ECJ EUROPEAN Cleaning Journal

Oleg Popov of Cristanval in Russia explains how the Moscow underground is cleaned every day.

The Moscow subway was opened in 1935. Today, its 12 lines extend over 333 kilometres between 200 stations covering over one million square meters with 10,000 trains in operation. The capital’s underground is used by seven million passengers per day, including nine million on average on weekdays.

Tendering takes place every year for the stations’ cleaning, cleaning the adjacent territories, and handling waste. The works performed and the sequence they are conducted in are thoroughly recorded in the ‘Cleaning Technical Process’, which the cleaning company’s employees must fulfil.

The majority of the cleaning is done at night, when the cleaners have an opportunity to clean everything in peace and quiet with floor washing machines, remove gum off of the floor, and detach stickers from the walls. Supplementary cleaning is performed during the day as well.

On weekdays, this begins at 8am and continues into rush hour. The primary job performed in the morning is clearing bigger-sized rubbish: plastic bottles, newspapers, and papers. Starting at 10am, when the level of passengers quietens down, is when the wet cleaning begins.

Another cleaning session then takes place in the daytime using floor washing machines stocked with cleaning chemicals and sanitising liquids. Starting at 2pm, the cleaners wipe the entrance doors, ticket box counters, turnstiles, and portal corners. Then, starting at 4pm, the evening rush hour. During this time, the cleaners again begin collecting waste and cleaning the stairs until midnight.

Train car cleaning is completed in several stages: first a run through at a speed of one to two kilometres per hour with a cleaning machine for about 40 minutes followed by sterilisation – a process that kills 95 per cent of bacteria. Using a vandalism fighting film, cleaners are able to rid the walls of the train cars of graffiti. The cleaners remove advertisements off of the walls, wash the floor, and wipe the handles. Mobile teams also began operating in 2015, manning the cleaning at the final stations of all the lines.

New innovations are constantly introduced in the Moscow subway and tested. For instance, on one line, they launched a three-level quality control system. At the station’s cleaning cabinet, cleaning schedules have appeared in the line transfer halls and around escalators that passengers can use to become familiar with the schedule. The employees of the special commission are required to check three times a day how well the passenger services are operating. On top of that, internet checks are put in place twice a month and external auditing is performed at least once per week.

Experience shows Moscow subway’s passengers are well behaved and don’t actively throw litter. There is rarely waste lying around in the Moscow underground and if somebody leaves a newspaper or a coffee cup on a chair, he will hear about it from the other passengers. When people see that everything around them is clean, they also start to want to maintain the same standard.