On Rīga's metro

This is the story of a metro system for Rīga that was planned for decades, almost built in Soviet times, but was stopped by an environmental protest movement in 1988 that changed the course of an entire nation, leading to Latvia regaining its independence. The metro that never was. 

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On Rīga’s metro

The metro that never was

There's a phrase Latvians use when something seems endlessly frustrating and out of reach: Nav aiz kalniem — not behind the hills, in English. In other words: just around the corner. Any day now.

Back in 1978, a journalist writing for the popular Latvian magazine called Zvaigzne — The Star — used exactly that phrase about Rīga’s metro: Metro celtniecības laiks, liekas, nav aiz kalniem. "The time for metro construction, it seems, is not behind the hills.”

He was correct. Yet, he was also catastrophically wrong.

Today, I want to tell you the story of a metro system that was planned for decades, almost built, but stopped by a protest movement that changed the course of an entire nation. And which, depending on who you ask, left either nearly nothing behind or something far more significant than bricks and tunnels. Let’s go underground to explore the fascinating story of Rīga’s metro that never was.

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The idea

Let's revisit Rīga in the 1960s. To understand why a metro was planned here, you first need to grasp what was happening to the city — and how quickly.

Before the Second World War, Rīga’s population was around 350,000 people. By 1965, it surpassed 650,000:  nearly doubling in just two decades. The growth persisted. By the late 1980s, it had reached nearly 900,000. The Soviet Union was rapidly industrialising Latvia. Factories were constructed, workers arrived, and new residential districts were built on the outskirts of the city: the vast grey apartment blocks, the mikrorajoni, still visible today in areas like Purvciems, Imanta, and Ziepniekkalns. Listen to my episode on Rīga’s Soviet microdistricts.

And here was the problem. Most of those new residents lived on the western side of the River Daugava — Pārdaugava — but most of the jobs were on the eastern side, in the city centre or at the great Soviet-era factories beyond the tangled ribbon of railway tracks. The VEF electronics factory alone employed thousands.

And in the 1960s, there was only one road bridge over the Daugava. Just one. During rush hour, the congestion was extraordinary. One worker, writing to a newspaper many years later, described it as travelling "in a herring barrel". How very Latvian!

The authorities examined the issue and considered the options. A high-speed tram line? Not enough capacity. An extension of the suburban railway? Too limited. It appeared there was only one real solution: a metro.

In 1976, orders were issued to commence technical and economic planning for an underground rapid transit system in Rīga. The project was assigned to the prestigious Moscow institute Megiprotrans, and by 1977, the first plans were revealed. Two underground lines forming an ‘X' beneath the city, running west to east and north to south. A third line was added later. There were to be thirty-three stations in total, with the first line opening in 1990 and the entire system completed by 2021.

Now, here's something worth knowing about Soviet metros. They weren't just transport; they were “statements”. The Soviet Union took pride in constructing grand, palatial underground stations. Places that were spacious and even awe-inspiring, as if the regime aimed to demonstrate that going underground could be a transcendent experience. Moscow's metro is still rightfully celebrated for exactly this.

And the designs created for the Rīga metro — the winning entries from an architecture competition in the early 1980s — were genuinely extraordinary. Bold. Streamlined. Almost sci-fi. Smooth planes, bowed ceilings, and mathematical geometries. One architectural critic who has written about them describes them as looking "like the lair of the villain in some 1960s science-fiction film.” They were gorgeous. They were eerie. And they were entirely imaginary.

Because constructing a metro in Rīga proved to be extremely challenging.

The city lies in the delta of the River Daugava. Geologically, it's a chaotic area — dolomite and sandstone, entirely flaky, as one Latvian geologist described. The groundwater is high and unpredictable. Engineers worried that digging underground tunnels could cause the ancient wooden foundations of Old Rīga’s historic buildings to rot and collapse. Just one kilometre of tunnel was estimated to cost around 20 million roubles — more expensive per kilometre than anywhere else in the Soviet Union.

