Transportation

After a month of taking transit (buses, streetcars, and trains), private automobiles (Audis, Ladas(Russian made), Toyotas, and SUVs), and walking in both Moscow and Yekaterinburg, I feel comfortable explaining how the Russian transportation scene works – or at least how it works from the observations of someone who has only been here a month, and hasn’t talked with a Transportation Engineer or Transportation Planer (do they exist?) while on his visit to Russia. With that omission (I can tell I have been reading to much Pushkin…) I shall digress.

Before jumping into roads, cars, trains, and what is generally thought of as transportation, I will begin with some of the wonders of central planning as shown through the Russian City of Yekaterinburg. What catches my immediate attention in the first photo is the white building that was Yekaterinburg’s first skyscraper (built in the 1980’s).Directly under the skyscraper a giant water fountain is flowing.

More relevant to transportation are the buildings behind the skyscraper (Yekaterinburg's first skyscraper I might add). During the soviet era, just about all of the housing built was massive apartment buildings (except for a few very run down shacks, there are no houses in Yekaterinburg). During the 1950s and 60s when most of the apartments were built, they were said to be “temporary housing” and would be used no more than ten years. Here in the year 2000, those buildings are still the dominant (no exaggeration) form of housing.

The locals refer to these type of apartment complexes as a “Sleeping District.” Up close, it is staggering for a California born-and-raised boy to imagine just how many people can fit into one of these Sleeping Districts. These apartment complexes are never found just in a row by themselves…They are organized more like “digital 8” all blocked together. I took the second photo out of the eighth floor window of one such apartment. It is interesting to note, that I am in an apartment building that is parallel to the apartment buildings go the length of the photo. Beyond those apartment buildings are still more apartment buildings creating a truly Russian sleeping district.

So, if I say that I am going to discuss transportation, why do I begin with a bunch of Russian apartment buildings? In college, I heard a lot about how we (Americans) needed to learn how to build “up” as oppose to “out.” “If we could just get some more density then we can make transit a more viable option…” Well, once again, the Russians have already tried that system to its logical extreme. These Sleeping Districts tend to be so densely populated, that except for a small minority, transit is the only option. Considering that no long term parking is provided whatsoever (the only parking provided is essentially on the side of the small roads that penetrate the Sleeping Districts and are “very short-term”), there is no way that even five percent of the people could drive alone to work without causing utter chaos in the nearby streets.

The two million people in Yekaterinburg make this city’s population larger than any in the Bay Area and one third the size of the entire Bay Area. (San Francisco has approximately 700,000 people living in it.) Within the city there is no highway system to speak of, but rather, large four lane roads (two lanes in each direction). The one exception is the main street in downtown, Prospect Lenina (Lenin Street), which has six lanes and moves real slow.

The photo of Prospect Lenina I captures the best of the street. Notice that there is no striping on this brick road (I say six lanes because that is approximately how the locals use it). There is also the statue of Lenin (would any Lenin Street be complete without such a statue?) and a streetcar traveling down the middle of the road. (The street car lanes are often used as a traveling lane which theoretically brings the number of lanes on Prospect Lenina to 10 lanes.)

Streetcars

The streetcar system in Yekaterinburg is comprehensive (especially when you include the subway system). One day while watch in the news, a local reporter said that Yekaterinburg has the largest rail system of any city in the world, and I believe it. The transit system is extremely punctual, extremely cheap (three rubles or approximately twelve cents each way), and in general, clean… Clearly the transit system is something that the Russian public values.

The streetcars have a reputation for punctuality that clearly doesn’t mesh with their deteriorating condition. However, I read that the drivers are paid a bonus if their trains run on time, and are docked if they don’t, creating quite an incentive for timely service -- although not a great incentive to encourage courteous behavior (like waiting for a woman with a baby in the rain as they run to catch the train -- the drivers won't wait for anyone!).

At some intersections, there are multiple streetcar lanes both entering and exiting. What is interesting is that the switching of the tracks so that the trains are going in the right directions is not always automated. Rather the driver has to stop the train, take a big crow bar, and manually change the tracks over so that the train will head in the right direction.

I have a personal transit story that should illustrate how the fare system in a streetcar works (it is the same inefficient system on the buses by the way). After waiting for a train approximately two minutes one afternoon (they come about three minutes on most lines), we shove our way through any of the doors. The driver is not the one who collects the fare, but rather, an old, heavy set woman with an official pin on her blouse collects our three rubles per person. Once on the train, a seat is always offered to either Anna or I (since one of us is holding Sasha). After a few minutes on the train, the old woman with the pin comes gives us the opportunity to pay our six rubles. It is really obvious that she really doesn’t car if we pay our six rubles or not since it is not her job to enforce payment anyway (that authority is given to still yet another person…). Of course, I have an enforcement story… One time while I was standing with Alexandra a man gets on our train looking like a young used-car salesman. Real discretely he shows me a tin of tobacco and asks me a question. Not wanting what ever it is he is selling I say “niyet” or “no” in Russian. Then he asks me the question again, this time with more umph, and I answer him again, “Niyet.” Well, luckily Anna came to my rescue and told him I don’t speak Russian. She then told me he was asking to see our ticket stubs. I pulled them out of my pocket and he happily left. In retrospect, however, when I Russian man shows you his police badge (not exactly a tin of tobacco) I don’t recommend telling him “no.”

