Posted: 08.01.2025 09:08:21

Coming five years to focus on quality

President of Belarus Aleksandr Lukashenko has taken part in the official opening of the three new stations on the Minsk metro’s Zelenoluzhskaya line: Aerodromnaya, Nemorshansky Sad and Slutsky Gostinets. Now travelling around the capital city became even easier and quicker. 

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Theme of flight, image of garden and Slutsk belts

It’s a long-standing tradition to give each new station of the Minsk metro its own character, features, and unique design. Aerodromnaya, for instance, is done in a blue-white-grey colour palette with lots of air and space created by bright, rhombus-shaped lighting fixtures imitating a clear blue sky with slight clouds. Longitudinal lines that bisect the lighting fixtures bring to mind a plane’s trail in the sky. Designers worked hard to honour the great past of the place where the Minsk airport used to be.
Both ends of the Nemorshansky Sad station platform are decorated with panels that look like techno-style birch groves. The tiles underfoot remind of nice fallen leaves.
The Slutsky Gostinets station brings to mind Belarusian national ornaments; its walls and the ceiling are lined with cornflower-blue porcelain tiles.
All the finishing, by the way, is done using Belarusian-made materials, including equipment like turnstiles and escalators.
The third metro line unites technological solutions of a new technical level, as well as high automation of management and control processes of engineering equipment. Intelligent systems of train traffic control, fare payment, fire safety, and new means of transmitting and processing data on the operation of all metro systems have been introduced here. To ensure the safety of passengers, the stations are equipped with platform edge doors.
Chairman of the Minsk City Executive Committee Vladimir Kukharev reported to the President on Minsk and Minsk metro’s development prospects.
The general plan of Minsk includes a section on the development of transport infrastructure, which includes a scheme for the development of rail types of urban passenger transport. The scheme envisages 4 branches of the Minsk metro, one of which is a radial ring. The total length of the third line will be 16km, and it will connect the southern and northern sectors of Minsk with the central part of the city.
It is planned that the fourth metro line will stretch for 25km+ and intersect with the other three lines. Its route will duplicate the second urban ring road. The construction of the fourth line will make it possible to finally resolve the issue of unloading the transfer hub between the first and second lines, and implement the concept of creating transfer hubs between all types of urban and suburban transport.

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To build metro two times faster

Aleksandr Lukashenko gave an instruction to speed up the metro construction rate two times. 
After the report made by Vladimir Kukharev, the Head of State said, “Everything’s great, but too slow. Unacceptably slow. Moscow builds it faster. You have to be two times faster.”
The Chairman of the Minsk City Executive Committee assured the President that the construction will speed up after the second tunnel boring machine is purchased. According to the Minsk Mayor, the three stations together cost Br832m in total. Each kilometre of tunnels cost about $70m.
Aleksandr Lukashenko stressed that Belarus has plans to link Minsk to its suburbs via surface metro.
According to the President, Belarus is not going to endlessly develop and expand Minsk. “Hence the decision to develop the suburbs, but they need high-speed transport links to Minsk. So, we are going to look at and plan to build surface metro,” he said.
The Head of State thanked the specialists involved in the construction of the metro stations for their high-quality work and the opportunity to make such a pleasant gift to people. 
“Next year and farther, over the coming five years, we will focus on high-quality construction and high-quality work. Get ready for that. No low quality will be allowed, and any President elected will anyway put quality at the forefront. It is already a habit of our people: cleanliness and quality are our main achievements and our brands. Get ready for that,” Aleksandr Lukashenko stressed. 
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The Head of State shared his memories about the Minsk metro. One of them was related to the decision to keep building the underground network despite the financial difficulties faced by Belarus in the 1990s. “The metro construction project was to be given momentum. I remember one of our first subbotniks (voluntary labour days) being down underground, building something in the metro,” he said.
The second memory the President shared was about an attempt of metro train drivers to strike. “I was still a very young President when your parents voted me in. And there was quite the calamity [in Belarus]. If not for the law enforcement, I don’t think we would have held on: they were overturning cars out there, and so on, and so forth. And the opposition back then was actively using the metro workers. I remember they persuaded your parents (that was a bad moment they don’t often talk about) to support the opposition and stop the metro in summer. It was punishingly hot, 30 degrees or higher, and the metro stopped. Everyone went to take the surface transport. Naturally, we didn't have enough buses, or enough anything back in those days,” he recalled.
The metro workers, Aleksandr Lukashenko said, were being paid decently in those turbulent times, 3 to 5 times higher than the national average.
“People flooded Minsk. But I said, we are not going to bow down to them. No way! If they don’t want to go to work, fine,” he went on.
But at the same time, the Head of State knew they had to get the metro running again soon, so he went to railway workers for help, and they supported him, “Considering they were my friends and that my mother used to work at the railroad. They knew their President was a railway worker, so to speak.”
“The railway management had doubts initially, saying they ‘didn’t know how to drive trains underground’, much less at 2-3 minutes’ intervals. I said, all right, let’s make it 5 minutes, but the metro has to run. In 24 hours, they were making it every 2 minutes. They got a hang of it,” the President revealed.
After a short while, metro train drivers who had been on strike, wanted to come back.
“I was in the Government house back then,” Aleksandr Lukashenko went on. “And one day, I saw a huge crowd out there. Men were going first, and women were behind them. They were wielding brooms and sticks, pushing their men forward. ‘What’s the matter?’ I said. Those were train drivers’ wives pushing their men to work. And I said, no, they don’t want to work. Let them do as they want and stay away. I refused to take them back for three days.”
“Leave if you want to! Like those fugitives are doing now. Teachers and doctors have to wash dishes. If they don’t want to, they are free to go begging. They are asking to be allowed back now. That’s why we set up a commission led by the Prosecutor General for them to petition and explain themselves to. If you didn’t blow anything up, didn’t set fires in the metro, God forbid, then come back and get to work. But if you are a lawbreaker, a criminal, then accept your punishment. That’s exactly how it was with the train drivers,” said the Head of State.
At the same time, Aleksandr Lukashenko knew he’d left the railroad without their best workers, so the metro train drivers were invited back after a few days.
“I knew those people were just confused, not all of them were bad. So, in a week’s time, I told them to come back. And those were the strongest, most solid, and some of the most loyal people I’ve ever had,” he said.
“So I now remember that time when the train drivers decided to prove to everyone that nothing can be done without them. It can! Without train drivers, without construction workers, even without the President. Life will go on. There will be someone else to take our place. Remember that and value your place, not only underground, but on the surface where we and our children have to live,” concluded the President.
The Minsk metro was opened on June 29th, 1984. Currently, the Minsk metro has 36 stations. In the 40 years since its launch (from 1984 to 2024), the Minsk metro has carried more than 8.5 billion passengers — a figure comparable to the population of the entire planet.
Based on materials of sb.by and belta.by