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The Moscow Metro, which spans almost the whole of the Russian capital, is one of the world's most heavily used metro systems. It is well known for the ornate design of many of its stations, which contain stunningly beautiful examples of socialist realist art.

Description of the Metro

In total, the Moscow Metro has 278.3 km of route length, 12 lines and 171 stations; on a normal weekday it carries 8.2 million passengers. Passenger traffic is considerably lower on weekends bringing the average daily passenger traffic during the year to 7.1 million passengers per day. The Moscow Metro is a state-owned enterprise.

Each line is identified by a number, a name and a colour. The voice announcements refer to lines by name, while in colloquial usage they are mostly referred to by colour, except the Lyublinskaya Line (number 10) and the Kakhovskaya Line (number 11) which have been assigned shades of green similar to that of the Zamoskvoretskaya Line (number 2). Most lines run radially through the city, except the Koltsevaya Line (number 5), which is a 20-km-long ring connecting all the radial lines and a few smaller lines outside. On all lines, travellers can determine the direction of the train by the gender of the announcer: on the ring line, a male voice indicates clockwise travel, and a female voice counter-clockwise. On the radial lines, travellers heading toward the centre of Moscow will hear male-voiced announcements, and travellers heading away will hear female-voiced announcements (a good mnemonic rule here is: ‘your boss calls you to work; your wife calls you home’). In addition, there is an abundance of signs showing all the stations that can be reached in a given direction.

The system was built almost entirely underground, although some lines (numbers 1, 2 and 4) cross the Moskva river, while line number 1 also crosses the Yauza river by bridge. Other exceptions include the Filyovskaya Line, which has a long surface section (seven stations) between Kievskaya and Molodyozhnaya stations, and the Butovskaya Light Metro Line (L1) with 4 elevated stations. Two further surface-level stations exist on the Arbatsko-Pokrovskaya Line and on the Tagansko-Krasnopresnenskaya Line

The Moscow Metro is open from 5:35 until 1:04 (the time may vary at different stations according to first/last train schedule). During peak hours, trains run roughly every 90 seconds on most lines. At other times during the day, they run about every two to three and a half minutes, and every six to ten minutes late at night. As trains are so frequent, there is no timetable available to passengers.

The Lines of the Moscow Metro

The colours in the table correspond to the colours of the lines in the map above.

Metro lines

Monorail lines

Notes

It should be noted that there are plans to extend the system with several "Light Metro". Light metro are Moscow non traditional metro lines designed to be elevated. One, Butovskaya, is already in operation, and the next to open seems likely to be Solntsevskaya ("Солнцевская").

The monorail line between Timiryazevskaya and VDNKh is currently in "excursion mode": trains leave once every 20 minutes, tickets cost about four times more than usual (50 roubles - about $1.70), and the hours of operation are 8:00-20:00. Full operation is planned to start on July 1 2006.

• Although the Filyovskaya Line was opened in 1958, some of the older stations date to 1935/37 when it was opened as a branch of the Sokolnicheskaya line; between 1938 and 1953 it was part of the Arbatsko-Pokrovskaya line. The stations were closed between 1953 and 1958 and reopened as part of a separate Filyovskaya Line.

• Although the Kakhovskaya Line was opened in 1995, the stations were built in 1969 and remained until 1983 an integral part of the Zamoskovoretskaya line, and - from 1983 to 1995 - a branch of it.

Ticketing

Tickets are available for a fixed number of journeys, irrespective of the distance of travel and the number of lines changed. Monthly and yearly tickets are also available.

The Moscow Metro uses magnetic cards (contact cards) for tickets with a fixed number of journeys (up to 1, 2, 5, 10, 20, 60 and 70 journeys for 30 days from the day of the first journey). Magnetic cards were introduced in 1993 as a test and were used as unlimited tickets between 1996 and 1998. For all other cases the Moscow Metro uses a Transport Card (or 'contactless smartcard'). Smartcards are available as 'unlimited' and 'social' tickets. The unlimited card can be programmed for 30, 90, and 365 days. The social cards are free for pensioners and other privileged citizens of the City of Moscow; they are available to school pupils and students at a heavily reduced price. Transport Cards were introduced in 1998 along with a new type of magnetic card. The Moscow Metro became the first metro system in Europe to fully implement smartcards on September 1 1998. The sale of tokens ended on 1 January 1999 and they stopped being accepted in February 1999.

History of the Moscow Metro

The Moscow Metro was initially built under the 1930's Moscow general plan designed by Lazar Kaganovich and was named after him ("Metropoliten im. L.M. Kaganovicha").

The first line opened on 15 May 1935 between Sokolniki and Park Kultury with a branch to Smolenskaya which reached Kievskaya in April 1937 (crossing the Moskva river by bridge). The construction of the first stations was based on other underground systems, and only a few original designs were allowed: (Krasniye Vorota, Okhotniy Ryad and Kropotkinskaya). Kievskaya station was the first to use national motifs.

