Since August 2017, China Railway Construction Corporation Limited (CRCC) 中国铁建 has been building a 4.6-km section and three stations on the “Large Circle Line” or the “Third Interchange Contour” in southwest Moscow, which will be completed by the end of 2020. The CRCC hires more than 100 engineering and managing staff and over 700 workers for the project, and about half of them are Russians. The first tunnel was bored through in early April, 2019 and the remaining eight tunnels by 2020.
In February 2019, the CRCC won another contract worth over 5.64 billion rubles (about 88 mln USD) to build a 2.9 km section of the “Large Circle Line.” The city aims to increase metro lines from the current 300 km to 1,000 km by 2023.
The company designed and produced five tunneling shields capable of coping with the city’s harsh winter and complicated geological condition. The “Shengli” 胜利号 tunnel shields, with a diameter of more than 10 meters, is independently developed, designed and produced by CCRC.