A last cool thing about the streetcars. As they tend to go down the middle of very crowded streets, in many places they underground passageways that connect the streetcar loading zones with the sidewalks. The next photo shows one such area, and the people on the right are actually heading down a staircase that will take them to the underground passage way. Those passage ways take on a life of their own (especially after a little rain) with people selling all kinds of nick-nacks (including potatoes).

Striping

The photo above shows the only arrows painted on the street that I saw in the entire city, and it also shows a rare example where the lanes are striped. More typical, like the photo above with the statue of Lenin, there is no striping, and the vehicles make the lanes up as they enter the intersection. Not only do very few roads have striping, the ones that do lose their striping every few blocks.

However, even crazier than the fact that their is no striping, is how the drivers have invent the lanes as they need. In order to understand this phenomena, however, we must back up a step and start with the obvious. Russian drivers tend to be much more skilled than their American peers. They accelerate faster, drive quicker, turn sharper, decelerate faster, and in many ways, are forced to “think” faster in order to avoid collisions.

Now for the lanes… Most streets seem just wide enough for an odd amount of lanes (three or five), and the Russian drivers are quick to take advantage of this. On a typical “five” lane road, two lanes go one direction, two lanes in the other, and then the middle one goes to whoever has the guts to use it (and many drivers do!). The middle lane is really interesting. Near intersections, it is used similar to a turning bay (although rarely to the vehicles wait their turn to turn, but rather, the fastest car tends to take the nearest available lane). It is widely understood that the most expensive a car (especially if it is German) always has the right of way (because if you don’t give it to them, they will take it anyway). In between blocks, this middle lane is used by the faster cars to pass everyone else. To sum it up, the fastest cars from both directs use this no-mans-land in order to gain precocious time.

No Smog

This is still my favorite street sign found in Yekaterinburg.

On many streets the locals have decided (rightfully so) that they don’t want smoggy vehicles on their particular street. Hence, the no smog sign. The first time I saw such a sign (they are all over the city) I thought it was a joke, the sign must mean that you are not suppose to keep cars idling while they are parked. Anna insisted, however, that the sign meant that smoggy cars are not allowed on those streets. The Russians barely listen to streetlights and the authorities expect some guy who is driving a smoggy vehicle to listen to a sign like that.

Anyway, as I am ready to publish this Anna double checked with her dad and it turns out I was right, the sign doesn’t mean “No Smoggy Vehicles,” but rather, don’t leave you vehicle on while parked. However, I still like the sign, and I am going to keep the section in here anyway.

Signals

The signals system is fundamentally pretty close to what I find in the United States (closer than France!), although there are some interesting differences. First, each intersection tends to have a signal on the near-side and the far-side of the intersection. And unlike the California, right-turn-on-reds is not allowed. (Interestingly this might be the one perk given to pedestrians. As most intersections, as soon as the through traffic light turns red there is a swarm of pedestrians.)

Probably the most obscure signal feature is shown in the next photo. Many of the intersections have arrows within the green lights showing which movements are allowed. Additionally, if your movement is not shown with a green arrow then it is not allowed. For example, in the photo below, vehicles are allowed to make right turns, and go through, but are not allowed to make left turns. In a few moments a green left turn arrow will light up at which point left turns will be allowed.

For what it is worth, I found arrows painted over a green light are extremely hard to read from more than a thirty or forty feet. Also interesting is that they put the streetcar signals right up there along with the vehicle signals (notice the orange lights to the left of the photo).

Drivers

The cheap labor market in Russia is shown in no better place than by the abundance of “drivers” in Yekaterinburg. Every “real” businessman has their own driver. This is similar to a low-paid chauffeur.

There are drivers all over the city, and the lower paid guys driver their own cars. After one has some experience then they can move up to driving a high level businessman who provides his own car. During any given weekday, in any parking lot will be a handful of men sitting in their cars reading or listening to music as they wait for their clients.

For corporate Russia, it is standard for a company to provided a driver for the president and all the vice-presidents, as well as one “rover” driver for the managers. The drivers in Russia serve many purposes, one of my favorite is when Victor has made his driver available to Anna and I to run errands around the Russian Bureaucracy. As the Russian government sent Anna from one side of the city to the other (repeatedly), it was very convenient to have someone who was waiting for us as we exited the building (especially in the rain).

< end of observations >

Back to Our Russian Trip