Chongqing: the deepest station in the world takes you 10 minutes to reach the trains | World

In China, a train station so underground that it takes 10 minutes to reach the platforms made people “claustrophobic” when watching videos of its passengers.

Hongyancun station in Chongqing, southwest China, opened in 2022 and extends 116 meters (348 feet) underground. A TikTok The user made a video showing his subscribers the interior of the structure, in which he can be seen having to take seven escalators to the station. In the caption, he writes that he had to take another escalator to access the platform itself.

Two lines are served by the station – line 9 and line 5 – and the height difference between two of its entrances is more than 141 meters (463 feet). If passengers cannot take the escalators, there are elevators that go down to the platforms and some people have reported having blocked ears when using them due to the depth of the station and the difference in air pressure .

However, Hongyancun has not been the world’s deepest subway station for very long. Before its opening, this record was held by the Arsenalna station in Kyiv, Ukraine. Opened in 1960, the station is 105.5 meters deep (346 feet) and is now the second deepest in the world. During the invasion of the country in 2022 by RussiaArsenalna was used as a bomb shelter.

In Britain, the deepest station is Hampstead, a station on the London Underground. Situated 58 meters (190 feet) below ground level, the trains are so low that the entrance to North London station is on top of a hill.

The deepest transit station in North America is the Washington Park Max station, built in 1998 and located 79.2 meters (260 feet) underground.

At a similar depth is Admiralteyskaya, a station on the Frunzensko-Primorskaya line in St. Petersburg, Russia. With a depth of 86 meters (282 feet), it was opened in December 2011 and sees around 992,000 people pass through each month.

In North Korea, the Pyongyang Metro is one of the deepest metro systems in the world, located 100 meters (328 feet) underground. Before the Covid-19, North Korea only welcomes about 5,000 Western tourists each year, so little is known about the transportation system.

A Hong Kong photographer who visited the subway told CNN that she was accompanied by tour guides the entire way and was “only allowed to travel for a few stops.” She added that she was not allowed to take photos from inside the tunnels.