern Watergate by 1902, time by which connections between cities and nearby towns became increasingly common throughout the nation. By 1905 would open Queenstown Station, in the center of the city, which came as a joint venture between Leight United and Trenchware United, and served as the main station near the city center, as a terminal for both southbound Leight trains and Metro' trains. The latter, however, had already planned a further underground extension east, which started operations by 1910, converting Queenstown into a bypass station for the Metropolitan Railway Company.
By 1909 the city would authorize the construction of more lines for all three companies, with three more smaller societies starting the construction of their own competing networks between 1909 and 1914. However, by the dawn of the Great War all three of them would go near bankrupt due to the forced shutdown of construction operations, eventually becoming freight transporters and trenchway operators.
During the great war many cargo corridors would open across the city, with passenger numbers stagnating by 1916 due to the war. After the war, Watergate city council lead an organized reconstruction of the city, which was lead by the opening of several large rail corridors across the young metropolis, as well as the so-called New Urbanism, which also brought large avenues and presumptuous plazas into the city center. Some of the railway corridors were to be built in elevated structures that dissected the city center, eventually becoming part of the trenchway system, while others used and expanded underground bunkers and tunnels for railway transit, later constituting the metro' and other underground services.
This Watergate-lead initiative would propagate to many cities across the nation, culminating on the post-war effort commonly known as The Brick Plan, which is said to have kick-started the nation-wide rail developments and rail-culture of modern Riamo. The Brick Plan is often characterized as the revolutionary transit-friendly architectural-urbanistical wave that made possible the existence of large railway extensions that occupy modern Riamese cities, with its policies and plans managing to salvage the vast majority of tramway companies that usually collapsed into bankruptcy in other countries at the time.
By 1926, the seven previous companies had given way to only one, and by then, the three cities now had 8 under- and overground lines and 4 major railway stations.
Gottenburg and Ureville would unite with Portgur the following year, forming the city of Guri, moment by which the remaining transport company came to be known as Guri Metro, gaining it's iconic name and pointy logo, while the regional heavy rail came to be known as trenchways, also gaining their distinctive features and signage.
By 1933 some older parts of the city had evolved to be filled with homelessness and poverty. The subsequent urban renewal and public housing projects of 1938 would give way to an additional 3 underground lines, which also linked with the western, more urbanistically-tangled parts of the city, areas which, by that time, had been riddled with a minority car-friendly burgeoise population.
These areas still maintain a noticeable lack of transit infrastructure, specially regarding tramways. The gap was noticeably large in transit maps of the city by the late 30s, which often lead to design attempts to hide it. The areas would come under several urban renewal projects by the 1940s, and the transit gaps eventually came to be filled with underground subway lines in an attempt to fill the void.
A rise in popularity of cablecars would see the first cablecar line open in 1949, with another two opening in 1953 and 1957, both of which linked zones in Hillside.
The 'second' Architectural Renaissance, by the 1960s, came with the introduction of transit-focused infrastructure across the system, with many new developments seeing smaller business districts being planned around them as consequence.
The central government had reduced transportation budgets starting in 1967, mainly due to the military actions across the decaying empire, which lead to a temporary rise in car usage across the country. However, with the Peaceful Revolution came massive modernization works across the nation, and so came the Third Architectural Renaissance, the New Wave. This wave focused their ideas on the expansion of the then-stagnating tramways, the creation of fast monorail corridors across suburban areas, the incorporation of bike infrastructure in and around busy areas, and the comeback of cablecars, waterbuses and bicicles. Some of their ideas, like the bicicle improvements, came to be installed by the end of the decade, while some, like suburban tramways, would have to wait until the 90s.
The late 70s came with many of these improvements, with the effects of the anti-car movement still being present in modern Guri, specially regarding the lack of highways across the metropolitan area except for some minor toll roads and outer ringroads tightly squished between the dense mid-rise districts. The city would see the opening of 2 new lines soon after the Revolution, whose works had been started as a way to content the population of the city, but with rushed viability studies and poor management, the lines came to be unified into one larger line after soils were deemed unreliable.
During the 1980s, the city would see very few extensions opening, with most of the works being directed towards the introduction of double-, quad-, and sixtuple-tracks along the main corridors, as well as towards the modernization of infrastructure, signaling, and trains across the systems. By then, the improvements on bike infrastructure had started giving fruitful benefits. Obesity rates went down, metro ridership kept rising and the infrastructure modernization efforts allowed for reliable schedules across the network. Daily night checks on the network started happening by 1986, becoming weekly inspections by 1988 and nightly thoroughly revisions by 1990.
In 1986 came the Grand Purple line, opened to relief the eastern, more denser parts of Watergate, opening by 1994 in its entirety. With the inauguration of Riamo One tower in the west of the city, in the new Business district, 1992 saw another metro line opening, linking North Park with Victoria and the city center, and providing good connectivity with the grandiose boulevards and towers to be finished soon after in the area.
By 1992 also came the grand premiere of the first 'suburban tramway link' of the city. Inspired by Nashton's success with trams in the periphery, the city council of Guri finally came to revise proposals from the 70s that called for trams to link newly built suburban developments in the periphery, connecting local streets with subway and trenchway lines while providing corridors for nearby areas to connect with each other.