Giving New Meaning to the Term FOOTball
First we learned that Russia couldn't handle the regulation of alcohol, resulting not only in the precious (by Russian standards) commodity's disappearance from store shelves but also numerous fatalities caused by bootleg hooch, and now the Moscow Times reports that Russia can't handle traffic either, to a rather embarrasing degree. Photos from EnglishRussia and the Moscow Times.
How do you know when you've got a traffic problem? When a top football team is forced to ride the subway to a big game. Despite a police escort, Spartak Moscow players got stuck in Moscow's increasingly brutal traffic before their Champions League match against Inter Milan on Tuesday night. They only made it to Luzhniki stadium by kickoff by swapping their team bus for the metro.
"Luckily, they didn't make us wait in line to buy tickets," Spartak spokesman Vladimir Shevchenko said Wednesday. "They just opened up the service gates for us and let us go through. "It's a good thing, too," he added. "The bus made it to Luzhniki only by the end of the first half."
Spartak, however, ended up losing, 0-1. The coach blamed the traffic. Spartak's route to Tuesday's game may have been unusual for a professional club, but the suffocating traffic that forced the team off their bus is all too familiar to Moscow drivers. More than 3 million cars are currently registered in Moscow, 12 times more than just 15 years ago, and Konstantin Korolevsky, a senior Moscow city official, said this week that the number of cars on Moscow roads was growing by 102,000 every year. Among the proposed solutions for the traffic jams are new, wider roads, computerized traffic-control systems, toll roads, metro expansion, more parking garages and even water taxis on the Moscow River. But in the meantime, the jams are getting worse.
An unusually high number of car accidents contributed to Tuesday night's jam, said traffic police spokesman Igor Koloskov. A total of 1,753 accidents were registered, about 500 more than the daily average. "There were 28 accidents on the Garden Ring alone from 4 p.m. to 8 p.m.," Koloskov said. "The average for an entire day on that road is about 20 accidents." Drivers typically do not move their cars from the scene of a fender-bender before police arrive to determine who was at fault, which further impedes the flow of traffic. Koloskov said the surge in accidents was due largely to the fact that drivers have not yet adjusted to winter driving conditions following the city's first snowfall last weekend.
Spartak's metro ride even made it to the floor of the State Duma. Noting the "curious incident" involving Spartak, Alexei Mitrofanov, a deputy of the Liberal Democratic Party of Russia, lambasted city officials for the situation on Moscow roads. "Is Moscow capable of fulfilling its role as the capital?" Mitrofanov said. "What are we giving them subsidies for?" City spokesman Sergei Tsoi dismissed Mitrofanov's remarks as populist. Spartak head coach Vladimir Fedotov said the traffic jam played a key role in his team's poor performance early on. "I had to give the pre-game talk in the train," Fedotov said at the post-game news conference. The players, trainers and coaching staff boarded the train at the Sukharevskaya metro station and rode nine stops, changing trains at Turgenevskaya, to reach the stadium just an hour before kickoff. With just under a minute gone in the game, Inter's Julio Cruz scored the only goal of the night. "They scored a goal right as we stepped off the metro," Spartak captain Yegor Titov said after the game.
Spartak's spokesman, however, said the players were blaming no one but themselves. "We had a police escort, but even that didn't help us in traffic like that," he said. "And we had several chances over the course of the entire game. It would be funny if it weren't so sad." Titov said he could hardly remember the last time he rode the Moscow metro before Tuesday, though he guessed it was some time "at the end of the 1980s or the beginning of the 1990s."
"It was amazing," Titov said. "We were all sweating quite a bit, though. It was extremely hot. But no big deal. We arrived just fine."
What's next? Will ambulance crews be toting patients on stretchers into the subway after car crashes because the traffic won't let them through? Stay tuned and find out.
Labels:
neo-soviet failure,
russia
7 comments:
UGLY: Always responsive to readers, La Russphobe thanks you for your suggestion. Look for a post dealing with the issue you raise tomorrow.
I believe his point is that being able to buy a car in Russia is hardly a sign of wealth and prosperity compared to Western nations. And in fact, even a Lada is far beyond the reach of most Russians, whose average income is $300 per month and who have no credit facility.
UGLY:
If we agree that Russia is impoverished and pathetic compared to Western countries, then we have a wonderful basis of commonality.
If your point is that Moscow having more cars on the road than it did in Soviet times is a sign of progress for Russia, I utterly reject this contention and believe that the facts cited in this post and the related one conclusively show that Moscow is on a pathway to disaster.
GRUZHY's point about Ladas conclusively shows how ridciculous the idea of "purchasing power parity" is. Under it, a Russian who buys a Lada and an American who buys a Toyota are deemed to get the same value, a totally ridiculous notion. In fact, it's questionable whether the word "car" can be fairly applied to both.
Your comment "in big cities and near of these almost anyone who wants car and has some persistence may have it" sounds like the Politburo talking. In other words, it's gibberish.
You are right that I should not say Russian salaries are 100 times smaller than American. American is $36,000 while Russian is $300, so that is 120 times smaller. Sorry for the error! I'm clearly not nearly enough of a russophobe!
UGLY: Your link has no information about the availability of credit to Russians for the purchase of an automobile. La Russophobe can easily say she's going to pay Vladimir Putin a compliment tomorrow, but that doesn't mean you should believe her. The fact that a particular Moscow dealer makes mention of it is totally meaningless. Can you provide a link showing how much consumer credit was accessed by the Russian people in 2005? That would be meaningful.
GUZHY: Maybe it would just go the way of the YUGO, but there is certainly a Wal-mart market in the US for cheap stuff. Why can't Russia export these cheap cars?
UGLY:
I've already explained the basis for my conclusion at length, and you've ignored it as usual. It (a) Moscow is sucking up wealth from the country so its relative prosperity is an illusion and harmful to the nation and (b) Moscow is incapable of creating the infrastructure necessary to support the larger number of cars.
"Russia is poorer" means absolutely nothing. How much poorer? An American earns as much in a month as a Russian in a year. An American man lives more than a decade longer. Russia isn't just "poorer" it's in a different class.
And how about the significance of being poorer? Doesn't it mean Russia must avoid confrontation with richer nations or be destroyed? Doesn't it mean the current government is a disaster? That's the only point I'm making by mentioning the comparison, yet you ignore it.
I don't agree with you on Yeltsin. It's quite true Yeltsin made many errors, but one of them wasn't to provoke the USA into a new cold war. Even if you think Putin has made some gains, and I reject that utterly (any gains would have happened under Yeltsin too, as the price of oil rose), all these will be totally wiped out in the new confrontation. For someone who claims to be "against Putin" you are awfully supportive of him.
My criticism of Russia is simply a warning call to Russians to change their government before it is too late. You seem to be saying you'd rather confront the world, defy reform and be destroyed than accept reform and wound your precious Russian pride. You are free to do so. Say "hi" to oblivion for me when you get there.
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