INTERVIEW | ANNA MERKULOVA
UNDERGROUND IN MOSCOW
Moscow is constructing new metro lines at a rapid pace to better accommodate the city’s seven million passengers daily who use it. Julian Champkin spoke with Anna Merkulova, engineer and CEO of the Mosproekt-3 group of companies about the expansion programme
Speed, scale, size: the superlatives for the expansion of Moscow’s rail infrastructure system come thick and fast. The entire off-street rail transport development programme, begun in 2011, includes construction of no fewer than 120 new stations by 2024. By then, the rail transport system of the metropolis will have doubled in size to exceed 1,000km. Its new ‘Big Circle’ will be the longest circle rail line in the world. One statistic gives an idea of this massive
undertaking: while most metro expansions operate a handful of TBMs at most, Moscow has had no fewer than 23 of them in operation on a single day – and thus entered the Guiness Book of World Records. The unprecedented pace of development of the
network – consisting of the Metro, the Moscow Central Circle (MCC) and the Moscow Central Diameters (MCD) – became possible thanks to high-end technologies implemented by Russian engineers. Anna Merkulova, engineer, member of the British
Tunnelling Society and ITA, and CEO of the Mosproekt-3 Group of Companies – a key player in the Moscow mega-project – tells Tunnels and Tunnelling International about the work being done. Moscow’s metro system has been a source of pride
since its original construction during the Stalin era in the 1930s. Its stations are renowned for their spaciousness and palatial interior design. Fifty years later, visitors to the city still marvel at the lavish attention paid to a public transportation system originally built to make life easier for the proletariat. But Moscow has grown and so has its transport
needs. The system consisted of lines emanating out from the city centre in a radial pattern – known as ‘diameters’ – with few cross-connections between them. Furthermore, road congestion was growing. “In 2010, the city administration decided on
accelerated renovation of its entire transport system,” explains Merkulova. “In doing so, it gave priority to the Metro – historically
the most popular type of public transport in the capital. Seven million passengers use it daily, which amounts to 2.5 billion rides a year. “The large-scale programme of expansion of the
underground network was aimed at extending its outreach to cover 90% of the city’s population. As a first stage, seven of the existing radial lines were extended,
18 | November 2021
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