Marco Public transportation system in Moscow is one of the bigger in the world, it is really easy to understand and there are many tools you can use to plan your trip. Metro, bus, tram, trolley bus, everything is connected, clean, fast and punctual.
How to orientate yourself in Moscow
There are few apps you must have if you want to easy go around Moscow. You have to keep in mind that in Moscow and its region live almost 20 millions people and traffic on roads can be crazy. Public transportation it’s easy, clean, fast, safe and cheap! So what can you ask more.
Every app is built by Yandex, the search engine and service provider in Russia, forget about Google here. Don’t be scared about Cyrillic alphabet, every app is also in english. Websites often are just Russian.
This is the metro scheme: https://yandex.com/metro/moscow, for mobile phones you can looking for metro Moscow and download the Yandex metro. It’s easy to plan your trip, choose the first and the last station and you have different options with different combination. Currently in Moscow there are 16 lines and every year they open some new station.
With Yandex map app you have the position of every public vehicle in the city updated live, you can easy understand where to go and how much you have to wait. Often on the street is not indicated the timetable, but the frequency, can be 5 or 20 minutes, it depends on the bus. If you download the app on your smartphone you can see the best combination between the metro and ground system transportation.
How to move in Metro
After FIFA 2018 almost every sign is in Russian and English, specially in the center. Metro open at 5.30 and close at 1.00, during the night you have busses or taxi. You can buy tickets from automatic machines or by the operator, in the city center you see a desk with written “I speak english”, not a lot but there are. Trains run every 40 seconds during rush hour, yes, 40 seconds! The average time between trains is 1.40 minutes and can be 3 minutes in the evening, so very frequently.
The ticket is valid for 90 minutes and you can use any public transportation, there are no zones in Moscow, tickets is always the same price. Here you have the official website, just russian: https://mosmetro.ru/tariffs/
If you buy a paper ticket those are some tariffs in October 2018:
- single: 55 RUB
- 2 trips: 110 RUB
- 20 trips: 747 RUB
- 1 day: 218 RUB
- 3 days: 415 RUB
- 1 week: 830 RUB
- 1 month: 2075 RUB
What is TROIKA card?
You can buy troika card in any ticket office and is a prepaid card for public transportation. You can decide to put money and pay single trip or to buy some packet based on time (monthly, yearly…) or number of trips (20-30-60). The cost of the card is 50RUB and they will give you back when you return it.
If you choose just to put money on the card the price of a single ride is 36rub instead of 55rub. Or you can choose any packet. For example I don’t use metro every day and if I buy 60 trips I can travel almost 2 months. In this case I pay every trip 30rub
Metro tours
Metro is one of the places in Moscow that you must visit. Every station is unique and is like to be in a Museum. Every station has a theme and everything is extremely clean. There are also metro tours you can take to visit the best stations and to know the history. You can see the following gallery to have a general idea of how the metro is.
