Ekaterinburg in Metro4All: accessibility details

28.10.2014

Metro4All now covers Ekaterinburg. You can start using data and route in our web app. Ekaterinburg is now also present in our mobile app.

There are 9 stations in Ekaterinburg subway. Typically to other cities stations fall into two groups: 7 stations built before 2010 are less accessible and 2 built after 2010 (“Chkalovskaya” and “Botanicheskaya”) are more accessible.

Elevators

Five elevators are located on “Botanicheskaya” station (built in 2011) and three on “Chkalovskaya” station (built in 2012). All elevators are functional and actively used not only by people on the wheelchairs, but also by elderly passengers and persons with strollers.

Elena Leontyeva, accessibility specialist and head of local NGO “Free movement” comments:

Initially elevators were meant to be used only by disabled people. However, we were heard and general public was allowed to use elevators as well.Elena Leontyeva

Same situation exists in Nizhny Novgorod, where one needs to call a station employee to use an elevator.

Elevators at both stations connect surface level with underground passage level. After that, in order to reach train platform of “Chkalovskaya” one needs to get through doors, turnstiles and escalator, and to reach “Botanicheskaya” – ramp, doors, turnstiles and special moving platform for wheelchairs. “Chkalovskaya” station project included one more exit with an elevator, but it’s construction is currently on hold.

The situation that elevators do not reach the platform level] is due to the fact that stations were officially considered to be bomb shelters. Station should not be connected with the surface (should be isolated). (By the way, Moscow metro station where elevator is reaching platform level are officially striked out of the list of bomb shelters)… Now standards have changed and metro stations are not considered bomb shelters anymore. So under new regulations elevators on all new stations will go all the way down to the platforms.Elena Leontyeva

Escalators

One will encounter escalators on 23 entrances/exits (7 of 9 stations). The only stations without escalators are “Botanicheskaya” and “Prospekt Kosmonavtov”.
Please note that one of the escalators at “Mashinostroiteley” station works only 5 hours a day.

Stairs

Unlike other cities we’ve visited almost all stairs in Ekaterinburg metro are equipped with rails. Out of 64 stairs (no counting single steps) 56 (88%) have rails.

Average length of stairs is 51 steps (and only 2 steps if you can use rails and ramps).

On a negative side, the slope of the rails is unusually steep. About half of the stairs have rails which 23° steep, this is especially common for newer stations.

Isolated sections of stairs with 1-2 steps are common as well, 29 exits/entrances out of 38 have such sections. They are doubled by ramps only at “Chkalovskaya” and “Botanicheskaya”. Steps are often of considerable height.

Turnstiles

For some reason baggage turnstile with increased passage width is not used in Ekaterinburg metro (like in Moscow and Saint-Petersburg). Because of that on several stations the passage width limitation reaches that of a standard turnstile (55 cm). These are “Uralmash” (southern exits), “Mashinostroiteley”, “Dinamo”, “Geologicheskaya” stations. Other stations are equipped with additional gates of larger width of different type.

Routes accessibility

There are 76 possible routes (38 identical exit and entrance routes) on 9 stations.

Accessible for people in wheelchairs are 10 routes (13% of total number of routes) – all 10 routes (5 exit ones and 5 entrance ones) are at “Botanicheskaya” station.

50 routes are accessible for parents with strollers (66% of total number). Other routes at “Uralmash”, “Mashinostroiteley”, “Dinamo” and “Geologicheskaya” are accessible only if your stroller is narrower than 55 cm.

If you require special assistance, you can request official help with transfers by calling subway’s official help service.

P.S. We ask everyone to send us corrections and additions to the data we collected (contacts).