Nevertheless, by 1985, the decision had finally been formalised. On 24 September, the Latvian Soviet Socialist Republic’s Communist Party officially approved the construction of the Rīga metro. The city's executive chairman, Ivars Ulmanis, travelled to Moscow and personally confirmed this. Construction would start in 1988. On the southern outskirts of the city, trees and bushes were cleared away. Workers' accommodation blocks were being erected on Granīta iela to house the first batch of construction workers. In a nearby warehouse, large concrete components were stockpiled and ready.

The metro, it seemed, was truly happening.

And then arrived the 27th of April, 1988.

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VAK and the protest

Arkādijas Park lies on the western side of the Daugava, in the district of Torņakalns. It is a compact, gently undulating stretch of greenery centred around a pond. Usually, one of the most tranquil and scenic spots in the city. On a sunny afternoon, families stroll there. Ducks glide on the water.

It was not tranquil on 27 April 1988.

If you find the grainy footage that survives of what happened there that day, you'll see something remarkable. Thousands of people swaying, chanting, waving placards. Signs that read "Metro nav draugs" - ”The metro is not a friend” and "Metro - retro!" People are brandishing spades. And this being a Latvian protest, there was a lot of singing! There was, somehow, a palpable sense of release, even of joy, in the crowd. About 10,000 people joined the protest. Reports said that the column of demonstrators stretched for 2.5km, the distance from the old town of Rīga to Arkādijas Park! It was the first large unauthorised public demonstration of the Awakening era. Unauthorised, but not prohibited.

To understand what was happening here, you need to know something about the political climate of Soviet Latvia in the late 1980s. Mikhail Gorbachev's reforms — glasnost, openness, and perestroika, restructuring — had altered the environment. Dissidents were being released from prison. It was becoming, just barely, possible to protest.

But protest about what? Any openly nationalist or political grievance still feels risky. So activists found a safer cause: the environment.

A year earlier, a journalist named Dainis Īvāns had published an article about a planned hydroelectric dam on the Daugava — Latvia's great river of destiny, the likteņupe, the river of fate. Tens of thousands of people signed petitions against it. The dam was cancelled. For Latvians, this felt like a miracle. The system could be pushed back. The people had power.

Out of this atmosphere, Vides aizsardzības klubs — known as VAK, the Environmental Protection Club — was born. Founded on 22 February 1987, VAK was officially a club for those concerned about nature: polluted rivers, the dying Baltic Sea, and the toxic air above the pharmaceutical factory town of Olaine. However, many of its members harboured deeper motives. Valdis Turins, VAK's vice-president, later stated in a documentary: "I was never really a 'green' in reality. I saw this as an opportunity for politicisation. As an opportunity to fight against a power that was unacceptable to me.”

VAK even designed their flag with the same proportions as the banned Latvian flag — crimson with a thin white stripe. They changed it to green instead of crimson. On the black-and-white televisions that almost every Soviet citizen owned, the two flags appeared indistinguishable.

When they focused on the metro, they had several genuine concerns. The geological risks were real. The destruction to parts of the old city was real. But the deepest worry was demographic. Rīga had changed drastically under Soviet rule. Before the war, ethnic Latvians comprised 63% of the city's population. By 1989, that figure had fallen to just 36%. The Soviet practice of bringing workers from across the Union to Latvia's factories had fundamentally altered the city's demographics.

And now, the metro would require tens of thousands more construction workers. Perhaps 20,000 or 30,000, critics claimed, though officials tried to reassure people it would be far fewer. Those workers, it was widely feared, would stay. Their families would follow. One banner at the protest said it plainly: "Metro — a green light to migrants”. Another: “Metro — a weapon of genocide”.

The city's pro-metro mayor, Alfrēds Rubiks, attempted to prevent the rally from taking place. He prohibited VAK from using Esplanāde park in the city centre. As a result, VAK adopted a backup plan: Arkādijas Park, across the river. The march commenced at the Rainis monument near Esplanāde, proceeded along Freedom Boulevard, past the Freedom Monument itself, over the Stone Bridge, and out to Torņakalns. Two and a half kilometres. Ten thousand people walking together.

