Metro Bilbao

The Bilbao Metro (Spanish: Metro de Bilbao, Basque: Bilboko metroa), trademarked as Metro Bilbao, is a rapid transit (metro) system serving the city of Bilbao and the region of Greater Bilbao. Its lines have a "Y" shape, with two lines that transit both banks of the Nervión river and then combine to form one line that ends in the south of Bilbao. The network of Metro Bilbao is connected with Euskotren Tranbia (tram services), Cercanías (commuter rail services), Euskotren Trena (commuter rail services), FEVE (commuter rail services, regional and long-distance trains), the Renfe service (long-distance trains) and Bilbao's bus station Termibus. It uses a meter gauge.

As of 2013, the Metro operates on 43.28 kilometers (26.89 mi) of route, with 42 stations (26 of them underground, and 16 on the surface) with 80 accesses (not counting elevators).

It is the third largest Metro company in Spain by number of passengers carried (87,133,034 in 2013) behind the Madrid Metro and the one in Barcelona.

Bilbao

Bilbao (/bɪlˈbaʊˌ -ˈbɑːoʊ/;Spanish: [bilˈβao]; Basque: Bilbo [bilβo]) is a municipality and city in Spain, a major city in the province of Biscay in the autonomous community of the Basque Country. It is the largest municipality of the Basque Country and the tenth largest in Spain, with a population of 353,187 in 2010. The Bilbao metropolitan area has roughly 1 million inhabitants, making it one of the most populous metropolitan areas in northern Spain; with a population of 875,552 the comarca of Greater Bilbao is the fifth-largest urban area in Spain. Bilbao is also the main urban area in what is defined as the Greater Basque region.

Bilbao is situated in the north-central part of Spain, some 16 kilometres (10 mi) south of the Bay of Biscay, where the estuary of Bilbao is formed. Its main urban core is surrounded by two small mountain ranges with an average elevation of 400 metres (1,300 ft).

After its foundation in the early 14th century by Diego López V de Haro, head of the powerful Haro family, Bilbao was a commercial hub of the Basque Country that enjoyed significant importance in Green Spain. This was due to its port activity based on the export of iron extracted from the Biscayan quarries. Throughout the nineteenth century and the beginning of the twentieth, Bilbao experienced heavy industrialisation, making it the centre of the second-most industrialised region of Spain, behind Barcelona. At the same time an extraordinary population explosion prompted the annexation of several adjacent municipalities. Nowadays, Bilbao is a vigorous service city that is experiencing an ongoing social, economic, and aesthetic revitalisation process, started by the iconic Bilbao Guggenheim Museum, and continued by infrastructure investments, such as the airport terminal, the rapid transit system, the tram line, the Alhóndiga, and the currently under development Abandoibarra and Zorrozaurre renewal projects.

Bilbao (surname)

Bilbao is a Spanish surname. Notable people with the surname include:

Bilbao (disambiguation)

Bilbao is a municipality and city in Spain.

Bilbao may also refer to: