Translated material
Pull you by the rubber
The Moscow City Hall is looking for a way to collect fees for using studded wheels.
Next year, additional fees for the use of studded tires may be added to the new transport tax rates in Moscow . City officials, who believe that it is motorists who spoil the road surface of city highways, 80% of whom use wheels with studded tires in the winter months, decided to return to the idea of charging additional fees for safe driving on ice. Yesterday, the head of the department of housing, communal services and city improvement, Andrei Tsybin, made such a proposal at a regular meeting of the capital’s government. “This issue needs to be considered jointly with the city’s legislative branch so as not to run counter to the Tax Code,” said Mr. Tsybin.Despite the fact that this idea, which has long been floating around on Tverskaya, 13, is still not formalized in the form of any regulatory act, today its discussion has already reached a new level. Because Moscow Mayor Yuri Luzhkov himself showed concern for the wear resistance of the road surface. “In the summer, I had to decide to allocate additional funds for the repair of the Moscow Ring Road and the Third Ring Road due to the furious wear and tear of the left lane, where a rut had formed, which is dangerous for drivers,” complained the mayor, who was also inclined to blame motorists for the appearance of potholes, not road workers. Mr. Luzhkov said yesterday that the issue must be resolved urgently: “Either those who have studded tires will pay extra tax for road repairs, or let’s ban the use of studs in the summer.”
True, from further speeches by officials it followed that it was not motorists or even the heavy military equipment that was allowed to walk along the Moscow streets during the May parade that were the main reason for the too high costs of maintaining the capital’s road surface in a relatively normal condition. According to Andrei Tsybin, existing GOSTs allow executors of city orders to use old-style building materials and road surfaces. And as a result, asphalt sometimes has to be rebuilt even more often than once every five to seven years.
The total length of city highways, according to the Department of Housing and Public Utilities and City Improvement, is more than 5 thousand km, and the road surface area reaches 120 million square meters. m. The cost of repair is 1 sq. m. m of roadway, according to Mr. Tsybin, costs the city treasury 1-1.5 thousand rubles. This year, according to him, major renovations were carried out on an area of about 7.4 million square meters. m, and another about 6.4 million sq. m repair work was carried out in the current order. Thus, up to 19% of the area of the entire road network was reconstructed, and the volume of repair work was 10% higher than in 2007.
Therefore, Mr. Tsybin proposed, along with tightening the requirements for car owners, to revise state standards for the production of road materials. “We want to oblige manufacturers to produce the asphalt that we need,” Marina Orlova, head of the press service of the housing and communal services department, explained to reporters. According to her, the reason that the city annually has to repair more than 10% of the road surface is also the “difficult climatic” situation, when the amplitude of temperature fluctuations ranges from 5 degrees Celsius to 20 degrees below zero, and “zero crossings” occur more 50 times per season.
In addition, according to Mr. Tsybin, already this winter road workers are faced with the issue of “developing and using new materials for markings.” “We need new low-temperature plastic materials that will work equally effectively on the capital’s highways,” he said, recalling that “relief” markings that warn the driver about changing lanes due to noise and vibration should be tested on the highways in 2009. MKAD.
“Today we have to repair the roadway every two to three years, which is primarily due to materials that do not meet high requirements. I believe that the use of new, more durable materials, allowing for an increase in service life, will only benefit the city,” the head of the housing and communal services complex, Petr Biryukov, supported the head of the department. The head of the capital's traffic police department, Sergei Kazantsev, is also confident that high-quality road markings will reduce road accidents by 15%. In general, the condition of the roadway, according to traffic inspectors, causes 5.5% of road accidents.
However, Yuri Luzhkov, who noted the lack of “comfort” on the capital’s roads, was clearly irritated by both the way the capital’s traffic inspectors work and the concept of development of the road repair industry presented by city officials. “There is no supervision over the state of the road infrastructure; I do not see a flow of instructions on those issues that are within your competence. You carry out your supervisory functions unsatisfactorily,” Mr. Luzhkov criticized the traffic police. From Mr. Tsybin he demanded not ideas, but a real plan of action. “I didn’t see a powerful section for implementing instructions,” he reproached the head of the housing and communal services department.