The Life Line of Moscow

Metro station in Moscow

Like most major cities in the world, the life line of Moscow is its amazing metro system. It carries around 10 million passengers a day on weekdays and is one of the most elaborate systems you will ever see. With a route length of over 180 miles, 12 different lines and 180+ stations getting to any place in the city is within reach. The complexity of the network takes some times to get used to, especially if you do not know the language, but once mastered reaching any corner of the city becomes super intuitive.

Art work at different metro stations

The connectivity though is not the best attribute of the Moscow Metro system – the stations built as “people’s palace” give a royal feel to the commuters. The Stalin time architecture of Moscow metro (the style got lost in the 1960s to give way to uninspiring concrete structures), is striking for its elegant ornate designs, lavish use of marble, mosaics, sculptures and chandeliers and classic iconography of the rich Soviet history. These luxuriant spaces were designed to double-up as bomb shelters in case of war and a place for important political and tactical meetings.

The Irony…

As a foreigner in Russia, I am super impressed with the wonderful metro system; the irony comes when you talk with people about it. Most of the people would tell you how much they hate the metro system in Moscow, many of them disclose that they rather be stuck in a traffic jam for hours than travel by metro.

Thanks to the population of Moscow and the convenience bestowed by metro, the trains get extremely crowded during peak times on weekdays (no competition to Mumbai local trains though)….but I guess the apathy of the Muscovites towards the metro shouldn’t come as a surprise, after all they are the same people who often responds to “how are you?”, with “too tired” “not good”… for petty reasons (definitely not the most positive group of people*)

Rush Hour (above)
Some of the stations are extremely deep (>80 mts below ground)
as they were built to double up as war time shelter
Escalator to one of the deep stations (right)

Irony of Irony…

Can you imagine that the first phase this huge underground installation was built mainly by volunteers who weren’t paid a dime for crawling around the dirty tunnels, risking their lives nearly every moment? They say money can't buy everything - probably passion is one of them :)

* This is just generalization after observing and interacting with a few people over the past few months and is a definitely a crude inference like all other generalizations