For short trips from major cities to the nearby towns, buses are a very convenient means of transportation. For long-distance trips it is advisable to use train services, provided by Russian Railways, a government-owned railway system. The company is one of the biggest railway companies in the world with 1.2 million employees. Compartments with 4 beds provide comfort and secure journey and can be booked in advance. 2 bed-compartments are also available.
Most Russian cities have well-developed and diverse systems of public transportation. Tickets are required for buses and train journeys. One ticket must be validated for each journey. It is best to purchase tickets prior to boarding, but they can also be purchased directly from the driver while boarding. If you need to get a taxi you can either order it from your hotel or hail in the street. Taxis are normally yellow.
The fastest public transportation in the cities is the Metro. The Moscow Metro, opened in 1935, is the most popular kind of transport used by approximately 9 million passengers. The major advantage of the Moscow metro is the combination of reliability, comfort and speed to move around the city. Every day 9915 trains run over 12 lines of the system with the minimum headway of 60 seconds and less during peak-hours. The Moscow Metro is well known for its outstanding architecture, making it one of the most visited place of interest in the capital. The Moscow Metro use magnetic contact cards for tickets with a fixed number of pre-paid journeys (1, 2, 5, 10, 20) with small discounts starting with 5-ride cards.
Metro systems also operate in Saint-Petersbourg (5 lines, 63 stations), Novosibirsk (2 lines, 12 stations), Nizhny Novgorod (1 line, 13 stations), Samara (1 line, 8 stations), Yekaterinbourg (1 line, 8 stations), Kazan (1 line, 6 stations). Metro systems are under construction in Omsk, Krasnoyarsk, Chelyabinsk.
