London: home to Sherlock Holmes, Harry Potter and Peter Pan. This is a city famous for its vast museums, palaces, football stadiums and shopping centers. A city that never sleeps, where you can get lost in a world of double-decker buses and antique telephone boxes, safe in the knowledge that no two moments will ever be the same.
It may be more than a thousand kilometers further south, but Madrid certainly keeps up with the London pace: welcome to another city that never sleeps. And how could it? With so many squid sandwiches, Rastro market stalls, museums and palaces to get through. You won’t find Abbey Road here: in this city, the streets are covered in the poetry of Quevedo and Lope de Vega, keeping its Goyaesque essence firmly intact.
London and Madrid are hubs of cosmopolitan activity with one thing in common: a transport system that enables its residents to keep moving—no matter what the hour. In Madrid, you’ll see signs for the Metro; whilst in London, you’ll hear locals call it the tube.
These subterranean networks beneath London and Madrid have evolved over the years, adapting to the growing needs of cities and becoming the vast infrastructures we know today. When you head ever-deeper underground and step into the modern carriages, it’s hard to believe that once, there was just one single tunnel, inhabited by steam-powered locomotives.
The tube: the history of the London Underground
The London Underground opened on January 10, 1893. The world’s first suburban railway traveled the Metropolitan Railway line, connecting Paddington with Farringdon Street. And back then, the iconic tube was just one steam train, moving between two stations only.
Today, the London Underground (the world’s oldest railway network) has 275 stations, transporting more than three million people every day. This system has adapted to the city’s evolution and dizzying growth, becoming a mainstay of London life.
And Ferrovial has left its mark on the tube’s long history. The company participated in the Northern Line Extension (NLE) project—one of London’s largest infrastructure works in the last 300 years—connecting Kennington station with two new terminals: Nine Elms and Battersea.
The project entailed creating three kilometers of railways to join new tunnels to the existing one, using so-called step plate joints and creating new underground passages. The extension was designed to improve South London’s transport links and contribute to the development of the zone. And it was an unmitigated success: it brought the tube to neighborhoods it hadn’t yet reached, reducing journey times from the outskirts to the center from 45 minutes to just 15.
The Madrid Metro: more than a century of history
The Madrid Metro was launched a quarter of a century after Londoners got their tube. Line 1 opened on October 17, 1919, connecting Sol with Cuatro Caminos; imitating the underground system that had already become an icon of the British capital.
Madrid Metro now numbers 302 stations, connecting various points of the city and covering a huge 295 kilometers in total. And Ferrovial played its part in this growing city network too, with the project to extend Line 9. The development created more than two kilometers of railways and constructed two new stations: Mirasierra and Paco de Lucía.
The extensions of London’s Northern Line and Madrid’s Line 9 were no easy feat: works were complex, due to them being constructed below what were already bustling neighborhoods on the surface. With works like this, it’s important to minimize the effects of construction for the people who live in the area: their everyday lives can’t be disrupted, and they still need access to transport networks.
It’s estimated that improvements to Madrid’s Metro Line 9 have transformed the lives of some 50,000 inhabitants; above all those living in Montecarmelo and Mirasierra. These residents now have a quick and efficient link to schools, hospitals and shopping centers, among many other services.
Over the course of their long history, the London and Madrid underground networks have changed at pace with their home cities; playing a major role in their transformation. The continuing improvement and extension works enable the cities to keep up their breakneck pace, bringing the famous ‘Mind the gap’ announcements to the ears of people far and wide.
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