Munich U-Bahn - History

History

Plans for an underground for Munich are quite old. In the 1930s the Nazis forbade the acquisition of new rolling stock for the Munich tramways in order to show how "insufficient" the tram system was. At that time trams were the primary means of public transportation in Munich. The Nazis made ambitious plans to change Munich into their "Reichshauptstadt der Bewegung" (Capital of the movement; the Nazi party had come to existence in Munich). This included the construction of an underground system. In the late 1930s construction started on Lindwurmstraße and Sonnenstraße where a synagogue was torn down because it was supposedly a "traffic obstacle". Construction was abandoned in 1941 as World War II intensified. After the war reconstruction of the badly damaged tram system took priority. However, even during the 1950s plans were discussed at Munich City Council to run a few of the tram lines underground because the capacity for surface traffic was overstretched. In 1964 plans were, however, changed and it was decided to build a "real" underground.

Work started on 1 February 1965 at Nordfriedhof (North Cemetery) in Ungererstraße. Today a steel girder at the first building site is a monument to Munich's first Underground railway. When the Olympic Games of 1972 were awarded to Munich in 1966, construction was sped up to get the "Olympic" line finished on time. On 19 October 1971 the first line commenced operations between Kieferngarten and Goetheplatz with a total length of 12 km. On 8 May 1972 the line between Münchner Freiheit and Olympiazentrum ("Olympic line") to the Olympic Summer Games 1972 was opened, just 10 days after the Munich S-Bahn commenced operations. To satisfy demand during the Games, some DT1 trains were borrowed from Nuremberg. On 22 November 1975 the extension from Goetheplatz to Harras was opened. The network has been expanded continuously since 1980.