Moscow Metro


The Moscow Metro is a rapid transit system in the Moscow metropolitan area of Russia. It serves the capital city of Moscow and the neighbouring cities of Krasnogorsk, Reutov, Lyubertsy, and Kotelniki. Opened in 1935 with one line and 13 stations, it was the first underground railway system in the Soviet Union.
, the Moscow Metro has 300 stations and of routes, making it the 8th-longest in the world, the longest in Europe and the longest outside China. It is also the only system in Russia with two circle lines. The system is mostly underground, with the deepest section underground at the Park Pobedy station, one of the world's deepest underground stations. It is the busiest metro system in Europe, the busiest in the world outside Asia, and is considered a tourist attraction in itself, thanks to its lavish interior decoration.
The Moscow Metro is a world leader in the frequency of train traffic, as intervals during peak hours often do not exceed 90 seconds. In February 2023, Moscow was the first in the world to reduce the intervals of metro trains to 80 seconds.

Name

The full legal name of the metro has been Moscow Order of Lenin and Order of the Red Banner of Labor V. I. Lenin Metro since 1955. This is usually shortened to V. I. Lenin Metro. This shorter official name appears on many stations. Although there were proposals to remove Lenin from the official name, it still stands. During the 1990s and 2000s, Lenin's name was excluded from the signage on newly built and reconstructed stations. In 2016, a Metro representative stated that Lenin's name would remain on station name plates as it aligns with the official name of the company, unchanged since the Soviet era.
The first official name of the metro was L. M. Kaganovich Metro after Lazar Kaganovich. However, when the Metro was awarded the Order of Lenin, it was officially renamed Moscow Order of Lenin L. M. Kaganovich Metro in 1947. When the metro was renamed in 1955, the Okhotny Ryad station was renamed as "Imeni Kaganovicha" in honor of Lazar Kaganovich. In 1957, the original Okhotny Ryad name of the station was reinstated.

Logo

The first line of the Moscow Metro was launched in 1935, complete with the first logo, the capital M paired with the text "МЕТРО". There is no accurate information about the author of the logo, so it is often attributed to the architects of the first stations – Samuil Kravets, Ivan Taranov and Nadezhda Bykova. At the opening in 1935, the M letter on the logo had no definite shape.
In 2014, the Moscow Metro adopted a standardized logo of the network as part of a broader rebranding of the Moscow Transport.

Operations

The Moscow Metro, a state-owned enterprise, is long and consists of 15 lines and 263 stations organized in a spoke-hub distribution paradigm, with the majority of rail lines running radially from the centre of Moscow to the outlying areas. The Koltsevaya Line forms a long circle which enables passenger travel between these diameters, and the new Moscow Central Circle and even newer Bolshaya Koltsevaya line form a and long circles respectively that serve a similar purpose on middle periphery. Most stations and lines are underground, but some lines have at-grade and elevated sections; the Filyovskaya Line, Butovskaya Line and the Central Circle Line are the three lines that are at grade or mostly at grade.
The Moscow Metro uses, like other Russian railways, and an underrunning third rail with a supply of 825 Volts DC, except line 14, which being directly connected to the mainlines with 3000V DC overhead lines, as is typical. The average distance between stations is ; the shortest section is between Delovoy Tsentr and Moskva-City, and the longest is between Krylatskoye and Strogino. Long distances between stations have the positive effect of a high cruising speed of.
The Moscow Metro opens at 05:25 and closes at 01:00. The exact opening time varies at different stations according to the arrival of the first train, but all stations simultaneously close their entrances at 01:00 for maintenance, and so do transfer corridors. The minimum interval between trains is 90 seconds during the morning and evening rush hours.
As of 2017, the system had an average daily ridership of 6.99 million passengers. Peak daily ridership of 9.71 million was recorded on 26 December 2014.
Free Wi-Fi has been available on all lines of the Moscow Metro since 2 December 2014.

Network

Lines

Each line is identified by a name, an alphanumeric index, and a colour. The colour assigned to each line is its colloquial identifier, except for the nondescript greens and blues assigned to the Bolshaya Koltsevaya, the Butovskaya and Troitskaya lines. The upcoming station is announced by a male voice on inbound trains to the city center, and by a female voice on outbound trains.
The metro used to have a connection to the former Moscow Monorail, a, six-station monorail line between Timiryazevskaya and VDNKh which opened in "excursion mode" in November 2004 and started providing regular passenger services in January 2008. From 2017 the monorail switched to "excursion mode" with less frequent trains, before being shut down on 27 June 2025.
Note: Line 13 is the former Moscow Monorail that was disestablished in 2025. The lines are still numbered as if the line were there.
Also, from 11 August 1969 to 26 October 2019, the Moscow Metro included Kakhovskaya line along with 3 stations, which closed for a long reconstruction. On 7 December 2021, Kakhovskaya was reopened after reconstruction as part of the Bolshaya Koltsevaya line. The renewed Varshavskaya and Kashirskaya stations reopened as part of the Bolshaya Koltsevaya line, which became fully functional on 1 March 2023. Its new stations included Pechatniki, Nagatinsky Zaton and Klenovy Bulvar.

