LOCAL

After more than 15,000 suggestions about improving Moscow’s traffic problems, City Hall has unveiled some of its jam-busting plans.

And it all boils down to persuading motorists to leave their cars at home and hop on to public transport – even though the city’s network already struggles to carry huge passenger numbers every day.

Mayor Sergei Sobyanin has found 200 billion roubles from the city’s budget which he hopes can transform the metro, bus and overland rail networks – enabling them to carry even more passengers.

On its last legs

Moscow’s public transport network already carries about 80 per cent of the population on a regular basis – and aging rolling stock is preventing further progress.

“Urban transport is on its last legs,” city transport boss Nikolai Godunov admitted, telling Rossiiskaya Gazeta that each year saw 9 per cent of the city’s buses and trams condemned to the wrecking yard.

That figure could rise to 43 per cent by the end of next year without significant investment.

However the rumour that trolleybuses would be ditched was dismissed. Far from getting rid of the electric buses, they are be upgraded, City Hall announced.

Parking and roads

An on-going effort to ease the traffic problems will see a move to create off-road car-parking, particularly around suburban metro stations and bus interchanges.

The plan is to encourage drivers from Moscow Region to stop bringing vehicles into the city centre.

But there are still plans to beef up the road network, creating a fourth urban ring road and widening many key routes into town.

The aim is to catch up with the North American urban model where about 30 per cent of land is used for transport infrastructure. In Moscow the current figure is a miserly 8.7 per cent.

Long-term progress

Saving Moscow’s commuters is more of a five-year plan than a quick fix.

Deputy mayor Nikolai Lyamov warned that things are likely to get worse before they get better, pointing to the experience of South Korean capital Seoul where it took four years to get a result.

“This is not a plan to fight congestion,” Lyamov admitted. “It’s a list of priority activities.

“Traffic congestion didn’t arrive in a single day, and to get rid of it in a single day would lead to total chaos.

“If, for example, we began to rebuild Shosse Entusiastov today and immediately dug up Varshavka as well we would have a double collapse.”