Vasileostrovskaya
- This object in Internet: Wiki, Wikimapia, карта Yandex
- Opened: November 3, 1967
- Station depth: 59m
- Project title: Sredny (Middle) prospekt, 7th line, 8th line
- Popular names: Vaska
- Type of station: horizontal elevator
- Entrance to the station: ground lobby
- Traffic: total about 1584 thousand people per month
For a very long time it was the only metro station on Vasilievsky Island, hence its name. For 12 years it was the terminal station 3rd Green Line - from 1967 to 1979.
But no one calls this station by its full name. Everyone always calls her simply - Vaska.
Like all "horizontal elevators", it is extremely stingy on beauty, and was built purely utilitarian.
The station begins a continuous series of "horizontal elevators" to 3rd Green Line - to the station Lomonosovskaya inclusive.
The only decoration is a decorative grille in the end wall with the name of the station and the year of opening. If you look closely, the letters and numbers on this grid have a very unusual profile.
One interesting feature of the station is connected with this grid. From the moment of opening until 2018, the station was shortened. Part of the platform behind the decorative grille was given over to office space. Because of this, the first two doors in the first car towards the station Primorskaya and the last two doors in the last car towards the station Gostiny Dvor were closed.
Until 2001, trains passed here towards the station Gostiny Dvor with the first car closed, i.e. the doors of only four and a half cars were available for passengers to board.
In 2018, before the extension 3rd Green Line for the station Primorskaya, the transfer of office premises and decorative grating was carried out. Since then, the station has not had such restrictions.
There is a very large flow of passengers at this station, for many years virtually the entire Vasilievsky Island "hung" at this station. Therefore, both at the top at the entrance and at the bottom on the approach to the escalator, injuries regularly occurred and occur due to very large crowds of people choking through the narrow needle eye of the entrance doors and escalators.
Escalators in the amount of three pieces are traditionally located at the end of the station. The hermetic door is vertical, of the "guillotine" type.
Let's go upstairs.
The pavilion here is also without any decorations, purely utilitarian. It is not visible from below, but above the escalator passage on the roof of the pavilion there is the same reinforced concrete anti-bomb hood as at the stations Frunzenskaya or Park Pobedy.
Previously, the same visor went along the contour of the pavilion, as it collapsed at the station Sennaya Ploshchad. Immediately after this incident, the canopy of the pavilion here was first reinforced around the perimeter with openwork metal trusses, and a few years later it was completely dismantled. Therefore, sometimes you have to hear someone call this station "capless".
The pavilion was built on a high plinth of 11 steps to protect against floods, frequent in this area of the city before the opening of the complex of protective structures on the Gulf of Finland.
There is nothing to see here except crowds of piggies. Let's go back down.
In the direction of the station Primorskaya there is a revolving dead end, which is currently used for motor locomotives and utility trains. Also, they say there is a service platform in one of the tunnels behind it. I don't know myself, I haven't seen it. A station of this type does not allow you to look into the tunnel.
Even during the construction of the station, a constructive reinforcement of the tunnels was provided, which would allow in the future to pass over the tunnels 3rd Green Line the tunnels of the ring line and the corridor of the second exit to the city. Currently, the second exit from the station is being designed, there seems to be talk about its construction, but there are no movements about this. It is assumed that the second exit will appear by 2029 between houses 37 and 35 on the 10th line of Vasilievsky Island. At the same time, it is planned to build a transition to the Ring Line. The question of when the Ring Line will actually be built remains unanswered.
Personally, as an old and experienced Leningrader, I have no desire to come here once again. There are too many people here. And if people are removed, the station looks even more bleak.
And only the lines of Sasha Cherny's poems come to mind - "Vasilievsky Island is beautiful, like a toad in cuffs"...