The metro establishment was shaken. The magazine Padomju Jaunatne — "Soviet Youth", which was arguably the most vocal critic of the metro in print, had collected readers’ letters on the topic. The results were remarkable. Out of 172 letters, from 1,965 signatories, only one person supported the metro. Just one. The editorial board added a wry note: "We would very much like responses from those who are in favour of building the metro.”

Even Latvian pop music got in on the act. The band Jumprava recorded a song called "Metro Nav Draugs" — "The Metro Is Not a Friend" — a beeping, slightly ominous piece of electropop where two expressionless young men stand on either side of the singer, singing the chorus together. The heavy rock group Vaidava recorded a darker, more foreboding track simply titled "Metro", warning of "destroyed houses, cobbles dug up," and asking, "is nothing sacred to us any longer?"

The project never recovered. With the protests growing, with the Popular Front of Latvia forming later that same year, with the political tide irreversibly turning, the metro was quietly dropped. There was no single dramatic announcement, no formal cancellation. It simply slipped below the surface. As one historian put it, the project "met with opposition and in combination with the fall of the Soviet Union, construction never took place".

But here's what's important to understand. The metro protest wasn't just about the metro. Valdis Turins, Dainis Īvāns, the writers at Padomju Jaunatne, the 10,000 people in Arkādijas Park — they had discovered something. They had discovered that it was possible to say no. That organised, peaceful, public protest could stop the Soviet machine. That voice — civic voice — had power.

VAK's meetings continued in the wooden building of the old Arkādija cinema, just at the edge of the park. And in those meetings, the ideas that began with environmental protection gradually grew into something bigger. On the 10th of July, 1988 — less than three months after the metro protest — the founding meeting of the Latvian National Independence Movement was held in Arkādijas Park. About 2,000 people attended.

One small protest against a metro had become the first whisper of a nation reclaiming itself.

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What remains?

What can you actually discover today of the metro that never was?

The honest answer, which I find nearly more intriguing than the alternative, is: almost nothing.

This is not how large Soviet infrastructure projects typically end. Usually, there are ruins — decaying stations, flooded tunnels, concrete stumps pointing at the sky. But because Rīga’s metro never advanced beyond the planning and early preparation stages, the city simply... filled the gap.

The most notable physical remnant was the construction base on Granīta iela, on the southern edge of the city, where the Soviets had built warehouses to store equipment: giant concrete tunnel-lining segments and heavy steel shields. Latvian architect and metro expert Mārtiņš Eņģelis — who has probably spent more time researching this subject than anyone alive — estimates that around two million roubles were spent on this base alone. You can still find Granīta iela on a map of Riga today. However, the warehouses of the metro project are long gone, either repurposed or demolished. The street itself is now mainly known among Rīga residents for being dangerous to cross.

And then there were the boreholes—more than a hundred geological survey shafts drilled across the city from 1979 onwards to explore what lay beneath. For years, they remained: mysterious iron pipes protruding from the ground near the National Library, alongside the city canal, and in patches of woodland. A city survey in 2014 documented all of them in a 70-page report, with photographs showing pipes projecting from the earth like metal periscopes. But by 2017, the city council had removed almost all of these from public land, citing concerns about groundwater pollution. A small number may still exist on private property, but nobody is quite sure where.

There are claims that additional accommodation blocks for construction workers were being built to accommodate the initial influx, supposedly in the suburbs of Ziepniekkalns and Imanta. You may have heard, as I did, that a certain well-known supermarket in Imanta is built partly on or around the foundations of a planned metro facility. It's a fascinating story. The problem is that every serious researcher of the metro has concluded these claims are, as Eņģelis diplomatically put it, "major hoaxes roaming the internet." The metro simply never progressed far enough into construction for such structures to be built.

