The Metro is one of the busiest subway networks in the world and on a normal weekday will carry more than 8 million passengers along 286.8 miles (461.5 km) of track, visiting 263 stations on route. When I lived in Moscow, I used to love running errands because it gave me an excuse to use the metro. To use it, all you need is this blue Тройка card, which I would buy 30 rides in bulk, and each ride would be an equivalent of $0.42 USD (probably cheaper now).
You can pretty much live anywhere in Moscow and live within a 10 minute walk of a metro station (although this might not be true in the outskirts). They have the busiest metro system in the world, and the most efficient – 99.99% on time (which is irrelevant, because trains come every 40 seconds for the brown circular line, and every 2 minutes on standard lines). T his is the metro station, Павелецская, which has an entrance inside the train station building. I had to use this station to get home from work. This pic was taken during rush hour, probably around 5:30pm (or as they would say, 17:30). Everyone is trying to squeeze into about 3 lines where we all walk through metal detectors. I do think that they are just for show, because everyone has keys and belts and we’re all just walking right through.
The brown circular line is quite cool. There’s an urban legend that Stalin had blueprints put in front of him, and put his coffee mug down, and it created a brown circular stain. He then looked at it and said “oh, great idea. Make it happen!”.
To find a metro station, they are typically labelled with a red M. See if you can spot it here.
When you decend into the metro, I feel like I’m in a futuristic tunnel. The escalators can be sooo long. I timed it once, and it took 4 minutes to ride it to the platform at the bottom. The platform is actually so deep, that I’ve been told that you’re deep enough to withstand a nuclear blast.
The escalator ride used to have advertisements on the wall, but they got rid of them in 2019 for some reason. I used to read them and see how many Russian words I know.
Each metro has a slightly different tunnel experience, as you can see here:
44 of more than 200 stations are listed as cultural heritage sites. Their artwork inside is phenomenal! МИР is a homonym, meaning both, world and peace.
The metro platforms are all uniquely amazing. I found this was to be so clean, I felt like I could safely lick the ground! This station is like a tongue twister. It took me a while to get it right. Петровско-разумовская.
The escalators bring you most of the way down, but there are occasional stairs, but only just a few – enough to screw over handicapped people.
The platforms typically have high ceilings. Every metro stop looks different.
Even this one has a Las Vegasy-like ceiling:
Most of the metro system is underground, but as you leave the city center, portions of it are above-ground. For instance, a pink circular line (МЦК) was built a year before the FIFA World Cup 2018 is entirely above ground. Here’s a stop near the skyscraper area called “Moscow International Business Center”.
This stop is near my old residence. It’s covered with a roof, which is convenient when it’s snowing.
Anyone navigating the metro would use the Yandex Metro app on their phone, but before smartphones, you can always look at the map on the wall. It shows each station along the way (shown horizontally), and a list of stations that connect to other lines (shown vertically).
Many have artwork on the walls of the tunnel.
I love the long-exposure pics of trains coming in.
Occasionally, the trains are decorated with themes.
You’ll frequently see police (Полиция) in the metro. I will frequently see them randomly stopping non-Caucasian ethnic groups and asking for their papers (usually migrants from Uzbekistan or Kyrgyzstan). I’ve been advised not to speak English near them, as it draws attention. A lot of them look no older than 18 years, and I sometimes felt like I was in the movie, “Children of the corn”. This is taken from a “переход” which is a tunnel corridor, connecting two or more metro stations to get to a different line.
Another type of police, омон, is a special unit within the military police. If you look in the mirror, this is what you see. haha.
The artwork coming out of the metro, as you ascend the escalator can look pretty cool, too. Some metros even have the communism star on the ceiling.
The words I see on the ceiling are ironic for 2022-2025. Peace, Freedom, Happiness.
And lastly, the entire metro system also has trams. You can use the same ТРОЙКА card to use the trams. They are above ground. They are nicely decorated during the holiday season!
One of the metro stations offers free fares if you do 30 squats in under 2 minutes. https://www.forbes.com/sites/andrewbender/2013/11/14/moscow-subway-station-lets-passengers-pay-fare-in-squats/