City to complete Big Circle Line soon: Building the longest metro line

2020 and is to open in 2021 when the Big Circle Line’s upper (northern) section is ready to operate.

The entire line is expected to be completed by 2022, said Deputy Moscow Mayor for Urban Development and Construction Marat Khusnullin.

He also discussed the Big Circle Line’s Savyolovskaya station that opened 20 December. This is the world’s deepest interchange station, located 65 metres underground; the second hallway is to open on the first weekdays after the holiday season when passenger traffic is expected to jump.

Builders resumed work 3 January to maintain the fast-paced schedule.

“Metro builders outdid themselves in 2018 with their best results ever. They opened 17 underground metro stations. We have never accomplished so much, building 33 kilometres of tracks and three train maintenance facilities. Most importantly, we started working on our 2019 projects last year. We are set to complete 32 kilometres of metro lines, 14 stations and two train maintenance facilities before the year is out,” Mr Khusnullin noted.

The 70-kilometre Big Circle Line, the world’s most ambitious metro construction project, will have 31 stations and two train maintenance facilities. It will reduce congestion on the metro’s first and second interchange circuits, that is, the Circle Line (No. 5) and the stations inside it. The line’s stations will open stage by stage, and are expected to handle up to 380 million people annually.

Nekrasovskaya Line

According to Mr Khusnullin, the first section of the new Nekrasovskaya, formerly Kozhukhovskaya, Line (No. 15) between the Kosino and Nekrasovka stations is to open in late March or early April. The section between the Aviamotornaya and Lefortovo stations is to open in late December 2019. There are also plans to open the Rudnyovo train maintenance facility, the first to start operating this year, in late March or early April.

Nizhegorodskaya station is the most complex construction problem here because no other station like this has ever been built, Mr Khusnullin added. Some of the tunnels between it and the Kosino station have been built with a 10-metre-diameter tunnel-boring machine. This is big enough for both tracks in the same big tunnel. The tunnels between the Kosino and Nekrasovka stations were built with conventional tunnel-boring machines with a diameter of six metres. Nizhegorodskaya station will also connect with the Moscow Central Circle (MCC) railway and the Karacharovo commuter railway platform.

“A 30,000 square metre underground facility allowing passengers to change to these different transit systems will be as large as eight five-storey buildings,” Mr Khusnullin added.

A 10 metre wide tunnel-boring machine will soon move through the operational Stakhanovskaya station for the first time in history.

The new metro line will link the Nizhegorodskaya and Nekrasovka stations through seven city districts, including Nizhegorodsky, Ryazansky, Vykhino-Zhulebino, Kosino-Ukhtomsky, Nekrasovka, Tekstilshchiki and Kuzminki and via the Moscow Region’s Lyubertsy urban community-settlement. The new stations will make things easier for 800,000 Moscow residents. The line will considerably reduce congestion on the metro’s Tagansko-Krasnopresnenskaya (No. 7) and Kalininskaya (No. 8) lines.