Zenit
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- Opened: May 26, 2018
- Station depth: 17m
- Project title: Kirov Stadium
- Type of station: column with closed air circuit
- Entrance to the station: ground lobby
- Traffic: total about 302 thousand people per month
Initially, this station was opened under the name "Novokrestovskaya", because this is the second metro station on Krestovsky Island. It belongs to a new, rare type of column stations with a closed air circuit. Almost like a "horizontal elevator", only glass.
Construction began in January 2015. The station was built in great haste for the 2018 FIFA World Cup and is intended primarily for the passage of huge crowds of people to the Gazprom Arena stadium for sporting events. Due to haste, the interior decoration is made very sloppy in places. Loosely and crookedly fitted panels, deviations of lines from the vertical and horizontal, and the like.
At the same time, the platforms at the station are of the coastal type, on the sides of the centrally located tracks. This is the first non-terminal coastal station in Saint-Petersburg. Therefore, the halls of the station are very cramped, and how the station copes with the peak flow of passengers is unclear.
And this is the first station in Saint-Petersburg, originally equipped with travelators and elevators for the disabled.
However, the Zenit football club got busy, and on August 14, 2020 (according to other sources - June 11, 2021), the Novokrestovskaya station was renamed Zenit station. At the same time, the interior decoration of the station was partially changed.
Now, behind the glass showcases of the station, you can see copies of football cups that the Zenit team won at different times. Among them are the 1944 USSR Cup, awards of the 1984 USSR Championship, the 2014/2015 Russian Championship and the 2019/2020 Russian Championship, the Russian Super Cup, the 2010 Russian Cup, the 2008 UEFA Cup and the 2008 UEFA Super Cup.
Who is world famous? Our Zenit Saint-Petersburg!
The feeling of crowding also arises from the fact that the support columns are located very close to the tracks. The glass wall, of course, will not fall on the rails, but visually the feeling is squeezed.
But this is almost the only place in the Saint-Petersburg metro where you can "legally" look into the tunnel while waiting for a train. Through the glass door.
There are two exits at the station, but since the station is located very specifically, on the very seashore in a huge empty park, only one of the exits is usually open. For a long time, the station generally worked only on weekends and holidays, as well as during sports shows at the stadium.
Let's go upstairs.
The station has a two-level lobby - two ground-level on both sides and one common underground. The capacity of the station during football matches is 30-35 thousand passengers per hour, however, according to safety requirements, both it and other nearby metro stations are closed to the entrance during matches. Simply because a huge heated crowd from the stadium is able to demolish these stations to the ground with pure muscular force after the match.
And of course, the whole space here is just sharpened for the passage of huge crowds of penguin people.
At the top, as it should be, a huge Zenith flag proudly flies. There is also the Western High-Speed Diameter, and Corn on the horizon. Everything is as it should be.
The territories are alluvial, the Baltic Sea used to splash here in general. And I suspect the wind should always blow here. Simply because it is almost the center of a huge open space with a stadium somewhere far behind.
The soccer ball, of course, is also presented.
We won't freeze, let's go back.
Here, however, there is a certain paradox between the wide entrance portals and a narrow escalator from the lower lobby to the hall. On the other hand, there are also wide staircases that apparently open with a large flow of people.
In general, the station shows us a strange combination of free and cramped, wide and narrow. And there are no hermetic doors on it (!).
But for the sake of the Zenit native football team, we will forgive her everything ;)
