Moscow's beloved Metro teeters

Moscow's famed Metro is built to awesome scale, runs like clockwork, and whisks more than 9 million people around the city each day.

But the underground also runs on the edge of bankruptcy – because its market practices are unreformed, its once-proud infrastructure is slipping into decay, and some of its employees have been robbing the system blind.

"A ride on the New York subway or the London Tube costs at least $1, but Muscovites get something even better for just five rubles [about 16 cents]," says Valentin Bolotov, director of the Moscow Metro Museum. "We're not living in the Soviet Union anymore. These economics are going to suffocate our beloved Metro."

Fares are set to rise to seven rubles in October, but experts say it will take much more than that to put the 70-year-old engineering marvel into the black. More than two-thirds of the Metro's budget is covered by government subsidy, and the deficit yawns wider every year. The explanation for this winds through the social and economic complexities of post-Soviet Russia.

More than half of the passengers who swarm through the palatial, marble-lined Metro stations and cram into the aging electric trains every day never pay a kopek. According to Communist-era social-welfare practices, liberally augmented by generous post-Soviet politicians, dozens of categories of citizens have the right to ride free.

These include pensioners, orphans, winners of state honors, soldiers, city employees, police, war veterans, customs agents, elected representatives and their staff, military reservists, judges ,and tax collectors. More than 100 different types of identity cards entitle bearers to pay nothing. "I don't even look at the documents, to tell you the truth," says bleary-eyed Svetlana Malkina, who supervises one of the open checkpoints where people gush through, flashing their papers. "I look in their eyes. If someone shows a lack of confidence, I might stop him."

More than twice as many people are riding free than in Soviet times, a trend that has Metro officials demanding urgent reform. "If the Defense Ministry wants to move troops around by Metro, that's fine, but why don't they buy tickets?" says Dimitri Gayev, director of the Metro. "There has to be a way to compensate us for the efforts and resources we expend." The problem has been compounded by counterfeiting and fraud. Metro officials admit they have no way of knowing how many people may be using fake ID's for free rides. One way to crack down, they say, is to issue every Muscovite with a personal Metro ID, containing individual data to be recorded by computerized turnstiles.

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