#26 - RW 12-24-05 - RW Home
Moscow News
www.MN.Ru
December 22-28, 2004
Traffic Jams - Punishment for Sins?
Mikhail Blinkin, a mathematician, made a startling discovery: Moscow traffic jams are the price that we have to pay for our failure to come to terms with each other
By Anna Rudnitskaya

One and a half months ago, Moscow Deputy Mayor Valery Shantsev gave City Transport Committee experts two weeks to work out proposals to improve the transport situation in the city. They put on their thinking caps. Indeed, there is plenty to think about: The previous meeting was less than encouraging. At the time, Valery Shantsev castigated transport specialists who, he charged, were drawing up charts and providing breakdowns on traffic jams instead of taking decisive action to improve the situation on the ground. But then what can they do?

Mikhail BLINKIN, director of research programs at the Scientific Research Institute of Transport and Road Engineering, mathematician, economist, and author of a comprehensive study on road traffic management, explains why it is impossible to resolve the problem of Moscow traffic congestion:

"There are a great number of aspects to city road traffic management. The most obvious, basic aspects - such as, e.g., traffic lights, traffic flow schemes, one-way and two-way streets - are dealt with by well-qualified people: They are doing their job efficiently, and there are no complaints against them. Moscow's transport troubles are caused by socio-political and institutional problems that specialists at the Road Traffic Management Center are simply not in a position to address.

Cause 1: Taxes

One fundamental issue is road funds. Elsewhere in the world there are so-called reverse taxes. For example, as I buy gasoline in Toronto or in Paris, a certain part of the sum goes directly in to a local road fund. The more we travel, the more money city authorities have for road maintenance and upkeep. This mechanism has been known from time immemorial. Thus, in the United States, the Federal-Aid Highway Act (Federal Highway Act) has been in force since 1956. Not so in Russia. At first, Russia's wise lawmakers established road funds, but then abolished them in 2000. Yet even when they existed, they were raised by a purely barbaric method: through flat-rate deductions from corporate revenues regardless of the number of motor vehicles that a company had or of how intensively it used them. I remember a letter that we received from a shipping company director (As a matter of fact, at the time we were working on a road tax scheme under contract for the Finance Ministry). "Dear sirs," he wrote, "I have only a Mercedes car on my balance sheet, which is used to carry the shipping company president. Why do I have to pay so much?" The tax greatly irked the business sector and so it was duly abolished.

Cause 2: Class Privileges

History shows that one of the first achievements of bourgeois revolutions was the abolition of class privileges, including the right of way (for example, when a feudal lord's carriage with a burning torch moved down the street, the crowd parted to let it pass). When Prince Felipe of Spain accompanied President Putin to the royal palace to meet with the queen, they arrived late due to a traffic jam. In the United States, only the president and the vice president have the right of way.

Another side of the problem: In most countries, priority is given to transport facilities depending on their carrying capacity. A bus carries 100 passengers so it enjoys a privilege. In one noteworthy development, the Norwegian prime minister asked parliament to allow her vehicle to use the Bus-and-Taxi lane if she was late for a Cabinet session. The most remarkable part of the story was the reaction she got from the MPs. "If you are in a hurry, you'd better take a taxi," they said. There are some elements of social behavior that are deeply ingrained and simply cannot be changed. This, however, does not apply to Russia. Class privileges are still in place, while technical (vehicle capacity) privileges are virtually nonexistent.

Cause 3: Urban Development

Moscow, just like all Soviet cities, was built according to construction norms and regulations (SNiP) in force at the time, on the assumption that the level of 180 motor vehicles per 1,000 people would be reached "beyond the target period" (that is to say, not before Communism was built in the country). Today there are more than 300 motor vehicles per 1,000 residents in Moscow. This rate of motorization was definitely not envisioned under urban development plans. Here is one glaring example: Over the past 12 years, all reserve land plots in central Moscow have been sold for development projects. As a result, instead of being used as surface or underground parking facilities, they have become sources of vehicle concentration. These plots were sold for the construction of business centers or high-end residential units with two or more cars per family. This is a cardinal town-planning sin. I am saying "sin," not "mistake," because the people who made these decisions were very well aware of their consequences and implications.

