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A subway, also known as an underpass, is a grade-separated pedestrian crossing running underneath a road or railway in order to entirely separate pedestrians and cyclists from motor or train traffic.
Pedestrians will not use an underpass where a more direct at-grade option is available.
Badly designed subways may not provide for disabled users, especially those in a wheelchair who cannot use stairs. As the underpass is normally below the level of the footway and carriageway (rather than the carriageway being lifted over the road), technologies such as stairs, lifts and ramps must be used. A subway under the A38 in Birmingham city centre was criticised for having a ramp on one side but only stairs on the other side.
In the Netherlands, underpasses for cyclists and pedestrians are often built as part of bikeways, often to replace or at-grade cyclist/pedestrian crossings. At Bilthoven station, the cycle track and major road previously crossed the railway at grade. To reduce delays, new separate underpasses were built, with motor traffic given a longer route than active travel modes. In 's-Hertogenbosch, the urban ring road has only one level crossing, but has ten overpasses and fourteen underpasses to ensure the road does not form a barrier to cyclists and pedestrians.
In Czechia, building subways under major city streets was popular mainly from the mid-1960s to the mid-1990s. After 2000, the prevailing tendency is to calm down urban traffic by building bypasses and ring roads and preferring non-motorized traffic within cities. Underpasses and footbridges that lengthen pedestrians' journeys or do not allow wheelchair access are no longer acceptable. Clarity and a sense of security are also taken into account. Some subways have been canceled, destroyed, buried or leased for other purposes. In 2022, Institute of Planning and Development of Prague (IPR) prepared a study of the revitalization of the Prague subways. Of the 123 underpasses under the administration of the municipal road manager (TSK), 30 were proposed to be canceled, 41 to be evaluated as part of a comprehensive solution for the given area, and the last to be revitalized or reconstructed, themselves or including modification of access roads. Podchody, Podchody ve správě TSK – analýza a plán rozvoje, IPR Praha, September 2022 At railway stations on the main lines, access via an underpass or footbridge is standard. The current trend is to extend the underpasses, which originally led only from one side of the track, to allow access from the opposite side as well. At the main railway station in Prague, access to the Žižkov side was ceremoniously opened on 24 September 2021. Na hlavním nádraží otevřeli podchod na Žižkov. V Praze vznikla také nová stanice, Novinky.cz, 24 September 2021 Similar modification was carried out, for example, in Olomouc (2006 Hodolany propojil podchod, Olomouc, 6 November 2006), Praha-Holešovice (2023 Další pražské nádraží bude průchozí. Skanska prodlouží podchod pod holešovickým nádražím k Vltavě, Zdopravy.cz, 11 February 2021) and others.
Subways are less common in North American cities than in European cities of comparable size. They are constructed when it is necessary for pedestrians to cross a railway line or a dual carriageway such as an interstate highway, and they appear at the exits from underground rapid transit systems, but one would be rarely built to enable people to cross an ordinary city street.
In the Philippines, the term is also underpass, and there are two types: underpasses for pedestrians such as along Ayala Avenue in Makati and in the City of Manila near Quiapo Church, and vehicular ones along the length of EDSA and other thoroughfares. One of the earliest and most notable vehicular underpasses is the "Lagusnilad" in front of Manila City Hall.
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