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Ufa, the capital of the Autonomous Republic of Bashkortostan, is situated on the western side of the Ural mountain range, at the confluence of the Ufa and Belaya rivers and has 1.1 million inhabitants. The city which had only 265,000 inhabitants in 1956 has grown rapidly due to the important oil industry in the area. The city which merged with its northern neighbour Chernikovsk has a 40 km north-south and a 15 km east-west extension and is building Europe's easternmost metro network.

The first line, under construction since 1997, runs north-south from Permovayaskaya to Sportivnaya: 9.1 km, 6 stations, average station distance is 1,500 m. 4 more stations are planned further south. This would be line 1 of a future 3-line network.

Update 23 June 2006 by Alexei Bobko:

There will finally be constructed a metro system until 2025, but an overground system (some kind of light metro). The future line of light-metro will include four major stations in the center of the city: Pravaya Belaya, Ufa (railway station), Zatonskaya and Bel'skyi Park.

“Rosbalt”, 05/04/2005, Main News:

Ufa authorities gave up construction of metro.

UFA, April 5, 2005. Ufa Authorities have finally given up the idea of construction of metro, which existed since 1960s. According to the correspondent “Rosbalt”, this was claimed in the briefing of the first vice-mayor of Ufa, Ramil Halimov on Tuesday. According to Halimov, the project of metropolitan construction in Ufa is economically senseless within the nowadays circumstances. The estimated annual costs for metro are around 1-1.5 milliard roubles, that, according to Halimov, comparable with costs of construction of “Polief” plant and Yumaguzinskoe water reservoir, which are much economically profitable. In addition, a vice-mayor emphasised that the Bashkortostan and Russia governments until now have not agreed on the equal share of costs of the metro project. According to recent agreements, 80% of metro construction costs would have to be covered from the local budget, which is too much for Bashkortostan. Thus, stated the representative of city administration, “it has no reason to build a metro as an attraction for visitors”. It should be noted that Ufa city administration proposed alternative variants for solution of transport problems like larger involvement of local railway network into mass transit, and construction of new motorways. The plans of Ufa metro construction appeared at the end of 1960s, but were most actively discussed in 1980, when the capital of Bashkortostan reached 1 million inhabitants. The first section of metro (6 km line with 4 stations) was planned for completion in 2008, second was scheduled to 2015 and the third – to 2030.

Thanks to Alex Riabov!