The reconstruction of Moscow highways will result in a transport collapse - even the mayor’s office admits this

The capital's authorities are completing preparations for a large-scale reconstruction of the city's main outbound routes. Repair work on the highways will begin this year and will last at least two years. Even the mayor’s office admits that the reconstruction will lead to a significant deterioration in the road situation in the city. Kommersant writes about this.

Yesterday, the mayor's office began selecting contractors who will reconstruct the Yaroslavskoye Highway and the highway connecting the south and west of the city - from Balaklavsky Avenue to Rublevskoye Shosse. The day before, similar competitive procedures were held on Entuziastov Highway, Mozhaiskoye Highway, Leningradsky, Ryazansky and Volgogradsky Avenues

Reconstruction of outbound highways is one of the main components of the program for the development of Moscow transport in 2012-2016. Of the 2.2 trillion rubles allocated for the program, almost 600 billion are planned to be spent on road construction and repairs. In 2012, funding for the program will amount to 309 billion rubles, of which 106 billion will be spent on the reconstruction of the road network.

At the end of last year, Moscow Mayor Sergei Sobyanin set the task of improving traffic on the city’s nine most problematic outbound highways. In 2011, competitions were held to develop projects for their reconstruction, and now tenders are being held to select contractors.

In total, the reconstruction of nine highways is planned to be completed by 2014. The most large-scale projects are the reconstruction of the Rublevsky direction and Mozhaiskoye highway. Three new interchanges, several large parking lots and a number of pedestrian crossings will appear on Balaklavsky Avenue. Rublyovka itself will undergo only a superficial reconstruction: in particular, the organization of traffic in one of the most problematic places - at the exit from Osenniy Boulevard - will be changed. As for the Mozhaiskoye Highway, part of this route in the section from the Moscow Ring Road to the Rublevskoye Shosse will actually become an overpass several kilometers long, under which new side passages will pass.

10 km/h and below

“Unfortunately, the Moscow authorities continue the sad Soviet tradition of building hybrids of city streets and high-speed freeways without public transport and pedestrians,” says Mikhail Blinkin, scientific director of the Research Institute of Transport and Road Facilities. “Many years of world experience show that such a solution is ineffective: such roads are inconvenient neither pedestrians nor drivers can use it."

Blinken added that freeways should not go into the city center. “No matter how we disperse traffic along Leninsky Prospekt, everything will still end up in Yakimanka,” he noted. “If we do not plan in the long term to build freeways running past the center, then living in the city will be inconvenient.” As for specific projects, Mikhail Blinkin criticized the reconstruction of Volgogradsky Avenue: no work is planned to improve traffic at the single-level intersection with Lyublinskaya Street. It is believed that this intersection causes traffic jams in the entire southeast of Moscow.

A scheme for organizing traffic in the area of ​​Warsaw and Kashirskoe highways has been published on the website of the Moscow construction complex. It is proposed to go around the repairs along side streets, which are already extremely busy. Similar schemes will soon be published for other highways. The capital's authorities understand that large-scale reconstruction in 2012 in Moscow could seriously complicate traffic in the city.

“The year will be difficult,” the city administration told Kommersant. “On average, when road work is carried out, the speed of vehicles in repaired areas drops by 20-30%,” confirmed Mikhail Kashtanov, leading specialist of the development department of the Echelon Geolife group of companies (studies traffic in Moscow). “The situation is complicated by the fact that the speed drops and on the streets adjacent to the highway, along which a detour is organized. During repairs, traffic jams may occur there with a drop in speed of up to 10 km/h and below.”