The first, the most remote and the most long-awaited: Eight facts about metro stations beyond the Moscow Ring Road

Moscow’s city boundaries have long gone beyond the Moscow Ring Road (MKAD), but the first metro station beyond this de facto city limit appeared only in the 21st century. It was opened in 2002.  Now, 21 of 224 stations are located beyond the MKAD. Under the plan, another eight stations will be opened this year. These include stations on the red line from Salaryevo to Kommunarka (Stolbovo), and a new pink line. The metro will come to the large districts of Kosino-Ukhtomsky, Nekrasovka and Kommunarka.

First station beyond the Moscow Ring Road

The first metro station beyond the Moscow Ring Road appeared in Severnoye Butovo. The southernmost station on the grey line – Bulvar Dmitriya Donskogo – opened on 26 December 2002.

Its construction was difficult. It began in the mid-1990s but was frozen because of the economic crisis. This was nothing unusual in those times. Not a single metro station opened in 1997 and 1998, and only one – Dubrovka – was launched in 1999. Just one new station a year was opened in 2000, 2001 and 2002, all on the southern section of the Serpukhovsko-Timiryazveskaya Line.

With the opening of the Butovskaya Line, Bulvar Dmitriya Donskogo became the first station beyond the MKAD, from which it was possible to make an interchange to another line. That said, for passengers the Butobvskaya Line was just a continuation of the grey line to Yuzhnoye Butovo: they just had to leave a train, transfer from the Bulvar Dmitriya Donskogo station to the Starokachalovskaya Street station and then move on.

These stations became a full-scale hub in 2014, when the Butovskaya Line was extended to Bitsevsky Park that connected it with the orange line.

Moscow’s first elevated line

The Butovskaya Line that opened on 27 December 2003 became the calling card of the most populous district beyond the MKAD, Yuzhnoye Butovo, where 208,000 people live today.

The Butovskaya Line is the light-grey line (#12) on the map. However, when this line first appeared, it consisted of five overland stations. For this reason, it was called the Light Metro and denoted as L1.

Incidentally, at that time the entire Butovskaya Line was located beyond the MKAD. However, another two stations, Bitsevsky Park and Lesoparkovaya, were added in 2014, which connected the light-grey line with the orange line and deprived it of the status of being located entirely beyond the MKAD. But now passengers in Yuzhnoye Butovo have the option of the grey line or the orange line.

The authorities decided to extend the Butovskaya Line to the Kaluzhsko-Rizhskaya Line in 2004. The new section was officially “under construction” for seven years although in reality work began in 2011. To avoid damaging the historical and natural site of Bitsevsky Park, metro builders bored the tunnels under it at a depth of 20-30 metres. 

The first metro bridge beyond the MKAD

In 2009 the metro expanded to another large district Mitino. The first metro bridge over the Moskva River was built beyond the MKAD, when the Arbatsko-Pokrovskaya Line was extended from Strogino. The bridge is located between the Myakinino and Volokolamskaya stations. In 2012, the blue line was extended further to the Pyatnitskoye Shosse station.

The first station in the Moscow suburbs

Over 100,000 residents in the Novokosino District got metro access in 2012. The yellow line crossed the MKAD and the Novokosino station was opened there. Before that, passengers had to take a long bus ride to the Novogireyevo station or commute by train.

Now Novokosino is no longer the only station located at the junction of two districts, but it was the first. One of its entrance halls leads to the Novokosino district in the Eastern Administrative Area and the other to the city of Reutov in the Moscow suburbs.

Another station like this can be found on the Tagansko-Krasnopresnenskaya Line. Residents of the Vykhino-Zhulebino District, part of which is also located beyond the MKAD, waited a long time for the extension of the purple line from Vykhino. It took the purple line 47 years to cross the MKAD.  The Vykhino station opened in 1966, while the Lermontovsky Prospekt and Zhulebino stations were launched in 2013. In the following two years, the line was extended to the Kotelniki station that also has exits both to Moscow and the Moscow suburbs.

First stations in the Troitsky and Novomoskovsky administrative areas

The Sokolnicheskaya Line, the original metro line (the section between the Komsomolskaya and Park Kultury stations with a branch to the Smolenskaya station), was opened on 15 May 1935. Symbolically, this line was the first to reach the Troitsky and Novomoskovsky administrative areas. The Rumyantsevo and Salaryevo stations were opened in the newly annexed areas in 2016.

