The Russian ruler rejected the project and ordered the inventor to sign a pledge "not to engage in hare-brained schemes in the future, but to exercise his efforts in matters appropriate to his estate.

The "city fathers" stated that the excavation works would "violate the amenities and respectability of the city"; the landlords affirmed that underground traffic would undermine the foundations of the buildings; the merchants feared that "the open excavations would interfere with normal trade"; but the most violent adversaries of the novelty, the clergy, insisted that "the underground passages running near church buildings would detract from their dignity".

By the end of the 19th century, certain interested parties began discussing the possibility of opening the Russian Empire's first metropolitan railway system.

However, due to the wish of the municipal authorities of the time to take ownership of the metro after its eventual entry into service, none of the aforementioned projects ever came to fruition.

[3] In the same year, Reshevsky, also an engineer, working at the behest of the Emperor's minister for transport, came up with two possible projects, which aimed primarily to unite all of Saint Petersburg's main railway stations with one urban interchange.

However, as it was later discovered through the experience of operating uncovered ground-level metro sections in St. Petersburg (which were later closed due to the same reason), such projects would lead to many difficulties in its maintaining.

Unfortunately, Russian engineers had neither sufficient equipment nor technical skills at the time to build deep-lying tunnels through the challenging ground beneath St.

[4][5] In 1918 Moscow became the country's capital after the October Revolution of 1917 and the Russian Civil War (1917–1922) followed; for more than a decade plans to build a metro in Petrograd languished.

[6] Ivan Zubkov, an engineer who for his work was later to become a Hero of Socialist Labour was appointed the first director for the metro construction.

On 3 September 1947 construction began again in the Leningrad subway, and in December 1954, the Council of Ministers of the USSR ordered the establishment of the state transport organization Leningradsky Metropoliten, to be headed by Ivan Novikov.

Ten years after the end of the war, at the beginning of the post-Stalin Khrushchev Thaw, the city finally got an underground transport network.

These stations later became part of the Kirovsko-Vyborgskaya Line, connecting the Moscow Rail Terminal in the city centre with the Kirovsky industrial zone in the southwest.

Just six years later, in 1961, the section from Tekhnologichesky Institut to Park Pobedy, along Moskovsky Prospect to the southern areas of the city, was opened.

Further extension of the line was undertaken to the south in the early 1970s, and in the 1980s to the north, with the final station Parnas being opened, following numerous delays, in 2006.

The third Nevsko-Vasileostrovskaya Line was first opened in 1967 and eventually linked Vasilievsky Island, the city centre, and the industrial zones on the southeastern bank of the Neva in a series of extensions (1970, 1979, 1981 and 1984).

The fourth line, Pravoberezhnaya, was opened in 1985 to serve the new residential districts on the right bank of the Neva before reaching the city centre in 1991 and continuing to the northwest in the late 1990s.

In 1995, a flooding occurred in a tunnel between Lesnaya and Ploschad Muzhestva stations and, for nine years, the line was separated into two independent segments (the gap was connected by a shuttle bus route).

It was also the first metro line in Saint Petersburg to feature a unique platform type that soon became dubbed as "Horizontal Lift".

It stands out among St. Petersburg metro lines for two reasons : its stations are almost exclusively of "Horizontal Lift" type and it has the longest inter-station tunnels in the entire system.

The line cuts Saint Petersburg centre on an east-west axis and then turns southeast following the left bank of the Neva River.

The line originally opened to provide access from the centre for the new residential areas in the eastern part of city, along the right bank of the Neva River.

On 7 March 2009 Spasskaya station was completed, creating the city's first three-way transfer and it officially became the new terminal for Line 4.

The remaining stations are located virtually on the edge of the city, and one, Devyatkino, is territorially in Leningrad Oblast, far away from the harsh underground geology that forms the Neva Delta.

The six shallow column stations are located in the southern and northwestern sections of the city, and the first three are found on the Kirovsko-Vyborgskaya Line.

Both of these stations, which use a modified version of the horizontal lift design, were opened in May 2018 as part of the line's extension to the northwestern section of the city.

Back in 2012, the official website of the Saint Petersburg metro claimed the opening of 54 new stations, 5 new depots and 71 kilometres (44 mi) of new lines.

The Metro is managed by the state municipal company Sankt-Peterburgsky Metropoliten (Saint Petersburg Metropolitan, Russian: Санкт-Петербургский Метрополитен) that was privatised from the Ministry of Rail Services.

The company employs several thousand men and women in station and track management as well as rolling stock operation and maintenance.

[17][18] Approximately fourteen [19] people died and over 50 sustained injuries from an explosion 3 April 2017 on a train between Sennaya Ploshchad and Tekhnologicheski Institut stations, on the Line 2.

[21] Russia's National Anti-Terrorism Committee also on 3 April defused an improvised explosive device at Ploshchad Vosstaniya station, on the Line 1.