How MKAD came to be: Moscow Main Archive — about the history of the motorway

The Moscow Ring Road (MKAD), which opened more than half a century ago, remains one of the main transport links of the entire city infrastructure. Using the documents of the Main Archive, you can learn more about how a motorway of great value to motorists came into being.

The idea to create a ring road around Moscow appeared in the 1930s. Work on the future road project began at the end of the decade and lasted three years. When everything was ready to start the construction, the project had to be closed down because of the war.

The was a pressing need for a ring road in the city during the war. When the enemy was approaching Moscow, the city extremely quickly paved several temporary intersecting lateral lines together resembling a circle.

The Moscow Soviet revived the idea to build the Moscow Ring Road in 1950. On March 3, they approved the architectural planning assignment for the road design. Shortly after, experts from the Institute Soyuzdorproekt (Design and Survey Institute for Highways) presented a route plan with the road running 15-18 kilometers away from the city center. The road was planned to be 109 kilometers long and 24 meters wide (14 meters wide roadway).

The Moscow Ring Road and radial motorways and railroads were expected to intersect at various levels and pass near as many factories and settlements as possible.

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Thanks to the MKAD, the transport infrastructure has moved forward quickly. The motorway freed the streets from bulky trucks and unclogged the streets in the center. The MKAD non-stop traffic motorway made it much easier to get to some destinations in the Russian capital.

In places where the new arterial road separated urban, country, and rural settlements, parks, and railroads, convenient one-way exits were laid to connect all these places. Since the road often crossed state and collective farm lands, they built crossings and passages under the Ring Road for the convenience of farmers driving cattle.

The project also took into account the areas near the motorway. Trees and bushes were planted in the fields and meadows, which, among other things, protected the road from snow. And those green spaces that had had to be cut down were replaced with new ones but in a non-forested area. Shrubs and flowerbeds decorated junctions, areas near city institutions.

The MKAD construction began in 1956. The first section — 48 kilometers from Yaroslavskoye Motorway to Simferopolskoye Motorway — was opened in 1960. After the ring road had been completed two years later, on November 5 it was fully opened for the public.