Translated material
Tunnel Thinking
The Metropolitan strives for the Moscow Ring Road
The capital's metro continues to break through to the outskirts of Moscow, whose residents are suffocating in traffic jams on the way to work . Yesterday, on the day of the 72nd anniversary of the Moscow subway, excavation of the last section of the tunnel of the new part of the Arbatsko-Pokrovskaya line from the Kuntsevskaya station to Victory Park began. Over time, it is this branch that will connect Kuntsevo with Strogino. As Nikolai Babushkin, deputy head of the metro, told reporters, the line will open for passengers in December. “The tunneling will be completed in September in order to be able to lay rails and install engineering equipment in the tunnel by December, when this section of the line opens for passengers,” he specified.Let us remind you that the new part of the Arbatsko-Pokrovskaya line (which will most likely be renamed Pokrovsko-Mitinskaya) will connect Victory Park with the Kuntsevskaya station on the Filevskaya line. Moreover, a new one will appear between the stations - “Slavyansky Boulevard”, from which a branch will go “up” to “Mitino” through the already operating station “Krylatskaya”. It is planned that part of the section of the line from Krylatskaya to Strogino will pass through the Serebryanoborsky transport tunnel. The metro promises that train service to the Strogino station will be opened at the end of the year. According to Mr. Babushkin, after the start of service, 40 pairs of trains will run on the new section of the Arbatsko-Pokrovskaya line.
The next station after Strogino, leading to Mitino, should be Myakininskaya, which is promised to open in 2009. This will be a historic breakthrough for the metro beyond the capital. In Mitino itself, however, underground trains will appear only by 2011. But on the other hand, three stations should be built in this microdistrict - Volokolamskaya, Mitino and Rozhdestveno.
The pace of construction of the new part of the metro line is reminiscent of the Soviet metro construction - a record was set for the speed of tunnel passage. “In December, on one of the sections of the line, the tunneling shield set a record: 650 meters were covered in a month. This is not the highest result in the world, but for Moscow it is a lot,” said Nikolai Babushkin, adding that German and Canadian equipment is used in construction. In addition, as the deputy head of the metro said, at the end of June, at a meeting of the Moscow government, a plan for the development of the metro until 2010 will be considered, according to which the main objects of metro construction should be the sections from Maryino to Brateevo, from Trubnaya to Maryina Roshcha. and from “Strogino” to “Volokolamskaya”.