Muscovites will be allowed in a circle: the opening of the Moscow Central Ring

Georgy Malets made a circle around the MCC and told what awaits Muscovites on the new ring road. We have nothing to add — we publish George's report and congratulate the citizens that the travel time to work will finally be reduced.

What is the MCC? It's not a subway or a commuter train — it's something in between. In many European cities, there have long been city trains combined with the metro system, which originate from cities and take passengers to the suburbs. So, the Moscow Central Ring, formerly called the Moscow Ring Railway, is exactly a city train. On the City Day, September 10, a new transport branch was launched in the capital.

(26 photos in total)

Source: LiveJournal/martin

In the morning, Vladimir Putin and Sergei Sobyanin opened the movement. Already in the afternoon, an event for journalists was held, attended by Maxim Liksutov and the head of the metro Dmitry Pegov.

Closer to two o'clock in the afternoon, quite suddenly for the press and bloggers, Patriarch Kirill appeared. Together with him, everyone entered the new "Swallow" and went around the ring.

For the first time, 24 of the 31 planned stations are available to passengers — construction work on the new ring continues. According to Marat Khusnullin, the work will be fully completed only in 2018.

The history of the Moscow Ring begins in 1897, when it was decided to build the Moscow District Railway, and on July 20, 1908, regular train traffic was opened. The small ring turned out to be not quite round, in the northwest it stretches for 12 kilometers, and in the south it passes 5 kilometers from the Kremlin. 14 stations were built on the road — unique examples of Moscow Art Nouveau of the early twentieth century.

Until 1917, the ring road transported workers and employees of adjacent enterprises around Moscow, although there were always not enough passengers. By the end of the 1920s, the areas through which the MOZHD highway passed received reliable tram and bus service, and in 1934 passenger traffic along the ring was closed.

Electrification and reconstruction of the Small Ring of the Moscow Railway for passenger service began in 2011. According to the plan, the MCC will become a new interchange circuit that will unite the metro and the radial directions of suburban railways, which will remove transit flows from the center.

Each of the 31 MCC stations will operate as a transport hub. Here, for example, is a frame directly from the platform of the Luzhniki station, where you can see that it takes only 1-2 minutes to walk to the Sportivnaya metro station.

17 transfers from 11 metro lines, including those under construction, and 10 transfers to 9 radial railway directions will be possible at the MCC.

Each car has Wi-Fi, sockets, shelves for hand luggage, hooks for outerwear and a scoreboard that displays the date, time, train speed and temperature in the cabin.

On the door in each of the five cars there is a special button that must be pressed to enter and exit the car.

The train goes full circle in 75 minutes, the length of the line is 54 kilometers. The first month of the MCC will work for free.

The green color is not a mistake with the colors in the photo. One of the unusual stations of the MCC was the stop "Business Center", made in green colors.

From it you can go to the metro station "International", without going outside at all.

I drove the whole ring, getting off at many stations, and I can say that everywhere the exits and transitions are organized quite conveniently, there are signs and navigation.

Trains run daily from 5:50 to 00:30, with an interval of 6 minutes during peak hours and 12 minutes the rest of the time.

The distance between the metro and the MCC stations is pretty small almost everywhere. For example, a transfer from the Vladykino metro station to the Vladykino MCC stop is very close.

The shortest transition was the transfer from the Leninsky Prospekt station to the Gagarin Square station. You've probably noticed an empty staircase leading to nowhere. The fact is that this transition has been conceived for many years as a transition to the station of the Moscow Ring Road.

The station of the Moscow Central Ring "Gagarin Square" is the only underground stop. The transfer to it is no different from the usual transition to the subway, it takes just a couple of minutes.

For travel to the MCC, city tickets for the metro, Troika cards, and ground transport passes are valid. The cost is similar.

In total, 33 Swallow trains, already familiar to passengers, will run along the Central Ring. The trains were designed by Siemens, and have been assembled in Russia in recent years.

To be honest, I didn't think that there would be so many people on the very first day of the MCC. The cars became full from the first minutes of the official launch!

Since the system is completely new for citizens, there are still many questions about the work of the ring. To solve problems, metro employees work at all stations, who informatively explain to people how and what works.

Even if your daily route does not run along the Moscow Central Ring, I advise you to just take a ride for one lap — an extremely unusual experience.