The second sin is that now there is virtually no space left for so-called interception parking. In any European capital, a vehicle may not stop in the downtown area other than to disembark passengers, while long-term parking costs a lot of money because streets are, essentially, a public asset that must not be simply squandered away.

Finally, the third sin: Moscow is developing according to a medieval radial-circular scheme. In the Middle Ages, this was necessitated by defense needs. Yet in the late 1970s-early 1980s prominent transport management officials and town planners said: What remained from the days of Yury Dolgoruky [the founder of Moscow, in 1147. - Ed.] should stay in place, but now let us start building chords, or radial lines. Mind you, those were not some metaphysical considerations, but precise mathematical calculations. Radial lines were envisioned under the 1979-1986 master plan for the development of Moscow. The plan lay dormant for several years. Large-scale construction did not begin until after the advent of Yury Luzhkov (in 1992), but then the plan was effectively buried. Today Moscow is developing in circles because this is what the city authorities decided. Although experts on traffic management know that no matter how many rings are built, they will fail to ease the flow of traffic from the center, but will only augment it. Therefore not even the fourth ring-road will salvage the situation. As a matter of fact, now that all of these roads been built, there is no possible remedy. The only thing to do is to agree on the sensible use of some extremely limited resources.

Cause 4: Corruption

The idea of charging motorists to drive into the center of town is being actively discussed today. Yet the question arises: How is this charge going to be collected? In most countries where it is levied, it is collected by police. But in order for police to be able to perform this function, it must not be corrupt, or the mechanism will simply not work. In our context, where any legal charge is typically replaced with a bribe, introduction of "congestion charges" makes no sense at all. Enforcement of any traffic control measures is, above all, contingent on police.

Cause 5: On-Road Behavior

The public and the ruling authorities are, as a general rule, poles apart. In on-road behavior, this comes through the most forcefully. The public hates road taxes. I recall a demonstration on Vorobyevy Hills when city authorities were planning to raise the tax: Demonstrators arrived for the most part in expensive, foreign-made cars. I said: "This tax will be used to improve the road and traffic conditions for you." "Thank you very much, but you'd better find some other way of doing it," they said.

A motorist's attitude toward his peers is also utterly barbaric. The general thinking is: 'I can park wherever I like since this is my inalienable right, guaranteed by the Constitution, and no one may order me to move my car along.' Although I am a devoted motorist myself, I do not support vehicular activists who are opposed to the idea of towing. All I can say is: Boys, you are not causing trouble for Luzhkov or Putin when you park in the middle of the street - you are causing trouble for your brethren on the road.

Cause 6: Mistrust

The problem is that any institutional solutions, which could help cope with traffic jams in the long term, require mutual understanding between the ruling establishment and the society. Such solutions cannot be imposed from above. Motorists should realize what measures will benefit it, while this realization comes through very simple things: Here is my road tax, and here is how it is spent. Once when I was writing an article, I regularly visited the web site of the U.S. Federal Highway Administration. It shows road tax receipts and how they are being spent on a day-to-day basis. There are many thousands of visitors to the site: This is normal, robust self-interest. This trust mechanism is absolutely vital. It is only when I, the layman, understand that I pay money to have my own situation improved that I will be open to negotiation, to cooperation, concerning behavior on the road, and many, many other things as well. In Russia, however, there is no self-organization, not even on the level of such selfish interests as motorists' interests. In this context, it would be simply fantastic if Motorists come to terms with the city or federal authorities.

MN File Moscow Traffic Jam: Vital Statistics

Presently, more than 3 million motor vehicles are registered in Moscow.

Their number increases by 200,000 every year.

This year the Moscow city government provided 63 million rubles to purchase towing vehicles.

The interchange construction project on Gagarin Square, which began this year, has a price tag of 3 billion rubles.

The federal budget provided 4 billion rubles to Moscow for road maintenance and upkeep.

Motor vehicles account for 70 percent of total air pollution. The amount of noxious emissions in traffic jams increases, on average, by a factor of 10.

Surveys show that 33 percent of drivers stuck in traffic jams think about sex, 7 percent become instantly hungry, while 6 percent do not think about anything at all.