The second stage was completed before the war. In March 1938 the Arbatskaya branch was split in two and extended to Kurskaya station (now the dark-blue Arbatsko-Pokrovskaya Line). In September 1938 the Gorkovskaya Line opened between Sokol and Teatralnaya. Here the architecture was based on the most popular of the stations already in existence (Krasniye Vorota, Okhotnyi Ryad and Kropotkinskaya) and the compositions followed the popular art deco style, though merging it with socialist visions. The first deep level Column station Mayakovskaya was built at the same time.

Building work on the third stage was delayed but not interrupted during the Second World War, and two Metro sections were put into service: Teatralnaya - Avtozavodskaya (3 stations, crossing the Moskva river in a deep tunnel) and Kurskaya - Partizanskaya (4 stations) were inaugurated in 1943 and 1944 respectively. War motifs replaced socialist visions in the architectural design of the stations.

During the Siege of Moscow, in the autumn and winter of 1941, metro stations were used as air-raid shelters and the Council of Ministers moved its offices to the platforms of Mayakovskaya, where Stalin made public speeches on several occasions. Chistiye Prudy station was also walled off and the headquarters of the Air Defence installed there.

After the war, construction started on the fourth stage of the Metro, which included the Koltsevaya Line and a deep part of the Arbatsko-Pokrovskaya line from Ploshchad Revolyutsii to Kievskaya, and a surface extension to Pervomaiskaya in the early 1950s. The exquisite decoration and design of so much of the Moscow Metro is considered to have reached its peak in these stations.

The Koltsevaya Line was planned first as a line running under the Sadovoye Koltso (Garden Ring), a wide avenue encircling the borders of Moscow's city centre. The first part of the line - from Park Kultury to Kursakya (1950) - follows this avenue. But later plans were changed and the northern part of the ring line deviates 1-1.5 km outside the Sadovoye Koltso, thus providing service for 7 (out of 9) rail terminals. The next part of the Koltsevaya line opened in 1952 (Kurskaya - Belorusskaya) and in 1954 the ring line was completed.

There is an interesting urban legend about the origin of the ring line. A group of engineers approached Stalin with plans for the Metro, to inform him of current progress and of what was being done at that moment. As he looked at the drawings, Stalin poured himself some coffee and spilt a small amount over the edge of the cup. When he was asked whether or not he liked the project so far, he put his cup down on the centre of the Metro blueprints and left in silence. The bottom of the cup left a brown circle on the drawings. The planners looked at it and realized that it was exactly what they had been missing. Taking it as a sign of Stalin's genius, they gave orders for the building of the ring line, which on the plans was always printed in brown. This legend, of course, may be attributed to Stalin's cult of personality.

The beginning of the Cold War led to the construction of a deep part of the Arbatskiy line. The stations on this line are very deep and were planned as shelters in the event of nuclear war. After finishing the line in 1953, the upper tracks between Ploshchad Revolyutsii' and Kievskaya were closed and later reopened in 1958 as a part of the Filyovskaya Line. In the further development of the Metro, the term "stages" was not used any more, although sometimes the stations opened in 1957-1959 are referred to as the "fifth stage".

During the late 1950s, the architectural extravagance of new metro stations was significantly toned down, and decorations at some stations, like VDNKh and Alekseevskaya, were greatly simplified compared with original plans. This was done on the orders of Nikita Khrushchev, who favoured a more spartan decoration scheme. A typical layout (which quickly became known as "Sorokonozhka") was developed for all new stations, and the stations were built to look almost identical, differing from each other only in colours of the marble and ceramic tiles. Most of these stations were very poorly built. It was not until the mid-1970s that architectural extravagance was restored, and original designs once again became popular.

Interesting facts about the system

The Moscow Metro has a broad gauge of 1520 mm, like ordinary Russian railways, and a third rail supply of 825V AC. The average distance between stations is 1800 m, the shortest (515 metres) section being between Aleksandrovskiy Sad and Arbatskaya and the longest (3,413 metres) between Volgogradskiy Prospekt and Tekstilshchiki. The long distances between stations have the positive effect of a commercial cruising speed of 41.6 km/h.

Since the beginning of Moscow metro, platforms have been built to be at least 155 m long, so as to accommodate for 8-car trains. The only exceptions are certain stations of Filyovskaya line: Delovoi Tsentr, Studencheskaya, Kutuzovskaya, Fili, Bagrationovskaya, Filyovskiy Park, Pionerskaya, which only allow for 6-car trains (note that this list includes all of ground-level stations of Filyovskaya line, except Kuntsevskaya).

Trains on lines 2, 6, 7 and 9 consist of 8 cars, on lines 1, 3, 8, 10 of 7 cars and on lines 4, 5 and 11 of 6 cars. All cars (both older E-series and newer 81-series) are 19.6 m long with four doors on either side.

