Press-people of the Ukrainian TV-channel TSN have reported that in the last couple of days Kiev subway has been making incredible profits. Heavy snowfalls caused a number of problems on the road and made people change their usual mini-buses for sleds and snowmobiles. Those ones who can’t ski, use subways. As a result, every morning you can see long queues in front of subway gates. According to preliminary data, only during the last day more than 200,000 people used Kiev Metro (that’s twice as many people as originally used to travel by subway). Yesterday subway workers managed to make about 400,000 hryvnia. Administration of the subway issued an order to shorten time interval between each train. And yet, in order to get into the train, people had to miss 1–2 runs. It was not easy to get to the platform as well. People had to wait in long queues for about 20 minutes to get to the escalator. Fortunately, no damage is done despite big crowds on “Vokzalnaya”, “Kreschatik” and “Maydan Nezalezhnosti” stations. Sergey Tkachuk, a head of communal enterprise “Kiev Metro” has reported that subway workers decided to regulate people flaw and speed of escalator to avoid big crowds and throngs.
No one is ready to predict the consequences of such overload. We can only hope that weather conditions are going to improve in the nearest future and all escalators are going to be tested.
