METROGIPROTRANS — SETTING STANDARDS SINCE 1933

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• Since the beginning of the Great Patriotic War, Metroproekt has been designing a number of defence facilities located in the existing and under construction structures of the Moscow metro.

• The Moscow Metro operated in two modes: it carried passengers during the day and became a bomb shelter at night. In 1941, the stations protected approximately 13.9 million people from bombing raids.

• The Institute continued developing designs for the Moscow Metro: in 1944, the third segment of the metro—sections of the Arbatsko-Pokrovskaya and Gorkovskaya (Zamoskvoretskaya) lines— was completed. Construction of the Circle Line began.

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• In the early postwar years, the institute’s designs were used to restore railway tunnels in the Donbass, along the Black Sea coast, in Crimea, and the Carpathians, and construction of railway tunnels began in Eastern Siberia.

• 1949 — First international project: providing technical assistance for the design and construction of the Beijing Metro (China).

• In 1951, Metroproekt was transformed into the State Design and Survey Institute Metrogiprotrans.

• In 1954, with the opening of its final section, the Circle Line of the metro was completed; its stations, in terms of architectural design, were compared to underground palaces.

• A year later, the second metro system of the Soviet Union opened in Leningrad — its design was developed by a branch of the institute

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• The Stalinist Empire style of the metro gave way to simplicity and cost-effectiveness. Metrogiprotrans engineers developed a standard station design made of precast concrete (the «centipede»).

• The metro expanded into newly built areas on the outskirts of Moscow: existing lines were actively extended and new radial lines were built — Filevsky, Kaluzhsky, Rizhsky, and Zhdanovsky

• In 1959, the «Lenin Hills» (now «Vorobyovy Gory») station opened — the first in the world to locate a station over a river on the lower deck of a highway bridge.

• The institute’s designs were used to construct transport tunnels in Moscow, a high-mountain highway tunnel in Kyrgyzstan, and hydraulic tunnels in Tajikistan, the Kuban region, and the Don River

• In 1961, Metrogiprotrans was awarded the Order of the Red Banner of Labor

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• The Institute actively cooperated with foreign countries, providing technical assistance in the design and construction of metro systems in India, Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, Poland, and Hungary, and also designed metro systems in the capitals of the Soviet socialist republics.

• In 1971, the Ploshchad Nogina station (now Kitay-Gorod) opened in Moscow — a unique complex of two stations with cross-platform transfers between lines, the first typical deep-level station

• In 1977, metro systems were operating in seven cities of the USSR: Moscow, Leningrad, Kyiv, Tbilisi, Baku, Kharkov, and Tashkent — all designed by local branches of Metrogiprotrans.

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• The Kalininskaya and Serpukhovskaya lines were commissioned. In 1979, Tverskaya station opened — the first deep-level station in the world to be built on an existing section without interrupting train service or constructing bypass tunnels.

• The institute continued to participate in the development of metro systems in Soviet cities with a population of over one million: the first sections were opened in Yerevan, Minsk, Gorky (now Nizhny Novgorod), Novosibirsk, and Kuibyshev (now Samara).

• Metrogiprotrans specialists participated in the reconstruction of the Salang high-mountain tunnel in Afghanistan.

• In 1985, Metrogiprotrans was awarded the Order of the October Revolution.

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• By the time the USSR collapsed, the Moscow Metro had 147 stations, with a total track length of 239.5 km.

• In 1995, a section of the new Lyublinsko-Timiryazevskaya Line was commissioned, and existing lines were extended. The institute’s specialists participated in the construction of the Tehran Metro (Iran).

• The Kutuzovskaya Interchange, a unique five-level tunnel complex facilitating the movement of intersecting traffic flows, was built in Moscow according to a Metrogiprotrans design.

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• Metrogiprotrans expanded its expertise: In 2003, the Lefortovo Tunnel, Moscow’s longest road tunnel (3,246 meters), was commissioned, followed in 2007 by the Zhivopisny Bridge and the North-Western Tunnel, the world’s first combined highway and metro line

• The institute’s design included the construction of Terminal A at Vnukovo International Airport and the Vnukovo underground railway station, a unique structure integrated into its infrastructure, unparalleled in Russia.

• The country’s first light metro and monorail lines opened, and the reconstruction of the Vorobyovy Gory station was completed.

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• Large-scale development of the Moscow Metro: Metrogiprotrans has designed more than 30 stations, including 12 stations on the Big Circle Line (the longest metro ring in the world at 70 km) and the Vnukovo Airport station (the first metro station in Russia located within an airport complex).

• Metrogiprotrans is participating in the design of the Moscow-Kazan high-speed railway (HSR-2).

• The institute is developing a project for extending the metro line in Yerevan, Armenia, including the Ajapnyak metro station and a metro bridge across the Hrazdan Gorge.

• In St. Petersburg, the institute has developed feasibility studies for the construction of four metro lines. The first section of the new, sixth, line of the St. Petersburg metro, designed by Metrogiprotrans, has been commissioned.

• In 2025, Metrogiprotrans began designing the Second Severomuysky Tunnel of the Baikal-Amur Railway — a duplicate of the longest railway tunnel in Russia (15.3 km).