The first section of the Moscow metro's planned second ring line is more than halfway to completion, Moscow Mayor Sergei Sobyanin was cited as saying Monday in a post on the government's city planning website.
This first section will extend more than 12 kilometers, Sobyanin said, from the station Delovoi Tsentr — not to be confused with the adjoining Yellow Line station of the same name — to station Nizhnyaya Maslovka, traversing six stations in all.
The city plans to have the nearly 60-kilometer-long second ring line, with a total of 28 new stations, completed by 2020.
As part of the ongoing metro expansion, Moscow will open eight new metro stations this year, Deputy Mayor Marat Khusnullin was cited as saying late last week on the city planning website.
Four metro lines stand to gain new stations: The Light Green Line will get three, the Red Line and Dark Green Line will each receive two, and the Purple Line will get one.
The planned construction, which will see 12 kilometers of new track laid under the Russian capital, marks a high point in the metro's history, Khusnullin said.
"In the whole Soviet era, metro construction … only saw this level of output once — in 1975," he was quoted as saying.
The Moscow metro has steadily expanded in recent years, gaining three new stations in 2011, three in 2012, six in 2013 and two last year.