When the fighting stops, build a subway in Odessa

When Russian bombs began to fall in Kyiv, Ukraine in 2022, crowds descended underground to the safety of the subway. The subway has continued to be a place of refuge throughout this brutal war. But only for residents of Kyiv. Other large cities under bombardment don’t have such a large and secure bomb shelter. Take the city of Odessa. With a pre-war population of over one-million, residents have few places to safely escape from aerial assaults. Additionally, plans have been debated for years around installing a new subway in the coastal city.

Kyiv residents seek shelter in subway station. Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license. Attribution: Kmr.gov.ua

Through support from the Scholars-at-Risk program and Tufts University, I had the distinct honor to collaborate recently with a professor in Ukraine, Hennadii Haiko. As a geo-engineer, he was interested in the work I have done studying underground settlements and we agreed on a research project to explore the possibilities for building an underground subway in Odessa - post-war.

We published the paper recently and I talked about it on my podcast here.

You can read about the research in this journal article:

Haiko, Hennadii, Justin B. Hollander, and Illia Savchenko. "Priority ranking of alternative Odesa metro plan variants: using modified morphological analysis method." International Journal of Urban Sciences (2025): 1-29. https://doi.org/10.1080/12265934.2025.2452509

Unfortunately, the war continues to rage on so thinking about post-war Ukraine can be difficult. When the time is right, it is my hope that Ukrainian planners recognize the potential value that a new underground subway line would add to increasing public transit options for residents of Odessa, while also offering refuge if the city is ever faced with war again.

Thank you for reading. Please do reach out with any questions or comments.

Sincerely,

Justin