The tunnelling work on the Big Circle Line (BCL) of the Moscow Metro, completed in 2021, was carried out at a record speed, according to Mr. Andrey Bochkarev, Deputy Mayor of Moscow for Urban Planning and Construction.
The Mosinzhproekt Group of Companies is a general designer and general contractor for the construction of new lines and stations of the Moscow Metro.
“During the mechanised tunnelling of the Big Circle, construction workers set a record for the speed of such work in the domestic metro construction industry. With an average tunnel boring machine (TBM) speed of 15-20 metres a day, 500 running metres were driven by machines in a number of tunnel sections in a month”, noted Mr. Andrey Bochkarev.
According to Deputy Mayor, this was the pace taken by the crew of the 10-metre ‘Liliya’ TBM that connected the Terekhovo and the Kuntsevskaya stations in 2020 with a double-track tunnel stretching more than 2.2 km.
“The 6-metre-long ‘Elena’ tunnel boring machine, which passed almost a kilometre of the left running tunnel between the transition chamber at the Klenovy Bulvar station and the exit chamber at the Kashirskaya station in autumn 2021, was working at a similar speed”, explained Mr. Andrey Bochkarev.
Mr. Yuri Kravtsov, CEO, Mosinzhproekt JSC, reminded that that tunnel was one of the last run tunnels in the Big Circle of the Moscow Metro and the well-coordinated work of the holding’s employees and contractors had allowed for the timely commissioning of new BCL stations and sections.
“The construction of the Big Circle Line has been underway for more than a decade. During this period the project has created 78 new tunnels using 33 TBMs, four of which were 10-metre giants, laying double-track tunnels”, added Mr. Yuri Kravtsov.
He specified that as a result of the mechanised tunnelling about 95 km of underground routes had been created, out of which more than 83 km were single-track and about 12 km were double-track.
The construction of the Big Circle Line is the main project of the Moscow Metro construction. It is more than 70 km long and has 31 stations. The Big Circle Line has connected the existing and future lines of the Moscow Metro, MCC and MCD platforms.
On 1 March, Mr. Vladimir Putin, Russian President, and Mr. Sergei Sobyanin, Mayor of Moscow, opened the traffic along the entire Big Circle Line of the Moscow Metro.
“It is the biggest and most challenging project in the history of metro construction. It is the new heart of Moscow’s transport system, which integrates both the MCD and the MCC and metro lines into a single transport system, and allows new metro lines to be connected, creating the future of the transport system. This is, of course, a huge and important project”, stated Mr. Sergei Sobyanin.
