section_path: Transportation/Metro
section_name: Metro
paragraph_text: Metro
  
  The Moscow Metro system is famous for its art, murals, mosaics, and ornate chandeliers. It started operation in 1935 and immediately became the centrepiece of the transportation system. More than that it was a Stalinist device to awe and reward the populace, and give them an appreciation of Soviet realist art. It became the prototype for future Soviet large-scale technologies. Lazar Kaganovich was in charge; he designed the subway so that citizens would absorb the values and ethos of Stalinist civilisation as they rode. The artwork of the 13 original stations became nationally and internationally famous. For example, the Sverdlov Square subway station featured porcelain bas-reliefs depicting the daily life of the Soviet peoples, and the bas-reliefs at the Dynamo Stadium sports complex glorified sports and the physical prowess of the powerful new "Homo Sovieticus" (Soviet man).
  
  The metro was touted as the symbol of the new social order—a sort of Communist cathedral of engineering modernity. Soviet workers did the labour and the artwork, but the main engineering designs, routes, and construction plans were handled by specialists recruited from the London Underground. The Britons called for tunneling instead of the "cut-and-cover" technique, the use of escalators instead of lifts, and designed the routes and the rolling stock. The paranoia of Stalin and the NKVD was evident when the secret police arrested numerous British engineers for espionage—that is for gaining an in-depth knowledge of the city's physical layout. Engineers for the Metropolitan Vickers Electrical Company were given a show trial and deported in 1933, ending the role of British business in the USSR.
  
  Today, the Moscow Metro comprises twelve lines, mostly underground with a total of 203 stations. The Metro is one of the deepest subway systems in the world; for instance, the Park Pobedy station, completed in 2003, at 84 metres (276 ft) underground, has the longest escalators in Europe. The Moscow Metro is the busiest metro system in Europe, as well as one of the world's busiest metro systems, serving about ten million passengers daily (300,000,000 people every month). Facing serious transportation problems, Moscow has plans for expanding its Metro. In 2016, the authorities launched a new circle metro railway that contributed to solving transportation issues, namely daily congestion at Koltsevaya Line.
  
  Due to the treatment of Metro stations as possible canvas for art, characterized by the fact that workers of Moscow would get to see them every day, many Stalin-era metro stations were built in different "custom" designs (where each station's design would be, initially, a massive installation on a certain theme. For example, Elektrozavodskaya station was themed solely after nearby lightbulb factory and ceramic ribbed lightbulb sockets); the tradition of "Grand Designs" and, basically, decorating metro stations as single-themed installations, was restored in late 1979.
  
  More recently, Moscow mayor Sergei Sobyanin has introduced comforts ranging from WiFi and USB ports and Apple Pay — while opening new stations at a breakneck pace. Moscow's metro is one of the world's busiest, handling 2.6 billion passengers in 2019.
  
  In the Russian capital, there are over 21.5 thousand Wi-Fi access points, in student dormitories, in parks, cultural and sports institutions, and within the Garden Ring and the Third Transport Ring. From September 2020 to August 2021, 1,700 new access points to urban Wi-Fi were launched in Moscow. The structure of the Wi-Fi network allows citizens to use the Internet without re-authorization.