Moscow Mayor Plans for traffic

Sobyanin is the new mayor for Moscow. Luzkhov and Moscow became too much a city state with it's own king. As long as the king listens to the emperor and keeps his people silent there are no problems. Now the new appointed mayor must do something to keep the people silent. This is done in a way which is very smart. By promising to take away the gridlock which irritates the Muscovites daily. City Hall's web site crashed Wednesday after Mayor Sergei Sobyanin published his long-awaited plan to fight Moscow traffic jams.



Tversjkaya carpark-free



Harsh measures are directly in effect:

- City employers should wake up an hour earlier to be present at work at 8:00 reducing the transportpeak
- Trucks are no longer allowed to to appear on the streets between 07:00 hours and 22:00 hours
- banning parking on pavements (Tverksaja, the main shopping street is allready complaining)
- pedestrian passes are to be removed from streets and should go underground

- kiosks are blocking pavements and attracting cars and they should be removed, all of them.

Future plans seem to ambitious, but it is never clear with Moscow what they can realise; if the really want then Russians can build superfast and big works. But also it can be that the plans stay plans, anyway, here are some of the measures on the long run:

- the metro should go regional in order to pick up commuters in satelite towns
- a fourth Ringroad should be constructed
- trolleybusses, regional busses and minibusses should be banned from the center for being to slow or not having enough capacity

Many measures are aimed at enhanced the carnetwork altough one would say public transit is key to succes. Every year 30.000 cars are added to the Mosocow carpopulation, it will be impossible to built at the same phase. Also it must be unwanted to do this resulting in a car polluted city.

Previous goverment Luzkhov did also have many of the same long term goals for traffic. It was packed in the Moscow General Urban development Plan 2025. But because many other measures in this plan got more publications this was forgotten. The destroying of more than 1500 mounments and many huge buildingprojects caused an uproar making Luzkhov less popular. Last drop was the forestfires to which the mayor didn't take engough measures according the media.

Moscow City november 2010

Sobyanin has interesting point of views on finalised, ongoing, or planned projects. Like he called Moscow City a mistake, being so near the center in an already congested area. Most Europeans cities would actually like this becase public transport can be a real alternative to cars with such plans. Also Sobyanin cancelled a plan building on a public square, Khitrovskaya, because he wants squares to stay public and not become offices. He rather would like to have a small park there with underground parking space. Given the developments forbidding to park cars everywhere and the growth of car population this can become the a examplar project for many spots in Moscow. This would be good example of Slow Urbanism; making a city where one can live, has respect for it's history and travels via public transport or even slower, by bike. But this last one is probably a step to far for Moscow! And also part of the development plan which is under fire now :<