Moscow Metro

"Осторожно, двери закрываются!"



The world's busiest subway system and second only to Tokyo in the general rapid transit systems category, Moscow's Metro system is both an impressive feat of engineering and architecture, and an experience that can hardly be recommended on a regular basis. Though the plans for it sprang up back in 1880's, the city government hating all public works as a matter of principle, and ridiculously rich Moscow merchants being equally ridiculously tightfisted about anything that wasn't fueling their ego, led to the fact that it finally started being built by Stalin (actually by Lazar Kaganovich, then railways minister, but that's the fact that slips from most Westerners' attention) in 1935, when both the funds and workforce finally were available. The deep underground tunnels and stations were explicitly envisioned as bomb shelters for the people of Moscow, and the wisdom of this move was proved during World War II, when most stations served as such, and some were converted to house various important military installations -- like Chistye Prudy station that was an Air Defense HQ.

The system, far more underground than The London Underground, is best known for the station design (especially in the earlier stations, when lavishness of decoration was the point, and some recent stations), with its ornate arches, sculptures, murals, etc. It's Socialist Realism meeting urban transport and looking like a museum. Sadly, during the Khruschev's times, the architectural opulence was greatly scaled down, which led to the proliferation of the bland and boring, extremely utilitarian station designs popularly dubbed "Sorokonozhka" ("Centipede", but literally "forty-legged"), due to the unfortunate coincidence of the typical station having forty square columns on the sides. Fortunately, the architectural chic was gradually restored, and now new stations may be less Socialist Realist, but still as artsy as they get -- which often leads to the Your Mileage May Vary situations.

The Metro is a lifeline for notoriously traffic-jammed Moscow, as it's often the only means to reliably reach the desired destination when major highways are jammed for hours, and any accident in the Metro leads to the city grinding a standstill. Fortunately, the accidents are pretty rare, and even The One Under is rarely a fatality -- taking into account London's example, there's a deep trench between the rails on every station. It also has another feature based on the English experience -- there's exactly one station with a curved platform, so the distinctive caution to mind the gap is simply unneeded there. It is replaced, however by the another, no less iconic phrase: "Ostorozhno, dveri zakryvayutsya," or "Be careful, the doors are closing." Sometimes you can hear another phrase: "Be careful when leaving through last door of last car," because some stations are not long enough to fully guarantee that train will actually fit. Another interesting feature is that there are no fare zones -- in contrast to much of the other world's subway systems, the fare is flat and each and every trip costs the same amount (~$1 as for now) regardless of its length or number of transfers. The Metro uses smartcards as tickets, with 1, 2, 5, 10, 20 or 60 uses and limited lifetime (45 days for a 60-use ticket), unlimited-but-no-more-once-per-7-minutes replenishable plastic smartcards with 30, 90 and 365 days of use. There are social monthly tickets and replenishable cards as well. However, in USSR times it used common coins and then special slugs. The system has been under constant overuse for last 20 years, so many wish to stay in traffic jams rather use the Metro. Ironically enough, there are human-jams on hub stations at rush hours.

Speaking of the rails, The Metro runs on the same wide gauge track (1520 mm) as other Russian railways, but uses a special rolling stock that is lighter, better suited to quick loading and unloading, and pretty bad for the overground running (there's only one line with a significant overground stretch in the whole system, so why bother?). In contrast with the London system, there's only one size of the rolling stock, as both surface-dug and drilled tunnels are built to the same spec. Most trains, which were designed and (mostly) built back in Soviet times, lack air-conditioning, relying instead on special scoops on the roofs, which make cars rather drafty when they are running, and positively stifling when they're not. New trains do have ACs though, but their reliability leaves much to be desired. They are also pretty rare, as they are bought only to replace the aging ones and used only on some lines. Given the enormous passenger load the system experiences most of the time, it's the major reason why riding a Metro can be a rather unpleasant experience.

There are 12 lines, which are designated by names, numbers and colors, and the lines tend to be referred to by their colors in the colloquial speech, except when the similarly colored lines may cause confusion and in the case of the Ring line -- it's never referred to by its color (brown), but always as "Koltsevaya" ("The Ring Line"). The lines are arranged in a wheel pattern, with seven radial lines running the city end to end being spokes, the intersecting grid they form in the city center constituting a hub, and Koltsevaya line, roughly corresponding to the Garden Ring along the edge of the city center, being the rim. There are also two shorter half-length radial lines, and since the plans of having the second ring to relieve the overloaded central grid were dropped due to the lack of funds, they are replaced by the ad hoc-built "chordal" lines, connecting the spokes outside of the ring, of which there are now two. Moscow Monorail is also often lumped here as a third chordal line (it is also run by the Metro company), but is actually a completely different affair, though there are efforts to better integrate it into the system.

Trains are very frequent, less than a minute apart during rush hour, and a supposedly horrendously long 7 minutes apart after midnight (stations open at 05:30 and close at 01:00 for maintenance), so no schedule is available to passengers -- you'd never wait long enough to warrant it. Direction can be determined by the gender of the announcer (male for into the city or clockwise, female out or counter-clockwise ). It's also almost impossible to get lost there, as there's only one branch in the whole system, maps are plastered on every imaginable surface, columns equipped with a voice link to information bureaus and emergency services stand on every station, and signs showing where you can get from here abound -- in fact, it is only second to the Tokyo subway in usability and usefulness of its signage -- if you just so happen to know Russian, of course, as there's very little in the way of international signs.

There is also a widely believed-in (but officially denied) Urban Legend about a "Metro 2" system, deeper down, designed to evacuate key people from Moscow in the event of a nuclear war. Most stuff on this is on a "my brother's friend's aunt's friend worked there" basis and anything on this should be taken with a pinch of salt. However, many tunnels have spin-offs and some of them are not associated with any object on surface. Metrorats (Метрокрысы) are another famous urban legend about the metro. They are, reportedly, extremely big and smart rats at least 1 meter in size who live in metro tunnels and can eat strangers. The legend is so popular, that it became ironical explanation for some stupid metro-questions -- or a reason for an instaban on some forums.

There are also many stray dogs ("Metrodogs") that live in the system, and even use the trains to go from place to place.

There are some "ghost stations," that were built, but never used for passengers. Passengers still can see them from car windows, yet mostly without lights except from the train itself.

There is as well a subculture of those who try to get to service areas: Metrostroy (parts of the system under construction), tunnels, and other places not meant for the general public. This requires some skills, special gear, and careful work, so even though it's annoying for personnel, such activities usually bring no harm.

In fiction
 * Firefox - this is filmed in Vienna, with a local station sign visible in one shot. Plus a funny mistake - he enters the U1 on Karlsplatz, but exits the U4 in Schönbrunn.
 * Night Watch - filmed, according to IMDB, in St. Petersburg. Which has its own, much smaller and less traveled, but much more technically complex and confusing metro system. The local joke does that St. Pete's metro was designed to utterly dumbfound any possible occupant.
 * The main setting of Dmitriy Gluhovskiy's novel Metro 2033 and the game based on it, where it serves as a shelter for the few survivors after The End of the World As We Know It, and monstrous abominations lurk in the tunnels.
 * In I Step Through Moscow, a 1963 Soviet movie which remains quite popular in Russia, a scene is set in the Moscow Metro.
 * In Police Academy: Mission To Moscow, Commander Lassard expresses his awe at the Moscow Metro to his Russian "hosts."
 * Mentioned in several Tom Clancy books.
 * The Metrorat urban legend is true in Age of Aquarius.