Moscow to spend over 1.5 trillion rubles on transport before 2016
MOSCOW. Sept 11 (Interfax) - The development of the transport system is one of the most important expenditures of the Moscow budget, Andrei Sharonov, deputy Moscow mayor on economic policy, said in an interview with Vedomosti on Tuesday.
"There are plans to spend 1.64 trillion rubles on this program in 2011-2016," Sharonov said.
Sharonov specified that this funding will be used to build 88 km of metro lines.
"We are replacing train cars with new cars with air-conditioning and anti-bacterial air cleaning systems," he said.
The authorities plan to create thousands of parking lots and launch an intellectual transport system, he said.
"We can no longer delay the solution of the transport issue. There are some 4 million registered cars in the city and only traffic virtually comes to a standstill when only 700,000 vehicles drive on the streets of the city simultaneously," Sharonov said.
Sharonov said he agrees with Western experts, who have made a conclusion that high-speed highways only draw a large number of private vehicles.
"This means that the more roads you build the more cars appear," Sharonov said.
Sharonov said Moscow was designed in the 1970s, when there was on average three cars per 100 people.
"Now there are 32 cars per 100 people! It's just impossible to keep up with the number of cars by building new roads," he said.
Sharonov believes Moscow should develop in the same way as other large cities: by giving priority to public transport through tough and consistent increase of the cost of owning private cars.