While a Russian proverb may suggest that "patience helps to overcome all troubles", many Moscow drivers would not agree. During the evening rush hour, the city centre transforms into a traffic battlefield where driving from A to B becomes a strategic mission that demands advanced planning.
The State Traffic Safety Inspectorate, or GIBDD, calculates the total number of cars registered in Moscow at 3.82 million and this number grows annually by some 200,000-300,000 news cars. However, the figure does not include yet more vehicles from other regions or from abroad, which are commonly found in Moscow. Transportation Ministry data released in October 2008 predicts the number of cars in Moscow to reach 8 million by 2015.
The financial crisis may well have put the brakes on Moscow's increasing traffic snarls, however. RIA Novosti quoted General Major Sergei Kazantsev, head of Moscow GIBDD, as saying that from January to March the number of cars on the city's roads fell by 5 to 7 per cent.
"We have seen 25 per cent less new-car registrations and 7 to 8 per cent less used-car registrations in first quarter, 2009," Kazantsev said.
The Moscow Fuel Association reported that despite petrol prices declining, total petrol sales fell 15 per cent from January to March.
The Association of European Business reported that nationwide new cars sales fell 47 per cent in March and 40 per cent overall during the first quarter in comparison to 2008.
Yandex Probki, an online traffic monitoring service, reported that traffic levels remained the same in the first quarter, although April figures fell by some 5 per cent compared to March.
Snowdrops, VIPs and parking tickets
While the crisis might have eased the pressure on Moscow's clogged roads, seasonal factors may have also played a role. With dacha season just around the corner, the podsnezhniki, or snowdrops, will soon emerge, bringing more cars back to Moscow's streets.
Podsnezhniki is a street-jargon term for drivers who keep their cars in garages during winter and use them only in the warm seasons. There are no estimates of how many drivers can be classified as podsnezhniki.
Liana Baladze, PR manger of Yandex Probki, said the highest concentration of podsnezhniki drivers appeared around weekends as "they mostly use their cars to drive to the dacha".
Among other problems that contribute to traffic jams are ineffective parking rules that allow for leaving a vehicle at an angle to the sidewalk, which takes up half a lane on each side of the road. Regulations in Europe and United States favour parallel parking.
"We often see how entire lanes are excluded from the traffic flow because of bad parking," said Sergei Tkachenko, director of the General Planning Institute for Moscow, or Genplan.
Russian driving law does not allow for leaving parking tickets on car windscreens as in the West. There are also no parking officers and drivers know well where all vehicle evacuators operate, rarely expanding to new areas.
Uncorking the jam
The city has been weighing up numerous possible solutions to the city's traffic woes - from the obvious such as parking stations located by public-transport hubs in the suburbs and bus lanes to more exotic solutions such as intelligent traffic lights or new roads constructed on the roofs of residential buildings.
Muscovites commuting via above-ground public transport should find life a little easier starting this September. The experimental introduction of separate bus lanes will begin on Volokolamskoye Shosse with the goal of easing traffic in the Mitino area.
Another improvement for Moscow region drivers is in plans to construct underground parking located by the end-of-the-line metro stations. Drivers will leave their car by the station and take a 20-minute metro ride instead of a few hours stuck in traffic. According to Genplan transit parking is to appear near Mitino, Novokosino and Planernaya.
Alexander Popov, deputy head of the Department for Development of Road and Communication Network, said that traffic lights with artificial intelligence would ease traffic gridlocks. "This system already operates on Dmitrovskoye and Volokolamskoye highways," said Popov. "Automatic sensors report the number of cars from roads and the system makes decisions when to switch lights." Currently the city's regular traffic lights change on fixed intervals, no matter what the traffic situation.
In what some might uncharitably call a case of "what kills Germans is good for Russians," Berlin engineer Roland Lipp presented to the Moscow City Duma an exotic idea for constructing Strassenhaus, or residential buildings with driving lanes on the roofs. Lipp suggested that the new invisible lanes would create no noise at all and this transportation option would be good for official cars and emergency vehicles. This project has been postponed since 2006, although Yury Luzhkov supported the idea. No similar project has been created in Germany.
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