What about the ghost of the metro within the city's geography? Now that is more intriguing. 

If you walk to the western end of the Kalnciems Bridge in Pārdaugava and look towards the Panorama Plaza tower — those four gleaming high-rises that are now among the tallest buildings in Latvia — you are standing approximately where the first station of the initial metro line, Zasulauks, was meant to be constructed. The towers were erected between 2004 and 2024 on what was essentially empty land. Empty, of course, because the metro never materialised.

And if you stand in Arkādijas Park today and look for the information boards installed there in November 2023 by the city's parks agency, you will find one that reads: "Protest against the construction of the Rīga Metro — the beginning of the restoration of Latvia’s independence”.

That is, in a way, the most significant physical trace of the entire story. Not a tunnel. Not a platform. Not a station. A sign in a park, acknowledging that what happened here in the spring of 1988 was not merely a protest against a metro. It was the start of something much larger.

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Where to find out more about the Rīga metro

If you wish to learn more about the history of the Rīga metro, there are several locations in the city where this story is shared — and some excellent digital resources as well.

The place where most visitors first encounter the metro story is the Popular Front Museum, in the heart of the Old Town on Vecpilsētas iela. This is technically a branch of the National History Museum of Latvia, and it's free to enter, open Tuesday to Saturday. The exhibition, which covers the entire period of the Third Awakening, includes material about VAK and the independence movement, the Baltic Way, and the barricades of 1991. It's a small museum but deeply atmospheric — it occupies the very townhouse that the Popular Front used as its headquarters from its founding in 1988. Walking through those rooms, with period television broadcasts playing on Soviet-era TV sets, gives you a sense of what those months felt like.

The Occupation Museum on Raiņa bulvāris offers a broader perspective — the complete history of the Soviet occupation from 1940 to 1991 — and helps you understand exactly what Latvians were attempting to free themselves from when they gathered in Arkādijas Park that April morning.

Speaking of Arkādijas Park itself, it's worth visiting. Follow the route taken by the marchers in 1988: start at the Rainis monument near the Esplanāde, walk along the boulevard, cross the Stone Bridge, and continue westward. When you arrive at the park, look for the information boards near the site of the old Arkādija cinema. Hint: at the top of the hill! The cinema building itself burned down in 2006 and was demolished two years later, but the boards clearly tell the story. I just did the walk on a sunny end-of-March day. It took me about half an hour to walk across Stone Bridge, past the National Library, then past the train museum with its Soviet locomotives on the tracks outside and keeping straight ahead past the football academy. Then the park is on your left. You will hear the ducks!

If you want a visual sense of what the metro might have looked like, the best online resource is the Rīga Metro Atlas — a virtual tour produced by capitalriga.eu that takes you along the planned first line and explains its history as it goes. The futuristic 1980s station designs are included, and they're worth your time: truly beautiful, truly haunting.

The architect and tour guide Mārtiņš Eņģelis remains the leading authority on this topic. In 2017, he conducted a series of walking tours covering all three planned metro lines across the city, totalling over 70 kilometres. It is worth checking if similar tours are still available. Even without a guided tour, however, the website neogeo.lv displays the entire planned metro network overlaid on a modern map of Rīga — allowing you to see, street by street, where the system would have operated.

For in-depth reading in English, the three-part series by Will Mawhood for Deep Baltic, titled "Beginnings," "Struggle," and "Traces", is outstanding. I've relied on it for this episode, and I'll include a link in the show notes.

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The Latvian environmental movement today

So, where does the story go from here?

VAK, the Environmental Protection Club that organised that pivotal protest in 1988, still exists. It is, in fact, the oldest environmental organisation in Latvia. Today it concentrates on what environmental protection groups typically focus on: water quality, the Baltic Sea, river monitoring, sustainable agriculture, and climate change. It is a member of Coalition Clean Baltic, a network of NGOs across the region. The radical urgency of 1988 has settled into something quieter, more institutional.

But the state of Latvian environmentalism today is complex, and honestly, quite intriguing.

