Moscow’s situation is funny in part because a number of diagonal slashes is closer to what the city needs (the central parts are probably an order of magnitude over design capacity during rush hour and essentially never under it), but the plan for those got turned into a ring because apparently the infrastructure to turn trains around at the ends was too difficult to build.
The other new ring is a fairly old preexisting train line that used to be cargo-only; it had the potential to be great, but unfortunately the ridiculously long connection times have made the real thing somewhat niche—if both your origin and your destination aren’t on it, the ten to fifteen minutes’ walk will likely make the result worse than just going through the center. And two connections are just never worth it.
(There’s a whole story behind how building stupid useless connections came to be viewed as a virtue in Moscow transport planning—look up “Vykhino effect”. Doesn’t make the result any less shit, though.)
The other new ring is a fairly old preexisting train line that used to be cargo-only; it had the potential to be great, but unfortunately the ridiculously long connection times have made the real thing somewhat niche—if both your origin and your destination aren’t on it, the ten to fifteen minutes’ walk will likely make the result worse than just going through the center. And two connections are just never worth it.
(There’s a whole story behind how building stupid useless connections came to be viewed as a virtue in Moscow transport planning—look up “Vykhino effect”. Doesn’t make the result any less shit, though.)