Renamed lines

The first plans for a metro system in Moscow date back to the Russian Empire but were postponed by World War I, the October Revolution and the Russian Civil War. In 1923, the Moscow City Council formed the Underground Railway Design Office at the Moscow Board of Urban Railways. It carried out preliminary studies, and by 1928 had developed a project for the first route from Sokolniki to the city centre. At the same time, an offer was made to the German company Siemens Bauunion to submit its own project for the same route. In June 1931, the decision to begin construction of the Moscow Metro was made by the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. In January 1932 the plan for the first lines was approved, and on 21 March 1933 the Soviet government approved a plan for 10 lines with a total route length of.
The first lines were built using the Moscow general plan designed by Lazar Kaganovich, along with his project managers in the 1930s–1950s, and the Metro was named after him until 1955 . The Moscow Metro construction engineers consulted with their counterparts from the London Underground, the world's oldest metro system, in 1936: British architect Charles Holden and administrator Frank Pick had been working on the station developments of the Piccadilly Line extension, and Soviet delegates to London were impressed by Holden's thoroughly modern redeployment of classical elements and use of high-quality materials for the circular ticket hall of Piccadilly Circus, and so engaged Pick and Holden as advisors to Moscow's metro system. Partly because of this connection, the design of Gants Hill tube station, which was completed in 1947, is reminiscent of a Moscow Metro station. Indeed, Holden's homage to Moscow has been described as a gesture of gratitude for the USSR's helpful role in The Second World War.
Soviet workers did the labour and the art work, but the main engineering designs, routes, and construction plans were handled by specialists recruited from London Underground. The British called for tunnelling instead of the "cut-and-cover" technique, the use of escalators instead of lifts, the routes and the design of the rolling stock. The paranoia of the NKVD was evident when this secret police organisation arrested numerous British engineers for espionage because they gained an in-depth knowledge of the city's physical layout. Engineers for the Metropolitan-Vickers Electrical Company were given a show trial and deported in 1933, ending the role of British business in the USSR.

First four stages of construction

The first line was opened to the public on 15 May 1935 at 07:00 am. It was long and included 13 stations. The day was celebrated as a technological and ideological victory for socialism. The designers consulted with employees of the London Underground during the initial planning phase, and much of the engineering design work was done by British engineers.
An estimated 285,000 people rode the Metro at its debut, and its design was greeted with pride; street celebrations included parades, plays and concerts. The Bolshoi Theatre presented a choral performance by 2,200 Metro workers; 55,000 coloured posters and 25,000 copies of "Songs of the Joyous Metro Conquerors" were distributed. The Moscow Metro averaged and had a top speed of. In comparison, New York City Subway trains averaged a slower and had a top speed of.
The initial line connected Sokolniki to Okhotny Ryad then branching to Park Kultury and Smolenskaya. The latter branch was extended westwards to a new station in March 1937, the first Metro line crossing the Moskva River over the Smolensky Metro Bridge.
The second stage was completed before the war. In March 1938, the Arbatskaya branch was split and extended to the Kurskaya station. In September 1938, the Gorkovskaya Line opened between Sokol and Teatralnaya. Here the architecture was based on that of the most popular stations in existence ; while following the popular art-deco style, it was merged with socialist themes. The first deep-level column station Mayakovskaya was built at the same time.
Building work on the third stage was delayed during World War II, and two Metro sections were put into service; Teatralnaya–Avtozavodskaya and Kurskaya–Partizanskaya were inaugurated in 1943 and 1944 respectively. War motifs replaced socialist visions in the architectural design of these stations. During the Siege of Moscow in the fall and winter of 1941, Metro stations were used as air-raid shelters; the Council of Ministers moved its offices to the Mayakovskaya platforms, where Stalin made public speeches on several occasions. The Chistiye Prudy station was also walled off, and the headquarters of the Air Defence established there.
After the war ended in 1945, construction began on the fourth stage of the Metro, which included the Koltsevaya Line, a deep part of the Arbatsko-Pokrovskaya line from Ploshchad Revolyutsii to Kievskaya and a surface extension to Pervomaiskaya during the early 1950s. The decoration and design characteristic of the Moscow Metro is considered to have reached its zenith in these stations. The Koltsevaya Line was first planned as a line running under the Garden Ring, a wide avenue encircling the borders of Moscow's city centre. The first part of the line – from Park Kultury to Kurskaya – follows this avenue. Plans were later changed and the northern part of the ring line runs outside the Sadovoye Koltso, thus providing service for seven rail terminals. The next part of the Koltsevaya Line opened in 1952, and in 1954 the ring line was completed.