With pinpoint precision

In 2024, Moscow Metrostroy began an important project for the city - the construction of the Dostoevskaya metro station on the existing Circle Line. The project itself is ambitious. The last time the construction of a deep station on an existing stretch was carried out in the 1970s of the last century, when the Gorkovskaya (Tverskaya) station of the Zamoskvoretskaya line was built.

The future 13th Dostoevskaya station, located between the Prospekt Mira and Novoslobodskaya stations at the intersection of Samotechnaya and Durova streets, was designed back in the 1950s, but the project could not be brought to life. In the 1990s, they even laid out a place for a construction site, but this attempt was again unsuccessful. The huge amount of work required a lot of money and time.

In 2010, the Dostoevskaya station of the Lyublinsko-Dmitrovskaya line opened, but even then the interchange hub with the Koltsevaya was not created due to the difficulty of placing a new station as part of an operating line.

The decision to build Dostoevskaya was made by Moscow Mayor Sergei Sobyanin, and the station was included in the list of promising construction projects for the Moscow Metro.

The project for the construction of the Dostoevskaya station is extremely complex - bypass tunnels have to be built to restart train traffic around the ring. The specific conditions of the location of the site in the very center of the city do not allow construction in an open pit and, accordingly, the use of tunnel boring complexes, therefore mine shafts were built near the “Theater of the Russian Army”, through which equipment and builders are delivered, and the mined rock is released.

The station is being built in a dense urban area, in the active metro area, this requires pinpoint precision.

–We are changing the design solution. Previously, it was planned to build a station with three shafts. Now we mean construction with seven trunks. Their depth will vary from 52 to 64 meters, notedCEO JSC "Mosinzhproject"Sergey Zhukov.

The future “Dostoevskaya” is a deep station and is being built using the mountain method.

–Unfortunately, you can’t think of anything else here, these are shafts, approach workings, opening of middle station tunnels, bulkheading of side station tunnels. The technology is the same, only equipment, machines, mechanisms are changing and, of course, we will use the most modern, but in fact it will be manual labor: people on the breakers, rock loading machines and so on, explained Sergei Zhukov.

In the thickness of the earth's rock

At the beginning of February 2025, the project for the construction of bypass tunnels received approval from the Moscow State Expertise. Sinking is carried out by SMU-6 and SMU-8 of Metrostroy.

–Builders are moving through the thickness of the earth with the help of small-scale mechanization in the technical area of the metro from two pre-created chambers for installing tunnel-layers on bypass tunnels to future traffic switching chambers. We walked about 230 meters along the left tunnel, of which 155 meters to the future chamber No. 2 and 73 meters to chamber No. 4, and over 270 meters along the right tunnel, of which we walked 220 meters towards the exit chamber No. 1, and colleagues from SMU-8 more than 50 meters towards the transition chamber No. 3. In total, 500 meters out of about 1,713 total length of tunnels have been completed today,” said Dmitry Zaitsev, chief engineer of SMU-6.

Drilling near an active metro section requires extreme caution and excludes the use of a number of special equipment, so builders use time-tested safe methods and technologies, and also apply non-standard solutions to speed up work.

–Simultaneously with the construction of bypass tunnels, we are excavating the approach workings to the traffic switching chamber No. 2 - this allows us to enter from the other side in order to work faster, explained Dmitry Zaitsev. – Construction of a ventilation duct for the Circle Line tunnels is also underway, where more than 80 of the 214 meters have already been completed.

In the future, it is planned to connect the bypass tunnels with the Circle Line tunnels through newly constructed traffic switching chambers, which will make it possible to redirect rolling stock during the construction of Dostoevskaya without blocking traffic. Residents and guests of the capital will not feel any significant discomfort from the creation of a new station on the historical underground ring of Moscow.

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The project provides for two lobbies, one of which, underground, will appear at the intersection of Durova Street with Delegatskaya and Samarsky Lane, and the second, above-ground, will be built at the intersection of Olimpiysky Prospekt with Durova Street and connected to the station by a 350-meter underground passage with a travelator. This will be the first such crossing in the Moscow metro.

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“Dostoevskaya” will be the first station built on the Circle 70 years after the full launch of the line in 1954. The service area of the future station includes the Tverskaya, Meshchansky and Maryina Roshcha districts with a population of 200 thousand people. It is expected that the new station will be used by 20 thousand passengers just at the entrance. With the opening of Dostoevskaya, the distance from the metro to the Olimpiysky complex will be significantly shortened - from 10 to 1 minute. Hundreds of thousands of passengers on the Lyublinsko-Dmitrovskaya Line will benefit from faster and more convenient travel options around the city. The Prospekt Mira station on the Circle and Kaluzhsko-Rizhskaya lines will be unloaded by up to 20%. The only transfer between the Koltsevaya and Lyublinsko-Dmitrovskaya lines ("Kurskaya" - "Chkalovskaya") will become freer - the load on it will be reduced to 25%.