Along a dark path

Yuri Luzhkov invites municipal officials to start work earlier than anyone else in Moscow

The capital's weather, which with the arrival of winter aggravates the situation on roads already clogged with traffic jams, forces the Moscow authorities to put on iron gloves. Mayor Yuri Luzhkov believes that a new work schedule for officials will also help solve the transport problem in the city during the reconstruction of the main highways. During the traditional Saturday tour of city construction sites, the mayor proposed starting the working day of municipal employees at seven in the morning.

Around these early hours, when citizens rush to work, the load on the capital's roads, according to Mr. Luzhkov, reaches its peak. Therefore, Moscow ministers will be asked, as the mayor puts it, to “stretch” the traffic flow. “If office work starts earlier, if we separate the various structures by time, this will have a unique effect,” said the head of the capital’s government, promising to discuss with colleagues the issue of moving the start of the working day to an earlier date. Moreover, it seems that the work schedule of white-collar workers may become flexible: some will report to work at seven, while others will be able to begin their work duties an hour later, therefore, their working day will end at different times.

But since municipal employees subordinate to the mayor's office make up only part of the army of officials who travel daily from the residential areas of Moscow to offices located in the center, Mr. Luzhkov promised to turn to colleagues from the federal bureaucratic vertical. “This question will also be raised before government organizations, the Russian government, so that they start work accordingly and finish earlier,” said the mayor, but apparently without much hope that federal officials will agree to synchronize their work with urban.

It is difficult to judge how Russian government officials will react to Yuri Luzhkov's proposal to get up after dark. Moreover, the center has already made its contribution to unloading the capital’s highways with money, allocating 11 billion rubles for the capital’s road infrastructure next year.

As Russian Finance Minister Alexei Kudrin said last Friday at a meeting of the State Duma, the amount of subsidies to the richest region of the country “many times exceeds the amount of funds allocated from the federal budget to any other subject of the country.” According to the Ministry of Finance, additional revenues to the capital’s budget this year will amount to about 150 billion rubles, and part of these funds, in the minister’s opinion, should be spent on the construction of roads and the metro. According to the first deputy mayor of the capital, Pyotr Aksenov, first of all, federal funds will be used for the construction of the Zvenigorod highway, as well as for the design and construction of the fourth transport ring.

However, urban transportation infrastructure needs appear to exceed federal assistance. “It’s good that such a significant amount will additionally go towards solving Moscow’s most pressing problem right now,” Moscow City Duma deputy Andrei Kovalev said on City-FM radio. - But the amount is clearly insufficient. Moscow now needs tens of billions of dollars to radically solve the traffic jam problem.” According to city planners, the capital lacks up to 350 km of roads, which are difficult to lay in already established areas. According to Yuri Luzhkov, the city authorities are “ready to increase the volume of road work many times over,” but in the current conditions they also intend to transfer the load to public transport, in favor of which motorists must refuse, leaving their personal vehicles in parking lots or interceptor parking lots.

Yulia KHOMCHENKO