On one hand, Latvia achieved something truly remarkable. The Latvian Green Party, founded in 1990, has participated in every governing coalition since 2002. In 2004, its leader, Indulis Emsis, became the world's first green head of government, briefly serving as Prime Minister of Latvia. Raimonds Vējonis later became President from 2015 to 2019 — the world's first green head of state. These are notable firsts.

On the other hand, and I say this gently, the Latvian Green Party has been described by political scientists as "green conservative" in a way that differs markedly from green parties elsewhere in Europe. It was expelled from the European Green Party in 2019. Its environmental record in government has often been overshadowed by its socially conservative positions. Academics have observed that environmentalism in Latvia, after independence, became largely “depoliticised”. The broad movement fractured into smaller NGOs while the government prioritised economic growth and EU accession.

The true environmental energy in Latvia today appears to reside within civil society.

Zaļā brīvība — Green Liberty — is likely the most active among NGOs. Founded in 1993, it focuses on climate policy, energy transition, fair trade, and circular economy. In September 2024, it co-organised Rīga's first Citizens' Climate Assembly — a deliberative process where ordinary Rigans spent weeks learning about climate change and proposing responses, funded by the European Union's Horizon programme. The leader of Zaļā brīvība, environmental scientist Jānis Brizga, was himself active in environmental protests during the final years of the Soviet Union. The thread remains unbroken.

The Latvian Green Movement, the Latvian Fund for Nature, and the Latvian Ornithological Society — all are active and engaged in campaigns. In April 2024, environmental organisations won a landmark case at Latvia's Constitutional Court, which ruled that a government framework permitting the cutting of smaller-diameter trees in Latvian forests violated Article 115 of the Constitution — the right of every citizen to live in a healthy environment. It was the first time the Constitutional Court had ever ruled on forest management. The case was brought by the Latvian Fund for Nature, the Ornithological Society, and the WWF, with support from Zaļā brīvība.

Latvia's Constitution, incidentally, is unusual in explicitly guaranteeing the right to a healthy environment. It is a legacy, directly descended from those who stood in Arkādijas Park in 1988, demanding the protection of nature, not just from a metro, but from the indifference of those in power.

The environmental challenges are genuine. Latvia's greenhouse gas emissions per person have been increasing. The timber industry and agriculture exert pressure on biodiversity. The shift to clean energy is gradual. There is no single, galvanising cause — no metro, no Daugava dam — to rally tens of thousands of people in a park.

But then again. In 1987, nobody expected that a protest over a hydroelectric dam and a protest over a metro would end with Latvia being free.

History, in Latvia more than anywhere else, tends to progress faster than anyone expects.

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Over and out

So the next time you're standing at a bus stop in Rīga, waiting for the 22 or the 18, watching the trolleybus sway and spark its way down Brīvības iela, spare a moment to think of the underground world that never materialised.

Beneath your feet, amid the dolomite, sandstone, and groundwater, a ghostly system still remains. Station names that would have celebrated Soviet power and the friendship of peoples. Stunning futuristic platforms where the Rigans of the 21st century would have tapped their cards and scrolled through their phones, barely glancing at the architecture.

Instead, they regained their country. I would contend that they secured the better deal.

Metro nav draugs. The metro is not a friend.

If you've enjoyed this episode or any of the other 61 episodes, please leave a review — it genuinely helps others discover the show. I'll also include links to the Deep Baltic series, the Rīga Metro Atlas, and the metro map overlay in the show notes at the end of the transcript.

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Show Notes:

- Deep Baltic three-part series: deepbaltic.com (search "Riga Metro")

- Rīga Metro Atlas virtual tour: capitalriga.eu

- Popular Front Museum: lnvm.gov.lv/en/popular-front-museum/

- Arkādijas Park info boards (Torņakalns, Riga)

- Metro map overlay: neogeo.lv

Image of a VAK protest poster taken by an Englishman in Latvia. Music by Music Word from Pixabay.