Takeaway jams

There is no need to convince anyone that endless traffic congestion has become a painful headache for the entire city. During rush hours, you can only move along many (not necessarily central) streets at walking speed. The extreme congestion of roads and the lack of personal responsibility of officials, apparently, prompted Smolny to decide to establish a new – “execution”, as they had already dubbed it – position under the city government. It is called mysteriously in a modern manner: traffic director.

The chairman of the transport committee, Alexander Datsyuk, spoke about the possible creation of a fundamentally new “anti-traffic” department back in September. According to him, today several institutions are involved in organizing traffic in St. Petersburg in one way or another: the Transport Committee itself, the Directorate for Traffic Management (DODD), the State Traffic Safety Inspectorate, etc. At the same time, it is obvious that today’s traffic management scheme is, to put it mildly, stalled. St. Petersburg roads still cannot cope with the annually increasing traffic flow. And, according to experts, at the current rate of motorization, after 2010 we may face a real transport collapse. That is, moving on the ground on four wheels will be completely impossible; only subway trains underground will be able to move freely.
According to officials, one of the reasons for endless traffic jams is the lack of coordination of efforts between different departments. It turns out that each institution is responsible for its own scope of work, but no one is specifically responsible for the congestion of the streets in general. Guided by these considerations, at the next meeting in Smolny at the end of November, they decided to create an interdepartmental structure that would unite disparate efforts to restore order on the roads.
It is assumed that the so-called traffic director will head the new institution. Moreover, according to First Deputy Chairman of the Transport Committee Nikolai Konstantinov, St. Petersburg officials are not reinventing the wheel at all: such a position already exists, for example, in London.
“This is not about duplicating the functions of our committee or the Traffic Management Directorate,” explains the deputy chairman. – The new structure should coordinate the actions of various departments, as well as unite and implement effective programs to improve the transport situation in the city. The end result of this structure should be the absence of traffic jams.”
However, Nikolai Konstantinov does not rule out that the transport committee itself could become such a coordinating body.
But others do not rule out this possibility. For example, according to Olga Ivleva, a specialist in the information and public relations department of DODD, it is possible that the directorate could become such a body. “But this requires serious refinement of the legislative framework at the federal level, as well as expansion of the powers of our department,” she says. According to the management of DODD, the above-mentioned structure should bear full responsibility for its decisions, without coordinating their adoption with other divisions. And report on the progress of work to improve the transport situation only to the governor.
So far, the powers of the newly created department are very vague. But it is already clear that the position of traffic director is very similar to the position of a switchman. Because the main point here is that responsibility for the road situation will be personalized. It's convenient for everyone. Outraged drivers will be able to send complaints to a specific addressee. And the governor will be able to reprimand a specific official for traffic congestion at a city government meeting. But which city functionary would agree to take such a suicidal position? And will the problem of traffic jams itself be solved?

Petr ARTEMONOV
Photo INTERPRESS