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Free Internet in Moscow and St. Petersburg Subways

In Moscow Metro passengers have long been accustomed to fast and free Internet access underground: all subway lines have been equipped with public Wi-Fi spots since 2014. 

Though it cannot be accessed from the platforms. but you can use your mobile Internet instead. 

In St. Petersburg, Wi-Fi has been launched on subway trains starting May, 2017. It is now available and the entire subway system is covered. 

To take a ride on the Moscow Metro, you can buy a one-fare cardboard card for 55 rubles ($0.97) or a Troyka plastic card, which can be used for ground transit and as a means of payment at some museums. You can top it up with your credit card or with cash to use it for an unlimited time.

Along with the omnipresent plastic passes, the St. Petersburg subway still uses metal tokens, which are old-fashioned and therefore more charming. Passengers often keep them as souvenirs and carry them around in their wallets. The Moscow Metro stopped issuing tokens 20 years ago, and the last one was used in 1999.

HORIZONTAL ELEVATORS

Only in St. Petersburg can you take a ride in a "horizontal elevator": this term is used in reference to ten special stations where the trains are separated from the platform with walls and sliding metal doors. When a train stops, its doors match up with those of the station, just as elevator doors are matched to the doors on each floor of a building - hence the name of this type of a station.

Stations with sliding doors were introduced as an extra safety measure in case of flooding. The soil of St. Petersburg is saturated with water and features half-kilometer-thick sections of wet sand, which are prone to coming loose. Subway construction in St. Petersburg was a real challenge - Soviet engineers used liquid nitrogen to freeze the swampy ground, which increased the construction costs greatly.  

More than 8000 tons of liquefied gas was pumped into the ground. The first "horizontal elevator" station was Park Pobedy (Victory Park) which opened in 1961.