Funicular (wagons with gear transmission) from Podil to the Upper Town in Kyiv. The second funicular in the Russian Empire after Odessa.

Until the beginning of the 20th century, people got from Podil to the Upper Town using equipped wooden stairs. With the development of urban transport, it was impossible to get around the problem of a quick ascent to Vladimirskaya Gorka. Ideas for this kind of transport arose constantly - in particular, there was an idea to create a mechanical lift near St. Andrew's Church. Due to its narrowness and steepness, there was no tram in Kyiv at the end of the 19th century, and Podil was not connected with the Upper Town. The city authorities decided to "arrange a separate mechanical lift in a place not occupied by the street."
Work on the “installation of an electric cable railway” (Mikhailovsky mechanical lift, or Mikhailovsky electric cable lift, named after the nearby Mikhailovsky Golden-Domed Monastery), which would connect Mikhailovsky Mountain with Borichev current, was carried out from 1903 and ended in the spring of 1905. The road cost to the concessionaire Belgian joint-stock company (City Railway Company), which owned the city tram, in 230 thousand rubles.

The idea of ​​​​the lift was invented and "punched" by the "engineer in the square", in the words of the Minister of Railways Sergei Witte, Arthur Abrahamson. The direct authors of the project were engineers N. K. Pyatnitsky and N. I. Baryshnikov. The initial project provided for a lift length of 250 meters, but due to the impossibility of demolishing one lower private house, they limited themselves to the construction of two hundred meters of a cable car.
The equipment of the funicular and the bogies of its carriages were made in Switzerland, which had extensive experience in the creation of cable cars. Two DC motors with a voltage of 500 volts and a power of 65 horsepower each ensured reliable operation. One of the motors was spare. A special band brake was connected directly to the engine, actuated either automatically or at the behest of a mechanic. This brake did not allow speeds to exceed the operating speed and prevented the wagons from hitting the buffers of the upper or lower station. Both cars had a capacity of 70 passengers and moved up and down at a speed of two meters per second.

On May 7, 1905, a test launch of the funicular took place for builders and mechanics. The very next day, May 8, passenger transportation and operation began.

Initially, during construction, the length of the cable car was forty meters shorter than it is now. It only reached Borichev Current Street, from where a tram of a private Belgian joint-stock company, which monopolized trams and horse cars in many cities of the Russian Empire, went to Kontraktova Square.
In the summer of 1928, an accident happened. During the repair, when changing the rope, the upper car fell down and collided with the lower one. People were not injured, and the cars were completely destroyed. They had to be rebuilt from scratch.

Without changing the principle of mechanics laid down at the beginning of the century, the workers of the Dombal plant (now the KZET named after Dzerzhinsky) made the new cars more comfortable and beautiful. The wagons were assembled on site. During the repair by the Okrkomhoz, in 1929, the funicular line was extended for another forty meters, to Postal Square (then this street was called Revolution Street).
Such a distance was also included in the original project, but then the owner of one of the estates located on the Borichev current on the path of the cable car opposed the implementation of the plan. The price that she demanded as compensation for the demolition of the "estate" and the construction of a new one was unaffordable for the city, and the state reliably protected private property by law. Only with the establishment of Soviet power did the original idea come to life. Extending the funicular, a new entrance was arranged in one of the houses on the square, since the former one was equipped as a corridor for passengers to exit.

The idea of ​​building new funicular lines was also in the air. According to the plans of the second five-year plan, lifts were supposed to appear on Voznesensky Spusk, on Andreevskaya Gora and near the Evgenia Bosch bridge.

In the mid-1980s, a new reconstruction took place.

Altitude difference between stations: 75 m.
Trail length: 222 m.
Slope: 18-20°
Track width: 1200 mm.
Car capacity: 100 people.
Seats: 30.
Traction motor power: 100 kW.
Voltage: 440V DC.
Speed: 2 m/s.
Movement time: 2-3 minutes.
Transportation of passengers:
4000 people/hour
up to 3 million per year.

The cars and control room are equipped with radio communication.

Opening hours: from 6.00 to 23.00.