The line was built in 1950–1954 as a circle route orbiting central Moscow, and became crucial to the transfer patterns of passengers.

Instead it was planned for complete cross-city routes ("diameters") to cross the city centre with interchange stations at their intersections.

However, after the opening of the second stage in 1938, it was clear from the excessive loads on those junctions, that this plan would be insufficient to deal with the growing number of passengers as the system expanded.

In the end, it was decided to partially align the southern path along the Sadovoye Koltso, and let the northern part deviate to connect most of Moscow's rail terminals.

This solved a major logistical problem, because, due to the layout of Russia's railroads, it would be impossible to travel from a region on one side of Moscow to another without having to make a manual transfer from one terminal to another.

Despite the fact that when opened, there were six stations left for future transfer provisions, this turned out to be too small for the growing system.