Moscow Choking On Smog, Massive Traffic Jams - ENN

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Moscow's booming economy, fueled by sky-high oil prices, has allowed Russians to indulge in consumer spending impossible in Soviet times. Cars are at the top of their shopping lists. Although only one in 10 Russians owns a car, car sales are booming and analysts expect them to reach around 2 million a year by 2008, up from 1.6 million now. Soviet citizens owned around 8 million private cars 15 years ago. Show rooms for the world's smartest brands dot the central streets of the capital, while less prestigious models are sold further out.

WALKING PACE

But the sheer quantity of cars, combined with a general disregard for parking and traffic laws means the new cars all too often go slower than walking pace. "We already have 3 million cars in Moscow and we get another 200,000 every year. We need to build more roads. We have a deficit now of 220 miles." said Moscow Mayor Yuri Luzhkov in a recent interview in daily Rossiiskaya Gazeta.

Moscow's traffic system is based around roads radiating from the center which means a whole section of the city can be paralyzed by a major traffic jam. Retirees managed to effectively cut off the city's main airport in January by blocking one of the major radial roads when protesting against benefits reform.

Luzhkov has already built or completed two ring roads for the city in an attempt to alleviate the problem and city hall is discussing whether Moscow needs another, but drivers say less dramatic changes would be the real solution.

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http://www.enn.com/today.html?id=9123

It was in the late 90's and it was smoggy and clogged then. Boy, you get stuck in those traffic jams and the sidewalks become your way out...in the taxi. Crazy roads and crazy driving and dark, smoggy air. They did have busses but probably mostly for tourists. I do not remember seeing a whole lot of them. It sounds like a strong public transportation system would help them a lot.

of making parts of central downtown car-free as Prague and some other European cities had done.

In 93 there was no divider between flows of traffic on the Ring Road and tanker trucks sat to the side to supply gasoline. Getting milk straight from the cow, as it were.

Even then, the number of traffic fatalities was amazing.

And in the city people parked on sidewalks all the time.

I just don't understand why, with the world's greatest subway system, so many people insisted on driving. When I was there subway cars usually arrived every two minutes. Evidently, that was a slow down from previous years.

I did not even know they had a subway system! We were on a goodwill tour with a bunch of grade schoolers, the only group to ever sing inside the Armory Museum, it was quite the deal so they took pretty good care of us. However, that did stop us from getting out on our own in Moscow. We were a little more free in St. Petersburg.

All I remember was it was totally nuts. We all had to split up into separate taxis at one point and the drivers thought it was a race. We were over the curb, horns blazing several times to weave in and out. This is off topic, sorry.

I was not aware of the subway but I did get to ride the trains out of the city and they were pretty nice and the busses were also pretty nice.

It's in Russian, but just click on underlined stations in blue to see some of the stations. Their subway truly is a wonder:

http://www.metro.ru/stations/

I just don't understand what we all think we are doing building more roads when worldwide oil production is about to decline? I mean, the Russian energy agency just came out and announced they are going to ramp up their oil (for some short term profits) which will probably equal Saudi Arabia's output for a while... and then start to drop off after the peak in 2010.

What the heck are we doing? Why build MORE oil infrastructure when we should be massively upgrading public transport and energy efficient rail?

No politician wants to be the first one to get in front of a camera and say "Big changes and hard times are ahead, and we have to start tightening our belts now."