The Moscow Metro train is identical to those used in all other ex-Soviet Metro cities (St. Petersburg, Novosibirsk, Minsk, Kiev, Kharkov, etc.) and in Budapest, Prague, Sofia and Warsaw.

Line L1 is called the "Light metro". It was designed to its own standards and has shorter (96 m) platforms. It employs newer Rusich trains, which consist of 3 articulated cars, but it can also be served by traditional 4-car trains. Rolling stock on the Filyovskaya line is also replaced with 4-car Rusich trains.

The Moscow metro currently comprises 171 stations, of which 70 are deep-level, and 87 are shallow. Of the deep stations, 53 are pylon-type, 16 are column-type and one is "single-vault" (Leningrad technology). The shallow stations compromise 65 of the pillar-type (a large portion of them following the infamous "sorokonozhka" design), 19 "single-vaults" (Kharkov technology) and 3 single-decked. In addition there are ten ground-level stations and four above ground. Two of the stations exist as double halls, and two have three tracks. Five of the stations have side platforms (only one of them-subterranean). The station Vorobyovy Gory is situated on a bridge. Three other metro bridges exist, but are covered or hidden. In addition there are two closed stations and one that is derelict.

Numbers of Moscow Metro

2005 numbers from official site.

Metro 2

Although this has not been officially confirmed, many independent studies suggest that a second, deeper metro system exists under military jurisdiction and is designed for emergency evacuation of key city personnel in case of attack. It is believed that it consists of a single track and connects the Kremlin, chief HQ (Genshtab), Lubyanka (FSB Headquarters) and the Ministry of Defence, as well as numerous other secret installations. There are also entrances to the system from several civilian buildings such as the Russian State Library, Moscow State University (MSU) and at least two stations of the regular metro. It is speculated that these would allow for the evacuation of a small number of randomly chosen civilians, in addition to most of the elite military personnel. The only known junction between the secret system and normal Metro is behind the station Sportivnaya of the Sokolnicheskaya Line. The final section of this system was completed in 1997.()

Recent events

On January 8 1977, twenty-nine people died and many more were injured when Armenian separatists planted a bomb in a train which exploded between Izmailovskaya and Pervomaiskaya stations .

On February 6, 2004, an explosion wracked a train between Avtozavodskaya and Paveletskaya stations on line 2 of the metro, killing 42 and wounding 250. Chechen terrorists were immediately blamed. Later investigation concluded that a Karachay-Cherkessian resident, a racist militant, had committed the suicide bombing.

On March 19, 2006 at 14:29msk (1129 GMT), a pile from the unauthorized construction of a billboard was driven into the tunnel and train between the Sokol and Voikovskaya stations on the Zamoskvoretskaya Line. No injuries were reported.

Expansion plans

Source: Official site

2006 - Delovoi Tsentr - Mezhdunarodnaya, Filyovskaya Line, 0.4 km

2007 - Chkalovskaya - Trubnaya, Lyublinskaya Line, 3.7 km

2007 - Park Pobedy - Kuntsevskaya, Arbatsko-Pokrovskaya Line, 4.9 km

2007 - Krylatskoe - Strogino, Arbatsko-Pokrovskaya Line, 6.6 km

2008-2009 - Trubnaya - Marina Roshcha, Lyublinskaya Line, 3 km

2008-2009 - Ulitsa Starokachalovskaya - Bitsevskiy Park, Butovskaya Light Metro Line, 4.3 km

2010 - Vykhino - Zhulebino, Tagansko-Krasnopresnenskaya Line, 3.4 km

2010 - Novogireevo - Novokosino, Kalininskaya Line, 3.2 km

2010 - Krasnogvardeiskaya - Brateevo, Zamoskvoretskaya Line, 2.9 km

2010 - Marino - Zyablikovo, Lyublinskaya Line, 4.3 km

2011 - Strogino - Mitino, Arbatsko-Pokrovskaya Line, 8.3 km

2011 - Solntsevskaya Light Metro Line, 11.95 km

See also

• List of rapid transit systems
• Moscow Metro 2

External links

Template:Ru icon Official Website
Template:Ru icon Metro.ru — Information, history, maps, art
Template:Ru icon MetroWalks Moscow Photos of all metro station
Template:Ru icon Metro.Molot.ru — Lines, stations, plans, articles
Template:Ru icon Moë Metro ("My Metro") — Stations, cars, links
Template:Ru icon Metronews — News of Moscow metropolitan
Template:En icon Moscow Metro
Template:Hu icon 81-717 Pictures about 81-717 type trains
Template:En icon UrbanRail.Net
Template:En icon Moscow Metro Photos — "faithful rendering of the decorations of the Moscow metro, through some 450 photos and 27 panoramas"

Template:Metros in FSU

• Moscow Metro lines
• Moscow metro
• Rail transport in Russia
• Rapid transit in Europe
• Transport in Moscow