Rumyantsevo set a kind of a record. It existed as a terminal station for 28 days, the shortest period in the history of the Moscow Metro. It opened on 18 January 2016 and the Salaryevo station began receiving passengers on 15 February.

After the Salaryevo-Stolbovo section opens, residents in Kartmazovo, Prokshino, Kommunarka and other New Moscow settlements will enjoy long-awaited metro access. The load will also be relieved on the Buninskaya Alleya station on the Butovskaya Line.

The Filatov Lug and Prokshino stations will be above the ground, while the Olkhovaya and Kommunarka (Stolbovo) stations will be underground. The architects decided to design the surface level stations to look like railway stations from the 19^th-early 20^th centuries, such as Waterloo in London, Pennsylvania Station in New York and Kievsky Railway Station in Moscow. These buildings have high arched ceilings and large windows.

The metro in the newly integrated areas will continue to be developed. The Sokolnicheskaya Line will be extended another 2.6 km to Potapovo near Potapovskaya Roshcha Street. This station will be welcomed by residents in the new neighbourhoods of Kommunarka and Yuzhnoye Butovo. Another new line, Kommunarskaya, will pass through the Kommunarka station. It will start from the Krymskaya station on the Moscow Central Ring and end in Troitsk.

The farthest station from the MKAD

In 2018, the metro reached Solntsevo and Novo-Peredelkino, the largest districts located beyond the MKAD in western Moscow, with a population of 250,000 people. The residents of Solntsevo had been waiting for the metro for over 30 years. The first proposals to extend the metro line along Michurinsky Prospekt were made in 1938. This project seemed promising but was never carried out.

In 1965, the concept was brought up again, with engineers proposing to run the line to the south of Troyekurovo, to wit, along Michurinsky Prospekt and further on beyond the MKAD to Solntsevo. However, construction did not begin in the 1960s, or the 1970s, or 1980s. It was launched in 2012, 47 years after the plans appeared.

Rasskazovka, the terminal station on the yellow line, is currently the farthest (about 7 km) from the MKAD.  It was opened last year along with six other stations on the yellow line. The length of the new section is over 14 km. Such a long section was never put into operation at once before. The line will eventually be extended to Vnukovo Airport.

Rasskazovka is one of the most unusual stations in the Moscow Metro. It is designed to look like a reading hall in a library: its columns look like cabinets with card indices bearing QR-codes. Passengers that have the app can receive a link for downloading a book.

Pink line getting ready to open

After the extension of the yellow line to the west, Kosino-Ukhtomsky and Nekrasovka in eastern Moscow remain the largest districts beyond the MKAD without metro access. The 135,000 people that live there will not have to wait long: the new pink line will soon appear on the metro map.

Voting on the Active Citizen website, residents chose pink to denote the Nekrasovskaya Line. The section will be over 15 km long and will have eight stations: Nizhegorodskaya, Stakhanovskaya, Okskaya Ulitsa, Yugo-Vostochnaya, Kosino, Ulitsa Dmitriyevskogo, Lukhmanovskaya and Nekrasovka.

Nizhegorodskaya will be a hub for two lines: Nekrasovskaya and the Big Circle Line. The station will have two platforms and four tracks: the pink line in the middle and the Big Circle Line on the outsides. Initially, trains on the Nekrasovskaya Line will run beyond Nizhegorodskaya station run to the Aviamotornaya and Lefortovo stations on the Big Circle Line.

The tunnels between Nizhegorodskaya and Kosino are being bored by a 10-metre tunnel boring machines, making them wide enough for both tracks. This is unusual for Moscow, where most tunnels are single track (though the original Sokolnicheskaya Line does have some double track tunnel sections).  The method makes it possible to expedite construction substantially. This is called the Spanish technique because it is very popular in Spain.

April 1 joke by physicists

In the 1990s, students at the Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology (MFTI) in Dolgoprudny were so tired of overcrowded buses and commuter trains that they decided to “get” a metro station of their own as a joke. On 1 April 1996, a circle with a new station, Fiztekh, appeared in trains on the grey and some other lines. It came after the Altufyevo station and was designated as “under construction.”

The students were convincing, making map stickers in a printing shop so they looked realistic. Many passengers believed that this new station was really coming soon and started calling with questions about it.

The pranking students could hardly have expected a metro station to appear near MFTI, but it is planned. It is to be built in the Severny District by 2022.